Pickles are not my Friend, and Other Musings

Last night, we finally got around to watching the opening episode of Steven King’s “Under the Dome'”. We listened to this very long book on cd during various trips back and forth to the beach. It was a riveting read/listen, and at the time my husband and I commented that it would make a great movie. I have read that it is hoped that the series will be picked up, and so they are gearing it as ongoing. There will be some changes from the finite book. The first episode had some gory special effects which since we both enjoy “The Walking Dead”, were not a problem.

The problem was that I had been hungry all day. Even though I had eaten a delicious dinner of half grilled tofu and half grilled flank steak, broccoli and salad, I still could have eaten a horse. I went ahead and had my snack of decaf coffee and vanilla pudding, but still I was pretty hungry. Maybe it was the cinnamon rolls with icing that my sweetie baked, or the gold fish he ate during the show. I finally gave in and had some dill pickles. They may be satisfying and have no calories, but in the morning, I alway pay for them with no weight loss and not being able to pass the old “wedding ring” test. Since I hate to wear rings, I rarely wear my wedding ring unless I am leaving the house. Now that I have lost 16-17 lbs., the ring slips on nice and loosely, until I have pickles or too much salt in other forms. This is why it has become an effective test of my fluid retention.

Okay, my dear husband, I know you are reading this and feeling guilty. Please don’t. I need these tests to my self control, and usually isn’t really even a struggle. I’m not sure what made last night different. Also, I want you to be able to eat what you want, when you want. You should not have to suffer for my years of overindulgence, and for your superior genetic ability to maintain a healthy weight (no matter how much you eat like a teenaged boy, I am so jealous).

Ah well, on to other subjects. I always check out multiple fiction and nonfiction books from the library and skip back in forth, reading a little in one, and moving to another, and then going back to the first. Several years ago, our Borders bookstore (and then the whole corporation, shortly thereafter) closed, so now it takes more of an effort to go to the bookstore whereas the library is very close. So now I save money, and often read things that I would not normally buy.

Right now, in addition to the book on music, I am reading “Consider the Fork, a History of How We Cook and Eat” by Bee Wilson. Ms Wilson sounds fascinating, she is a British food writer and historian with a Ph.D from Cambridge where she and her family now live. She wrote that though we as a species had been cooking with fire for over 100,000 years, the clay pots only date back 9 or 10 thousand years ago. It was looked upon as so magical that early potters were often considered shamans in early cultures. How fascinating, I still look at potters like that since I am unable to make even the most rudimentary pot. How many ladies around my age watched the movie “Ghost”, and signed up for a pottery class, only to find it was nothing like the movie. It was frustrating and difficult. I so admire potters.

Gosh, it’s almost 9:30. This is my working weekend, so I better get to it.

Our Home

Some days you wake up, look around the home you have made, and everything just makes you happy. That’s how I felt this morning, after I made up the bed, and looked at the complete picture with the muted light coming in through the drapes, giving the room a dreamy, soft look. I love the cozy nest my husband and I have made together, we have enjoyed decorating this house so much. We rarely disagree on our decorating choices, though in art, I am a fan of whimsy and he is not.
That’s a pretty minor area of disagreement. and probably is good, in that it keeps me from getting carried away.

I edited this picture slightly with the Google app, Snapseed. I’m pretty sure it was free, and there are cool adjustments and frames. Sometimes you just don’t feel like sending a photo to your laptop and editing it in Photoshop. I highly recommend this app.

This morning, on the diet front, I lost another 1/2 lb which always starts my day off on a positive note. My new carbon steel wok arrived, but I am still in the process of seasoning it. It’s really not an easy process, I have to cook and rub oil all around the inside for 10 minutes and then let it cool 3 more times, Whew, I hope it makes my stir fry taste good so it’s worth all the effort.

I am trying a new water flavorer by Hansen. The sticks are 10 calories each, but I use 1 stick to flavor a big pitcher of water. They are sweetened with Stevia which I am trying to use more of rather than Splenda/succalose.

It’s about time to start on lunch, with this diet, you really need to stay on schedule with your meals so that you are not too ravenous.

A BIG NIGHT OF BARBACUE

Despite what my scale told me, I lost almost 3 pounds last week per my visit with Ideal Protein folks. It’s still amazing how good I feel. My blood pressure has returned to the low end of normal which is a huge relief.

Last night, we decided to barbecue our supply of food for the week. This picture does not show the healthy tofu with soy sauce and sesame seed that I made for a little non animal protein. The burgers were two pounds of grass fed beef mixed with one pound of organic ground pork. Nothing was added to them, no salt or seasoning whatsoever, and my husband said that they were amazing. The bacon cooked away all the grease, and I tried a tiny bit, yum, yum. My husband is the consummate grill master, and he raves about the ceramic cooker. I can’t wait to try my tofu tonight, the soy/sesame combined with a smokey flavor should be great

Stalled! How annoying!

This is the first week that my weight has stayed the same for days on end, it’s very frustrating. I started drinking Mio again, could that be the culprit? Also, I mixed the plan up a little. I am going back on the straight and narrow and get back to my usual 1/2 loss a day if it kills me. Of course I have to stall right before a pool party on Sunday where all the ladies are nice and slim.

On to happier subjects, we are thinking about building a boat dock, and yesterday afternoon, I had the wild idea to take the kayaks out and look at other people’s docks. We have a big tube that our Aussie, Koda loves to sit in, I thought she would enjoy the trip with us.

It all started out as a good idea, but the dog so addicted to my husband that she barked the entire time because she wanted to get into his kayak. I see why Aussies can herd sheep so well, their bark is really, really annoying. If I were a sheep, I would do whatever they wanted just to shut them up.

We headed back to the house to drop Koda off, but instead of jumping off the raft, onto the land, she jumped onto Darrell’s kayak. I wish I had a picture of the two of them. It was hilarious. We went a little ways like that, then we had to turn around again because she wouldn’t stop moving around.

By the time we finally headed out, the wind had picked up and we were paddling right into it with a slight chop to the water. It was hot and the paddling was hard. When we were almost to the boathouse we really wanted to see, I started to get queasy. That was it for me, I told my husband that I was headed back. My poor husband has already had the pleasure of kayaking with me in a two man, glass bottom boat in the keys, only to witness me “feeding the fish” for half the trip. I’m sure he doesn’t really want to repeat that experience. I know I didn’t, especially since I had just eaten a delicious tuna steak. Really, how did I ever teach scuba diving in the North Atlantic, youth, I suppose.

Back to the diet, I really enjoy chopping all the veggies; zucchini, yellow squash, turnip, cauliflower and broccoli, up in the food processor. They cook really quickly and add a nice thickness to the Ideal Protein soups. I hear really good things about the Vitamax blender, but cannot quite get my head around spending that much money on it. They say that it makes fabulous soups. I did order a new wok of carbon steel from Amazon. Hopefully, the carbon steel won’t be too much maintenance and will give the food that authentic Chinese taste. The wok I had been using has a nonstick surface, and it has gotten scratched somehow. I have been worried about using it when cooking at high temperatures.

I am finding that I can eat soup everyday for lunch and be very content. This is what I have read about soups and weight loss. This source is from Weightlossresources.co.uk.

What’s the Truth about Soup and Weight Loss

Increasingly, research has revealed that consuming soup improves satiety (the feeling of fullness at the end of a meal) so that we eat less and take in fewer calories which is great for weight loss.

Eating soup appears to be far more effective – and a whole lot tastier – than drinking a glass of water with a meal to help fill us up, the latter of which is often a top diet tip.

In a study from Pennsylvania State University, researchers asked women to eat chicken casserole, chicken casserole with a glass of water, or chicken casserole with the same amount of water added to make a soup. They were then allowed to eat whatever they liked for lunch.

Those women who ate the soup consumed around 100 fewer calories at lunchtime – enough to shift 10lb in a year – and didn’t compensate by eating more during the rest of the day. It’s thought that when water is consumed separately from food it satisfies thirst not hunger. But when it’s mixed with chunky ingredients, the body handles it like food.

This study isn’t a one-off either. In another study carried out by the same researchers, when adults received a bowl of low-calorie vegetable soup 15 minutes before a pasta lunch, they consumed 20 percent fewer calories in the complete meal. Even though the soup provided 150 calories, overall they consumed 135 fewer calories for the entire meal.

I find soup incredibly satisfying, and now it’s such an easy way to get those veggies in every day.

Well, time to get started on the day. Hope everyone has a wonderful day, and remember to drink lots of water, especially in my “neck of the woods” where it feels like 900 degrees in the shade.

Good Morning World!

Well I see that my moon picture did not successfully post. I will work on getting that loaded later on. As far as the “Supermoon” was concerned, I did not see what all the fuss was about. It was pretty, but really not anymore impressive than some other full moons I have seen. I bet it looked great through a telescope though.

We have really been enjoying sitting outside in the mornings and on weekends. Next I want to have a movie night under the stars. For Christmas, last year, my husband bought me a little HDI projector from Sharper Image. It is so much fun, you can plug it up to the iphone, ipad or laptop or tv and project onto a wall. We tried it for a minute last night, it was projected great against the side of the house. Next time I want to set it up right, with a quilt and chairs, and citronella candles, ask some friends over, and have a big time watching a movie. I really could just stay outside all the time if I had a choice.

By lunch time today, I was really hungry. I walked took the dogs for a long walk this morning and then worked past the time I should have stopped and eaten. Of course, my big container of prechopped veggies was almost bare, and I like to make lunch & dinner, combine and half them, that meant I needed 4 cups of veggies. I really thought I would pass out if I had to deal with washing and chopping that much, so I used what I had and chopped up a small purple stripped eggplant. The veggies were stir fried in the wok with a teaspoon of olive oil, then steamed with some homemade chicken stock, then mixed together with the Ideal Protein chicken soup, diluted with water.

Lunch and dinner made in a snap. There was some big time begging from our Aussie so it must have smelled good

The moon as seen through candlelight.

Another Hot Day

I love this diet! I really cannot say that enough. I lost another 1/2lb this morning, but more importantly, except for getting up to pee all night from the enormous amounts of water I drink, I feel wonderful. No more reflux, not once. I sleep great, and wake up bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Yesterday, because I have been getting so weak, I decided to try something. I combined my Ideal Protein lunch food which was the chicken soup and my 8oz of evening protein which was organic boiled chicken, shredded, with 4 cups of the wok prepared veggies. I mixed it all up, and then divided it using the scale and guesstimating to get the right proportions of soup to veggies to meat. I then put half away for dinner, and ate other half for lunch. It worked, I still lost weight, and I was not nearly as weak. Dinner was a snap since it was already prepared.

You may think it gets boring to eat the same thing so often. It has not been for me, I like it because it takes most of the thinking and agonizing over what to cook out of the equation. My husband doesn’t seem to mind fending for himself. I made him a loaf of bread yesterday which he dug into with gusto. It was a little difficult smelling that delicious bread smell in the house for hours, but it was a good test of willpower. I know that this mysterious willpower that I was not able to summon before Ideal Protein is a result of hormonal balance rather than personal strength, but hey, I have to get a little credit for not cheating.

Morning is now my favorite time of the day. The dogs and I wake up, I feed them and make my coffee and IP vanilla pudding “creamer”. We then go and sit outside and enjoy the morning. It’s a perfect time for blogging, reading and listening to all the early morning sounds.

I have set up my grandmother”s 100+ year old maple table up on our covered patio, it’s my little oasis. I remember eating at this table as a child, as my mother said that she did. It had been sitting in our garage, neglected, so I ‘m so glad to give the old piece another chance at family life.

Time to stop blogging, and finish my coffee/breakfast. Hope everyone enjoys the Supermoon tonight. We took a lot of pictures last night, some in HDR, but it was late, and I was too tired to start merging or editing. I will work on it today and post some.

Finally some weight loss

Finally the scales moved. After staying the same weight since Wednesday, today I weighed 1 1/2 less, hooray! I think I was losing all along, but every night I was hungry so I ate a lot of dill pickles. The first clue I was eating too much salt was that my wedding ring was tight again. Yesterday, no pickles, and it helped.

With all the fat loss, they say you are releasing toxins and estrogen that have been stored in the fat. I can believe it, my moods have been pretty dark some days, and I don’t think it’s is all just weakness from decreased calories.

I cannot say that this journey has not been and continues to be, a struggle, but it has been one that I finally feel confident of success. Before I gained weight, I had always been able to turn my laser like focus on the task at hand, and keep at it until the job was done. Years ago, my mother told me that I could achieve anything I wanted to, the challenge was getting me to want to. This task of weight loss just seemed out of my reach before Ideal Protein. As much as I wanted to and as hard as I tried, I would soon lose focus and give up. Eating just felt so good, I guess I can understand addiction a whole lot better. So I say, bravo Ideal Protein for giving dieters control in our lives again.

I tried a new coffee this morning. Well it’s actually an old coffee that had been sitting in my freezer since Christmas before last. Appropriate to Christmas, it’s peppermint. I mixed the Ideal Protein with extra water, and used it as a creamer. Talk about delicious, it’s like having a yummy dessert for breakfast.

Okay, enough about food and diet and me. This is a really amazing book. It’s called “Guitar Zero” by Gary Marcus. Gary Marcus is a professor of psychology and the director of the NYC Center for Language and Music. This book details his journey as a nonmuscian, at forty, to learn to play the guitar, and all of the fascinating physiology and psychology that goes with learning such a complex new skill set as an adult.

There is a quote from this book that really resonated with me. Gary Marcus wrote, “There may be no better way to achieve lasting happiness-as opposed to mere fleeting pleasure-than pursuing a goal that helps us broaden our horizons”. I have always found that to be true, though as I get older, my goals are not as lofty as they once were. And if that were not enough of a motivator to learn, he also said, “new neuroimaging studies that suggested that new knowledge can bring the same sort of surge of dopamine one might get by ingesting crack cocaine”. Wow, that’s pretty amazing.

A beautiful recipe for after the diet

Okay, I know I can’t eat this now, but it sounds so incredible and looks so beautiful, I had to share it, and save it for myself for a later thinner occasion. I am going to have a little vicarious love affair with yummy dishes like this

Cherry, Hibiscus, and Goat Cheese Panna Cotta
yield: 4 to 6 servings
active time: 20 minutes
total time: 4 hours
Panna Cotta
the ingredients
• 1 packet (2 1/4 teaspoons) unflavored gelatin
• 2 cups half-and-half
• 2/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup (3 ounces) soft goat cheese, softened
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Hibiscus & Cherry Topping
• 1/2 cup dried hibiscus flowers
• 7 ounces fresh cherries (about 18), pitted and chopped
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 2 teaspoons lemon juice
how to make the panna cotta…
in a small bowl, sprinkle gelatin over 1/4 cup of cold water and let sit for 5 minutes to soften. heat half-and-half and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until sugar is dissolved and mixture just starts to steam. Remove from heat and stir in goat cheese, whisking until smooth. Stir in softened gelatin and vanilla extract until completely incorporated. divide among 4 (6-ounce) or 6 (4-ounce) jars or ramekins. arrange on a tray and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or until set. meanwhile, to prepare topping, pour 1/2 cup boiling water over hibiscus flowers. let steep for 5 minutes, then strain, discarding flowers. combine hibiscus liquid, cherries, sugar, and lemon juice in a saucepan and stir over medium-high heat until reduced by about half, about 15 minutes, or until thick and syrupy. transfer to a heat proof container, cover, and refrigerate until ready to use. Just before serving, spoon topping over set custards.
(recipe + photos by lindsay landis for designlovefest– want more food posts & restaurant guides? go here!)

3rd Week Weigh In

I am having a picnic today, an unplanned picnic. After my weigh in at 10am, I was supposed to meet my girlfriend to see the house she is renovating. Something must have come up, because I cannot get in touch with her. So my picnic is outside UMC Dental clinic where I have an appointment at 1. They have a really shady area with tables and chairs, probably set up for the smokers when it was still allowed on campus. It’s very relaxing, there is a breeze, the birds are singing and there is free wi-fi. Great place to kill a little time and eat healthy.

My weigh in went well, down 3.6lbs from last week. I am so compulsive, though, I want to lose 5lbs a week because they say women lose between 3-5lbs/week, and I want to be at the top of that number. Oh well, there’s not much I can do about it, I don’t have the energy to do much exercise, and I’m keeping my calories low and protein high. I might as well enjoy the journey.

I did try an Ideal Protein product that i hadn’t tried before, the wildberry yogurt drink. All I can say is delicious! The only complaint I have with Ideal protein is the sweetener they use. They use succolose, and I wish they would use stevia. Not that I don’t like the taste, I just feel like the stevia would be more natural and healthier. Some things I have read say that by the time corporations get through processing stevia, there are not antioxidants left in it. I am going to try growing my own and make a tincture for sweeting.

That’s all for now, going to get a good dental cleaning while at the same time helping a fledgling dental hygienist learn her trade. They do a wonderful job, and it’s nice to save money and feel like you are contributing to someone’s education.