Designing Your Appetite

Some days when I am crankier than usual, there is something that really bugs me about, in general, "the low carb world" that I see online. (Meaning, the overall 'social result' of community.) Do you ever notice this?

It's this: so many people just want to eat crap.

If you tell them they can't have crappy carbs, they instantly start doing everything they can to reproduce the crap in a lowcarb fashion.

Surely this must be what inspired all those horrible frankenfood pseudo-lowcarb abominations that bombed in the grocery world (and gave the erroneous impression to marketers that "low-carb is dead" as a result).

I found that when I quit eating things breaded, for example, I quit needing to find semi-lowcarb grain-based specialty-foods for breading stuff. This matters because, even though you can do it, most the time it means you use the majority of your daily carb on lowcarb bread crumbs or carbquik instead of on something actually good for you like veggies. (Or at least almonds or seeds or cheese or something.)

If it were just a little in a muffin batch or meatloaf it'd be one thing, but foods with major elements that are based on crappy food have more than one problem.

I've nothing against creative food. It's one of my personal focii in fact. And I've nothing against reproducing highcarb food in lowcarb ways really, that's natural. Except that some things, you really cannot produce in a lowcarb way without either getting into highly processed stuff or ...

Or without keeping your taste for it. If despite being lowcarb, I continued to eat tacos instead of taco salad, burgers instead of pattymelts, and breaded chicken instead of baked, roasted, crocked, parm'd, grilled chicken, then I would still WANT those things.

A great deal of going-off-lowcarb seems to hinge on the person feeling like there is something that is high-carb that they just aren't getting. Over time, I've come to feel that in fact, the problem is not that there is something they aren't getting. The problem is that they have not adapted to "wanting what they have."

Think of it like an appetite for sex -- food being related. ;-) A man might not have the buxom blonde coworker he thinks is sexy, but that is only an issue if he really wants her. If he is happy with his woman, he won't CARE that he doesn't/can't have the other one; it may be eye-candy just like some high-carb foods are, sure, but it's just no big deal and there is no real desire that would make him give up what he has.

Well I think it's kinda similar with food. If a person keeps eating "crap-LIKE" foods, they continue their appetite for crap food. Then when someone goes, "Hey, here's some crap food!" they eventually think, "Wow, that looks great, and it's even more familiar-tasting than the crap-LIKE food I've been faking on lowcarb!"

But if you adapt people to eating real food in a way that is healthy, and they learn to like real food made healthily, then they have far less reason to "go off" lowcarb. They don't feel like they're "missing or faking" a burger bun with lettuce. They don't feel like they're missing a tortilla when they eat the ingredients as a hot plate. They don't feel like they're missing breading when they eating roasted chicken.

And eventually, they will breed an appetite, and a FAMILIARITY, with good food, and reduce both appetite and familiarity with the crap. Familiarity is one of the big issues too.

So, some days it just irks me to see so many trying to stuff highcarb into lowcarb. Crap is crap. I don't care if Wheat Protein Isolate and Sweetzfree and ThickNThin made it possible to just barely squeeze that food through the digestive system as "a mostly low-carb ECC" value. That only means that
(a) all those carbs someone could have eaten in life-giving food, they didn't, and
(b) they continue their familiarity with that food, and
(c) they continue their appetite for food that tastes like that, and
(d) they continue their dependence on specialty foods the local grocery likely doesn't have or that cost more.

I'm not saying we can't use high-carb or specialty-stuff. I do. I'm just saying that sometimes I see people who so overwhelm their food with it, either so often, or so overwhelmingly in a given dish, that the reality is, they are NOT "adapting to eating lowcarb as a lifestyle," they are instead, "attempting to temporarily adapt lowcarb eating to be just like the crappy highcarb eating they always did, except the carbs, and a sense of 'fake/not as good'."

Until people learn to LIKE lowcarb well enough that they have NO REASON to be "so tempted by that buxom blonde breaded-fried chicken that they "fall off the wagon" and have some, lowcarb is going to BE a wagon that they can fall off.

Because that is really the point: men don't sleep with the secretary because they want her, they sleep with her because they have lost interest or concern for their wife. So the reality is that the reason for the wandering-into-badlands is about his relationship with his wife and how he feels about that. If you see what I mean. Well if your relationship with your lowcarb food is great, you have no reason to feel you "need" high-carb food. Because it isn't about what you don't have, it's about how well you like and are comfortable with what you DO have.

When you can eat a piece of roasted chicken, a plain hamburger patty, some stir fried broccoli, and be genuinely happy for it -- love it, have it be your most familiar food, have it be something your body learns to have an appetite for -- lowcarb is no longer HARD. It's easy and constant and familiar.

Anything that's hard, is usually temporary. So it matters.

That is my soapbox for the night!

PJ

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

Hey! I AM alive. Hard as it is to believe some days.

Right now I am working like 8am to 2am. It's nuts. So I don't have much time to write and it's kind of hard to formulate ANY thought, let alone a decent blog post. But I will be back soon!

I have several major focuses in my life which tend to take up about 98% of my attention when they are present. At which point, everything else falls away. I go through these focuses one at a time. And when I am with focus X, everybody in focus Y and Z think, "What on earth happened to her?!" and my friends get irked at me and so on.

I guess the reality is that I am a chronically over-committed sort and I can only be with any program "cyclically".

Alas, that seems to include an eating program. I've been ignoring Lowcarb for awhile now but AS OF MONDAY 9/3 I am back on a 12 week plan. I have a nifty spreadsheet for that as well as one for general tracking that I will link on my next post in case anybody else wants to use them.

I haven't had any money for awhile (when I say that I am being quite literal) but I get paid tomorrow so can finally go shopping for REAL FOOD. Not the carbfest nightmare (Ramen is 6for$1) I've been eating while in temporary poverty. I know, some great bloggers have exampled how LC can be done on a budget (Regina at Weight of the Evidence) has more than one good post on that) but I don't think I budget well enough to do it on twice that budget. It's a good thing I have a job is all I can say.

Meanwhile back at the... er, mental world of PJ, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the stuff I blogged on some time ago regarding society bias against fat, and "fat activism" and things like that. It really moved me and made me feel quite differently about my lowcarb public stuff than I used to.

I eat lowcarb--not as often as I should--because for me, it is healthy, it tends to avoid gluten, it definitely avoids carbs, it increases my protein, and I like the food. I am much healthier when I'm eating lowcarb. I feel so sorry for people who, when they diet, are really doing nothing more than being miserable and underfed for awhile but otherwise see little benefit to it besides a slow wasting of muscle that reads on the scale as weight loss so they're happy.

Totally aside from weighing some insane amount I am too frightened to step on the scale to rediscover, I would eat low carb because it's good for me in so many ways. It isn't really about weight loss. Yes, I *want* bodyfat loss -- absolutely! But I want about a dozen other things just as much frankly, all of which matter too. Putting the focus on 'weight loss' first, is kind of misleading because it ought to be about bodyfat, not just pounds. Second, it's kind of overbalanced because it ought to be about health, not just size. And third, it's just incomplete, because LC is as good for me for other reasons as it is for gradual weight loss reasons.

So I think when I get some time (in a day or so--by end of this weekend latest I hope) to come back and blog properly (I have several taggings I must respond to!), I think I am going to take my weight off my blog. I'll keep it on my journal on the forum so anybody can see it if they want, as I link to it with my screen name from here; it isn't that it's a secret.

Recently there was a big drama (actually I think it is quietly continuing) about an eating plan that is, off-paper and into the hands-on practice, basically a starvation diet. Well, I really want the focus on this blog to be "healthy lowcarb yummy stuff and life", not, "the contest to lose scale-pounds by eating a certain way", and partly that's because this mentality about "eat this way to lose weight!" is really part of the same problem that drives people to starvation diets to begin with.

If the focus were on what is healthy for you, what makes you feel good and strong and mentally clear and physically able, then there would never be any confusion about why living on 400 calories a day might be ok. I say this as a person who regularly, if not forcibly on a lowcarb eating plan, lives on sometimes that many calories a day. That is why I'm hugely fat. I ought to be a walking testimony-of-terror to anorexic groups about what mucking up your metabolism in the most serious way can do to a person.

So I'm not saying I don't understand. Eating is inconvenient and time consuming and in general a bother unless I have time and interest. If someone fed me, I'd eat all the time. When my laziness and busy-ness (I am over-"focused" as attention goes) has to compete with food, it often loses. So I am no saint on the food front. I'm just saying that the whole focus on butt-size compared to what goes in your mouth is really part of the problem to begin with, that causes people to starve themselves or live solely on cabbage or all kinds of other bizarre and stupid acts of hysteria to deal with fat. And meanwhile, it means that even the people who should most support the acceptance of 'size' in our society, no matter what it is, are basically playing the same game as those against it, when the primary focus isn't "Hey I'm healthy and happy and isn't this eating plan great" but rather, "Here's how much of that nasty ugly weight I've managed to lose."

Maybe in reality we shouldn't congratulate people for losing scale weight--but for improving their health, which is just as hard-won an effort for people who do this in ways like removing cream from their coffee, or getting off gluten-containing foods, or improving their vegetable intake, as for people who do it by "officially losing weight."

My point is that the whole concept of an eating plan is life-wide. It shouldn't really be about your butt. It should be about your health in 1001 ways, your longevity, your quality of life. Person X who is eating broccoli and roasted chicken but not losing weight if that's the case, is working JUST AS HARD on improving his life as person Y who is eating pepperoni and frankenfoods but losing weight on the scale.

A focus on health would circumvent a lot of problems and put the lowcarb focus where it belongs. I believe this issue of putting the health goals first and weight issues second is the way it ought to be, and I plan to do that with my exercise blog as well. Which I forgot I even owned until recently. Damn, I am such a scatterbrain! Can I blame this on eating all those carbs?! :-)

PJ

Who Your Fat Is

The other day I felt as if I were suddenly dealing with 101 internal demons of emotion, loose and flowing about my mood like 'free radicals' of the mind. It wasn't time for PMS, yet the "turbulence inside me" was severe.

It occurred to me that maybe I was underestimating the effect of doing something that causes the fat cells to empty.

Fat cells store toxins. Which can be internally generated biochemicals that simply did not fully vent as necessary -- which sums up most emotion in today's high stress world. Biogram Theory suggests we store biochemical under the myelin sheath of the nerves, and that could also be affected by changes in fat cells in a given area.

Every fat cell that empties into the bloodstream is reading aloud, inside us, a tiny chapter of a story to us, a story of who we were at the moment we stored that fat.

And who might that be? What emotion might that come with? And what if we lose not just one fat cell at a time, but a whole avalanche of them once in awhile?

Emotion inside the body is biochemical. If we can't vent it, we store it. Storing emotion in fat, if this indirectly is so, suggests that we might not really be ridding ourselves of it, but merely burying it, till the time we finally use those fat cells... and the ghosts of our emotion come back to haunt us, processing "through" us to be vented, as they should have been in the first place.

After thinking of it that way, I spent the night feeling as if a thousand little elements of me over the last 20 years were weaving through me, like energy motes looking for a doorway out, one denied them for who knows how long. In retrospect I think I should have dived into the turbulence and cried if possible, to help 'vent' some of that. Instead, by the time I finally decided to meditate on it, it knocked me out (nothing like sleep=denial) and woke up yesterday in a 'flatline' mode of no emotion whatever, not even normal amounts, which is just as much its own issue.

I go into 'flatline' and barely eat, breathe, or live: this is my own dysfunction. Some people go into the turbulence and binge themselves sick. Some people go into the turbulence and starve themselves sick. Maintaining balance of food and behavior while losing weight might in fact be more of a challenge than doing so while not losing weight. I haven't heard this addressed anywhere before. Probably because there's little if any research on it.

I suspect in some people, this variance in biochemical probably has an even greater effect on their mood. As if while they are working on the new person they want to be, elements of that old person are quite literally flowing through them in the present, sparking or carrying the same emotions that made them gain the fat in the first place.

Who is our fat? Are we ready not just to 'deal with the fat', but to 'deal with' the emotion it carries, and the toxins that cause current-emotional responses?

Is it losing a part of ourselves... literally? As literally as cleaning out a house is losing all the things we give away and throw away? Is part of the resistance to this change because our overall body/psychology know that it is literally a "loss"?

My grandmother believed in karma. I mean in the very literal balance of the universe kind of way. She believed if you stole a nickel, you would pay that nickel back most certainly. In a sort of funny way this almost struck me like an emotional version of her take on karma: like we cannot get away with denying ourselves, our feelings; that sooner or later, unless the storage contributes to killing us, we are going to have to deal with those feelings; what we don't vent one day, we will face again when we lose the fat that biochemical stored itself in.

It also makes me wonder if, just like people vary radically in how much insulin they produce, maybe emotional biochemical quantity varies that much too. And if so, if maybe some people 'need' to store more fat in order to 'deal with' that biochemical that the person is not willing or able to process, than others.

It does sort of give a new way of looking at the idea of Reich's fat as 'Body Armor' theory, yes? That one is not merely protecting themselves from the world; but that the fat storage is quite literally physical protection, via biochemical storage in fat cells rather than having it flow through the body and be experienced and hence vented.

[edited to add: D reminded me, Reich's theory is about muscle tension (stress); it's work based on his theory since then that suggests that fat is a form of body armor.]
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A Difference in Perspective

My best friend was telling me how he perceives me very much like this:



Which was funny because a few minutes later he happened to click on my Tomboy Tough blog, where I was talking about the tragi-comic nature of today's workout, where I described myself, as usual, like this:



I cracked up. That is how differently we perceive me. He thinks I'm courageous that I am working on exercise no matter that it's so hard for me. I feel like... well, you know.

It's sorta funny though. I guess we all perceive ourselves differently than those around us do.

And of course you can tell we are both total nerds, with our Star Wars references. ;-)
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Who Watches the Skinny?

I've been reading online the last couple weeks. A lot about weight, obesity, and things like that. And one of the more interesting, if distressing, things is reading peoples' comments about some articles, posts, etc.

It got me to thinking back to pretty much everyone I know, all the times I've eaten in public with others, etc. And what I want to know is this: who watches the skinny?

I've seen people eat enough food for two full days of meals at dinner and not blink, and then eat dessert on top of it. I've dined with people who ate so much starch/sugar in their meal it's amazing they didn't pass out on the floor an hour later from the blood sugar drop. I've sometimes hung out with people who noshed on junk morning, noon and night, partied and drank, and considered ice cream a food group.

And most of these people had a completely unreasonable, and inaccurate, "pride" in themselves for not being fat. Like the majority of people commenting on the internet, they really believed that fat people were doing something they weren't, something unreasonable and probably shocking, which got them into that situation.

It never occurs to people that maybe skinny people eat like hell too. That some of the biggest junk food addicts and sweet tooth fanatics are skinny people.

If merely eating badly made people fat, I suspect the population of morbidly obese people would be 3x what it is now. It's obvious that eating badly makes SOME people fat. But not others. This is a no-brainer, I admit.

So where does the open prejudice against the obese come from? Is it society's last -ISM? People aren't allowed to openly despise others for being a given race or a given religion anymore, but it's perfectly ok -- in fact, all experts and the media at large agrees -- that despising and mocking people who are fat is perfectly ok. And the entire basis of this is: they ate themselves into it.

Yes... that's true, although not necessarily because they ate donuts constantly; there are other ways to "eat yourself fat," including eating a lot of carbs when you're insulin resistant, eating foods you have body intolerances for, not eating often enough, and other non-food issues that contribute. Usually it's a combination of things.

(I think one reason lowcarb works so well for so many, is because by default, nearly by accident, it tends to wipe out food people commonly are sensitive to, such as gluten-foods and milk.)

But from my observation, half the skinny people I know have eaten themselves into what would be 300 lbs if their bodies worked like some other peoples' bodies.

Yes, I know quite a few people who are thin and who eat well and exercise and certainly "deserve" to be thin. But I also know a lot of people, by far the majority, who eat just as badly as any fat person I've known.

They eat junk, and lots of it, when upset. They eat junk, and lots of it, for every imaginable holiday, party, or special event. They eat deep fried burritos off the lunch truck and donuts at the office for breakfast and too much for dinner. But you know what?

Nobody stares at them. Nobody looks at their plate in restaurants, as if to assure themselves that if it contains anything but dry carrot sticks, "No wonder that person is so fat." Nobody watches them shop like it's the court's incriminating eyewitness evidence for their figure.

Because they aren't fat. So nobody cares how they eat.

I think a lot of people who get fat, do get that way through sheer junk eating, but ironically, a lot of them do it after eating that way for many years with no result. And then one day, after a lifetime of carb overdose, their body starts getting insulin resistant. And the pounds start packing on. And the more fat cells, the bigger the metabolic problem, so it starts to become exponential. And then, yes, they too are fat. But for a good portion of their life, they ate that way and weren't.

It would make more sense if so many thin people, many of whom I've known and who certainly eat worse than I ever did if gluttony is any measure, didn't feel such arrogant pride about how they are NOT fat and other people ARE and so they have an "opinion" about those other people. Don't look, Ethyl! Can you imagine what that woman had to do to weigh THAT MUCH?!

And in public places, I see people watching me. It's not just paranoia; I used to be thin, I gained weight very rapidly while immersed in work and school, and when I surfaced, the difference in peoples' reaction to me was mindblowing. I know it's not just my projection, people really do "react" -- literally taken aback by my size, quickly followed by the culturally-indoctrinated response of sheer disgust, aversion, or embarrassment. Much like I told my child, "Don't stare at the man with the missing arm, it's rude!", that rule seems to hold for many people on looking at overly fat people. It's a horrible disfigurement; it qualifies for the "look away" response. But most people don't look away -- they just look.

They watch my shopping basket. They watch my restaurant dinner plate. They watch me with that look on their faces, often, as if they can't imagine what truly bizarre sinful behavior I had to indulge in; surely, it's nothing they've ever done, or that nobody they know has ever done.

If they were watching the skinny, they'd know better.
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Where I Am!

OK! I started where I am. 381 pounds!

I can finally say again, "I lost 100 lbs!" About time. I know that's a number that would make most people want to swan-dive off a bridge, but since I started at 482 way back when, it's a number I feel pretty good about. My goal is to reach at least 365 -- preferably 350 but that may be unreasonable -- by the end of this 12 week cycle (which is Aug 5).

Nearly five months off lowcarb had added enough water weight that it's taken me three weeks to drop it. From now on though, anything I lose should be fat.

As soon as I can find my tape measure, I'll have that plus a body fat% measure that's done based on those. Doesn't really matter how exact it is, since it's the "change" I'm interested in over time. I want to focus a lot more on body fat% and not just weight.

o0o

See my TT blog for exercise stuff. I've been doing it. It's working... as much as it can, given my weight. This first week is easy, next week I hope to find my max weights for proper workout, and I'm on my way.

It's been Ozark storming so much I haven't been able to use the cool walking park my city just built. And some stupid kid (either mine or my housekeeper's) stole the power cord from my overpriced exercise bike for some reason. I'm feeling very growly about that at the moment!

o0o

I've planned a menu for next week, for the five weekdays. I'm working on eating more this weekend but the official menus start Monday. I must shop today or tomorrow for a few things to finish it off. It allows me to plan all food, 6 eating times a day, prep most things ahead of time at least partly for superfast food, and have great numbers.

I got a burr coffee grinder (economical but great reviews), an electric french press, some 100% kona coffee, and more of the 24% butterfat dutched cocoa. I'm going to start having mochas in the morning (with half&half). I know, this has some carbs, and it's caffeine -- of course, that's half of why I want it, haha! -- but it just sounds so decadent.

I feel like I'm treating myself well, somehow. Like even just taking the time to make something nice for myself to drink is itself a special kindness to myself. I don't normally even make the time to make food for myself, let alone something special, except the occasional experiments I post here. It's funny but it seems like the lowcarb approach has, in the end, had a lot more to do with respecting my body and taking time to do something decent for it, than just the food choices themselves.

For most people it's an eating plan... for me it's therapy. :-)
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Lowcarb and Gardens

Well, there you go. Whine, kvetch, gripe, blog, and then throw yourself on your bed and cry your head off until you fall asleep. It worked for me. But finally that glorious time of the month arrived, and I quit feeling like alt.FatGirl.die.die.die and got on with my life.

Today I was reading the blog Weight of the Evidence, and she was talking about trying to successfully live, let alone lowcarb, on a pitifully small amount of money.

It got me thinking about gardens. You know, the last century's radical shift away from gardening is not just about free time. If anything people have more free time than they ever did, culturally -- they just have other priorities, of course. I suspect it's more about a trend of basically avoiding responsibility, in a way. I don't mean if you don't have a garden you're irresponsible (haha!), I mean that as a culture at large it seems like we grow more and more toward "paying someone to feed us or fix us."

Like to example the latter, my friend didn't want to do lowcarb because her doctor said it was unhealthy, so now she's on a drug to relieve acid reflux. Or another woman I met who said she had a gastric bypass not just for the weight issue but "to deal with major medical problems" like acid reflux. Holy cats on a pogo stick batman! Apparently the second one didn't know that 10 days on lowcarb (off gluten in particular) solved my major acid reflux problem instantly, bam, GONE -- and the first just didn't care. Don't bother me with facts. Don't expect me to eat well. Here's money. Give me a pill and shut up about it.

Well as much as so many folks wax on about "fresh fruits and vegetables," I'm led to think that they don't know much about the vegetables sitting in their walmart produce section. The carbs are often much higher, the nutrients vastly lower, in what you buy at the store, because those are genetic strains designed for single-point harvesting (not gradually like most plants), and to withstand shipment in a box over long distances without visible bruising or spoilage, and to taste as sweet as possible. In short, they are designed to be big sweet cardboard. Kind of like the breakfast cereal version of vegetables. Not to say they're bad!--they're not. Just to say that most the stuff in the grocery just doesn't compare to what you can grow at home.

(By the way. You can even grow mushrooms at home. We buy mushroom compost, from a local firm that sells the typical little white ones you get in the store. It's usually pretty hot (not really ready to be used IN the garden, needs some more biodegrading) but we dumped some in a bed we weren't using. Months later, we pulled out several groups of mushrooms, that were literally like 9" circumference. I'd never seen anything so gigantic. Apparently these little guys don't have a growth limit on them, they are simply harvested at that size consistently. You can get mushroom kits from most seed selling sources.)

My point is that it's close to free -- not quite but nearly so, moreso over time -- to grow your own vegetables, that are as fresh and nutritious as they can be.

If you have, anywhere on your property, a square of even occasional sunlight, even in short-day climates, of at least 2 foot by 2 foot in size (well you could do 12"x12" but that is really cutting it close! ;-)), you can grow a small garden.

I'm serious. Anybody who has not read the terrific book "Square Foot Gardening" by Mel Bartholomew, please do yourself a favor and read it. It is SO worth the read. It's simple, interesting, kinda humorous in spots, and lays out a garden plan that is actually fun, even for kids. You can sometimes find it in libraries or used. It shows you how you can grow the maximum yield (food) in the minimum amount of space, soil, water, and effort.

If you want to see my standing garden -- last year when it was in use! -- visit The 8-Cat Garden and browse through the maybe dozen posts there. Not much on that blog. I am not gardening this year because between getting my ex to move out, focusing on my diet, on my job, spending more time with my kid (and taking months off to eat high carb which made me feel exhausted and not inclined to plant when I should have!) I won't be gardening this year.

I might give in this weekend and throw a few seedlings for herbs and peppers and tomatoes in the ground but whether I feel like watering them during the summer heat for their survival is still up in the air I'm afraid. The new grape arbor however I'll find a way to get water too. The horrid re-re-re-freeze we had after it had already warmed up and bloomed into Spring this year, killed nearly all the vines dead it appeared, but some life is coming back near the ground on most of them and I want to help them survive.

But enough about me -- though I AM the center of the universe, if my ego is any indicator -- I was supposed to be talking about gardening.

Since the dawn of whatever time God, Aliens or Happy Chance taught man that sticking seeds or fruits in the ground would make something grow, mankind has been growing food. If you went back a century, in any country you may live in, you'd probably find a great majority of the population (outside the inner cities of course) who flat out could not have lived were it not for the serious gardening they did (and often other things, like raising chickens and goats, making butter, etc.).

Let me repeat that. People grew food because they could not afford to shop much, especially if they had lots of kids. So why does that never seem to occur to people today??

I used to do programming for my living and I don't know if it's related, but I was kinda worried about Y2K. No, I was not buying a gun and a fallout shelter in Montana. I was buying stored bulk food and medical supplies in case the apt. complex across the street, full of old women and single moms and kids, faced some bureaucratic no welfare checks today kind of problem.

I was pretty casual about it until the official meeting with the president and leaders of all major media sources resulted in a total blackout on the subject except for the occasional mocking of someone worried. Had they said, "Well it could be an issue, but we don't expect it. It's a good idea if y'all keep some water and food and TP around in case the just in time inventory system, computer driven as it and bulk product transportation and fuel often is, has any difficulties," then I would have done exactly that and not worried about it. But the mysterious silence instead -- I guess applying that "don't ask, don't tell" motto to leadership, as well as other controversial subjects -- completely freaked me out. I had a 2 year old at the time I first started thinking about it. As any mother knows, this is related, of course. The biological instinct to protect the child is overwhelming.

So I set out to educating myself. I read so much stuff via internet and via book that it was like cramming for a hard college final, but every single day for like 18 months. I know more about making a homemade brick wall from scratch, delivering babies, baking without an oven, and composting human waste, then you could ever want to know, as just a few examples.

Totally by accident, I came to realize that not only was I a city girl, but I was utterly ignorant, totally dependent, and would basically die left to my own devices. I really had no idea how ignorant I was until I really started studying everything. And one of the most astonishing, horrifying, yet interesting subjects I ended up reading a ton about was natural gardening.

Some people think that even as you read this, somewhere, some machiavellian evil overlord is conspiring to squash research for lowcarb and push carbs not just for product sales but to make the medical industry yet more money and humans yet more dependent on pharmaceutical.

Well, I don't know about that. Probably. Maybe?

But I do know that even as you read this, those sorts are conspiring and implementing every plan they can to make it so food seeds are unavailable to the public, so food is patented and licensed and seeds aren't even allowed to be kept or sold or traded, or if they are, they are designed to not work at all for a second season's growth.

I know, it sounds extreme. It is like an onion, if you study this subject, you just keep thinking it can't get any worse, and the more you learn, the more you're just completely lost for words on what a 'Grand Plan' it seems to be at some level and how well it is working thanks to the ignorance and unconcern of our population. When I started reading about seed saving and the whole situation of seeds in our world, I was stunned. Were it not for the amazing efforts of a small number of die-hard, ridiculously driven, overworked altruists over the last couple decades in particular, to found tons of seed saving organizations and share seeds and develop farms just to perpetuate and keep rare seed strains alive, and to gather seeds from all over the world -- the situation would be 100x worse today than it would have been without them.

I know most people think you just go to the store and buy a packet of seeds. Easy, right?

A few are the sort that will reproduce next year if you know how to save them properly, if you prevent cross contamination of the crop, if you store the seed well, if you have decent soil (which is generally built, not bought). Most of them aren't. Most of them will grow nifty oversized and over-sweetened (carby!) vegetables and fruits for you and if you want to grow anything next year, you'll need to go buy more seeds, or what you'll get may or may not look or taste anything like what you plan.

Now look again at how many options you have in that store. Do you realize that there are hundreds of types of peas alone? Who knew?? How many of those do you see available to you in the store? Probably one. Maybe two. How many different companies do you see on those seed packages -- and do you know if they actually share a parent company?

Most people have never given a second thought to the subject of gardening and seeds and the availability of seeds -- and seeds that will bear fruit you can collect seeds from to grow another season -- I certainly hadn't. Might be worth your time. Especially if you don't have much money.

It's a basic survival skill. It's the sort of thing we all should know a little about, just because we are human, just because we eat to survive.

And it's more fun and not as much work if you do it right. Even I at 482 lbs could garden -- you just plan it to fit what you can do. Even a small planter, near enough your door/traffic that you see it regularly so watering and care is easy and totally minor, can grow more 'stuff' than you might imagine! Yummy stuff. Green onions and a diced small roma tomato and a pinch of an herb can make a major difference in a morning's scrambled eggs.

And add a lot to your health. And save a lot for your pocketbook!

Avoiding the Obvious

I was going to write an essay about how my body reacts to lowcarb vs. non-lowcarb, but after seeing the graph I made to summarize my history of lowcarbing (dating back to 1/1/2005), I realized it says more than I ever could.



.

The Recipe for "Gumption"

You know, you gotta "get up the gumption" -- where on earth did that word come from, I wonder?? -- to do much of anything.

Eat right. Exercise. Drink water. Take supplements. Clean your house. Whatever.

I've had a very difficult time 'getting up the gumption' to do anything useful lately. I'd like to say something else. Tell you how inspired I am. But really, I feel like I am looking for inspiration under rocks and in haystacks. Here, kitty kitty kitty. Come home to me.

o0o

I've noticed that sometimes it's a matter of extremes. Often in the past, I have known I was unhappy, dissatisfied, needed to do something, about some situation in my life. But this went on and on. Eventually I hit rock bottom, the ultimate in desperation and despair, and from there, the only direction to go was up.

This presents a real problem for fitness goals. You can't wait until you're worse off than you were before to finally feel like getting around to doing something about it. Well you can, but then you fit in with most of the rest of planet earth that diets strenously and ends up fatter.

I don't want to wait until I hit rock bottom. I could be dead before that happens. I want to find inspiration within myself now, or at least soon.

o0o

Years ago when many of my cats were about 7 months old, it had snowed, and then iced. They wanted to be outside for brief times, and there is no more memorable sight and sound than that of half a dozen cats, "galloping across the frozen tundra" of a backyard. Yes. Cats gallop. I never knew that until the iced-snow echoed all their pawbeats. It was awesome.

I had a cat-door in the window of the spare room at the time. Near that window is a big metal thing on the ground that houses the HAC air intake unit. To make it more easily possible for the gets to get from the big-thing to the cat-door in the window, I used the little plastic slide that my kid had outgrown, that used to be on one of those rubbery-plastic "cube" things that multiple kids can play on.

At first, it was so cute, their little pawprints in the snow as they ran up the slide to the window.

Then it iced over.

It was cruel. It was unusual. It was deviant and inconsiderate of me. But watching the kittens run up the slide, only to get huge eyes, flex their front claws like crazy, and sliiiiiiiiiiiide back down it again, was so funny that I literally ended up on the floor clutching my stomach with tears rolling down my face. Every time I would stand up and look again, to see the latest cat doing it, I would just collapse in hysteria.

They were backsliding, going downhill, while trying to get a grip with eyes wide and claws out.... to no avail.

I feel kind of like that right now.

I hope someone is having half the fun over it I remember having over them. I think I feel just about as irked about it as they seemed to. And like them, I eventually gave up at least for the present, sitting at the bottom of the uphill journey home, and staring at what was inside, thinking, 'DO SOMETHING TO HELP ME, YOU FOOL!'

o0o

My little girl is overweight. The last two years have put it on her in a big way. The irony that her dad moved here allegedly in part to be healthy food and exercise for her to solve my worry about it way back when, and that it got exponentially worse, is not lost on me. For the last two months since he moved out, though, I've been having a hard time focusing even on what is good for ME. Which would at least partially translate to what is good for her, of course. It is starting to genuinely ruin her life. She is miserable. She can't fit in any of the clothing types, styles or pieces she wants, and she can no longer run and play well with the other kids. She bawled her head off to me about it recently, and I felt like the lowest kind of lifeform that I had allowed this to happen. I wasn't overweight in school so I don't know what it's like in that respect, but I've got the testimony of plenty of friends that tell me it's a nightmare nobody can really imagine.

So getting my act together is more than just about me now. It's not just about getting the gumption to improve my life. It has to be SO lifewide and SO consistent that it improves hers, too.

No pressure PJ. It's just that your cooking, diet and exercise will not only kill you if you don't get your shit together, but they're ruining the life and future of the one human you love most in the world, your only child.

If that isn't supposed to be inspiration, what is??

So why does that make me feel like turning on the music loudly and crawling into a dark corner and making the world leave me alone? Shouldn't that instead make me feel all optimistic and positive and inspired about what can be done and needs to be done?

I need therapy. But I can't afford it. So ... instead, I have a blog.

o0o

I've even thought of many good ideas lately for having quick food. Like:

1 - make tons of taco meat and freeze in portions so it's always a nuke away.
2 - make tons of 'blue-cheese burger' patties and freeze so it's always a grill away.

And my old standards,

3 - make massive quantities of chili verde (a friend reported the recipe was dry and tasteless for her. The portions vary on my recipe but I recommend using more water and veggies if in doubt.) and store it in 4-6oz gladware containers.

4 - make cocoa flax muffins (to die for IMO) and stick 'em when fully cook in a ziplock kept near, so you can just pull one out and munch on it -- good protein, good fiber, super yummy.

5 - make a pound of spicy ground sausage and then scramble a dozen+ eggs and mix it all together with some shredded cheddar and then put it in a big gladware container in the fridge. Anytime you're hungry, dish out a bowl of the stuff, nuke it briefly, and if you want add some salsa, sour cream, a little more cheese, lowcarb ketchup, or whatever to it (it's good plain). Lasts awhile and having a lot of both fat and protein is filling.

I have a bunch of hamburger I bought in bulk (bought 1/2 a side) in my big freezer. So theoretically there is no reason I can't do the first two things at least.

o0o

That I don't FEEL like it -- and that my normal obsessive discipline has so NOT kicked in to save me lately -- is making me wonder what the heck is going on? I'm starting to feel like maybe I'm possessed. One of us is avoiding getting healthier, I just don't know which one. But it feels like an internal wrestling match.

PJ

Highway Blind

I know it's been forever and a day since I've posted on this blog. I'm genuinely sorry about that and I am really grateful to the people who made comments and encouraged me to, well, get my act together and say something. As bloggers go, I kinda suck -- consistency is one of the primary criteria of this web genre. Then again, I swear that doing the FT+ job routine plus the Single Mom routine plus having other substantial things in my life, already means that anything important to me I have to deduct from sleep hours. I don't know how people with more kids do it. I have one and I feel like the time issues are ridiculous.

I'm also really focused as a personality. Sometimes I have trouble focusing on more than one or two things at a time. So when my food/exercise/health is in focus you can't shut me up, and when it's not in focus I'm nearly antisocial. I stayed away from the lowcarber.org forum so long (aside from occasional lurking) that now I have a guiltfest about acting like a friend to friends after having abandoned them. (It's a four planets in Virgo thing. I can feel guilty about anything. Pretty impressive... I'm not even Catholic. ;-))

OK let's see. FOOD! Well, I've learned something, and that is always a good thing, even if you have to wade through a trench filled with carb-laden disaster to learn it: I learned that it is very hard for me to do anything "moderately." Starve myself? I can do that. Eat to oblivion? I can do that. Do low-carb? I can do that. Do low-cal? I can do that. However, the "do moderately low carb, moderately low cal, moderate amounts of food, eaten several times a day, along with decent water intake and supplements" -- is apparently a challenge I haven't yet mastered.

What is it about "moderation and balance" that is so hard for me?

I think maybe it actually relates to "attention, intention and expectation." Curiously, these three things are heavily tied into another subject I study as well, in which psychology plays a major role. Let me explain:

When I do something extremely, I really have to pay attention. Compare it to how people actually spell common names wrong more often than long complicated names. Why? Because the long complicated names, they really have to pay attention to, to write/type at all. It's the ones like Smithson that tend to end up with typos or what have you, that they don't think they need to think much about. So when I am totally lowcarb, I really have to pay attention to what the heck I'm cooking and eating, because I'm counting carbs all over the place. But when I am "moderate carb" -- basically just "eating with an emphasis toward protein and veggies and an emphasis away from starches and sugars" -- well frankly, that's just so middle of the road. I don't need to "worry about" the details of how many carbs or how much protein because I'm not counting.

I thought counting carbs etc. was kind of driving me crazy. But now I'm starting to think maybe it's the thing that was actually making it possible for me.

Intention is another subject. In order for me to really INTEND toward my health goals, obviously I have to pay attention, but it's really part of a driving "intent" that one either carries with them or they don't. When I have that driving intent because the 'attention' factor is forcing my food and exercise and health to be "present in my mind" almost constantly, then I am much more prone to be 'committed' to whatever I am doing. I am more habitual about drinking water for example, which affects how I feel, how bloated I am not, which can affect my energy level, which can affect my exercise quantity and even my food choices, so these things snowball like crazy into an end result for better or worse. Often worse.

And finally, expectation. When a person is really working hard to eat well and count carbs and get exercise and drink water, they EXPECT to lose weight. Well, or at least to gain muscle, or something! I believe that expectation, on a psychological level, is a huge driver of the reality we create for ourselves. One only needs to be around children awhile to see how their belief systems, and what they have learned to expect, has a profound effect on not only how they filter their perception of reality but, it seems, even the 'luck' that brings events into their life. I mean it works with adults just as well, but we tend to be so ingrained in patterns and slow to change that it is less obvious with us.

So my plans for 'moderate' eating failed abysmally, primarily because apparently the whole fact that it was moderate caused me not enough attention, intention or expectation concerning it. I am wondering if this actually speaks to the larger question of our society and why it's so hard for most our non genetically thin members to STAY lean and fit through their life. I mean you have to admit that with the exception of health issues, most people would "eventually" be in good shape if they just ate "moderately" -- I don't just mean in portions I mean in terms of food composition (eating moderate amounts of deep dish pizza will still make you fat ;-)). But most people don't eat moderately. They eat excessively, and then eventually they go to the other extreme, on some kind of diet or another, and eat non-moderately in some other way. Go figure.

So meanwhile back at the scale, I haven't weighed in a couple weeks but I think I am at about 390, about 10lbs heavier than my lowest weight, which is actually only about 1-2 lbs heavier than when I went on my "moderate plan" which shortly failed to be a plan at all.

I think at the moment what I am mostly fighting is emotional, psychological frustration. I want fresh orange juice now and then. I want to not have to make every imaginable food from scratch. I want to be able to eat at a restaurant and have more than 1-2 menu choices. I know, I am acting like a petulant child. That is how I feel about it though.

Some days ago I crockpotted a huge bag of chicken breasts which we've been 'mostly' living on. I discovered if I chop it up and toss it with cream-of-anything soup and some veggies it's quick protein (although, also carbs). I just finished cooking a brisket in my oversized crockpot. I didn't know what to do as I forgot to buy beer. I poured in a cup of red cooking wine, a cup of real apple cider with mother, a few cups of water, a bunch of natures's seasoning, minced jar'd garlic and course black pepper, and hoped for the best. It came with a pre-seasoning stuff all over it and you know, it just did not smell that good cooking, so I'm not sure I'll like it. I think I recall last time planning to NOT get it seasoned next time, but forgot! Anyway, so tonight I have to figure out something to do with it. I should go eat some now. I've never used a crockpot for brisket before. Never had one big enough!

I've also had fast food and regular soft drinks during this period so I can't pretend I'm eating well. I want to get off the soft drinks but it kind of requires getting enough sleep for once. The more exhausted I am from sleep deprivation the more I drink caffeine (I really detest diet drinks. I don't mind diet rite tangerine, but it has no caffeine!) which has sugar and then I end up wanting all kinds of stuff that is not good.

Isn't it funny how carbs/sugar changes your taste. When I am lowcarb, I drool over slices of onion. Asparagus is dreamy. Real food is awesome. An orange is orgasmic. When I am not lowcarb, I have zero interest in even the sweetest fruits unless they've got sugar added so it's a dessert! I just want carbs. So if I allow myself to eat the carbs I want when I am lowcarb, I then cease to have any interest in eating lowcarb. Oh brother.

I have an exercise room now, at least I do when I can get my kid to clean it up, as she is nearly living in there now, she loves it. She sits on the weight bench and watches star trek: the next generation videos on the TV which is up on the wall. She nabs the big cutting board from the kitchen and does Sculpey clay stuff while watching. I am getting slightly more exercise than I used to, although the addition of yard work is certainly increasing this by a big percentage. My yard is not huge but everything grew like 8" from no-green to overgrown in like 10 days -- the whole city was overgrown -- it wasn't easy to mow.

Speaking of yard. I decided I'm not going to garden except a tiny bit this year. I just don't have time. Meanwhile, spring sprung, everything in the landscaping grew like crazy, especially the grapevines and this is their first real year so that's cool, it was beautiful and impressive, and then it froze deeply for a few days, then was hot, then froze again, then was hot again, and now everything looks dead as rocks. grrrr. Hope they survive.

They opened a movie theatre by my house, I'm pretty excited to have 4 screens near me, we used to have to drive an hour nearly to get to one. My dad talked to the chief of the tribe who was building it, and told him about my issue with fitting in seats, and how I used to be a movie freak but when I got fat, stopped going since I didn't want to sit in the aisle or be miserable. Well that was a long time ago they had this talk and the theatre just opened and ALL the seats have 'optional' arm rests that go up, so I fit in anything! It's so awesome! And it's like 4 blocks from my house. Way cool! My kid's pretty excited about it too. ;-)

Two of my cats remain indoors but the others live outside now. They are less than thrilled about this, especially when it is raining like today. But I have a garage with a cat door (it has mild heating) and a covered front porch with a padded bench and they get fed regularly so they are not gonna die of it. I miss them but I so do NOT miss the constant disaster of 8 barfy, poopy, hairy animals living indoors!

My house is so much better now that my ex moved out I just can't believe it. I mean literally it's a different house. And my little girl is nearly a completely different person. She used to always be miserable, whiney, cranky, drama queen, and for the most part now it's like her entire personality has had major sunshine added to it. I'm making a point to spend at least an hour with her every night and focus on a decent bedtime and it really seems to be paying off a lot. I mean she is just so much happier. And when he first left she was literally bubbling and dancing for days. It was sort of sad, and embarrassing for him, that she was so obviously so much happier. I'm so glad I finally made the decisiona about that. And so glad for my friends that helped me see sanity on the subject. Oh yeah and she recently got her jr. purple belt in karate, she's so proud. She just got glasses. I let her get whatever she wanted and she chose some insanely pricey designer pair (nearly $300! I had no idea they were that much until it was too late), but they do look cute and are due today or Monday. She is actually looking forward to wearing them, bizarrely enough, this after months of angst about not wanting to wear glasses! Only needs them if she 'needs' to see distance like the chalkboard.

Meanwhile it's been just over a year since my LASIK. I need some +1-+1.25 reading glasses but I'm 41 so that would have happened anyway. My distance vision is about 20/45 in one eye and 20/15 in the other so it's about 20/25 together; not super clear but I don't need glasses to drive. I was waaaaaay beyond legally blind before I had lasik, it was just 'correctable' was all. I couldn't see the face of someone I shook the hand of; I couldn't read the giant numbers on my digital alarm clock while lying right next to it. So I am still stupidly happy about it and I feel sure my vision would be even better if I had kept my eyes decently hydrated esp. the last six months. With indoor climate control it is really hard, they get dry so easily after LASIK.

Well anyway, so that is what is up with me. I have been having these little pep talks with myself lately about how I need to get my act together and focus on my health. But you know, for the last few months, since January, I have focused on my house, my job, my kid, and a little bit on my primary hobby which has a ton of internet stuff that has required mega time investment. I just haven't felt like I had "enough left over" to focus on my food and my exercise and water and supplements and weighing and counting and so on. But that's stupid, I mean it's a cop-out excuse and I know it, because I know that I feel better when I focus on my health, and I feel even more competent about everything ELSE when I do, so it is not competition for attention, it only benefits the other things in my life.

I'm still "thinking" about it. Working on getting up the gumption for appropriate attention, intention and expectation. But I wanted to post something about my status at least, so people didn't think I had forever abandoned the blog. Right now I just feel like I am trucking down the highway of life, halfway hypnotized, highway blind.

Best,
PJ

Treading Water

I haven't posted on this blog in awhile, in part because I haven't been focusing very much on my food and exercise and overall health the way I should be.

My husband left (at my insistence) the 8th of February, and to be honest I've mostly been focusing on what is in front of me at any given moment. The unbelievable disaster of my house that had to be changed once he left -- I have moved more "stuff" out of my house than most people have in their whole house -- has taken tons of time (and money for my housekeeper's help, landscaper's help, trash company's help, etc.).

While I'm at it, I've started going through every thing in every room, beginning with the kitchen. I wanted to know every thing I had, where it was and why. Maybe that's a bit of psychology or some overkill on a control issue, but I have felt like I lived in a chaotic disaster of an overcrowded stacked-to-ceiling warehouse for so long, that it feels rather good to just get RID of stuff and have some space and "feel" organized.

You wouldn't believe how much stuff I found that I forgot I even had!! Brand new homemade yogurt maker and yocheese maker -- gotta try that! Brand new really high-end dehydrator. Several appliances I forgot existed. Not to mention I can now SEE all of my clear glass / lucite / plastic canister sets and what is in them. All my spices, sweeteners (and a shelf full of DaVinci sugarfree flavor syrups) are on one wall-unit I call the spice shelf. It's very cool to have things in one place, organized, clean, I know where stuff is, etc. When I walk into the kitchen I no longer feel overwhelmed: now I feel inspired. That hasn't yet panned out to much new experimenting yet -- I've been over-prosaic lately and we've been living on crockpot chicken or pork or sandwiches or fruits and veggies -- but I expect it will eventually.

Of course, you know what it's like when you set out to clean and reorganize in a big way. It gets worse before it gets better!! :-) So imagine that applied to an entire house (and garden and landscape and porch and driveway) and you might get an idea of the scope of things here.

Meanwhile, back at the health issue... I don't seem to have gained any weight (aside from water weight that comes and goes depending on my carbs, 'time of the month', etc.) but I haven't lost it either, for some time. I haven't been trying, so that's hardly surprising.

I just got my weight bench set up Sunday, finally (in a place big enough to use it), and just got walking shoes with athletic gel inserts that I hope will inspire more walking activity. I got a new power cord for my exercise bike; I bought it like 6 years ago, barely used it, stuck it in the garage and forgot I owned it, funny enough! So I dragged it out (it's huge and heavy) and put it in the exercise room (the ex's former bedroom). I went looking online to see if they still sold this model, Vision Fitness HR R2600 and sure enough, they do -- for two grand! Sheesh. I must've made too much money that year. Well anyway it allegedly will work with the heart rate chest strap that my nifty watch HR-monitor came with, and tonight I'll be trying it out.

I've had a string of offbeat things bothering me the last few weeks, from a friend dying to my greatly increased carb intake resulting in me having a lot less physical energy, more water weight and less limberness, and more desire to eat more carbs which is SO aggravating. A couple times with family I ate lousy things like pizza, or McDonalds, or french toast; I paid the price, suffice to say. Fortunately that has been in the minority. Mostly my problem is, as usual, not eating during the day. Now that I let myself eat 'whole grains' so I can have decent bread again, I've discovered if I make 2.5 sandwiches, cut the 2 in half, that I have several small meals ready for me through the day, plus half a sandwich for the kid when she gets home, as she's always hungry.

We've been eating more stir-fry veggies, and apples and bananas. I realize the latter two are a great deal of sugar of course, but my rule for the kid is that she can eat any fruit or veg; it beats the eclairs and mac&cheese and McD's her dad was feeding her that hugely increased her weight in the 18 months he was here. Now that her food hinges on me, I'm starting to realize just how badly (and how often) she was eating. Total carb addict. Hopefully we can cure this over time.

MY GOAL FOR MARCH: To get to where I can walk all the way to her school and back (3 miles). If I did that to take her and pick her up, that would be six miles of walking a day! And 3 for her. I want to try it, but thanks to more carbs and less water (which I am changing and improving even as we speak) I haven't felt physically competent enough even to try.

I met a man recently who told me he used to weigh 480. He was probably 250lbs lighter now; probably not done with his progress but certainly looking pretty good. I wasn't real sociable both times I met him I'm afraid, as I was half-dressed both times and on the phone long distance once. But I find myself wondering where he lives (he said close nearby), and wondering if he would be interested in a walking buddy or something. Then I tell myself to get over it, because what guy is going to be interested in walking around publicly with some woman who weighs 400 lbs? But he was so friendly, I didn't feel like he was judging me. I didn't notice what it was I was sensing at first, until later I thought back on it; it was that unlike most people, he wasn't "reacting" to my weight, like it's some social contagious disease. I don't want to date him, I just think it would be cool to have a buddy to walk with and someone who is not ten years old or a cat, to talk to!

Independence Day

Today is my official independence day: my husband, as of late last night, is out of the country, and permanently out of my life aside from visits-to-kid. Thanks be to God. I feel like I have lost a ton of weight from some unspecified part of my body, as if we hold some 'astral' sense of weight with things that 'weigh us down'.

I could look at this as losing 195 lbs overnight. I feel great!

It'll take me at least a month just to clean up the unbelievable amount of STUFF he over-occupied the main room (and largest bedroom) with, but I'll do it. And after two months of ice and snow, and 8 cats stuck in the house all the time, I decided to get tough about them at the same time. He went to the airport and they got thrown out to live in the garage. It has a couple HAC vents out there, food, water, litterboxes, and a cat-door in the window so they are free to go in/outdoors. I let the little fragile one with no body fat stay inside, but when it warms up, she can go out too.

Already the house FEELS significantly different.

I'm so happy.

I sang, "Hit the ROAD, Jack! And don'tcha come back! No more, no more, no more, no more!" all the way home from the airport.

I think I'll go clean something.

The Big O

A new experience is making such a big difference for me:

Organization.

(Heh. I bet you thought this was about something else.)

I've had a real challenge while on low carb, especially the last 2 months, with a variety of factors, including:

How many of us work our butts off for someone else, but... only "hope to get around to" the things we want to do?

* remembering to eat
* remembering to weigh myself
* remembering to take my supplements at all, let alone 3x a day
* being able to drink water consistently through the day so that I can get a gallon in by the end of the day
* not eating frequently enough (rather than only once or twice a day, or meals separated by 6 hours)
* not preparing properly so when I go to eat, there is something lowcarb available that does not take me 30 minutes to pull together (if at all)

...All of which combines to other side effects, like not getting nearly enough protein each day, and more.

Yeah I know. After reading that you're thinking, "You can't remember to eat?! You have no brain!"

Yes, there is that...

But seriously, I wake up in the morning and I'm into the "get kid to school mode" and then I move on to the "I work from home mode" and that's that. I'm used to putting the kid, the job, in fact everything, before "me" on my priority list.

I'm very focused. When I'm doing thing X, I am totally doing it. I'm busy, and I don't remember to do stuff until usually late afternoon, when I realized I've blown it yet again -- I didn't eat frequently, I didn't drink water, weigh myself, take supplements, get stuff ready that I needed, etc. 15+ years of eating one meal a day and tuning out the world while I obsessed on work is a hard habit to break.

How many people are unusually competent as mothers or church planners or business people but feel like they're constantly a day late, a dollar short, and behind the 8-ball in their personal life?

So my friend was telling me, "Set your alarm!" and I said well then I'd have to reset it a zillion times a day. I heard myself say that and thought to myself, "My gosh, am I the laziest human alive?! You know, I think I might be!" Talk about making excuses. But it got me thinking about it.

I had prepared a ton of chili verde, in the fridge and the freezer, in those little Glad plastic 4oz (1/2 cup) containers. I had baked some Cocoa Muffincakes v1.8 which began a healthy muffin and turned into a sweet treat by the time I was done with it. So for the first time in awhile, I had actually prepared food in advance that I could eat as needed. Plus I have a variety of stuff right now that I could munch on if I chose.

So the day BEFORE today, I sat down, considering what I had in my fridge and pre-pared, and worked out what I should eat today that would bring my nutrition numbers to my ideal.

Why did I never think of doing this before? Planning my food in advance? As if I have to be so undisciplined that I require spontaneity for food or something, how silly -- it's not like I don't know what I like. (Surely, until recently, humans were usually very carefully planning food in advance and/or eating whatever had to be eaten before it spoiled.)

I put the info in my spreadsheet that I use as a food journal, with set times. Every so many minutes or hours, I was due to do something, usually combined with eating. I would eat X, or Y; I would weigh myself; and I made a point that each time I needed to eat, I would grab my 1/2 gallon water bottle, drink 8 long gulps, and then go do whatever I was doing. After I finished eating I would try to drink 8-16 more gulps, which when you are eating meat is not that hard because it makes you thirsty.

I set my alarm. And when it went off I would instantly re-set it for the next time (90 minutes later), do my thing, and come back to work. It didn't take hardly any time, contrary to my expectation that getting up so many times a day would be too time consuming.

The result is:

* Today was by far my most ideal nutrition counts in the four months I've been lowcarbing.
* I drank a full gallon of water today and never did I really feel like I was waterlogging myself, because it was very gradual and consistent.
* I had many separate eating times of very small amounts throughout the day. I never felt hungry, I never felt full. The more protein your weight requires you get in, the more you need multiple meals, since taking massive protein/fat in one meal isn't really ideal.
* Since my food's planned ahead I never reached the middle of a prep only to discover we are now out of something I need, or it has gone bad.
* I got far more movement in my day since I had to get up every 90 minutes.
* I went to the bathroom every 90 minutes (remember that gallon of water!) but it wasn't like being 'constantly interrupted' for it, because I was already up doing my thing anyway, so it just became a routine.
* I actually felt like I was accomplishing something!

Now attach praying, stretching, weighing, taking vitamins, etc. to some of those 'timed events' and you have a very constructive day.

I knew it was going to be a successful day. How could it not be? I had a plan!

And importantly, it's never much. It's never like some gigantic effort, like making a big meal or doing an hour of exercise or drinking a whole quart of water or something else that's a real pain no fun. Every 90 minutes, I drop what I'm doing and do what I should -- and it usually doesn't take longer than 5-10 minutes max. And by the end of the day, I find that I have accomplished a LOT -- all in tiny little pieces.

o0o

So in addition to my "lowcarb lifestyle", I have other things that are important to me, from prayer to getting my kid to karate. My friend pointed out that for 20 bucks there is a great electronic scheduler with alarm at Amazon. You can schedule any number of "appointments" -- every Thursday at 5:30 for example, to get ready for karate, or weekdays, or one-time things -- or, a regular "eating+" schedule that is consistent and happens in many segments throughout the day.

I could do this on my computer now -- but I'm not always at my computer, so that's not convenient. Something small that could be clipped on a purse, belt, backpack, tossed in the car to travel with you, could combine work and personal AND even your "plan of discipline" sounds fabulous to me. I ordered it, so when I get it later this week I'll let you know what I think.

Meanwhile, I actually made nearly 200g of protein today, a full gallon of water, at 20 carbs and 2200 calories -- and everything I ate was fabulous. I wasn't stressed or rushing. I wasn't trying to do math in my head and guess about my food or 'forage' in a hurry for lunch. I got my prayers and stretching and other things taken care of. And from the beginning of my day, here's the kicker:

I KNEW IT WAS GOING TO BE A SUCCESSFUL DAY.

How could it not be? I had a plan!
I had everything all worked out ahead of time.

It was easy, it was fast, and it got done.

Think about it. We plan our work days, our meetings, our lesson plans, our grocery lists. Those of us who do jobs like project management for a living, plan the 'flow' of things so there are no surprises (we hope), no panicking rush, no running out of resources, no bottleneck vs. desert of workflow for vendors and contractors, etc. We plan it, we document it, we report on it.

Funny most of us don't put as much "Organization" into the rest of our lives, isn't it? Why NOT pre-plan and schedule your food/water and minor activities? It's not like you can't change your mind if you need to. Isn't LIFE at least as important as the job? Isn't being competent and feeling good about what we accomplish in many areas just as important personally as professionally?

I'm used to putting the kid, the job, in fact everything, before "me" on my priority list.

Why not "get my act together" by sitting down and making a plan for shopping, for pre-cooking/storing, eating, and all the little things I must do? Why not set an alarm or organizer-reminder so that we get it all done regularly, unhurriedly, gradually -- and perfectly?

Many years ago in Los Angeles as an independent contractor (troubleshooting, mfg. line process, software training, etc.) my business card said, "Organizing Your Organization." Why not organize my own life? How many of us work our butts off for someone else, but then for ourselves, only "hope to get around to" the things we want to do?

How many people are unusually competent as mothers or church planners or business people but feel like they're constantly a day late, a dollar short, and behind the 8-ball in their personal life? Maybe it's because we aren't used to making the same kind of effort on behalf of ourselves that we do for others.

The Big O is now underway. I'm making plans. I'm following plans. And it's pretty amazing, frankly, how with a minimum of effort, I am accomplishing more than ever.
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Marathons of Enthusiasm

So the last few days I actually have the urge to physically DO something... not just sit as motionless as a rock all the time. This is a rather new urge for me. I've been so heavy and as a result, so sedentary, for so long that when I felt like "doing" something I had to ask myself, "Er.... like what would that be?!"

Yesterday I did two more stages in the chocolate muffin with lowcarb and high protein experiment. By version 1.7 (seven trials), I think it's pretty damn good personally. You could put cream cheese frosting on it and call it a cupcake. It does require some LC ingredients at least if you make it like I did. I call them Cocoa Muffins v1.7 (recipe link here). (If you're not a lowcarber.org member, here's a link to an image that has the recipe, nutrition count, instructions.)

Edit 1/8/07: Use version 1.8, here instead for much moister, chocolatey-er muffins. However, the calorie/fat count on this version is much higher, as it upped the oil a lot.

Today I spent three solid hours walking walmart with a heavy basket that cost me over 1/3 my paycheck. Sheesh! But I got a ton of kitchen utensils and stuff like that which I needed, and a bunch of meat for some major prep cooking, and as usual the kid made out like a bandit by the time it was over, with a new sweater, tennis shoes, a bunch of art supplies, and some fruit juices she wanted. I've made it clear that at the end of January when her dad departs, this house is lowcarb and that means her too, so she is living it up while she can!

It was more exercise without cease than I've done in eons. I was getting kind of weary and my back was "thinking about maybe complaining" when I finally got home, got the stuff in the kitchen and sat down.

Later around 11pm I got enthused and energetic again and decided I would go ahead and make the chili verde now instead of later. So I spent 1.5 hours just cleaning and chopping the various ingredients, only to realize I was very tired and my lower back was starting to complain. Then I realized I still had to cut up nearly 10lbs of pork and brown the outside before I could put everything in the crockpot.

I gave up my pride and begged my soon-to-be-ex husband to do it. Which was SO impolite, since it was 12:30am by the time I suggested he spend 90 minutes doing that! But he did and so tomorrow morning around 9:30am we will have a big ol' pot of chili verde. And there is more meat and less veg than usual this time so it's super lowcarb/high protein.

I'm frustrated that I keep forgetting to weigh, but when I did, my weight wasn't changing. I'm not moving fast enough to meet my goal in this 12 week cycle if I don't get my butt in gear. As of last Monday (a week ago), I finally got my protein up to an average of 100+g per day and my water to a minimum of 2qt per day. I thought this would greatly up my restroom habits and weight loss, but the weight didn't move and I keep wondering where the heck the food is all going since a lot of it doesn't seem to be leaving me!

Tomorrow I'm cooking a big seasoned briskett, as well as all this chili verde, so I will have a bunch of food frozen and refrigerated. Once the briskett is done, I think I might make burritos with lowcarb tortillas and pre-shredded cheese and wrap them tight in foil and freeze, for some nukable meals of that too.

Did you notice the nifty Flickr flash picture thing down on the left nav? I saw that at Lady Atkins' great blog and got myself one.

Anyway. I keep thinking that I have energy and get really upbeat about wanting to DO something (for once), and it goes well, but I tire out much sooner than I expect. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is... ah... not used to exercise. My body isn't yet keeping up with my enthusiasm!
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