| Diet NonReport |
[Nov. 25th, 2009|09:45 am] |
Around noon yesterday I decided I just didn't want to do diet stuff this week at all. I'm still going to try to make wise choices, but it allowed me to eat half a turkey sandwich and a chicken caesar salad for dinner without any sense of guilt.
My goals for today... clean up the apartment some more, cook pies, prep veggies, and brine turkey.
People ask if I am cooking for Thanksgiving and while I answer yes, at no point in time does it even begin to feel like cooking. Roasting a turkey is braindead simple, making the gravy, mashed potatoes and stuffing as basic cooking techniques. Sometimes I actually make my own cranberry sauce but really, it is a trivial item. All in all, a turkey dinner is a simple straightforward meal. I worked harder putting together the venison meal I made for Leslie and Jamie last year. |
|
|
| Capitalization |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|12:36 pm] |
The most consistent search the brings people to my blog is "Cannellini Beans and Spinach". Is there someway to capitalize upon that? Can I hold recipes for ransom? "I have this wonderful dish and here are some great pictures but I won't release the recipe until I get $5."
The other most consistent search is 'chaos creates opportunity' which I do see has potential for actual capitalization - Chaos Creates Opportunity. There, capitalized. Okay, bad joke.
Seriously, I do think I can expand upon the concept, give historical examples and present day examples. Further define what 'chaos' actually means, talk about how crisis is just a type of chaos and give examples like that town in Kansas that was destroyed by a tornado. They turned a disaster into an opportunity. People who have gotten laid off and started their own business are turned crisis into opportunity.
I don't know, is it too positive for the likes of me?
The third most consistent search beyond stuff on Gracian is on pessimism. |
|
|
| Diet report |
[Nov. 24th, 2009|10:32 am] |
Breakfast
Banana (105)
Slimfast (180)
Lunch
2 Apples (120)
Dinner
? oz of chicken (???)
1 large salad with yogurt dressing (200)
Evening snack
150 grams of vanilla ice cream (300)
I ate a lot of chicken, I was just using it before it went bad. I lost a steak I was planning on eating due to time, I wasn't going to let the chicken go the same route. I wasn't too upset about the beef. It was an awful cut of meat... no matter how I cooked it, it was tough.
The ice cream was more a comfort food thing. Wasn't much left in the container and it seemed like a good thing to eat at the time.
My scale keeps getting stuck and I no longer really trust it on a pound by pound basis, so I think a new digital scale is in order in the future, though it may just feed obsessiveness.
All this does make me feel like I am whistling past the graveyard, though. I'm fighting my nihilistic tendency and trying to focus on positive outcomes. Losing weight serves a greater purpose of better health and a better self image. |
|
|
| Maybe it is just me |
[Nov. 23rd, 2009|01:26 pm] |
Maybe it is just me but there are certain conversational elements that people you barely know do that set me on edge. I've had a chance to experience all of these things recently and I often wonder if people know they are doing it or not.
The first thing is when I'm asked about my educational background in a conversational tone. "Did you go to college?" When I answer yes, and they ask me what I majored in and I tell them. This is normal. When they respond in amazement as if I had said "Astroengineering and Applied mathematical field mechanics" when all I said was "Political Science and Philosophy" I am left wondering if they even know what PoliSci and Philosophy is and just how many people graduate with those degrees every year and end up never using them. It immediately seems patronizing. Of course, I am forced to reflect on similar events in my life. When I meet someone who studied medieval history or French literature, I have a similar reaction of awe, based either on envy or genuine appreciation of knowing something that is beyond my grasp.
The second thing is being praised for intelligence by someone who just met me. I think this is just being polite but honestly the person just met me, how can she/he truly know my intelligence. I don't know if I'm intelligent or not. I'm think I'm slightly above average but there are a lot of dumb smart people out there. So when people I just met praise me on my intelligence it feels like a used car salesman praising me on my ability to judge a class vehicle.
When these things occur back to back, it makes me feel really bad. I feel like I'm being mocked.
Again this probably does tie into my general pessimism. Never trust praise, only trust criticism. I was playing Team Fortress 2 yesterday and was going along just great, until some guy started harping on my play ability. Instead of leaving the game and joining another, I stayed and took the abuse because it seemed like a valid evaluation. (It wasn't, he was an ass.) |
|
|
| Diet report |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|04:40 pm] |
Breakfast
Slimfast (180)
Banana (105)
Lunch
2 Apples (120)
Dinner
Sushi (??????)
Some appetite. No food yesterday did not translate into a ravenous appetite today but at least I wasn't repulsed by the idea of food. The sushi tonight should be a good distraction from the norm. Have to make the key part of tomorrow's dish tonight. |
|
|
| Diet report - Reverse of Yesterday |
[Nov. 19th, 2009|05:02 pm] |
Breakfast
Nothing
Midmorning snack
Nothing
Lunch
Nothing
Afternoon Snack
Nothing
Dinner
At this point it doesn't really matter, but I suspect it will be a frozen dinner I picked up awhile ago (500)
Evening Snack
??? - doubt I will be hungry enough for an evening snack.
So if you graph the calories of the week, yesterdays splurge is compensated for today's lack of appetite. Appetite should return tomorrow hopefully. |
|
|
| 4 Day Weekend Diet Update |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|09:52 am] |
Friday:
I was pretty good on Friday until 7pm when I broke diet over a beef burrito, chips and salsa, and margaritas.
Saturday:
I got to see Leslie for a bit between moments in her very busy life. I then spent the rest of the day playing video games. I ate pretty poorly.
Sunday:
Up early, chores done, I ate sort of okay but snacked a lot.
Monday:
Supposed to be back on diet, but totally failed. Food experimentation requires a lot of eating. |
|
|
| Diet Report - 1797 |
[Nov. 13th, 2009|07:16 am] |
Breakfast
SlimFast 180
Banana 105
Rice Cake 40
MidMorning Snack
hardboiled egg 78
Lunch
SlimFast 180
2 Apples 160
Afternoon Snack
Reese's 100
Dinner
7 oz chicken breast 424
Salad w/ 2 Tbsp Blue Cheese Dressing 270
2 oz pasta w/ 1 Tbsp sauce 260
Amazing what salad dressing can do to a daily calorie count. It doesn't help that it was full fat blue cheese dressing.
|
|
|
| Diet Report - 1597 |
[Nov. 12th, 2009|07:00 am] |
Breakfast
1 rice cake (40)
1 slimfast (180)
1 banana (105)
Midmorning Snack
1 hardboiled egg (78)
Lunch
1 SlimFast (180)
1 apple (80)
Afternoon snack
Reeses 100 Calorie (100)
1 apple (80)
Dinner
Pork chop (424)
rice & mixed vegetables (190 )
salad (140)
total calories - 1597
Kind of boring. I bought way too much protein last week. Luckily the tunafish is in cans and will carry over. I'm going to have to start getting my meat at Whole Foods because I can buy individual portions there instead of Jewel's family packs. Why does the world hate single people?
|
|
|
| Diet Report |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|09:36 pm] |
Breakfast
Rice Cake (40)
Slimfast (180)
Banana (105)
Snack
hardboiled egg (78)
Lunch
Slimfast (180)
Apple (80)
Snack
100 Calories Reeses (100)
Dinner
6.5 oz chicken breast fried in light olive oil (365)
75 grams frozen brocolli (30 calories)
2 oz pasta with 1 tbsp of sauce (225)
Salad (140)
Evening Snack
1/4 cup lowfat vanilla yogurt (22.5 cal)
3 Tbsp granola (37 cal)
Total Calorie: 1532
I picked up a digital kitchen scale today and I think it is already worth it. Knowing how much I was eating of pasta and meat allowed me to eat a bit more. I was afraid that my estimates were wrong so I was shorting myself a bit on the food I was eating. The 100 calorie Reese's snack things are a wonderful invention. Not that I'm down on fruit, but I really need some variety in my snacks. The hard boiled egg is a nice addition, though I can't believe how many different answers there are to the question 'how many calories in a hard boiled egg?' so my calorie count yesterday was off. I shouldn't pretend that the total calories I have listed are the actual calories I'm eating. They are an estimate. I'm not counting the calories I get from my 16oz of coffee and roughly 12oz of tea I drink every day.
I'm already thinking about this weekend and where I'm going to go eat to breakdiet. That's my new word. People used to break fast, now I breakdiet. It'll catch on, I'm sure of it.
Last week I broke diet at Fiddlehead. I'm thinking it has been a long time since I've had a Cesar margarita. So if anyone is interested in generic Mexican food and killer margaritas Friday night, let me know. |
|
|
| Diet Report |
[Nov. 10th, 2009|07:09 am] |
Monday's Calorie Count
Breakfast
SlimFast Shake (180)
Banana (105)
Midmorning Snack
hard boiled egg (54)
Lunch
2 Apples (160)
Dinner
4 oz pork chop (340)
1 medium salad w/ cauliflower, cucumbers, carrots and garlic dill dressing (140)
2 oz pasta with sauce (120)
1 rice cake thingy (40)
Total: 1139
Yeah, this was a bad day. I ended up having to work through lunch. Last night as I wrote I was really craving ice cream. I almost just called the whole diet off but I knew that was a critical moment. Do I cave to my cravings or do I control them? Of course I didn't realize just how far short I was falling in my calorie intake for the day.
I'm estimated weights which tells me I need a kitchen scale. I should have a scale anyway. Speaking of scales, the needle has moved down. I don't want to get into reporting the weight fluctuations because I know I will feel like I've failed if the weight bumps up even temporarily. But I do feel like there is some progress. |
|
|
| Diet Report - Weekend |
[Nov. 8th, 2009|01:27 pm] |
Starting Friday Night I was officially off my diet.
I broke the diet fast by going to Fiddlehead, eating half a roasted chicken with mashed potatoes, olives, and a mixed green salad with Becka. We then shared a sticky toffee pudding dessert with Guinness Ice cream. I also had a bottle of Pere Jacque.
Saturday morning was yogurt with granola and blackberries and blueberry pancakes.
Lunch was a blue cheese and tomato salad at Daily with a 312 beer.
Dinner... was sort of random. I ended up eating a lot of candy, drinking a cider and a Molson.
Sunday, I woke up got my coffee did my laundry, went grocery shopping, came home ate a banana, a bunch of coffee cake, had more coffee and am now contemplating dinner since I went crazy on protein options for the following week.
No calorie counting allowed on the weekends. My rule... just to prevent myself from becoming obsessive.
Some minor diet changes, though. Switching up my eggs to vegetarian fed chicken eggs. Organic? No. I'm not falling for non-regulated labeling. Organic is essentially meaningless. I'm committing to soy milk as my 'milk' of choice. I never drink milk straight, I just cook with it and the additional benefit of soy milk is the expiration date is a month away instead of a weeks away, which means I will probably end up wasting a lot less.
I'm going to try to add a midmorning snack to the lineup. The SlimFast diet recommends a midmorning snack but I was cutting it out for extra calorie reduction. I'm just going to eat some yogurt around 11:30am each day (roughly 80 cal) which should help with cold prevention and eliminate those pre lunch hunger pains.
Kind of excited by the strawberry shakes and wary of the coffee flavored ones, but it is just a week. I drink the chocolate flavored ones too quickly. |
|
|
| Diet report |
[Nov. 6th, 2009|06:28 am] |
Breakfast
Slimfast Shake (180)
Rice Cake (40)
Banana (105)
Lunch
Slimfast Shake (180)
Special K Protein Bar (180)
Apple (80)
Snack
Apple (80)
Dinner
2 Orange roughy fillets (160)
romain cauliflower salad w/ carrots and yogurt dressing (80)
Brown rice and vegetables (180)
Snack
Cheese sandwich (170)
Mini Charlseton Chew (110)
Total Calories: 1545
Definitely started loosening up a bit, allowing some indulgences. Still was able to keep it under 1900 calories.
|
|
|
| Diet report |
[Nov. 5th, 2009|09:41 am] |
Breakfast
1 rice cake (40 cal)
1 banana (105 cal)
1 SlimFast (180 cal)
Lunch
1 SlimFast (180 cal)
1 apple (80 cal)
Snack
1 apple (80 cal)
1 fun sized pay day candy bar (90 cal)
Dinner
1 romain lettuce cauliflower salad with garlic dill yogurt/vinegar dressing (50 cals)
1 can tomato soup with 1/2 cup of elbow macaroni and 1/2 cup frozen mixed vegatbles (300 cals)
Snack
1 cheese sandwich (150 cal)
1 cup of hot cider (105 cal)
Total calories: 1360
Yeah, I can't keep this up. This was unintentionally low calorie. I made regular tomato soup and amped it up with pasta and vegetables. I also added more than the called amount water to the soup to increase the volume and lower the salt taste (salt, I've found, is a real hunger trigger for me). 6 large romain lettuce leaves are 20 calories. My salad dressing is two tablespoons of fatfree yogurt (18 calories) with a lot of rice vinegar (enough to thing it out to dressing consistency which is 0 calories), garlic, dill, salt and pepper. Not sure how to measure the calories of the dill and garlic but it isn't a lot of dill and less than a third of a clove of garlic... so I will say 1 teaspoon of garlic at 4 cals per teaspoon and add another calorie for the dill.. 5 calories. The dressing (which comes in at almost a quarter of a cup) only has 23 calories, I only use half of it on the salad. 12 calories for the dressing, 20 for the leaves, another 10 for the cauliflower - round it up to 50 for the sake of not wanting to underestimate...
I ended up at my coffee shop instead of Starbucks and I got some steamed cider. I was going to order an herbal tea but realized people rave about their steamed cider and just went for it.
I should be eating 1900 calories a day, but that is with reasonable exercise. I don't have an exercise plan in place - and thank god I don't. I can feel my body eating itself.
And the reality is, come this weekend I go off the 'official' diet, eat cavort and do what I like, so I'm just choosing where I get my calories.
3500 calories = 1 pound. I haven't seen the needle move on the scale and I don't feel thinner, but I do feel better about being in firmer control of my caloric intake. So for as much as I find the shakes to be gross, I think I'm going to continue this into next week. I find it a fascinating parallel with NaNoWriMo -- word count and calories.
|
|
|
| Lurid Tales of Dieting |
[Nov. 5th, 2009|09:18 am] |
"Have you ever been dating a woman..."
"No."
"Wait, what? Yes you have."
"I mean, no, whatever you are going to ask me about my experiences with dating, no - we never did that."
"You don't even know what I'm going to ask."
"Okay, ask."
"Have you ever been dating a woman and have her wake you up in the morning with with a bj?"
"Nope."
"Seriously?"
"Yep."
"Wow. That is strange, isn't it? "No, not really. What is strange, I think is that isn't what I would want."
"What would you want?"
"This is a bit twisted...."
"Go on, I'm intrigued."
"Well, see, I have this fantasy that it is early morning..."
"Yeah, yeah!"
"And she wakes me up with the smell of fresh homemade cinnamon rolls baking in the oven, bacon frying in the pan, and fresh brewed coffee."
"You are perverse."
|
|
|
| Food Exploration |
[Nov. 4th, 2009|09:05 am] |
I was watching this really gross food show last night about a guy who goes around eating just the most disgusting foods imaginable (like grilled chicken keel bones, live beating frog hearts, turtle blood sake). I recalled after the show that a group of Twitter people had done a Taco Crawl... going to different restaurants sampling different tacos. Add to this Chicago's current obsession with hamburgers (and that god awful pretzel bun) and I started formulating an idea of a weekly/monthly dinner exploration.
I'm trying to come up with a type or style of food that is readily available at a variety of restaurants, high end versions and low end versions, and is found in a variety of cuisines. For example, I was thinking about fish. From sushi to fish tacos to cajun and beyond... a lot of options when it comes to fish. Problem with fish is I'm not a big seafood fan and I would end up eating fish n chips and sushi constantly.
But I like this idea that once a month there is a food destination, taking me into the city and to far flung suburbs. I just have to come up with the anchoring food. |
|
|
| Diet Report |
[Nov. 2nd, 2009|08:35 pm] |
Breakfast
1 rice cake
1 Vanilla Slimfast
1 banana
1 accidental doughnut
Lunch
1 chocolate Slimfast
1 apple
Dinner
1 rice cake
3 oz pasta
4 tbsp pasta sauce
1 chicken leg/thigh w/ bbq sauce
small salad with yogurt dressing
1 small scoop of ice cream
So... failure on doughnut - it was an accident, grabbed it without thinking
I probably shouldn't have had the ice cream. I technically had 700 calories to play with since I didn't eat anything with the slimfast at lunch. I'm allowed two snacks which is what the banana and apple were supposed to be.
General analysis: The time between lunch and dinner is too large. Lunch at 1:30, dinner at 7:30. The afternoon snack may have to be a bit more substantial.
I'm also supposed to drink lots of water with this diet. I've opted for tea and coffee instead since I can only just drink water when I suffer from thirst and I drink it all in one immediately. I"m not a sipper of water. I'll forget it is there. |
|
|
| A week away, the way of the weak |
[Nov. 2nd, 2009|07:52 am] |
After another week away from work I'm sort of ready to return to work. I know my coworkers will psychologically punish me for being gone. They did that last time.
I decided that I'm taking this week and doing the SlimFast diet. It is the only diet that offers food replacement that isn't way expensive and has a clear goal of reigning in caloric intake. I also think it will make my evenings a bit more easier to handle since I won't have to think too hard about the food I'm going to eat. I'm not expecting weight loss, I'm expecting to 'shrink' my stomach so I feel fuller sooner.
I started writing on NaNoWriMo and am up 800+ words so far. I have two weekends that will be massive disruptions, so I am trying to follow the advice offered by the NaNoWriMo site by going big early... Though I was hoping to have hit 3k words on the first day, I accept that I wasted a lot of time watching the first two seasons of Dexter. |
|
|
| every landlord was surveyed and the result was the Domesday Book |
[Oct. 21st, 2009|03:58 pm] |
A quick assessment of things with minimal whining.
1. Gutted my OkCupid profile. I went from getting occasional responses to none... zero... zilch. Time to start from scratch. Though I don't want to start dating someone before the holidays. Did that two years in a row and it went blah two years in a row. Winter in Chicago is too hard to kindle a relationship.
2. While redoing picture for the profile I realize that just five years ago I looked better weightwise than I do now. (I did not use five year old pictures on my profile.)
3. I'm setting aside next week for a full prep for Nanowrimo. I'm going to do a snowflake thingy for the future novel. I'm rereading my old stuff now to refamiliarize myself and it is cringeworthy and I can't help but edit it as I read.
4. My general sense of security at work is lessening. I know I'll see the cliff coming but I think I'm sensing it ahead of me. So some time this next week is going to be spent updating my resume and shooting off a few to some jobs just to get gears in motion. I know too many people who have been out of work for over six months for me to be lackadaisical about this. This will include sending off resumes to places in Montana and Seattle. |
|
|
| samhain lamentations |
[Oct. 17th, 2009|11:26 am] |
I was at the store and suddenly freaked out that I hadn't started making the secret ingredient for the blood martini and then realized... I didn't have to.
Not having a Halloween party this year is oddly liberating and sad at the same time. I think after last year I just realized that I can't do it alone and have it meet my expectations. Ah yes, this is not a post about parties and fun, this is a post where I ONCE AGAIN get maudlin and grumpy.
ugh... I'll just cut it off here. I've heard it before myself and it isn't interesting.
Something that is interesting, the berry cosmo martini mix I bought at Target in the ultra cool bottle is disgustingly sweet and I think it poisoned me last night. |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
luminousx's journal