Good Things: February 2007 Archives

The idea for this post comes from Badger who posted the places where she rarely if never comments. It is a fabulous idea so I am stealing it and doing it myself. Three of the places I lurk are also on Badgers list as well. Who knew? Ruth Campbell Smith Diaries - I found this blog through a link left on my blog. Miz S outted me as a lurker to Carol. Carol posts daily a transcript from her grandmother's diaries. It is a bit of voyuerism probably but I love the glimpse into another time and another life. 15 Minute Lunch - This guy is funny. I love his take on even the most mundane of things. I have no idea how I found his blog. It was one of those click a link click a link click a link things until you don't have any idea the spiderweb of roads that led you to where you are. So, I was lost, then I found Johnny. Johnny Virgil. Lyvvies Limelight - I get a vicarious pleasure reading her vent about her in-laws. It may sound mean but I don't mean for it to be at all. When I read her venting it takes off some of the steam of my own. Notice I NEVER speak of that subject here. I first found her and her blog through Susie at the Underpaid Kept Woman. Prepare to Meet Your Bakerina - I consider the Bakerina to be my food geek read. I love her recipes. I love her way of writing. I don't think I am intellectual enough to create words into sentences the way she does. She is successful at something I just can't get the hang of. She bakes the most beautiful loves of bread! I can almost smell them through her photos. I also love that her pots and pans are well used and in no way look like they are brand new. They looked battered, worn and well loved. True Wife Confessions - I have been reading this blog since around entry #60 something. I found it through a google search but I can't remember what it was I had googled that landed me there. I find reading these confessions often sad. Very sad. I wonder why people can't say more out loud to each other. I find it frightening the women who have one night stands over and over and the possibility they could get aides seems not to bother them at all as they stand defiantly saying they will do it again. I feel sorry for their husbands but I feel even more sorry for the women who write alot of these confessions. I am always surprised by the things confessed. I guess there is something about dirty little secrets that draws me back time and again. Confessions of a Pioneer Woman - This has to be one of my most favoorite lurking places. Ree is just the funniest most honest woman I have ran into in a long long time. I love reading about their family ranch. I love looking at her photos. I love her impersonation of Ethel Merman. The fact that she puts a 2 year old on a horse and sends her kids off behind the rest of the cowboys makes me hold my breath. She is impressive and makes me look like I sit around and eat bon bons all day long. Ha! I think I love her. You know, in the way that she is like a heroine in the romance novels that I write in my head. (I wrote a giant one the other day when I was doing all of that laundry.)Go visit and tell her I sent you. I lurk at other places, too, but this is enough for today. Tell me where you lurk.

I have always been an advocate of eating the good food. By good food I mean meats, poultry, fish, pork, butter, dairy, eggs, whole grains, fresh fruits and fresh vegetables. Which makes me a fan of Nina Planck. She is full of the good common sense I have been trying to get across to others for years. Along time ago I read a study about margarine and it scared me. Margarine is something like 1 molecule away from being a plastic substance. How could I ever let my kids put that in their bodies? I am a fan of real foods, good foods, natural foods. So, then, why am I fat? Because I love bread, rice and potatoes and those things are like poison to me. They stay locked in my cells. I think I carry around every bite of rice, bread and potato I have ever eaten packed away in my body in the form of fat. While I have been doing a very low carb diet I have not been doing a pile on the meats and lets eat all the fat we can diet. I have been doing this in a very healthy manor. Let me explain what I am doing to succeed in my goal of weight loss. 1. Not skipping breakfast. Starting up your body's engine with protein int he morning gets the motabilism revved up so you can burn calories at a high rate. Sticking with a protein rich breakfast of eggs and either sausage or bacon, sometimes ham. I drink decaf coffee in the mornings and early afternoon. I try to drink water as well. This keeps me full and I am not tempted to snack when I give the baby crackers between his breakfast and lunch. 2. Eating lean meats/fish/poultry/pork and a green salad for lunch. Sometimes I have deli meat (watch out, deli meats, hotdogs, and other processed meats have added carbs) and a flatout wrap for a sandwich with mayonnaise (0 carbs) or cream cheese (<1 carb), lettuce, and sometimes avocado with lemon juice and salt. The wrap adds 6 carbs. I don't seem to feel as well when I have the bread wrapper but when lunch fixings are light the wrap is a filler more than anything. I drink water or iced decaf tea. 3. In the afternoons I confess to drinking caff free diet coke. I am addicted. I might even have an advant edge chocolate fudge shake. Liquids keep you full and help to get past the urge to snack when the baby is having applesauce or pretzels or goldfish. 4. In the evenings I have lean meats/fish/poultry/pork, the standard salad with one of Ken's steakhouse dressings that are 1 or 0 carbs. (These salad dressings are the best on the standard market shelf. Don't buy the walden farms brands, they are not good and rip off your money.) I also work in other vegetables based on the carb count of the day. - Green beans have 4 net carbs per serving and Italian flat beans have 3 net carbs, I opt for the lesser carbs Italian green bean. - Brocolli - 1/2 cup steamed brocolli pieces is 1.6 carbs. Add butter and a little salt and pepper and it is perfect. - Cauliflower - 1/2 cup is .8 (less than 1 carb!) when steamed. Add butter and a little salt and pepper and it is perfect. - Avocado - a haus avocado has 3.5 carbs for the enitre thing. i usually have half sharing it with Colby. - Baby Spinach - Less than 1 carb for a handful of greens. - Romain Lettuce - 1 cup is .5 carbs. A 2 cup salad is a lot of salad! - Iceburg Lettuce - 1 cup is .1 carbs that is almost nothing! I wouldn't even count that tiny portion of a carb. - Pumpkin - 1/2 cup has 4.7 carbs. You can eat a slice of baked pumpkin the same way as you would a sweet potato. Butter and salt and pepper makes it perfect. (I have pumpkin in the freezer from the fall.) - Yellow squash - 1/2 cup is 1.4 carbs, raw it is 1.3 carbs, you can do alot with fresh yellow squash, raw, stirr fried, baked as a casserole with butter, cream and cheese. Zucchini is even less and is very versitile! I could go on and on and on - asparagus, turnips, collards, etc. really good stuff but not high in carbs and starch and natural sugars. For those concerned that I am ruining my health by restricting carbs I appreciated your concern. I also want you to see that a low carb lifestyle is about making choices based on how your body reacts to certain foods. I can choose the baked pumpkin instead of a baked sweet potato. I can have the cauliflower instead of mashed potatoes. I can have green beans instead of sweet peas. It is also a good thing that I love salads. I am eating alot of salads. I am not starving myself, even though sometimes I think I am starving. Mostly that is because I haven't drank enough water. Do you know that in most people the body's signal for being thristy is confused with hunger, therefore we eat instead of drink? Into my meals I have added some things that work well for me like the low carb pasta, and the carb count milk beverage. I eat cheese and sour cream (in moderation). I am just being VERY careful and making myself aware of what I am putting into my mouth and therefore into my body. Paying this close attn to what my body tells me is the reason I am beginning to melt away. I have lost 11 pounds in the past 3 weeks according to the bathroom scales. I don't feel like I have lost anything whatsoever but the scales say I have. The weight is coming off easily right now and I know I will hit those bumps in the road where nothing comes off but I am trying so hard not to sabatoge myself from the start. I am gaining willpower daily to look at the chocolate cake on my counter that my kids have for dessert in the evening and not even want a bite. I am not kidding myself either. I know the weight will come off in time. I know it will be long row to hoe in this garden that is my life. But I am willing to work at it. I am smart. I am not doing a stupid fad diet. I am changing my eating style and lifestyle. I have to develop a new relationship with food. That is hard part. Do you know when you are sitting and eating a good meal, relaxed and enjoying yourself that your brain floods your body with oxytocin? It does! That is why many of us fat people associate food with love. That is why we drown our sorrows and comfort our hurt feelings with food. Today our weather forecast is for severe wintry weather, snow and ice mix. School is canceled. I have the wood stove in the kitchen hot and it is warming the back of the house. In the livingroom the fireplace is cheery with the flicker of flames. The perfect day for chicken soup. The woodstove is doing double duty. I have my big heavy stockpot filled with a chicken, water, chopped onion, peper, salt, garlic and other herbs bubbling away. When the chicken is cooked I will divide the broth into 2 pots. In one I will prepare traditional soup with potaotes, carrots, noodles etc. In a second pot I will prepare soup Colby and I can eat. I will use asparagus tips, cauliflower and maybe some low carb rotini. Sure I could make the entire pot low carb but Steve and Gracie like potaoes and carrots. They like the way I have always made it. They will also eat it the new way I fix it but they prefer it the other way. It takes very little effort to prepare both. Everyone will sit this evening at the table and enjoy steaming bowls of soup and a salad. We all will have a full warm tummy and the oxytocin will flood our bodies. The end result I think is being happy in what you are doing. I am very happy right now. I am looking forward to the day when making the choices become automatic and the longing desire for a waffle dripping with butter has passed and I won't remember it or miss it. I am willing to work every single day for every pound that comes off my body. I am working for success. I am doing so in the healthiest way I can. For me this works. For you it may not work. I am not interested in a get skinny quick diet and then the day after I reach my goal weight the pounds start packing back on. I am changing my life in more ways than one. I hope those of you struggling to get control of your body and to get more healthy much success. I hope you are doing it the smart way so that you can have a chance to maintain the loss and enjoy your new thinner body. I am tired of being the fat girl and my weight flip flopping. It took all these years for something inside of me to click to be able to do this. My mind is focused. My body is following. It is all uphill now. I am working on it one day at a time. Knowing you all are watching (and some of you are waiting for me to fall flat on face) and I want to be an inspiration to you. I want to be your cheerleader as well. Thank you for supporting me. Thank you for inquiring about my health. Which, btw, I am healthy as a horse. I have not one medical disorder or disease other than I am just fat. Thank you for coming with me on this journey. Somedays I need to hold your hand to get through the bad parts. Thanks for being here. One more thing, I take vitamins daily as well. I take a multi-vitamin but I also supplement with extra calcium, potassium to help my body use the calcium and to prevent leg cramps, vitamin C, B-12 to keep my immune system high, and E for my heart. If you plan to go on a restricted diet plan take your vitamins! I am probably leaving out tons of things I have been thinking about so if you have a question please ask. I don't have time to spellcheck. I will do so later. I am publishing now because I have to feed the baby, settle Gracie with a home from school activity and help Colby by proofreading her paper due tonight. I'll be back later to spellcheck.