Lovely lamb

Good morning. Time for coffee.Sausage and egg today.
Salmon salad. I put it through the food processor because I'm fussy about all the bones and skin and bits that come in a can of good salmon. Also the usual veg and some jell-o.

After lunch, I walked over to that coffee place and bought an Iced Americano. Checked on the website and before cream and splenda it only has 20 calories. Gurpreet's small Caramel Frappucino has 210 if she gets it without the whipped cream. Sometimes she asks for extra whipped cream. Lucky for her she weighs slightly less than my right leg.
Half an Atkin's Advantage mocha crunch bar for coffee break.
Lamb from the slow cooker. Last night I cut up some onions, ginger and garlic with some lamb stew and tossed them in the crock pot with a can of coconut milk, cumin, tumeric, salt and pepper. When I got home from work I added an entire 5oz bag of baby spinach. It had more calories that I would have liked but it was really, really good.
Some time after I had the other half of this afternoon's Atkin's bar and some diet ginger-ale.
Total calories for today 1,721. A bit high but it was worth it for the coconut lamb.

Friday but not the end of my week.

Slept in this morning. Good, because I really needed it. Bad, because it didn't leave me enough time to go exercise before work.

Coffee.

Since I was making brunch I tried my omelet with asparagus and emmental again. This time it came out much tidier.

It was really hot and muggy in our workroom. For my break I went over to that coffee place and got an Iced Americano (basically espresso over ice - I added a little cream and splenda). It was really yummy and had few calories and carbs compared to all those whipped drinks they make.

Lunch was the easy tin of smoked tuna slices with ginger, a whack of celery, radishes and jicama. That huge pile of veg had less than 60 calories and only 6 net g. of carbohydrates. Also my favorite cherry jell-o.
I was actually getting hungry again at break time so had the 35g of old cheddar left over from my early break.


Usually a problem - I get home from work at 9pm and my stomach and head both expect a meal. Today with so few calories earlier in the day I pretty much had carte blanche to snack on whatever I wanted. I started with 20g of pork rinds and some diet ginger-ale then made myself a flax bun. This is a recipe I'll have to talk more about soon, but not tonight, it's late and I have to get up for work in the morning.

Totals for today 1,358 calories and only 23g of carbohydrates although some of the soluble fibre in the flax should count - that's for another post.

Wait, that's not bacon! Finally finished the kg of natural bacon yesterday so today I had a couple of sausages. The top sausage is actually local lamb, the bottom one supermarket pork sausage. Also two eggs and coffee.Morning break - coffee and the remains of an Atkins bar I've been carrying around for awhile.

Tuna salad chunk light tuna in water, 10g of chopped walnuts, a tablespoon plus a little of mayonnaise. 73g of avocado on top. Baggie with radish, jicama and lots of celery slightly out of shot. Sugar-free cherry jell-o.

Doug's at work tonight and I was supposed to have the "Lyin' Pork Ribs" (see May 29th) but had my home-made chicken soup instead. I boiled up a few chicken carcasses that we saved in the freezer (Doug's all over this since he saw Nigella do it). Added some mushrooms and a handful of Dreamfield's penne pasta. Not much actual chicken, maybe 30g. Also 45g of cheddar cheese that was originally going to be my afternoon break but got left behind, and the last two slices of salami.

Seconds on soup.

Total calories for today 1,474. Carb count 39 but that doesn't take into account Dreamfields pasta over the regular stuff.

A little something besides pictures of food

I've been noticing that lots of people other than my immediate family and friends are finding my blog and I'm feeling like maybe there should be a little more substance. Since I'm always offering advice I thought maybe I could include a tag named after everyone's favorite gaming searches - 'hints, tips and cheats'. In this case cheats will probably refer to foods that feel like you're cheating but shouldn't really sabotage your low-carb efforts.
Not everything works the same for everyone but if you keep trying you might just find the one thing that changes how you feel about food. I'll start with a couple of books that helped me.


Passing for Thin: Losing half my weight and finding myself. By Frances Kuffel
Losing weight is really, really hard and doesn't have much at all to do with how hungry you are. I love Frances' voice and her honesty. Her book gave my own weight-loss mission a jump-start just when I needed one.

The Four Day Win: End your diet war and achieve thinner peace. By Martha Beck
If you're an Oprah fan you probably already know her. I saw her book in the library, read the jacket cover and yelled "Yes!" (in my head - it's a library, eh?). She seemed to get why so many of us yo-yo diet and her solutions will probably help a lot of people. To get an idea of what the book is about you can read the article "Taking the Weight Off ...Again" online.
I have to admit that while I did bring the book home from the library (twice) and read chunks of it I haven't really followed her plan. The little I did read though, changed how I felt about my dieting and gave me just a little more control than I had before. Good enough.

Back under control.

My Brazil Bodum coffee maker ready to pour. I'm still drinking the Caddysaurus blend from Pepper's market almost every day.Boring old bacon and eggs. Tasty though.
Went to physio/exercise and felt much better today. Home just in time to freshen up and eat a big bowl of my homemade chicken soup and a little bowl (120g) of cottage cheese before heading out to work
Note to self - don't take pictures of cottage cheese (or yogourt) in a white bowl with a flash.For my coffee break (singular - only working four hours today) I have 60g of soft cheeses and 60g of cantaloupe melon.
Dinner is a great big bowl of romaine lettuce (137g) with a small grilled chicken breast (87g) some caesar dressing and a light shredding of stinky hard cheese.
With only 300 calories for dinner I knew I would have to have something more before bed. Sugar-free ginger-ale and a 40g of pork rinds. They always really fill me up but have to be eaten with pop - they're quite awful with water.
Today's total: 1,452 calories. Yay me!

How the %#$% did that happen?

Wanted some fibre in my diet so I had cereal made of flax this morning. Also coffee and a hard-boiled egg. Coffee for my coffee break.
Chicken salad with capers, some celery, jicama and radishes. Sugar-free gelatin.
Piller's pepperoni tidbitz. A serving of five pieces (30g) has 140 calories, less than the same weight of nuts, but jeez.
For dinner we made a big ole crock pot of "Country-Style Pork Ribs" from the Better Homes and Gardens Low Carb Slow Cooker Recipes. The recipe says there should be 304 calories, 16 total fat, 9g carbohydrates. 30g protein per serving. The problem starts when I input all the ingredients into Fitday and the result says 497 calories per serving and the rest of the numbers are similarly high. I hadn't added anything into fitday until after dinner because I thought it was a really normal day. When I added the ribs, cauliflower puree and side salad my total calories for the day was 1,747! I weighed the ribs and gave myself a portion of 175g which included the bones (25g I weighed them afterward just to be sure). So I confirmed that 150g was approximately the amount of meat for one serving in fitday and sure enough - almost 500 calories! Too bad I made so much since I'm not going to want to eat this again anytime soon.
1,747! that's the last time I trust the numbers in a cookbook.

Lazy Monday

In spite of the fact that it was my day off I woke up at 6:45 and wasn't able to get back to sleep. Bleh. After 40 minutes of tossing and turning I got up and made coffee.Eventually got around to making some breakfast, tried to make an omelet with asparagus and gruyere (my new favorite flavour combination) but we had a little accident when I tried to flip it. Still tasted good, just not very pretty.
By the time my omelet was ready I needed more coffee.
I mooched around at lunchtime and couldn't settle on any protein - getting a little tired of fish in a tin so I finished off the yogourt (.75 cup) and a couple of big spoons of my splenda-sweetened rhubarb.
Still wanting protein and also now craving salty so I went with 55g of Cervelat salami. We've worked on planning dinner but I also have to keep up with planning lunches so I don't get stuck like this.
Since I'm having a lazy day at home I'm having to deal with munchies and just generally wanting to graze, pick, nosh... Looked at the mixed nuts (my nemesis) poked around the freezer and found a big bag of unsweetened flaked coconut. I carefully measured out 10g (10g!) and nibbled it a flake at a time.
Dinner was yesterday's leftover hamburger pie, a little sauted bok choi and our usual side salad.
I thought about a little cheese, maybe a little fruit but no, the call of the diet fudge pop was too strong. Oh well, they're all gone now and unless I see them on sale again I'm not going out of my way to buy more.
1,592 calories today. Sure it's low enough that I'll still loose weight but I'd really like to stay closer to 1,500 maybe even a little under some days. I'm setting a goal of four days out of the next seven I will keep under 1,500 calories. Reward? I'll have to think about it.

Seven weeks and four kilos!

Now I know that I'm not supposed to be a slave to the scale. I know it's more important that I feel good and that my clothes are getting looser but every now and then I cave and weigh myself just to see empirically the progress I already know I've made.

Today - a day short of the seven week anniversary of this blog I'm down 4kg (about 9 pounds) from the weight I was just before I began taking pictures of food willy nilly. Actually, over-all I'm down down almost 7 kilos from the point four weeks earlier when I started recording what I was eating in my FitDay programme but I've done that before and frequently stop using it when I have to eat out or have something for which I don't know the nutrition values. I'm hoping that I can keep this up for as long as necessary. Now all I need is one of those new-fangled cellular telephones with a camera built in that will fit in my pocket so I don't need to haul my half-pound (plus extra batteries) Canon A430 all the time.

Scootering!

Looks like it'll be a nice day. The clematis think so anyway - hey, there's coffee!
Weekend breakfast of two egg omelet with asparagus, mushroom and a little gruyere cheese.

Went to the Black Stilt for Scooter meet-up and we actually went for a ride up to Mattick's Farm since I wanted to visit the Red Barn Market. Had a big coffee for energy on the way up.As usual, 4 scooters per parking stall. Hi Carol!
Home late for lunch so just had enough to keep me going until dinner. Brunswick Seafood Snacks (Golden Smoked flavour) and half a cup of yogourt with a big dollop (50g) of the stewed rhubarb.
Dinner was Doug's favorite, hamburger pie. We make two thin layers of lean ground beef (hormone free) and bake it with a mixture of cream cheese, horseradish, mustard and spices sandwiched in between. It's always so moreish but we managed to eat just one serving tonight. Also a nice big salad on the side.
Hey! There's chocolate "frozen dessert" pops in the freezer. Let's have one.
A little more cheese (40g) and a couple of big strawberries (80g) for a snack later on.
Total for today 1,553.