Brrrr...and still trying

Hello everyone, it's Friday and I haven't posted for over a week so thought I'd check in with what is happening over here.   First off....it's cold!  We finally got some winter weather this week and it's been dipping down into the low teens at night.  Yesterday an inch of snow delayed schools in the morning (I know you're laughing up there in the northwest) and today it is supposed to start snowing again in the afternoon.   I think you know that I have two dogs, but did I tell you that somehow we also adopted a stray cat from our neighborhood.  An elderly neighbor named him Mickey and used to take care of him. About seven years ago she went into assisted living (and has since passed away) and we promised her back then that we would take care of him for the rest of his life.  He can't come in our house, because of the dogs, and because he has lived outside all his life and would feel trapped in a house.  We always leave our outdoor shed open a crack in the winter so he can go in and out of there when it gets cold.  After a run in with a raccoon in the shed one year Mickey doesn't want to hang out there as much.  This year for Christmas my dad sent us a box of Omaha Steaks and we used the insulated packing box for Mickey by taping it shut, cutting a hole in the front, and putting a piece of wool blanket inside.  This lovely thing now sits on our front porch all winter. The shed is still open with another box also in there for him in case he gets too cold, but he seems to prefer the front porch.  I tried to get a picture of him all snug inside his box this morning, but of course as soon as I stepped outside he started to come out.

My weight was up a pound this week.  Not happy about that and it's back to trying to figure our where I went wrong.  I was tracking my food pretty well in my journal and then I let it slide over the weekend and into Monday, so that's one problem.  My brother and his son came over on Sunday to watch the game with my guys and me.  I talk a lot about what I like and don't like about the uniforms and drive them all crazy.  I had a couple beers with them while watching the game so this probably didn't help me at all.  Lastly, I made a batch of Maria's almond flour chocolate chip cookies this week for my son and ended up eating six of them in one day!  That's not good!  By the way here is a tip.... when I made them this time I used my Vitamix to make my own blanched almond flour using a bag of blanched, sliced almonds I found at Costco, like these.

Those cookies came out SO much better with the blanched, almond flour, instead of almond meal.  Really soft and nice, which I guess is why I ended up eating six.   

For this week I've decided to start tracking my foods in my journal again.  I like to write down my foods, carbs, sugars, fibers and net carbs (carbs minus fiber).  I'm taking an idea from Dawn and I'm going to try to keep my net carbs very low for a week and see how I do.  It's harder than you think even when you think you are eating healthy.  Here is how yesterday went.  

Two Coffee's with stevia and heavy cream 0C/0S/0F = net 0

Green Breakfast shake (I love these) 20C/0S/16F = net 4

Bob Evans Cobb Salad w/ ranch(went out to lunch with husband) -10C/4S/3F = net 7

1 cup of hot sweet chili tea w/stevia = 0c/0s/0F =net 0

Home made mushroom soup(with mushrooms, onions, garlic, chicken broth and little cream)

 = 29C/8S/5F = net 24

Decaff coffee with stevia and cream = 0c/0s/0f=net 0

Days Net Carb total =35 and total sugars 12

See what killed me?  The mushroom soup!!  Here I thought I was having a very light evening meal because of my late lunch and it turned out to be the highest in carbs and sugars according to "My Fitness Pal".  Now that was a surprise! Also notice that the carb count gets high with just regular food.  No chips, cookies, crackers or breads.

In addition to paying close attention to my net carbs I'm trying to get in more exercise by walking my dogs.  My son is on college break right now and has been pushing me to walk the dogs with him everyday - which is a good thing, I need to be pushed to move more.  I haven't done every day, because I'm lazy that way, but I've been walking with him at least three times a week around the farm behind our house.  So far, this hasn't helped in my weight loss, but it does make me feel better and hopefully will tone me up a bit if I continue.

 

One last tip.  I am loving the convenience and nutrition and taste of my breakfast shake everyday!  I've been eating one entire big package of raw spinach by myself every week!  I personally could never eat that much spinach in salads or just by cooking with it.  You don't even notice it in the shakes, except for the color.

So that's it for this week.  I'll let you know how my journaling goes.  Hope everyone else is having a good week.  Stay Warm!!

What's New

Hello everyone!  Just doing a quick blog to let you know how my smoothie experiment turned out.  It didn't - lol!   I got so excited reading all these new blogs about healthy smoothies and how great everyone felt on them that I had decided to give them a try.  The only problem is that they contained fruit, which we all know is a big no-no on BFC or any kind of low carb really.  But, I thought, I HAVE been stuck and it IS going back to the way we are "supposed" to eat.  Lots of fresh veggies and fruit, right?   I decided to try it for two weeks and see how I felt.  Funny thing is I only made it through about five days.  Drinking my breakfast and lunch didn't bother me at all, in fact I kind of liked the convenience of the whole thing and I wasn't any hungrier than usual, surprisingly.  Stick everything in a blender, whirl and drink.  Fast, easy and no pans to clean up afterwards.  The problem was with how I felt.  I started getting headaches again, and just a general feeling of not feeling great, you know what I mean.  Plus, I was extremely tired in the late afternoons and early evening.  I mean falling asleep over my laptop kind of tired.   It had to be all the extra sugar in the fruit that was making me feel bad.  Another negative was that after five days of doing this, I did not gain or lose one pound!  Not one!   So I gave it up about five days in.    The one thing I did like was the convenience AND  how much fiber I could get in my body this way.  A ton!  So what I did was I gave up the fruit/veggie smoothie and replaced it with a breakfast protein green smoothie.  Here is what I've been putting in them:

Protein Green Smoothie

1 cup almond milk
1 scoop Vanilla Jay Rob protein powder
1 tsp. Psyllium Husk powder
1/4 tsp stevia
2-3 cups of baby green spinach leaves
1 TBS Cocoa Nibs
1 TBS Chia seeds
ice and extra water to get it to the coldness & consistency that I like

I figured that this has about 24.5 Carbs and 21 Fibers 0 sugars

Since switching to this smoothie I feel MUCH better.  I sometimes have it for lunch too and sometimes add in 1/2 avocado, or switch the Chia seeds to Flax seeds.

I've been on these for about 3-4 days now and although I feel much better I still have not seen any difference in my weight.  Still haven't seen so much as a pound difference up or down.   I am not one of those people that weight shifts easily for I guess.  I have to give things a while to see a difference.  Plus the fruit may have screwed up my metabolism for a little while.

I've got to say that I'm really interested in Dawn's Atkins experiment.  Not so much what foods you can and can not eat (I think all low carb diets are basically the same that way) I just really like the idea of tracking net carbs and trying to keep them below 20.  It seems so much easier to me than figuring how many carbs make a serving and how to include a handful of afternoon almonds into which serving and so on.  Plus when you get to subtract fiber from your carbs it makes you really mindful of the fiber.  So I got out my old notebook from when I first started BFC and began writing down EVERYTHING I eat and tracking my carbs, sugar, and fiber that way - at the end of the day I total up my net carbs to see how I did.  For me its so much easier to write it down then to try to enter everything into "My Fitness Pal".  I've also noticed on "My Fitness Pal" that the ingredients you choose have a wide variety of nutritional counts depending on which entry you choose.  If I check the ingredients myself I get the true count for what I'm actually using.  It's still a great place to key in your own ingredients for a recipe you're using though to get the total counts for that recipe.

So that's where I am right now.  At least I've gone from being neutral about my weight loss to pro-active again, so that's something right?   In other news, it's just about tax time for me around here, with our business and our rental business, and I mustn't forget college FAFSA's.  Yuck!  Time to get everything in order and break out the old adding machine.  Fun times ahead!

Good luck this week everyone!

Time to Get Back on Track and An Experiment!

Happy New Years Everyone!  

I hope this year is a good one for all of us, healthy and happy!

For Christmas this year I got a new Vitamix!  How exciting!  My husband and I walked past a Vitamix demonstration in Costco a few weeks before Christmas and I was telling him that I'd read about people using them on the blogs.  I didn't want to watch the demo, because I didn't want to start wanting one since they are pricey.  However, my husband must have thought, "Yes!  Finally, a gift idea for my wife!"  and he ran out and bought one that week, lol.    Now that I have it, I must say it is really nice.  I put away my coffee grinder, regular blender, and food processor and replaced it with this one appliance.  I started searching the web for Costco demonstrations since I hadn't watched the real one, to see all that it could do!  I found this one lady that does demonstrations for a living and has a blog Blender Lady and started reading about green smoothies and raw food living.   From there I began to find a million blogs about green smoothies, you know how it goes.   Now, I'm not about to start a completely different diet because I've been doing the BFC for almost two years and basically like it.   But....., I have been sort of stuck in my weight, and even up since the Fall and over Christmas, so it makes me wonder how to improve things.   A green smoothie is basically 2 or 3 cups of greens of any kind (spinach, kale, collards, dandelion, carrot tops, lettuce, etc.) that you put into your blender with some water, and (here's the hard part) a bit of frozen fruit, and then anything else you want to put in, like chia seeds, nuts, cocoa nibs, flaxseed, etc.  Then you liquefy it all up in a matter of seconds and drink it down.  You get a ton of greens and fiber in one drink.   The only thing that made me hesitate trying it was the dreaded fruit, which we all know is not really allowed on the BFC.   Well, I've decided to do a two week experiment!  I'm going to make one of these (with as little fruit as I can stand) and drink them in the morning for breakfast and then again at lunch and then I'll eat a regular BFC dinner.

I'll do this for two weeks and see if the following happens:
1.) I lose any weight
2.) I feel healthier
3.) I feel satisfied
4.) I'm hungry or not

I started two days ago and so far have not noticed any difference in my weight, either up or down. But I seriously don't lose as fast as some of you, and have never been able to make much of a difference in just a day or two.  They do taste surprisingly good and you can't taste the greens at all.  The last two days I haven't been hungry during the day and so haven't snacked.  We'll see if that continues.   Yesterday I had 3 cups of spinach, a whole key lime, one green apple, chia seeds, small handful of almonds, a little stevia, and some real coconut and coconut water.  If you add berries, which are better for us on the BFC, it still tastes really good but turns an unappealing brown color.  Don't look, lol!

Other news, my son got me hooked on the Masterpiece Theater show,"Downton Abbey" .  Have you guys seen it - so good!