After a few months of that, and then some carb cheats at Christmas parties, I figured I must have gained at least 10 pounds, maybe more.  I hadn’t weighed myself since I was last losing weight at something like 240.2.  When I got on the scale yesterday, I was just hoping it would be less than 260.  It was 245!  I sure can’t complain about that.  I guess it shows that if you low-carb most of the time, you may not lose weight, but you probably won’t gain much weight either.  You can’t gain weight without carbs driving insulin driving fat storage.

Now that all the parties are over, I’m getting back to eating right full-time, and I’ll be writing more about it as I go.  We’ve tried some cool recipes lately, including some that use cauliflower as rice, which works way better than I thought it would.  I’ll post some of those with pictures next time we make them.

I’ve got 45 pounds to lose, and six months to my birthday, so that’s 7.5 pounds per month.  That should be very doable, so that’s my goal for now.

I don’t worry about my vegetable intake, since most of my ancestors went months without seeing a vegetable, and when they did run across one it was a small fibrous thing compared to what we grow today.  But I do like a lot of vegetables, and they help add variety when you’re no longer choosing between mashing, frying, baking, scalloping, or Frenching your potatoes at every meal.  As much as  I like meat and eggs, they do get boring after a while by themselves.  Here’s a picture of my lunch yesterday:

Meatballs and Green Beans

That’s a half-pound (before cooking) of green beans, amounting to at least three servings, and it’s only 8.5 carbs!  I had that for lunch and at least one serving of summer squash at supper, so I had over four servings of vegetables and still came in at 25 carbs for the day.  Some other vegetables are even lower in carbs than green beans, so they’re basically unlimited: broccoli, radishes, lettuce.  Low-carbers can eat lots of vegetables if they want to.

We also harvested our carrots yesterday, and I’m so proud—they’re the best carrots I’ve ever grown!  I think the key was thinning:  most years I’ve been too tender-hearted to thin them as much as they need, so they’re crowded and don’t develop well.  This year I mercilessly thinned them down to one every few inches like the packet said.  They were still crowded somewhat by the cabbages next to them, but some did well anyway.  Here’s a bad picture of them right after digging them and cutting the tops off.

Dirty Carrots

And here are a few after scrubbing.

Scrubbed Carrots

We grew two varieties, so that’s why some are short and fat (Short and Sweet variety) and others are longer and thinner (Danvers).  Carrots are a bit too high in carbs to eat many as a side dish, so these will be going into chicken stock.  For now they’re all in a bag in the freezer, ready to be added to the next batch of stock we make.

I was actually lower on carbs this week than the first week, with a few days below 20.  That’s just because we were busier, so I didn’t get as many vegetables cooked.  The important thing, though, is that the carb cravings are completely gone.  I still know fries and ice cream would taste good, but I don’t crave them anymore.  I had one (one!) slice of fried potato at my folks’ yesterday, and while it tasted awesome, I didn’t feel any compulsion to eat more.  And I recorded it as 2 carbs when I got home.

Now that I’m just burning fat, I don’t expect to lose more than 1-2 pounds per week from here on out.  A consistent two pounds-per-week would be awesome; that would have me hitting my goal right about Christmas.  Just in time to celebrate with pie!  Even one pound-per-week would have it all gone by my next birthday.  It took years to gain all this weight, so I won’t complain if it takes almost a year to lose it.  As long as it’s dropping, I’ll be happy.

My list of foods eaten in the past week (some a few times):

• bacon and eggs
• cheesy scrambled eggs
• cheeseburger and kraut
• plate pizza
• giant burger (basically a meatloaf with a cream cheese/mustard/horseradish filling) and fried squash
• Jello (sugar-free, made with Splenda)
• cheeseburgers
• pork chops and stuffed squash
• bratwurst and kraut
• broiled chicken and fried squash
• meatballs
• sliced meat and horseradish mustard
• cheese and sausage tray
• raw cabbage
• lime pickles
• ground beef with cream cheese
• 1 fried potato slice
• picnic chicken
• cream soda

The plan for this week is just to keep it up.  I’ve got a couple new recipes to try, and I want to eat a few more vegetables, since we’ve got loads of them in the garden right now.

The first three days were somewhat rough.  I’d eat a big breakfast of a 1/4-pound of bacon and five eggs, and I’d be “hungry” an hour later.  Obviously I wasn’t really hungry, because my belly was still full, but my body was going through sugar withdrawals and trying to fool me.  So I’d snack on some meat or cheese to get rid of the fake hunger pangs.  In that initial phase, you can’t worry about how much you eat; all that matters is breaking the high/low blood sugar cycle.  If that means eating three pounds of meat in a day, so be it.  It’ll pass.

On Thursday, all that went away and it became much easier.  I’d still like to have some ice cream or potato chips, but I’m not sitting around fantasizing about them, trying to rationalize a trip to the store for one more carb binge.  Hunger is now a physical sensation that tells me I should eat soon, not an unstoppable force.  By Saturday, I was able to go to the farm and watch everyone dig into mashed potatoes and gravy, corn, and brownies with chocolate sauce, and eat my fried chicken and cabbage without much of a twinge of temptation.  I couldn’t have done that a week ago.

Now that I’ve gotten past the hard part, I just have to stick with it.  When we’re out at an event or someone else’s house, I have to stick to my guns and turn down carby foods, even if that means skipping a meal and eating when I get home.  I also need to prepare in advance for those times, taking along something to snack on in case there’s nothing to eat there.

photo by Anosmia @ flickr.com

The Adams County Fair is coming up, and that’s always a tough time.  There’s never been anything there like the sign in the picture.  Except for breakfast, when one of the church stands serves good stuff like ham and eggs, it’s hard to find anything to eat at the fair that hasn’t been breaded, powdered, battered, or all three at once.  I’m not willing to pay $3.50 for a corn dog and just eat the 10-cent hot dog, so I’d better pack a cooler full of good stuff when we head up there.  Maybe one of these years some better options will show up.

Here are some of my meals from this week, to show I haven’t just been eating “bacon and brie,” as that Ornish character described low-carb:

• bacon and eggs
• stir-fry of hamburger and green beans sprinkled with mozzarella
• spaghetti
• burger with mayo and horseradish, Swiss chard, green beans
• “plate pizza” (that’s where I sprinkle a couple ounces of shredded cheese on a plate, top it with pepperoni and/or hot pepper rings, and microwave until the cheese starts to crisp up on top)
• cheese omelette
• Mexican squash casserole (a first-time recipe that we liked a lot, so I’ll write it up with pics next time)
• tuna salad (tuna, chopped boiled eggs, onion, mayo, mustard, hot peppers, cheese)
• mushroom soup with burger (another good new recipe that we’ll have to write up)
• fried chicken, raw cabbage
• scrambled eggs
• sliced meat with mayo and horseradish mustard
• one beer (Michelob Ultra, 2.6g, a birthday present)

I ate a lot of green beans this week, since we’re getting loads of them now and a half-pound of them has only 8.5g net carbs.  A half-pound is a lot of beans.  We’ve started freezing those, so this week I’ll eat more summer squash and Swiss chard, since they don’t preserve as well as beans.

Arm Roast

Start with a roast that’s got a decent amount of marbling.  The roast above is an arm roast from a Jersey steer, probably 3 pounds or so.  A chuck roast also works very well.  Rub both sides with salt and pepper:

Coated with Salt and Pepper

Now get out your crock pot and layer the bottom with onions, celery, a couple bay leaves, and a smashed garlic clove or two.  You can leave the onion whole or in halves if you like to eat soft cooked onions.  If I’m using fresh celery, I put in a couple whole sticks.  This celery had been chopped up and frozen, because we never use a whole head of celery before it goes bad.

Vegetables for Flavor

Now pick out some herbs, fresh if available.  I picked rosemary, oregano, and thyme (top left to bottom right in the picture below), which made a nice combination.  Wash any dirt off them.  I leave them whole, so it’s easy to remove the stems later.  Some of the leaves will fall off during cooking, but that’s okay.

Herbs for Roast

Put your roast on top of the vegetables, then the herbs on top of the roast.  I think that’s the best way to layer them, since it’s easy to get the stemmy herbs out later, and the vegetables help keep the roast from overcooking against the bottom.

Ready to Cook

There’s no need to add any liquid; the juices from the vegetables and roast will make plenty.  Put the lid on and turn it on low.  If you had potatoes or some larger vegetables in there, it would probably take 8 hours or so, but without them ours gets done in about 6 hours.  Your crock pot may vary.

When it’s about finished, it’s time to get the beans started.  This method of roasting perks up the limp, thin beans you can get in the grocery stores in the winter.  It doesn’t do much for fresh ones that’s better than simple boiling or steaming, but we’re eating a lot of those these days, so we roasted these for a change of pace.

Cover a cookie sheet with aluminum foil (to save cleaning later), and wash your beans.

Foil-Lined Sheets for Beans

Washed and Trimmed Green Beans

The recipes I’ve found for roasting beans tell you to put them on the sheet and brush them with oil, but there’s an easier way.  Dry them off with a towel, then drizzle a couple tablespoons of olive oil in the bowl with them, and add some salt and pepper.  Roll the beans around with your hands to coat them all over.

Coated with Oil and Spices

Now spread them out on the foil fairly evenly.

Ready to Roast

Put them in the oven at 450 degrees.  After ten minutes, take it out and flip the beans over, then cook another ten minutes.  While that’s cooking, it’s time to get the roast ready and make the gravy.  Here’s the finished roast:

Finished Roast

Discard the herbs and transfer the roast to a plate.  This one cooked a little longer than it needed to, so it’s fairly dark, but it was still good.  It should pull apart with a fork.

Roast Ready to Eat

If you want to eat the onions and celery, scoop them out and put with the roast.  Put a cover over it to keep it warm.  Now you need to pour the broth off to make gravy.  Put a saucepan on the stove, and strain the broth from the crock pot into it.  I’m straining it with the lid here, but you can burn yourself that way, so you might want to use a sieve.  If you like pieces of vegetables in your gravy, go ahead and dump them in there too; just be sure to pick out the bay leaves.

Beef Broth for Gravy

I’ll be making a milk gravy here.  You could also replace the milk with water to keep the carbs lower.  Since our side dish was so low in carbs, I figured we could afford a few extra carbs in the gravy.  To a couple cups of milk (or a 1/2 cup, if you use water), stir in a tablespoon of cornstarch until there are no lumps.  That’s about 22 carbs for the milk and 7 for the cornstarch.

Cornstarch and Milk

With the broth boiling, drizzle the milk mixture into it while stirring constantly.

Thickening Gravy

Continue to boil and stir for a minute, then turn it down to a simmer and see how thick it’s getting.  It’ll usually be thicker at the table when it cools somewhat, so this takes some practice.  If it’s not thick enough yet, you can add some more cornstarch, just always stir it into a little water first.  (Check the instructions on the cornstarch box.)  If it’s too thick, add some water or milk to thin it.  I like the bubbles to plump up on top just a bit before settling back down.

Milk Gravy

When your beans and gravy are both ready, it’s time to eat.  I like the beans to just start getting almost-burnt spots on them, but you may like them a little more or less done.

Roasted Beans

Now everything’s ready to eat!  Here it is plated up, with and without gravy.

Roast with Gravy and Beans

Without Gravy

Carb-wise, a serving of gravy like that in the picture has about 5 carbs, and a cup of green beans has 5-6, so the whole thing comes in at about 10, which is my limit.  This is a great low-carb meal.

I need to keep my carbs under 30 grams per day, and it’s best if they’re spread out somewhat.  So that means 10g per meal, or if I have a couple snacks, 7 per meal and 5 per snack.  I thought I’d make up a list of some foods I eat and how much fits in under 5 grams, to refer to later.  People often think low-carb means no-carb, or that we can’t eat fruit or vegetables, so I figured I’d share it here so people could see some of the options.

Fruit

• Apple – 1/4 apple
• Blackberries – 1/2 cup
• Blueberries – 1/3 cup
• Cantaloupe – 1/2 cup
• Cherries (sour) – 1/4 cup
• Grapes – 1/4 cup
• Peach – 1/2 medium fresh or 1/3 cup canned
• Pineapple – 1/4 cup
• Raspberries – 1/2 cup
• Strawberries – 3/4 cup (the king of low-carb fruits!)
• Watermelon – 1/2 cup

Breads and Grains

Almost all breads and grains are off-limits (and not really suitable for human consumption anyway), but a few things can be okay now and then in small doses.

• Saltines – 2
• Triscuits – 1
• Low-carb bread – 1 slice
• Rice – 1/8 cup

Vegetables (raw unless noted otherwise)

• Asparagus – 12 spears
• Chili beans – 1/4 cup
• Beets – 1/2 cup cooked
• Broccoli – 2 cups raw, 1 cup cooked
• Cabbage – 3 cups
• Carrots – 1 medium
• Cauliflower – 2 cups
• Swiss chard – 3/4 cup cooked
• Cucumber – 1/2 medium
• Green beans – 1 cup cooked
• Lettuce – 4 cups
• Lima beans – 1/8 cup
• Mushrooms – 1-2 cups, depending on the type
• Onions – 1/2 cup
• Peas – 1/4 cup
• Snap peas – 1/3 cup
• Peppers – 1/2 – 1 cup, depending on type
• Sweet potato – 1/8 cup mashed
• Radishes – 1 cup
• Sauerkraut – 1/2 cup
• Spinach – 4 cups
• Summer Squash – 1 cup
• Winter Squash – 1/2 cup
• Tomatoes – 1 medium whole one, 1/2 cup canned
• Turnips – 1 cup
• Wax beans – 1/2 cup

Other

• Nuts and Peanuts – 1 ounce
• Real Cheese – 3-4 ounces
• Velveeta – 2 slices
• Eggs – 6
• Cream – 3/4 cup
• Yogurt (homemade plain) – 1 cup
• Meat, butter, oils, lard, spices – unlimited

That’s not everything I eat, but it covers most things, including everything we’ve got growing in the garden.  It’s nice to see them all listed like that, and realize how much variety there is to choose from.  It’s easy to get in a rut and just make the same things over and over until they get boring, but that’s really not necessary.

I keep forgetting to weigh myself first thing in the morning to get an official starting weight, but I should be at about 240-241, and my goal is 199.  I probably can’t hit that by my birthday, but halfway would be nice.  I’ll report on how it goes, and any interesting recipes we make along the way.

I’ve got a couple new low-carb articles floating around in my head, but no time to get them typed up right now, so they’ll have to wait.

Latest Latin Lesson is up, on the Second Conjugation.

photo from flickr.com

Angel wrote a couple good posts on low-carb eating recently, which reminded me that I haven’t talked about my diet in a long time.  There just hasn’t been much to report.  We haven’t tried many new recipes lately, mostly just sticking to meals we’re used to, and I didn’t lose any weight over the winter.

I can’t blame that on the diet, though; it’s my own fault for not sticking to it strictly enough.  It seems like I’m pretty strict, until I actually keep track and add it up.  About once or twice a week, I’ve been eating too many carbs.  Sometimes I go way overboard, like on Easter, when the candy and cheesecake were just too tempting.  Other times it’s not drastic, like eating a pound of peanuts or a few too many crackers, but still too many carbs to stay firmly in ketosis (fat-burning mode).

People with healthy insulin response can switch back and forth more quickly, kicking out a bunch of insulin to store the carbs in the pasta they had for supper, then switching into ketosis while they sleep and burning it back off.  One of the early low-carb diets, called the Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet, was based on that idea.  It allowed one high-carb meal each day, but the other meals had to be very low-carb.  That worked great for some people, because their metabolism handled the carbs from a single meal quickly enough that they spent more hours in fat-burning mode than in fat-storage.

But for the insulin resistant among us, it doesn’t happen that quickly.  Most low-carbers I’ve talked to report that it takes 3-4 days for their bodies to shift into solid ketosis, and that’s been my personal experience.  After about three days of strict low-carbing, I lose some water weight, my clothes suddenly fit differently, acid reflux is completely gone, and hunger even feels different.

So if I cheat on the diet once or twice a week, it’s not surprising I haven’t been losing weight.  Every time I’ve been in ketosis a couple days, a meal with too many carbs knocks me back out, and the metabolic cycle starts over.

On the plus side, I haven’t gained any weight either.  According to the mainstream belief on diet, a winter spent eating all the meat, eggs, cheese, butter, and nuts I want, with almost zero exercise, should have plumped me right up.  But keeping my carbs low most of the time kept my insulin production down most of the time, and it’s almost impossible to store fat without excess insulin.  I’m also still enjoying the benefits of zero acid reflux (which in my high-carb days was bad enough to wake me up at night), more energy, healthy teeth, etc.  It’s easy to focus on the weight loss and get frustrated when that’s not happening, but I have to remind myself that’s not the only reason I’m eating this way.  It’s also about not being miserable and staying healthy.  Easter was a painful reminder of that, when the acid reflux and mental frazzledness hit me that evening.

Now that things are growing in the garden, I’m looking forward to getting serious about my eating again (at every meal) and losing the last 40 pounds.  Fresh vegetables from the garden add a lot of variety, and make it more fun to keep cooking good stuff and trying new concoctions.

Dr. Mike has a great post on the history of obesity that I might as well mention here, especially the graphs he discovered.  There’s a clear upward trend in obesity starting in 1976-1980.  (Not coincidentally, 1977 was the year George McGovern and Congress got into the diet business.)  There’s also a very clear increase in the percentage of calories people get from carbs, from about 1978 to today.  Over the same time, percentage of calories from fat has been decreasing.  Carbs and obesity have been going up together for 30 years while fat eating has been going down—so we blame the fat, right?  The fat hypothesis is so obviously wrong it’d be funny, if so many people weren’t being hurt by it.

photo from flickr.com

I’m not really hungover; all I drank at the bar last night was water.  But I’m tired, achy, and sort of foggy and slow, so most of the same symptoms are there except for the headache.

I’m going to be glad when this pool league session is over.  I enjoy playing and being there, especially when I win like I did last night.  But it makes Sunday too long a day, starting with 8am Mass and ending around 11pm after pool league, usually with a family visit or a party of some sort in between.  For an introvert like me, even if all those things are enjoyable, they certainly don’t make for a day of rest.  I feel like I need to start taking Mondays off to recover from Sunday.  That doesn’t seem right.

Oh well, seven more weeks and this session will be over.  I’ll take the summer off for sure, and then switch to a weeknight if I play in the fall.  When I used to play on Tuesday nights, that was much better.

When it was raining yesterday, I wished we’d gotten some garden seeds planted.  But it got so cold last night we might be glad we waited.  If it’s too cold for germination to start and the seeds are completely soaked for a few days, they may rot.  After this storm front moves through, we should be able to plant our early stuff just in time for the next sunny spell.

My FreeBSD-induced traffic surge seems to have dwindled now.  It’s amazing how you can write 100+ articles about all sorts of different things, and you never know which one is going to happen to catch the attention of a much busier site and get you a link that quintuples your traffic overnight.  I guess that’s why most blogging experts focus more on how to create or attract links from big sites than they do on writing the actual content.  The content doesn’t have to be especially good or original, if the right person decides to share it.

Recently we tried a new recipe I found on Jimmy Moore’s low-carb site, low-carb baked macaroni and cheese using shirataki noodles.  It was pretty good, but I made the mistake of replacing the bread crumbs with crushed pork rinds and the rinds turned out to be fairly stale, so that flavor kind of overwhelmed the mild flavor of the mac-and-cheese.  Next time we’ll get some low-carb bread for the crumbs; with those it’s still supposed to have only 5 grams of carb per serving.  Fresh pork rinds would probably work okay too, but it really doesn’t need to be lower in carbs than 5/serving.  When we get it the way we like it, I’ll do a full article on it with pictures and talk some more about those noodles.