Vacation in San Francisco

As you may have noticed, I haven't blogged much at all lately. I've been too busy having fun.

Make no mistake, blogging about my weight loss is mostly fun - but you see, I've been on vacation!

I've lived across the bay from San Francisco for awhile (about 7 months) and have yet to really visit the city like I should have. So here I am - staying at a hotel on Fisherman's Wharf. We're right next to pier 39 ("we" being myself and my friend Matt).

We're just about to leave for Yosemite. Yeah I know, we're staying in the city and taking a day to go all the way out there. Thing is, we found a convenient little travel package that includes a day tour and transportation to the park. It picks up from any SF hotel, which works perfectly for us.

For awhile, I'm taking a little vacation from my normal low-carb bloggin - but if you care to check back tomorrow you can read about my trip to Yosemite and see a picture or two of me at the park. When vacation is over and done with, I'll post a summary of the progress reports I've skated out on, and sum up the weeks I haven't been around.

Until then...

Fun at Work

This doesn't have much to do with dieting. Nothing at all in fact. But, I just wanted to call your attention to something my work friends and I have decided to share with the world. Over the last few weeks, we've recycled our old latex gloves (we go through dozens a day) and used them to make a ball. Gloveball is our mascot here - and you should check out gloveballs myspace page. All he wants is to be your friend.

Check out the pics section - we have several pics up there of gloveball and some of our coworkers. For those of you who wondered what my job as an optical technician entails, well, gloveballs page won't help too much.

I work at Tinsley Laboratories. We makes precision optics for many different applications.

We made the optics that were installed in the Hubble telescope to fix its "vision", and we're currently manufacturing the optics that are going in the next big space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope. We do other .types of optics - for instance, I work in the department that is refining optics that are making their way to the LLNL Ignition Facility.

I started at Lenscrafters, and worked there for a few years. When I moved out to Cali, I was lucky enough to find my way to Tinsley.

For those who are wondering, gloveball plays no part in manufacturing of our lenses; that's up to the pros.

Low Carb Cheesecake Recipe

Hello Folks!

As promised, here is my version of simple low carb cheesecake, without a crust as I like:

3 8oz packages cream cheese
4 eggs
1 and 1/2 teaspoon (1/2 Tablespoon) vanilla
1 and 1/3 cups Splenda
1/4 cup sour cream

I recommend letting your eggs and cheese get to room temp before you begin to blend.

Blend the cream cheese with one egg first. When adding the other eggs, wait until each is blended before adding the next. Add vanilla, sour cream, and Splenda last.

Pour into a 6 inch springform pan and bake at 400 for 10 minutes, then finish off at 350 for about 20 minutes or until sides are firm and light brown and center is still a little soft. You can also use a thermometer - look for a center temp of about 150 degress. For a thicker cake, double the recipe and use a 9 inch springform (or use the 6 inch pan). If you'd like to experiment with pan sizes and cake thickness, definitely use the thermometer to check for doneness.


Enjoy!

Weight-loss jumpstart

Ok, I promised info on how I get a headstart to get back into ketosis after a slip. A day turned into a few, but here we go!

First off, it's not my way to take planned binges. I can't seem to do them correctly. So, when I binge it's because I had a moment of weakness. My moments are usually followed by several more moments give or take a day or so. The best way to get back on track is to eat. Yep, eat alot. Eat to your hearts content. Find your favorite low carb foods and USE them.

Now, eating alot while low carbing doesn't always work for everyone in the weight-loss stage. Many still have to pinch their intake a little bit which is pretty easy since most don't get hungry eating as such. But that first day back in the saddle is not about losing - it's about about breaking the cheat cycle. For those of you who may binge like me (at least 2 meals in a row) it's a difficult task to get going again.

Now, after I've had a day to satisfy myself and start eating the right foods again I reinduct myself. Sometimes for a week - sometimes longer. As tmy appetite comes under control, I'll eat less and less for the first week and then continue that for the second. Then I adjust my caloric and carb intake so I lose at a decent speed.

It's been my method since way-back-when I weighed 385 pounds, and it's not failing me now even though I screw up from time to time.

Later in the day, I'll post my cheesecake recipe! I should have thought of that myself... shame on me. Now where is my recipe pile...

Back in the Saddle - times two

Things are back on track, and it looks like I may exceed my goal for this week by a pound or two!

Next week, since my back has been great, I'll be expanding my exercise routine to include some cardio (which I should have been doing anyway) and some very light weights. I have little 20 pounders I'm going to use for upper body since I can't put too much strain on my back. I plan on going for reps.

I'm back in the saddle in another respect too. I'm a musician, but I haven't played in a band for years. Lately, friends have expressed interest in a few different projects. One project in particular, Esleg, is seeking a bassist. Well, DAMN! I play bass among other things, so my friend asked me if I was interested. I of course said yes.

There are a few basic demo tracks up, you should check them out if you like ye olde rock and roll. They are rough recordings, but when I heard them for the first time I saw great potential.


You can also check out The Alara Project. I have a few instrumental tracks of varying styles posted there.

So, things are good! when I move into the new place things will be even better for my music! Not only will I have more space to record in, my new roomate is a musician. And he loves Prince! How cool is that?

Very cool.

Week 4 Progress Report

Starting weight: 300.6

Current weight: 288

Total shrinkage: 12.6 lbs


It's that time again! It's been a very interesting week. I fell off the bandwagon pretty hard for two days. I ate not only once outside of my normal low-carb diet, but TWICE. Twice in a row. On Wednesday and Thursday. I made the very large mistake that often leads me to stray - I didn't eat during the day. I could use all of the normal excuses: "I was busy and didn't have the time," etc. but I won't.

I try to avoid the feelings of shame associated with cheating - shame and embarrassment is captured quite effectively in a vid I posted previously. I can't think of a worse feeling than what that lady must have been experiencing.

Instead, I'll talk about what I should have done differently to prevent this from happening. The big thing for me is time, so I shorten the time it takes to prepare meals. For instance, in preparation for the upcoming week I'm buying a big bag full of chicken breasts from Costco. They're great - I can cook 6 in the same time I cook one, so I cook a few days in advance. I very tired of eggs, so instead of the normal breakfast fare I have a diced up chicken breast with some raw veggies. The first thing I should do every single morning is get some food in my mouth - more is better, but I absolutely must eat breakfast. It sets me up for a moderate day, and makes me less hungry at night.

Something else I consider my golden arrow of preparing ahead of time is low carb cheesecake. Getting some fats in the tummy first thing in the morning is key to appetite control - what better way to do it is have a slice of cheesecake for breakfast? Sounds weird I know, but nothing is easier than grabbing a slice and getting ready to go. You can eat it one handed when chilled (my recipe is more firm than some) as opposed to something like eggs or my diced chicken breast option. One handed is good if you're collecting items for work, although I'd suggest to finish before getting in the car.

I'm not too worried about the extra weight I'm carrying. What is normal for me, is that when I slip two things happen: I immediately stop losing, and gain back a few pounds of water weight. I can't be sure that my extra weight this week isn't actually fat since I don't trust the BMI/hydration results from my scale.

The other thing that happens is that a few days after being careful once again, I end up being almost as light as I should have been if I had never fallen off the bandwagon. Now, if I were to forsake my dieting for an entire week, I certainly would gain back the fat I lost PLUS the 8 lbs or so of water weight I seem to carry when I eat unhealthily.

So, for next week I predict to be 8 lbs lighter than this weeks final weight in.

Lets see how close my estimate is. Think I can be 280 in a week?

I plan on using a special jump start technique that goes beyond what I've already written about - tune in tomorrow for more details!

Medication Nation

As some readers may already know, I'm currently recovering from a back injury that left me with 2 slipped disks and a single ruptured one. These days the pain isn't so bad, but a few months ago the pain was pretty intense. I just started lifting above 10 lbs, and walk without too much difficulty. Thanks to a short regimen of prednisone, I recovered quickly - these days just 800 mgs (third of the max daily dose) of ibuprofen keeps me able to walk. Most days I'm able to lift, and the numbness in my legs is minimal. Enough background - here is what is on my mind.

After almost fully recovering, workers comp. finally approved a specialist to evaluate my injury and prescribe treatment. The appointment was in January 22nd. My injury occurred on August 10th. Good thing the general practitioner and my PT were able to get me to work again, I only missed a few days thanks to just 4 days of prednisone. If I had waited for the specialist, I would have been at home for months. It might seem decent to sit at home and collect a check, but I would have gone out of my mind! My work is very important to me, and I would have returned completely out of the loop.

Imagine my surprise when I finally got to see the "specialist" and he completely changed my medication after simply reading my case history that was months out of date. I told him carefully that I was managing the pain just fine with advil, but he didn't seem to mind stuffing me full of some pretty heavy meds.

To start my day, he wanted to take a pill for the inflammation. Handy since this is the source of the nerve pain - the disks are bulging against the nerves leading out of 2 vertebrae in my lower lumbar region and anti-inflammatories help a great deal. Since the stuff he wanted to me to take can cause bleeding, he prescribed Xantac to "protect my stomach". This apparently means "covers his ass". I used it for a week. Not only was I in immense pain for a few days because it didn't work, I felt like I was on some kind of mind-altering drug. Hey wait, I was!

That's not all; he also prescribed Neurontin. For those of you who are familiar with such a thing, you'll know this ALSO messes with your head. It makes you sleepy, dizzy and nauseous. But, no worries - the good doctor also prescribed some sleeping pills. Side effects? Dizziness and nausea. It seems that the doctor was well aware of the anxiety and restlessness that are caused by the anti-inflammatory, and simply decided to omit this fact from our 12 minutes spent together. That's right - 12 minutes. That includes the 3 and a half minutes I took to follow him into the hall after he tried to take off without explaining a damn thing about the crap he was giving me. His lame ass excuse for the drowsiness inducing meds? "You need a full nights sleep to heal properly." No kidding! Did he ask me if I was having trouble sleeping? Nope. He just assumed I'd be an anxious wreck from all the drugs, and did not tell me. Bingo! I felt like I was on cocaine just from the anti-inflammatory. Score one for the drug companies!

So, it comes down to this: a few advil a day or 2 drugs to do the same thing plus ANOTHER 2 to counteract the bad side effects. On top of it all, they didn't work HALF as well as just a few generic ibuprofen tabs.

No thanks doc, I'll stick with the ibuprofen.

Things to say to your server when you eat low carb

For anyone that has braved eating out when low carbing, you are well aware of the confusion that is evident on the faces of some servers when you make special requests or refuse things that seem innocuous to some people. Here is a compact list of handy responses that you can keep with you when eating out, in case you meet with some resistance from your server.


1.) I'm Diabetic. If you give me sugar I'll go into a coma immediately after stabbing you with my fork.

2.) Keep your croutons to yourself, mister.

3.) I just ordered a hamburger wrapped in lettuce. If you offer me fries one more time, I'll order them and insert them into your eyes.

4.) Yes, that's all I want on my plate. If it makes you feel better you can put a potato there for me to toss at your other table.

5.) So I eat butter with a spoon. You brought me a loaf of bread. As I see it, you tried to kill me and I'm trying to butter away the pain.

6.) You're right, it's not a balanced diet. That's why I eat Vegans.

There it is - six things to confuse and frighten uncooperative servers.

Thanks for reading! Remember, print this out and practice - sooner or later you'll find the perfect opportunity to make your server understand the depth of their ignorance. Or you could just get arrested. Either way, it's sure to be fun.

New favorite breakfast spot

For those of you that may be in or near the San Francisco/Oakland (that's right, the bay) area, you really should make a trip to Point Richmond and check out Little Louie's Cafe. They have a ton of not-on-my-diet items, but I won't hold that against them. Bread is baked fresh daily, sandwiches are crafted, and various coffee drinks are brewed within their walls. I hear they make a mean burger too, but I've never partaken.

Now, what I show up there for is the ham-and-cheese omelet. And the (slightly not-on-the-diet) coffee! The omelet is made with monterey jack and black forest ham, and I have to say; the consistency of the egg in their omelettes is possibly the best I've experienced. They use just the right amount of oil, and have the grill set to what I would guess to be the "perfect" setting. To state it plainly, it's the best omelet I've ever not made myself.

The only thing that makes my omelets better is that I don't have to pay almost 9 bucks for 'em. But, Louie's has a nice atmosphere and the service is honest. Honest, yes. What I mean by that, is they don't seem to have the curse of "professional" servers. I mean this in a good way! I'm spared the memorized food propaganda that I would normally get at larger, and perhaps more expensive, restaurants.

"Can I interest you in BLAHAHAH BLAH BLAH today?'

No thanks. Not today. I didn't yesterday and probably won't tomorrow either.

What I got instead was:

"Hi."

and then,

"Here's a menu, lemme know when you're ready."

Then the gentleman went back behind the deli counter to ring someone up for a latte. A few minutes later I beckoned him over. Five minutes after that he brought me my HUGELY stuffed omelet. It was packed with a ton of ham. Well, a few ounces at least. Come to find out, he felt a little bad that I didn't want his potatoes or toast so he had the lady on the grill stuff some extra ham in there. Black forest ham can be expensive; they lost money on me I'm betting.

Maybe someone who reads this and eats bread can tell me how the sandwiches are...

Until next time.

A pat on the back goes a long way

There are a bunch of low carb blogs out there, and one of the best is Jimmy Moore's "Livin' La Vida Low Carb" blog. If you take a search engines word for it, Jimmy's blog is #1. If you ask his readers they'll tell you the same thing! Since I've been in the low carb blog world, his blog has been my destination of choice. In fact, it was his writing that prompted me to start a blog of my own. Imagine my surprise when my picture ended up in one of his posts! No, it wasn't a wanted poster.

It set me all a gigglin' when I caught wind of it. I'm glad you dig my blog Jimmy! Maybe I'll get to meet you one of these days. I'll hunt you down when I hit my goal weight. Until then I promise NO stalking.

Week 3 Progress Report: Slow but Steady

Starting weight: 300.6

Current weight: 286.8

Total shrinkage: 13.8 lbs


Week three has arrived, and I overshot my weekly goal by just a tad - 2.6 instead of 2.4. I'm not going to cry over that. As I hoped, the weight loss slowed to a more reasonable pace. Perhaps I should start tracking caloric and carb intake, it would be interesting to see what happens if I change things up for a week or so. I didn't try to reinvent the wheel yet, I just added a few more carbs in the form of a larger salad each day. Also, I added it one particular day in the form of pizza.

Yeah, it's true - I ate a piece of pizza. Interesting thing happened - I still kept losing weight, but my hydration levels/BMI changed dramatically for 48 hours according to my "broken" scale. I'm thinking that it's not as much broken as its just pissing me off. Check out my post about the stupid scale.

When I'm dehydrated, my scale gives me a depressing BMI. Basically, it's all over the place. Every two months I'll be creating a chart like the one above tracking BMI and hydration as its reported by my scale. Stupid or not, I think I may just have to take the numbers as they are given then sort it all out in the end.

Good news! I'm moving, most likely, to a place with a pool. I need to strengthen my core, and swimming is a great low impact way to do that. A few months ago I ruptured a disk, and since then exercise has been boring and only effective for healing my back. Sure that's vital, but I want to be able to lift again. Weight loss is so easy with lifting! Plus, I really enjoy the workout.

An added bonus to swimming in my condition is that the pressure on my damaged back is greatly reduced when in the water. A bonus on top of that is the heat in the pool will improve circulation and help reduce swelling in the long run, which causes the nerve pain I experience in my leg from two other disks that are bulging out. If I treat my back before a swim with some good stretching and an ice down, that heat afterwards will feel great. My therapist will also be thrilled.

Thanks for tuning in this week for my third progress report! Time to get back to life - I'm going out to breakfast today, I found a great place downtown. I'll write about it on my return.

All Hail "In-N-Out", my guardian angel!

Everyone that has an In-N-Out near them MUST go eat there. Low carbers especially. There is a secret menu (many of you already know this) that is found on their (notsosecret) site that includes a "protein" version of any of their burgers. Yes, like many other fast food places they'll wrap up the burger in lettuce for you. How they differ from other fast food joints is that the food is actually TASTY wrapped in lettuce and I never feel like they're confused by my request. In-N-Out has saved my fast food loving ass more than once.

Near where I work there is an In-N-Out next to a few other fast food places. It's like a filter - just when I'm about to toss my diet down the drain, I get saved by all those perky burger-wranglers who find it natural that I don't want their buns.

The reason the holiest of holys is on my mind, is that I put myself in a precarious position tonight for dinner. I didn't eat breakfast or lunch today. Bad, I know! When I don't eat during the day, I get hungry (of course) and my will weakens. I tend to eat anything that gets in my way when I'm at this point. Burger King usually gets taken out first with a vengeance. Late night, Taco Bell usually falls victim to my beastly hunger. Nothing is safe. Not even my co-workers.

When I hit the road for dinner tonight, I heard that little voice in my head, the addict in me; "Go ahead and just grab some Taco Bell. You can do some extra pushups to get rid of it! You can stop anytime you want, just DO IT." I felt my hands take on a life of their own as I switched lanes in order to position myself for the kill. Thankfully, In-N-Out is closer than Taco Bell so I pulled in there instead. It tasted 10 times better, and was completely low-carb.

"Double Double, Protein Style please!"