CURRENT PROGRESS: 4.4 lbs. lost in 6 days.
Projected weight loss over 180 days = 132 lbs.
Day Six: July 10, 2017, – This morning’s Weigh-in was 276.8 lbs, that is a loss of .6 lbs.
Day Three: July 7, 2017, – This morning’s Weigh-in was 277.4 that is a loss of 2 lbs.
Day Two: July 6, 2017, – Today’s weigh-in was: 279.4 lbs and that equals a loss of 1.8 lbs.
Day One: July 5, 2017, – Wednesday’s weigh-in was: 281.2 lbs
My starting weight for this diet is 281.2 lbs.
This weekend was a challenge. For one thing, I gained weight on Saturday and chose not to log either Saturday or Sunday because I didn’t want to deal with the gain. I didn’t want to deal with that failure head on. Not very heroic, but it is something your hero is likely to experience at the beginning of their story. Friday evening I drank an entire bottle of Sauvignon Blanc with dinner. We had chicken with veggies, which has made up most every meal so far. It’s not far from my normal eating habits, save for the pasta, rice or potatoes, and bread and cheeses I might otherwise include in our meals.
I don’t remember Saturday, but it wasn’t bad, like Friday night. Truth be told, I’d gained back up over 280 lbs when I weighed Saturday morning. It shocked me. Maybe I should have expected it, and maybe I did, but instead of jumping on here to report it, I chose to hide from it. Still, I dived head first back into the plan on Saturday.
Sunday’s around here are a challenge now, because, my 77-year-old mother and my 83-year-old aunt, who has Alzheimer’s, come over every Sunday after they attend church and I make lunch for them and we watch a movie. Frequently my mother-in-law shows up too with her sister and we have six for lunch. I’ve usually prepared homemade-pasta or store-bought pasta, with a chicken dish and bread, mash potatoes, some veggies with rice or risotto. Usually, I’d dose it all with cream, butter, and salt.
Yesterday, Sunday, I shredded a head of iceberg lettuce, diced four medium tomatoes and made five plates with a pile of the lettuce and topped it with a scattering of the tomatoes. I made Pico de gallo as a garnish. I pressure cooked two skinless chicken breasts with three boneless skinless chicken thighs and I included about two tablespoons of minced garlic, 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper, a tablespoon of whole cumin seed, one large white onion, two dried Anaheim chili’s, two roasted poblano peppers and cooked them under pressure for about an hour.
I remove the chicken, which is falling apart at the touch, and I easily shred it. I take the chili’s and remove their stems and add them with the rest of the contents of the pressure cooker into the food processor and run it until it’s a mostly smooth mixture. After that, I pour the mixture through a fine strainer to remove the skin and remaining seed particles, which can be bitter and chewy. After straining I pour the red mixture back into the pressure cooker, or sometimes I put into a stainless steel pot, and reduce it to a flowing, but thick and rich red sauce. This time, I didn’t use salt or oils.
I add the red sauce to the chicken and coat it well.
In the meantime, I cooked a large acorn squash. I like to do it in the microwave. I cut the squash in half and remove the seeds. I place the squash open side up and put a tablespoon of butter in the cavity, and cooked it for 8 minutes on high. When it was done, I flipped it over cavity side down and cooked it for another 8 minutes of high.
Once the squash was cooked, I cut it into cubes and pulled the peel off. I ate the peel as a snack while I prepared everyone’s plate. I spread shredded chicken over the lettuce and tomato and then added cubes of squash around the plate and dolloped a heaping spoonful of Pico de gallo right in the middle. That’s it. That was what we had for lunch Sunday.
I’d forgotten to buy avocados Sunday morning at the grocery store, but next time, it won’t forget. I’ll also add mango and pineapple next time. Who knows what else I might do with it.
Since we’re forgoing dairy, grains, and most fats, I’m having to think up new flavor profiles to satisfy myself, my wife and others. It’s not that hard, but I admit that it’s not easy. I love Mexican food and those meals usually include, rice and beans, cheese, sour cream, corn and flour tortillas and in my case, tequila(Oprahesque pronouncement).
For dinner Sunday, my wife and I had beef. We actually had grass fed beef. $3 more per pound. I made hamburgers with grass fed beef and the moment I bit into it, I remembered the flavor. What flavor do I remember I was born in 1965 and I grew up eating beef. Lots of beef. We weren’t wealthy, but we ate cheap cuts of meat and lots of ground beef. If you grew up after the 1970’s, you might not be aware that prior to the 1980’s, beef, tasted much better.
I cooked three patties, one for me, my wife and one for her to take to work for lunch today. The moment that patty fell apart on my tongue, I had a flash of memories, not one, but many of eating beef with my family. That flavor of grass fed as opposed to grain fed fatty and sweet muscle is unmistakeable. It’s the difference between pure cane sugar and saccharine, freeze dried coffee and fresh ground whole bean, a twelve-year-old Jameson Whiskey and a bottle Jack, I prefer the Jameson in this case.
I cooked some portobello mushrooms, to use as bread. No grain products allowed. I sauteed lots of onions with a small amount of diced tomatoes and browned some tomato slices to give them a char and some caramelization. I made my own yellow mustard. Four tablespoons of ground mustard with an equal part of vinegar (red wine vinegar and malted vinegar). I added some garlic powder, turmeric and onion powder with about and an equal amount of water, maybe 1/2 cup. I also added a teaspoon each of xantham gum and arrowroot as a binder and thickener. Once mixed, I cooked it in the microwave on 50% power for 8 minutes, three times, adding a touch of water in between and mixing it each time. After letting it cook in the refrigerator for about 1/2 an hour, it turned yellow and it tasted like typical Yellow Mustard except for the salt, I added no salt to it.
I spread the mustard on the gill side of the mushrooms and placed a patty on them, added a slice of charred tomato, sauteed onions, and shredded lettuce and topped with another mushroom cap.
That was dinner. A wondeful meal and I wans’t hungry later. It was filling ad flavorful, satisfying. That’s what matters the most. If you don’t get satisfaction from your meal, them you have to change things up until you find things that truly leave you feeling satisfied for a long time.
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