So I’ve diddled away the whole day in front of the computer. Not quite the whole day, actually: feeling poorly after another five-hour night, I went back to bed following a short exercise junket and slept until almost 10 a.m. Then it was back to the office to work on the new e-book, whose manuscript I just finished and sent off for a designer’s review. The working title is Slave Labor: The New Story of American Higher Education. And I’m feeling mighty smug about it.
Watch this space! As soon as it’s published, I’ll run a give-away, so you’ll have a chance to grab it for free before the ravening hordes descend on Amazon. 😉
After this one is launched, I intend to do two e-cookbooks. One will present some of the surprisingly delicious low-fat, low salt, sugar-free diet recipes I’ve concocted over the past month. And another will be a collection of the recipes I’ve published over the years at Funny about Money, plus quite a few others.
The diet is going surprisingly well.
This morning I was down 11.8 pounds(!!) from my ponderous starting weight of a month ago.
Wow! That leaves only 9.5 pounds of flab to kill off before I reach my goal!
I can’t believe this. Already I look only two months pregnant instead of three — the toxic belly fat seems to be what’s coming off the fastest.
It’s astonishing to see the fat melt away this fast. Really, I think I’m losing faster than I did on the Atkins diet. But then I didn’t make the effort to put in all that exercise — my car was parked a mile from the office and up three flights of steps, and I had to walk up another two flights to get into our building, so I figured enough was enough.
It looks like what’s doing the trick is three and a half miles of brisk walking or jogging plus a half-mile of swimming. To get those street miles in before one is likely to expire of heat exhaustion, I have to start exactly at dawn. Any later than the first graying of the sky and by the time the jaunt ends it will be so ungodly hot as to be downright homicidal. But the swimming in the evening is refreshing and a nice way to end the day.
The quasi-vegetarian diet is probably helping to peel off the pounds, but I can’t imagine it provides adequate nutrition. Lately I’ve been feeling a little green around the gills: fatigued all day and kind of weak in the knees.
Saturday M’hijito, bless his heart, came over with Charley the Golden Retriever to hang out and prime the pool’s filter with dog hair. Since he was still here at dinnertime, I broke out a couple of steaks and we had a decent dinner of beef, corn, salad, and the two spectacular artichokes he brought with him.
Truly I felt awful on Friday and Saturday, but after a decent meal and a halfway decent night’s sleep, on Sunday I felt great again.
So I concluded that I probably need not cut the meat almost completely out of the diet. Sliced up the leftover steak and stir-fried that with some greens and curry, which stretched it out a long way and has provided a couple of meals (with one to go!) since then.
At any rate, clearly the big challenge will not be to lose the next nine and a half pounds but to find a way to keep all 22 pounds off permanently.
The exercise is making me feel so much better that now I can’t imagine doing without it. Though…hmmm… I’d sure like to find some more interesting places to perform these tricks. Walking around and around the park gets pretty boring, no matter how entertaining the local fauna.
Same is true of trotting up and down the mountain park trails, although at some times of year, especially the spring, it’s a little more interesting than the neighborhood. The canals go a very, very long way — in theory I could walk or bicycle all the way to Tempe and almost out to Sun City from here. On the other hand, the canals are probably not very safe — a few years ago, a serial killer nabbed a woman who was in the habit of bicycling along the canal. Beheaded her and threw her headless body in the water. So…that does give one pause.
There’s one of those Baptist megachurches on Central. It has a huge interior track where people can walk or run, plus a lot of other workout equipment. However, you have to buy a membership, and…well, I do object to helping fund (however indirectly) the Baptist church’s political agenda, which IMHO runs directly counter to the interests of women’s rights. No offense, dear Baptist readers…but you kind of have to be in Arizona to appreciate some of this stuff. 🙄
A couple of air-conditioned shopping centers open early so people can walk around and around inside the malls. But that also strikes me as mind-numbing boring. Why drive so you can walk around a boring track when you can walk around a perfectly fine park just a few yards down the streets?
One way or another, assuming I can keep up this level of exercising from now until I topple over into the grave, the other question is…how much and what can I eat to level off at the desired weight but not gain more weight back?
And how will I bear that?
I’ve cut out my very favorite food, pasta. And also bread. And also potatoes. Now, I could surely do without bread, which while pleasurable is not the center of my life. Potatoes I enjoy but don’t overindulge — and could cheerfully trade them in exchange for a flat belly.
But no more spaghetti? No more penne? No more casarecce, no more gemilli, no more fettucine? Really???? THAT seems pretty extreme. And wine…will I have to do without the daily swiggle forever? Five ounces of wine packs a punch of calories. What else will I have to give up if I choose to go back to the supposedly healthful benefits of the daily glass of wine?
We do know that red meat jacks up the blood pressure (supposedly). So I’ll substitute salmon, tuna, ono, and other wild-caught fish for most the volumes of beef and pork I’ve been in the habit of scarfing up. And buy unadulterated chicken at Trader’s, Sprouts, and Whole Paycheck instead of the salt-soaked, antibiotic-laced flesh of tormented and mutilated birds available at other markets.
But it still looks like the landing-strip menu is going to have to comprise a lot more veggies and a lot less starches and meats than I’ve been accustomed to eating.
Well. I’ll figure that out when I get there. Meanwhile, there’s almost ten more pounds to get rid of. Wouldn’t it be cool to be free of them by the end of the summer?
🙂
Congrats on your success in weight loss….but what do you eat? Seems like there is a lot of stuff you are trying to stay away from. Will tell you DD2 decided to go meatless about a year ago and had to return to eating some meat. She just didn’t feel well…had no stamina or strength. Boy it’ll be interesting to see what “your numbers” are when you meet your weight goal. Keep upt he good work…
Right now the diet’s a little constrained because I’m out of money until next Friday, and I’m fast running out of fresh foods.
However, by and large it’s pretty good: mountains of fresh veggies cut up and tossed into salads, a wonderful bean salad (some of which is still in the fridge), grilled veggies (which reminds me to marinate the portobello this morning!), eggplant casserole, cabbage salad, stir-fry with Napa cabbage and kale and many other veggies, soup with veggies… Aiming for a small amount of meat twice a week.
I’m certainly not going hungry! The food is great, but I do think that going without meat may be the cause of the occasional feeling of weakness and fatique…especially since that disappears the day after I’ve had a meal with meat in it.
Have you tried adding more nuts? If I’m weak, a handful if raw nuts (I prefer almonds) are a great boost. There’s also nothing like spreading some PB and jam straight on a banana =).
But I’ve also been vegetarian for about half of my life, so I am probably biased towards meatless meals.
Yes. I put walnuts or pecans in almost every salad and also in things like quinoa and rice pilaf. And I also cook with almonds and pine nuts.
Sounds like you’re doing great… congrats! Cutting out all these awesome things like pasta and potatoes are things I’ve had to do as well. The wine however has been HARD to let go of 🙂
Going without meat is great, but make sure you’re getting iron from another source. I tried becoming a vegetarian a few years ago and I ended up having to get iron injections (my iron was already low).
Good luck!
Women often suffer iron deficiencies when they’re in their child-bearing years. Mercifully, all that is in my past. 😀
Actually, beans are pretty high in iron, as are a number of leafy green veggies. But meat is a reliable source, as it is of proteins and B vitamins.
When we were in the outback of Alaska, I had the joy of a period where I bled so heavily that I became weakened. Self-diagnosing iron deficiency, I sent SDXB off to bring back some canned beans. Consumed a whole can of the things and within a day or so started to feel back to normal.