Category Health & Weight Loss

Results … Month #10

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Results … Month #10

Recovering from a fall!

Made an amazing new discovery this past month … it looks like it’s more difficult to lose 8lbs, than it was to gain that 8lbs in the first place!

Who knew!?!

After last month’s disaster, I wasn’t all that optimistic coming into the new month. It was the first time since I started this whole exercise where I felt that I really might have to force myself to “go on a real diet”. Considering I was going into the 10th month of the program, I was a little taken aback by that thought. Fortunately, it didn’t last long, & I was back to testing & tweaking again, within 3 or 4 days.

“Testing & tweaking” is how I try to add credibility to the act of me trying to figure out how to eat more bad stuff & not pile on the pounds. One of the new foods I tried this month was coconut sugar. It’s supposed to have a few less calories, a slightly lower glycemic load, a few more nutrients, & some other good stuff, like inulin, when compared to regular sugar. One of the best ways to test a sugar is by adding it to something that tastes nice … like cheesecake!

The cheesecake was pretty good. The darker color of coconut sugar gives the finished product a light caramel color. Makes it look like something far more wicked than it is. Not that a cake made of full fat cheese & sugar isn’t already a little wicked. Turns out it doesn’t behave quite like a glass of iced water when it comes to weight control. But, then, a life without cheesecake just wouldn’t be right, would it!?!

Bottom line is that I still haven’t recovered all of that 8lb gain from the previous month. But knocking off 4.4lbs for this month isn’t too bad. Besides, I generally didn’t feel up to working too hard at it. So it’s a bit like I got an almost-free 4.4lb pass for the past few weeks. Maybe this new month is the month where spring will finally be sprung. Maybe I’ll get rid of the rest of that rebound. And maybe we’ll soon get to those warmer months where I can start testing the dietary value of beer & wine on the deck. In the company of the little birdies, flapping & twittering around the treetops!

Roll on summer. Aaaahhhh!

PS … The cheesecake diet, even when the cheesecake is made with coconut sugar, will probably not become the next hot diet for rapid weight loss! 🙂

Best One-Pot Cooking Appliances

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Best One-Pot Cooking Appliances

Slow-cooker makes a meal of it!

Over the course of my “career” in the kitchen, I think I’ve had just about every small appliance that ever showed up in the stores. Or on a TV infomercial. And over time, I found myself dropping off most of them to the local thrift stores. You’d think I’d have learned my lesson by now, wouldn’t you?

Not!

Just splurged on a slow-cooker the other day. Don’t know why, but this might be the only one I have never tried before. It was on sale, so my “big splurge” cost me $29.95. And that was Canadian dollars. How do they even make the box & packaging materials for that kind of money? Never mind ship the thing to Canada from …. oh, never mind, you know what I mean. It’s just a silly price. And if this thing stops me getting take-out … just once … it’s already paid for itself.

The first meal was an eye of round roast. I know, I know … mea culpa … but I’m surrounded by skinny people who like lean meat! Now for a guy who drives an induction stove, because it’s so fast, this thing was a just a little frustrating starting out. No action. Nothing. C’mon pot, give me some sizzle or something!

Nothing. Nada. Nil. Is it even working!?!

I’ll be eating steak tartare come evening time, won’t I?

Came home after work to one sweet-smelling kitchen. Or should I say savory! And to a lump of beef that was falling apart. Yet, the potatoes hadn’t turned to mush. How’d it do that!?! This is an interesting little pot. I think I’ll be spending some more time playing with the thing.

And when I’m done, I’ll talk more more about why a guy like me needs so many one-pot cooking devices. I sense a head to head coming up between the programmable multi-purpose pressure cooker, the air-fryer, & this new slow-cooker.

And we’ll see what it does to my waistline at the end of the month! 🙂

Easter Eggs, Bunnies & Piggies

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Easter Eggs, Bunnies & Piggies

Ever wish you liked tea!

If you check in on this blog for weight-loss tips, this is probably not the best month to do it! When I was a kid, the best part of Lent was getting fish ‘n’ chips on Fridays. My rebelliousness has only grown with age!

Though now, with Easter behind us, I wish fish ‘n’ chips was the worst choice I made over the Easter holiday. Sadly, I must confess to a little indulgence in the commercial chocolate-fest that is the product marketer’s version of Easter too!

Though to be fair, I tried to be good while I was being bad. The eggs on offer weren’t free range so I decided to go with the healthier wild game option … I ate chocolate bunnies!!! Unfortunately, they were milk chocolate. So help me, I never realized that ’til I was on the 4th one. 🙂

This month, I was hoping to reverse some of last month’s gains. But spring can’t make up it’s mind whether it’s sprung, or not. Skies are grey, drizzle is constant, the morning fog is thick. Even the trees can’t decide if they should bud. An occasional good day makes me believe. And then it’s all snatched away again.

I wonder why there are only chocolate eggs, ducks & bunnies for Easter?

Are chocolate piggies too big a marketing challenge!!!

Bento’s Take on Weight Loss

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Bento’s Take on Weight Loss

Anchor

What’s Weighing Us Down?

I ran into Bento at the pub the other night. Bento is an old friend of mine & he often has a quirky take on things. Sometimes, Bento’s view of things can give me pause for thought.

He was rambling on about how remarkably similar American politics are, to what Irish politics were in the old days. This was all by way of him complaining about winter dragging on & he mused out loud (with the odd expletive to accent an important point): was spring ever going to arrive? Bento wondered if he could get away with saying that his father was born in a warm country somewhere? The idea being that he could claim citizenship there, without all the usual bother, & just head off to the sun for a few months ’til things warmed up. Modern politics gave you great freedom & flexibility these days, he thought.

Bento’s meandering tone, as he muses, has a way of making you believe the unbelievable.

Almost mid-sentence, he asked me why I was trying to lose weight!

He continued …

“Aren’t you better off just enjoying yourself, Paul?”

“It’s not like you’re out night-clubbing & chasing women or anything, is it? And even if you were, sure couldn’t you just find a woman that might like a nice fat fella, like yourself?”

Bento doesn’t necessarily always run his thoughts through a filter to make you feel any better about some particular challenge you might have.

“Is it the health?”, he quizzed aloud.

Not expecting me to fill the silence with what I thought, no answer was required. He then went on to reminisce about a few of our friends who had gone to the great pub in the sky. Undeservedly & well before their time, Bento adjudicated.

“You won’t be running any four-minute miles in the few years you have left, will you?”

Another question that he would undoubtedly answer for me. I sipped my pint. Again. Despite his silent pauses, there was no point interrupting him while he was in flow.

“You’d be better off doing things you’d like to be doing.”, he opines. Him looking up, under raised eyebrows, at me. The creamy froth of the pint still on his top lip. Then promptly removed with a practiced twist of the bottom one.

“And then maybe you’d spend less time thinking about what you would & wouldn’t like to eat, wouldn’t you?”

He’s different. But sometimes, Bento has a way of recognizing the anchor below the still surface of the water.

I was missing dinner. We had another pint. Bento carried on musing. All very enjoyable.

Down about a pound & a half this morning!

Results … Month #9

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Results … Month #9

Results Month 9

I changed this month’s animated pic. Typically it would have proclaimed that I was “Down 32 lbs“, since I started the program. Instead, this month’s says that I “Gained 8 lbs“. I am keeping the Results post heading consistent but I didn’t want to hide the fact that this month’s efforts resulted in a pretty big weight gain. The first time that’s happened.

Of course, what I really wanted to do was scream out …

What a total loser! Or maybe it should be … What a total gainer!

What I said, after stepping on the scale this morning, was a tad worse. I won’t repeat it here. But you might be surprised to hear that I deliberately brought this all upon myself.

I had scheduled June for a bread test month. A couple of opportunities for some good bread eating turned up at the beginning of last month, so I flipped it to March. I have managed to work a lot of things back into my diet & I really wanted to see if I could integrate bread again. Why?

Because I love bread, of course!

For an entire month, I ate bread. Sometimes in controlled doses, at other times with abandon. And that wasn’t quite what my original intention was. It got so messy, so quickly, that I really haven’t learned anything new from what should have been a month of measured bread eating. I was so out of control that I was blaming eating bread for the slice of chocolate cake that followed. And for the bag of chips I scarfed while watching the big game on Saturday morning. For most of the month, bread was being blamed for everything. It was a total fiasco. I was, all at once, stressed, depressed, anxious & furious. And stuffed. It was all bread’s fault. It certainly wasn’t mine!

Was I anxious & depressed because I was eating all that bread? Or was it the anxiety that had me eating more bread than I intended? The whole month was so out of control that I didn’t know which came first … the chicken or the egg?

In fact, I didn’t care if it was the chicken or the egg, so long as they were between two slices of well-buttered bread!

Not only have I gained 8 lbs over the past month, but I’ve learned little to nothing from the experience. So I’ll have to do the bread month again. Properly this time. Just not anytime soon!

Now, a new month, a new start. It’s April. Maybe I’ll quit bread & smoking at the same time for the day that’s in it!?!

Happy Fool’s Day to all.

Unfortunately, I’m not foolin’ about the weight gain for March. It’s real.