Decadence is a Matter of Opinion

Or so said the sign at my coffee shop this morning as I stopped to buy my coffee on the way to work. I definitely felt like I had a decadent weekend. Bread (aka Body of Christ), cream cheese, pomegranete cosmopolitian, and I even slept until 7:30 am on Monday! Not exactly everyone's idea of extravagant indulgence, but when you get used to being up for work at 4:30 am and you eat 1000 calories a day, it changes your perspective.

Yesterday my body seemed to be correcting for the indulgence on the weekend. I wasn't really hungry most of the day. I got up, blogged at Kinkos, took my four mile walk, wasn't hungry. Eventually I was feeling a tiny bit hungry at around 1 pm after quite a bit of working on packing. Ate a lowfat cottage cheese (90 cals, 11 g protein.) Eggwhite scramble would have been better, but I just didn't feel like it. Later in the afternoon I had some celery sticks with the nice spicy mustard I had gotten at the Farmers' Market. I had planned to re-try the Saturday night dinner that never worked out due to my olive cream cheese freak out. So I sauteed the zucchini and yellow squash in a tablespoon of olive oil, and added it to the Farmers' Market spicy sauce. It was fantastic! As I said before, I almost always make my own red sauce, usually with a ton of garlic sauteed in red wine, but this one was worth purchasing. Drank a glass of wine. Even with the oil that I used to sautee the squashes, I ate no more than 500 calories yesterday. And it's not like I'm trying to stop myself from eating; I am just not that hungry on the day after I go over target. My body seems to happily balance itself out. Oh, and I walked a second four mile walk in the early evening, bringing the total to eight miles. I was feeling extremely happy all day yesterday: beautiful day, excited about moving, birdies singing, found my old copy of the Saint Elmo's Fire soundtrack, etc. On days like that, I have to walk a lot to get out my extra energy. Otherwise, I become insufferably cheerful and annoy the neighbors. On a normal day, I am the happiest person I know. On a particularly good day, I don't see how anyone can stand to be around me.

Re-read some of the Albatross before bed... managed to put it safely out of the reach of the paper eating cat before falling asleep. Contemplated how my persistent inability to convert pounds to kgs has hindered my CRON progress.

Yesterday was very low protein, and I am starting to wonder if I should just go back to the whey protein shakes. I seem to keep missing my protein goal, and getting a large part of it out of the way in the morning makes it so much easier. I think I'll focus this week on drinking milk to help with calcium, and see if that helps me reach my protein goal (which is 60 - 70 ish g, btw) Milk is good because it doesn't fill me up as much as food, so it shouldn't crowd out my appetite for things like veggies.

This morning I was fairly hungry, so I ate my eggwhite scramble for breakfast, 140 cals, 29 g protein. Then I ate 1/2 cup of grapenuts, 200 calories, as a mid morning snack at my desk. I am irked to discover that Grape Nuts are not in the list of pre-entered foods in my software, so I will have to bring the box into work early tomorrow morning and hand enter the entire thing. I feel like it's cheating to eat a fortified cereal, but I need to get my fiber, iron and calcium up, and I don't have the appetite or energy to eat five bags of frozen kale a day. Also, I enjoy the pleasant crunching of grape nuts, and the fact that I can carry them around in a zip lock bag.

Maybe I will torture myself by searching the archives to find out what's wrong with grapenuts. That should cut down on the insufferable cheeriness.

Plan for the rest of the day:

lunch:

salad with 1 cup romaine lettuce and my new fat free Vidalia Onion vinegarette
1 cup broccoli lightly drizzled with fresh lemon and pepper
cottage cheese
100 calories of olives

afternoon snack:

cafe au lait with skim milk

dinner (ish):

creation of kale and collard greens in vegetable broth with a little olive oil
carefully measured four ounce glass of red wine
cup of skim milk

I eat too much salt. Too much salt is not good for one. However, if I were to stop eating salt, I would probably lose three pounds overnight. Then I would get all scared when I weigh myself at 4:30 am and have to call Kenton at what would be 1:30 am California time for reassurance that I was not in immediate danger of dead rat syndrome from overly rapid weight loss. That wouldn't be very nice at all, so I'll just keep eating salt so that Kenton can sleep at night.

Speaking of weight, my weight was up to 110 again this morning, which was probably a result of the eight mile walk and the super salty mustard plus the bottled spicy sauce. Whenever I exceed my regular four miles, I tend to hold a bit more water weight the next morning. I suppose it's also a possible result of the over indulgence in the Body of Christ, but since the calories balanced out the next day that seems unlikely. In any event, I'm definitely holding onto my weight at a nice low calorie level, which is good. Unlike those who are seeking weight loss, we CR folks actually want our metabolism to be lower. So it's good that I'm adjusting. I guess we'll see tomorrow.