A few foods I like...

These are some of my favorite foods right now...

Joseph's Flax, Oat Bran & Whole Wheat Flour Pita Bread.  I stumbled across this at my local Walmart.  It's only 4 net carbs per piece.  I can toss them in a toaster and they crisp up enough to use in dips.  They have pockets which I can stuff with sandwich fillings.  Yesterday, I fixed some with chicken salad. 

Ocean Spray diet blueberry-pomegranate.  Ocean Spray has recently come out with several additions to their diet juice line.  Most have about 2 or 3 net carbs per 8 oz. serving.  My favorite is the blueberry-pomegranate.  This definitely satisfies my cravings for fruit juice.

Mission cab-balance tortillas.  There are many different sizes.  The ones that I buy have only 7 net carbs per tortilla.  This is much higher than other low-carb tortillas but they taste so much better.  My wife and I actually like them better than real tortillas because they don't split or crack when you pack them too full.

Lose weight in two weeks!

My 3 year old son Skylar has been exposed to too many commercials about dieting.  This morning at breakfast, he was eating Special K cereal and said, "If I eat this I will lose weight in two weeks!" 

Please excuse my bitch session

Right now, I'm insanely busy. My wife is pregnant. The baby is due mid April but we may take him out a bit early. So at home we are getting the house ready. My home office has moved into the master bedroom. The 3 year old has moved into my office and we are trying to turn his old room into a nursury. My 3 bedroom, 2200 square foot house once seemed enormous to me but now seems way too small. I'm thinking of buying my parent's house in Cincinnati when they move into a new house that they are currently building. In the meantime, at work my 5 year information systems project is coming to a head with our first North American implementation going live next week at one manufacturing plant in Mexico and one in Indiana. My company originally asked me to be in Mexico the entire month of March, which I refused. I absolutely will not be out of the country during my wife's 3rd tri-mester. At the same time, we are preparing to role the new systems out in 6 more plants in July. So, I am on the road more than ever. After July, I don't have any idea what I'll be doing at work. My project will be done. They want me to either work in California or Canada both of which would suck as I'd only be home on the weekends. I'm sick of being on the road. Anybody know of any good paying ERP or logistics jobs in Cincinatti?


I'll be working from home next week and in Indiana the following week. When I return, they will make a decision on when to induce labor on my wife. And I am taking off a week whenever the baby is born.... plus it'll be hard for the company to get me out of my home office for a while.

But anway, the point I am trying to make is that my life is crazy busy right now. I've got more work on my plate than any normal person plus more than I can get done at home on the weekends.

And throughout all of this, I am dieting. With all of this stress, I wonder if I'd be losing weight even if I wasn't "on a diet". I lost a little over 3 pounds this week. At this rate, I'm guessing that I can reach my target weight in six to nine months... just a little too late to wear a speedo at the beach this summer (yeah, right!).

Weight, it's not really a stall.

Today is the second Friday in a row that I weighed 315 pounds.  But, I'm not worried.  It's not really a stall.  My waist and hips are both an inch smaller than they were last week.  And, for the first time in a long while, I checked my urine with a ketosis stick.  It measured 1.5, meaning that I have small amounts of ketones in my urine.  The positive ketone reading proves that my body is indeed still burning fat. 

"What the heck is going on?", you may ask.  Obviously I am losing fat.  My lean body weight calculation says that I have gained 4 pounds of non-fat. So, I am either gaining muscle, retaining water, or have former food sitting in my digestive track.  I'd like to believe that I have gained muscle.  It is unlikely because I've had little to no exercise.  But then again, I could be gaining muscle due to increased protein intake.  However most likely, it is because I ate some salty pistachio nuts last night as a snack.  The salt is probably causing my body to hold onto water.

My advise to my readers is:  Don't trust the scale.  Measure your success in inches not pounds. 

Blogs that I Follow

For those of you looking for good low-carb blogs to follow, I have a companion feeds site:

http://lowcarbblogs.blogspot.com/

Here you will find a list of blogs with links to their most recent posts by topic.  If any of you know of any good low-carb blogs that I'm not aware of, please respond to this post with their links so that I can add them.

Recipe List for Feed Readers

Since many of my readers are looking at my feeds rather than this website, I thought it would be good to occasionally post my recipe list. 

Cooking Measeument Conversions

Recipes - Main Course

• Beef with Mushroom Gravy - 4 net carbs per serving
• Better Carbquik Pot Pie - 5.5 net carbs per serving
• Brandi's Breading for Frying - 1 net carb per serving
• Brandi's Salmon Patties - 1 net gram per patty
• Cheeseburger Pie - 2 net carbs per serving
• Chicken Chimichangas - 6 net carbs per serving
• Chicken Enchiladas - 3.7 net carbs each
• Classic Meatloaf - 3.6 net carbs per serving
• Coconut Battered Shrimp - 0 net carbs
• Crunchy Tacos - 0 net carbs per shell
• Egg Salad for Sandwich - 1 net carb per serving
• Fettuccini Alfredo Impasta - 3.5 net carbs per serving
• Fried Chicken (Pork Rind Version) - 1 net carb per serving
• Kentucky Hotbrown - 8 net carbs per serving
• Pizza Crust - 2.5 net carbs per slice
• Pumpkin Soup - 8 net carbs per serving
• Salmon and Swiss Cheesecake 3.6 net carbs
• Sausage and sauerkraut - 5 net carbs per serving
• Simply Chicken - 4 net carbs per serving
• Simply Scallops - 10 net carbs per pound
• Soda Pop BBQ Chicken - 4 net carbs per serving
• Spaghetti - 4 net carbs per serving
• Thin Crust Pizza - 8 net carbs per serving

Recipes - Breakfast

• Biscuits - 1 net carb each
• Cheeseburger Pie - 2 net carbs per serving
• Chipped Beef - 4.5 net carbs per serving
• Cinnamon Streussal Flax Muffins - 2.5 net carbs per serving
• French Toast - 3.5 net carbs per serving
• Jicama hash browns - 5 net carbs per serving
• Pancakes - 1.75 net carbs each
• Salmon and Swiss Cheesecake - 3.6 net carbs per serving
• Satisfying Biscuits and Gravy - 7 net carbs per serving

Recipes - Appetizers and Salads

• Buffalo Chicken Dip - 4 net carbs per serving
• Bulgarian Shopska Salad - 2.5 net carbs per serving
• Carb Freedom Fries w/ Bacon & Cheddar - 2 net carbs per serving
• Cauliflower Salad - 2.9 net carbs per serving
• Cheese Crisps - 0.5 net carbs per serving
• Coconut Battered Shrimp - 0 net carbs
• Country Cucumbers - 1.5 net carbs per serving
• Fried Green Tomatoes - 4 net carbs per serving
• Garlic Relish Sauce - very few carbs
• Grilled Romaine with Ceasar-cardo Dressing - 6 net carbs
• Guacamole Dip - 3 net carbs per serving
• Rainbow Slaw - 4 net carbs per serving

Recipes - Breads

• Better Bread - 3 net carbs per serving
• Biscuits - 1 net carb each
• Cinnamon Streussal Flax Muffins - 2.5 net carbs
• Cornbread - 5 net carbs per serving
• Crepes - 0.5 net carbs each
• Hamburger Buns - 0.4 net carbs
• Pizza Crust - 2.5 net carbs per slice

Recipes - Desserts

• 3 Minute Brownies - 3 net carbs per serving
• 3 Minute Lemon Cake - 3.5 net carbs per serving
• Almond Macaroons - 1 net carbs per cookie
• Chocolate Mousse - 6 net carbs per serving
• Cinnamon Streusel Flax Muffins - 2.5 net carbs per serving
• Classic Cheesecake - 6 net carbs per serving
• Coconut Macaroons - 0.6 net carbs per cookie
• Crumb Crust for Desserts - 12 net carbs entire recipe
• Divine Zucchini Cobbler - 9 net carbs per serving
• Fried Ice-cream - 8 net carbs per serving
• Lemon Birthday Cake - 7 net carbs per serving
• Peanut Butter Mousse - 7.2 net carbs
• Pecan Pie - 7.5 net carbs per serving
• Pumpkin Cheesecake - 5 net carbs per serving
• Strawberry Delight - 7.2 net carbs per serving
• Strawberry Lemon Pie - 7.5 net carbs per serving
• Yum Yum Salad - 6.25 net carbs per serving

Recipes - Beverages

• Eggnog - 8 net carbs per serving
• Hot Chocolate - 5 net carbs per serving
• Lemonade - 4 net carbs per serving
• Vodka Highballs

Progress Report

I am happy to report that I can now play with my Wii fit without first taking off my clothing (Wii balance boards have a 330 pound weight limit).  In about a month, I have lost over twenty pounds.  For the first 3 weeks, I lost between 4 & 5 pounds per week.  During the 4th and 5th week, progress has slowed resulting in under 2 pounds lost per week.  I had hoped that having 1 carb up day per week would prevent this slow-down but it apparently hasn't.  My calculated lean body weight has dropped about one pound which means there has been no real muscle loss.  My waist and hip measurements haven't changed much in the last two weeks but I can see a big difference in my face and neck.  So, because I am making progress and have not plateaued, I will continue with my current strategy.

For those of you who are new to this blog, my current strategy is to keep meals under 15 net carbs.  Snacks under 10 net carbs and not within an hour of a meal or another snack.  The idea is not to limit daily carb intake but to avoid blood sugar spikes.  Essentially, I'm using low-carb to control my glycemic load.  Also, I am taking 1 day off of the diet per week in hopes that it will prevent my body from going into starvation/conservation mode thereby avoiding plateaus.