Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness

Gluten – You are my enemy, I think

We spent 5 days in NYC, eating and drinking our way through the city.  I did what I knew I shouldn’t do and ate whatever I wanted to – the justification being that “I’m on vacation!!  It’s NYC!  I should take advantage!”

As a result, I went from 128 to 131.6.  I’m ok with being 131.6, but I’m not OK with feeling bad from eating all the not-good-for-me food. So, to get back on the wagon again, in August I have 2 goals:

1.  Eat breakfast and supper at home every day.

2.  Absolutely no gluten.  No beer, no mysterious dressings, no ice cream.  Nothing.  No gluten.  I’m going to try to cut it out completely and see how my allergies are affected.

Wish us luck!

Uncategorized

Lazy Hlo

Holy cow, it’s been an age since I’ve written anything.  Why have I been so remiss in my writing?  Who knows?  Vacation?  Laziness?  Busy-ness?  Lack of anything interesting to say?  Probably mostly the latter to tell you the truth.

Well, I’m writing tonight despite not having anything interesting to say.  It’s time to get back on the wagon and start writing again. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and now it’s time to formulate some of those thoughts into words.  Well, not right now, but over the next couple of weeks.  Right now I’m just saying hi to my blog and then I’m going to go for a walk.

I’ll give a quick update, at least, on life in general.  I’m still doing the primal/paleo thing.  Still seeing great results.  I’m down to a size 4 and weigh 128.1, a weight I’ve not seen since I was perhaps 6?  I feel really good.  I’m struggling with allergies a little still.  I think that’s because I drink alcohol more than I should, and I don’t drink WHAT I should when I DO drink.  If I reigned that in, I’d probably feel better.  But, we’re going on vacation Wednesday, so the dial-in will have to wait until August.  Anyway, I’m feeling good.  I have some abs now and some arm and leg muscles.  I found awesome running shorts I love.  I’ve been running more regularly, probably because I love the shorts so much.  I’ve been getting up at 5AM and running, in point of fact.  It’s too hot to run any other time.  I’ve also finally started doing squats and lunges.  My ass is going to be to die for by the end of the summer, I swears.  What else, what else???  We took a trip to the beach for 4 days.  It was an awesome vacation of biking, jogging, reading, and staring at the beach, wondering how I can change my life so I can stare at the beach more.  We’re offsetting the relaxing vacation with an NYC vacation.  We’re Amtraking it.  Pray for no delays and break downs.

Work is work and is fine.

I haven’t been doing any art outside of a pencil drawing of Tim that looks like my uncle Jerry.

I’ve sold a few coozies on Etsy.  I’ve made like a whopping $40 bucks which has all gone towards rebuilding my wardrobe as most of my clothes aren’t fitting these days.

I did my first Codeacademy lesson in JavaScript tonight.  I’m going to be writing web pages in no time.  Not.  But I do have the itch to learn something new.  Coding?  Maybe?  We’ll see how patient I am and if I can reign in my frenetic mind for a few minutes each day to learn something.

Been reading a good book – Stumbling on Happiness.  It’s all about how we don’t really know what’s going to make us happy in the future because we are currently in the present and see everything through the present filter instead of the non-existent future filter.  God help us all.

Watched a cool Ted talk tonight. Here are the highlights – Level up your life every day.  Live life deliberately.  Collect experiences not stuff.  At least it made me not watch TV at all this evening.

So how’s that for a stream of consciousness post?  The next one will be more coherent, I swear.

Take care and have a pleasant, deliberate evening.

Health & Fitness, Uncategorized

Vacation from Paleo

We returned from Ocracoke late last night. The drive home was wrought with annoyances and delays, but it did have two positive results.  1.  I think I might be able to convince Tim to fly next time we want to go someplace 1000+ miles away.  2.  We discovered another vacation destination – the Kentucky Bourbon Trail.  Who wants to be our DD??

Since we were on vacation, subject to the whims and offerings of the local restuarants and grocery stores, I decided to relax a bit on my diet while in Ocracoke.  Well, actually, I relaxed it a lot.  As I mentioned in the previous post, whiskey was hard to find on Ocracoke, but you can’t not drink on vacation, so I beered it up.  I also ate hushpuppies, onions rings, chicken strips, clam chowder, fried clams, pizza, amazing tacos, bagel with lox and cream cheese, cream in my coffee, etc. etc. etc.   Keep in mind I ingested all this while wearing a bikini for 6-8 hours a day.  Not a good combo.  I was positive I would weigh 7 lbs more on my return to Iowa.  Maybe it was the steady homeward-bound diet of prunes, apricots, and walnuts, but I actually only gained 3 lbs.  I guess all the biking and swimming and running on the island mitigated some of the effects of the bad diet.

I did notice other ramifications, however.  My general appetite has increased, and my appetite for sweets has skyrocketed.  I want CANDY, and I want it now, and I want A LOT of it!!

Hopefully a week of getting back on track will curb the cravings.  I got off to a good start this morning by making us eggs fried in ghee and sauteed red & green peppers with onions and garlic, garnished with 1/2 an avocado.  After my morning 3 mile walk, I snacked on beef jerky and a date.  I kinda fell off the wagon for lunch though.  Tim’s birthday was yesterday, and since we were on the road for 22 hours, we didn’t have a chance to do much for it.  So today we got a late lunch at Granite City.  You can’t go to GC and NOT get beer, so I got a beer.  A huge beer.  I’m a member of the mug club, so the huge beer was only $3.50.  We’ve been members for a year, so we got a coupon for a free appetizer, so we split the boneless chicken wings (with ranch).  My supper was actually pretty paleo – the Napa Valley Burger with no bun and a side of deeeeelicious steamed broccoli.  I figure we are technically still on vacation since we haven’t gone back to work yet, so I can still cheat.

It’s supposed to be wicked hot this week, so exercising will be a challenge.  Right now, my goal is to wake up at 5AM and jog.  Tim says he’ll do it with me, so we’ll see.  I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night, so who knows how I’ll feel tomorrow.

Tim and I are going on another trip in a few weeks – this one to visit my bros in NYC.  I think eating well will be easier there than on the island of Ocracoke.  Plus, I’m sure we’re going to be doing a ton of walking, biking, and hiking, so things shouldn’t get too OOC.

I’m kind of looking forward to August, when our schedule will normalize.

Take care, and have a wonderful evening!