Are you gonna eat that?

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toodamtall

toodamtall

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I'll start by reposting my intro:

So, once upon a time I lost a bunch of weight. Of course, the reason I lost all that weight was because I found it in the first place... Then over the course of a few years, I managed to find it again. Now that I'm middle aged, the excess weight is literally killing me though, so what the heck, I'll take all the support I can get.

Current issues:
Asthma (lifelong, so no real excuse here)
High BP
High cholesterol
Type 2 diabetes being treated with both Metformin and insulin injections
Major weight gain over the last year because of a catastrophic accident that rendered me unable to walk for 4 months and then slowly building up to normal walking ability since.

Current plan:
Overall modeling a diet/lifestyle change based upon paleo principles, but without being a zealot about it.
Increase physical activity by baby steps. I weighed 375lbs a few weeks ago, currently 365lbs. extended exercise right now has to be very low impact because I don't wanna 'splode my heart, lol.
Add in bicycling short distances next. I used to do it a lot, it fell by the wayside long before the accident, so I can't blame everything on that.

Basically I'm trying to eat good clean food and increase my activity. Simple enough right? Yeah, sure.
 
Now I'll make my first official diary entry

I'm 52 years old, six and a half feet tall and weigh 365lbs. I've been as high as 389lbs and as low as 245lbs within the last decade. Clearly, this diet thing is not a new process for me, although I wish it wasn't a necessary process at all.

About a year ago, I was still very much overweight and wasn't paying a lot of attention to health signs. Two things happened. I got into a motorcycle accident and crushed my left foot. Then while preop testing, the doctor refused to do surgery until my glucose numbers were down. I guess I figured I probably was diabetic, but was ignoring it. Well, my glucose was 310 and my A1C was 11.1. Emergency trips to the endocrine center and onto metformin, lantus and Humalog, and we got the glucose down in order to rebuild my foot. Two screws, two pins, a couple of surgeries and a bone graft to hold it all together and after about 4 months I was able to start bearing weight on the foot again. PT ensued, but even now the strength is still not back all the way and my balance is a bit off.

After months of sedentary living I realized that I had gain almost 40 more lbs! See, in addition, I didn't realize that insulin was a form of growth hormone, and without a physical outlet to help burn off calories, I was just packing them on.

Time to get serious.

I've documented before, even on this site once upon a time. I even recognize some names from when I was here before back in like, '08-'09. New username and new journey now. A little more urgency this time.
 
I love to cook and I'm not bad at it. I'll post some recipes along the way as I come up with them, assuming they come out right.

Dinner last night:
Southwestern cauliflower fried rice:
Sautéed diced red onion, diced red and yellow peppers in olive oil. Added in the "rice" and kept stirring to brown it up some. added cumin, smoked paprika, salt, pepper and some chili powder. Dropped a couple of eggs into it along with some leftover steak that I had chopped up. Mixed it all up and served. Came out pretty good. Good use of refrigerator stock.

Been hitting up the farmer's markets lately. fresh red onions with stalks still attached. Going to buy some fresh basil going into the weekend for something. Ooh, and I have some leftover bacon chunks from the bacon I cured and smoked last weekend. Might have to make some collard greens
 
Made Thai style chicken skewers, kind of similar to a Satay idea. Used the gluten free soy sauce. Spicy peanut sauce to go with it. Really simple roasted veggies to go along with it. Bought a variant of zucchini that I can't remember the name of now. It's light green and shorter, but wider than a regular zuke. They make good stuffing boats because of their wider shape. Sliced it and drizzled olive oil, put it on a cookie sheet with some fresh red onion chunks and seasoned all of it with a herb & lime rub that a local place makes up with their own home grown herbs (they have a fantastic farm to table restaurant there too, and most of their ingredients come from right out back).

That being said, Saturday night was not so healthy. I've been really good over the last 2-3 weeks staying low carb and clean, but a wood fired pizza called to me. Sadly, I answered. Feeling a little logy after the weekend and just hoping that the system rights itself properly after a couple days of clean eating.
 
Hi Tall and welcome (back) to the forum :) A friend of mine uses grilled slices of round (pumpkin-like) zucchini or aubergine as pizza crusts if her carb allowance won´t otherwise reach and is very happy with the result.
 
LaMaria said:
Hi Tall and welcome (back) to the forum :) A friend of mine uses grilled slices of round (pumpkin-like) zucchini or aubergine as pizza crusts if her carb allowance won´t otherwise reach and is very happy with the result.
Click to expand...
Hi LaMaria, My daughter has made me mini pizzas using a cauliflower based crust which were pretty good as well. I haven't gotten her specific recipe yet, but I've seen similar on the net. No, my issue was a combination of lack of preparation (didn't eat before going out shopping) and an overall craving for Something Bad. It was limited to the one day and I'm doing a bit better now.
 
So I found a local farm stand that carries (in season) amaranth greens. This is what is used in Jamaica to make steamed callaloo, something I always eat a lot of when I visit. I bought some bunches and added some fresh diced fresh tomato and onion along with a bit of my homemade bacon for the sauté portion of cooking. Skipped the scotch bonnet pepper that the recipe called for though, a little hot for my taste. I did dice up a nice red ripe chili to make up for it.
 
The big dry sea scallops were on sale, so pan seared scallops for dinner tonight with spinach stuffed portabella 'shrooms.

Not sleeping well the last few days. Kinda caught in a loop here, because if I sleep well, I have time for exercise, but if I don't I'm trying to give myself more time to sleep. The exercise might help me sleep better, so guess I need to suck it up and short the sleep a couple days and exercise to see if it breaks me out of the cycle.
 
Baked parmesan crusted haddock and fresh sautéed lemon garlic bok choy.

Slept like @$$ again yesterday. Kinda making my long night shift even longer.
 
Another long night shift, then two days off. Yay! Actually slept ok today. Only took until the last day of the work week to settle in, then tomorrow my schedule gets upended again for the weekend. Hopefully next week goes smooth.

Carb wise today I did fine. Fat wise, meh, not so much. Still eating clean though in terms of product content and processing. Nice fresh peppers, onions and mushrooms sautéed with a little avocado oil. The fatty part came from the grilled sweet Italian sausages that I get from my local butcher.

Shout out to local businesses everywhere! I'm lucky, in that I have a few local places where I can literally do farm to table stuff any day of the week. Obviously, the produce is seasonal, but we have two pop up farmer's markets within a 10 mile radius and two really good permanent farm stands even closer.
The big one for me though is meat. There is a butcher that I've been going to for years in the town next to me. He locally sources all his meats. You want lean hamburger? He pulls out a slab of beef and cuts it off after trimming, grinds it right in front of you and packs it in freezer paper. Does anyone remember the "pink slime" controversy? Yeah, well not here! He also makes his own pork and chicken sausage on premises. The other outlet I have when going toward certain bigger or specialized cuts of meat is a local slaughterhouse and meat market. I cure and smoke a lot of my own meat. Come on over sometime and I'll make you a 14hour smoked Texas brisket that will melt in your mouth.

And lastly, I have a seafood market nearby that is superb. Guess it helps to live in a coastal state, but this place not only sells to the public, but also distributes to restaurants etc. so the turnover rate on stock is quick. They have trucks going in and out of the Boston Fish Pier all week. Market pricing is always somewhat variable, but they don't jack up the prices in their consumer market, so we buy at just over wholesale most of the time. Fresh haddock this week was $4.99lb.

The trick is, since I enjoy cooking so much, to prepare all this great stuff in healthier ways than I used to. I also need to make a more concerted effort into planning long term menus and prepping stuff on the weekend that will be easy to pull out during the week. It's easy to get through part of the week and realize you still need to prep a dinner on Thursday and just decide to order out. Never a good recipe for control of either ingredients or overall methods of preparation.

Okay, I'm out for the weekend. Wish me luck on staying clean.
 
good luck for the weekend :)

I feel a little sorry for people living in cities with no access to good fresh produce at affordable prices, I am spoilt living in a farming area with a local fishing industry. however I have been a little slack in getting the veg garden prepped for planting this year lol.
 
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