February 2011
27 posts
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Feb 1 Resolution: Push-ups and Squats
The first thing I am going to do is continue on the “4 Hour Body” diet. I don’t know if it works any better than any other diet regimen I have tried in the past. I weigh 92.9 kilos this morning which is down since I started but it certainly isn’t the startling weight and fat loss others have seen. I’m not 100% sure I am following it correctly either, certainly I am...
January 2011
41 posts
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Socca... is chickpea flour okay? →
I need to check whether or not chickpea flour passes the test as this might just be a perfect addition to those days when you really want something hearty.
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Recipe Book: Egg Foo Yung | Finding My Fitness →
This is our dinner tonight, with some modifications given that on a Sunday in Paris you can’t find quite the same ingredients. And I am making it with pork.
Update: this was great! Kids ate seconds and thirds. I used olive oil with a few drops of hazelnut oil to start, cooked garlic, onions, and ginger until soft and caramelized. I added the zucchini (courgette in these parts) for a few...
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Slow Carb Lettuce Wrap | My Four Hour Body →
Disclaimer: I haven’t tried this recipe yet but I will soon as I am getting bored with the slow-carb foods
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Wrapping up Dietcheat Day and looking to February
I didn’t manage to cram all the food I wanted in yesterday. I ate some lovely pain au chocolat. I had a galette. But I missed the kebab and French fries. Next week I guess.
Tomorrow is the end of the month which means I need to add a new habit or resolution for February. As noted in my January 1st post rather than outlining an ambitious single goal for the new year (and then failing) I am...
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Another Saturday, Another Dietcheat Day
The scale read 93.1 kilos this morning. Not great. That’s down from 94.6 which is my math is correct at this ungodly hour is 1.5 kilos (or 3.3 pounds for old-fashioned people). I am certainly not seeing the dramatic weight loss others are claiming on the 4 Hour Body/Slow-Carb diet. There are glitches in my program to be sure and I will keep working on this for a while.
One other interesting...
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Crispy nut and herb fried chicken
This recipe is adapted from Mark’s Daily Apple, a site dedicated to “primal” diet and health. I admit I am intrigued by “primal” or “paleo” even though I am healthily skeptical of some of the claims.
Ingredients
Chopped almonds. The original recipe calls for chopping nuts in a food processor. I don’t have one here so I bought finely chopped...
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Tale of the tape: 93.2 kilos, 21%
I didn’t expect great results. Usually when I travel to the US I gain five pounds and feel groggy for a few days. This time I gained .3 kilos and feel okay. Not sure if that is evidence for or against the slow-carb diet.
The hardest thing to avoid in the US was beer. When I am there it’s for a business trip so I wind up socializing more than I normally do. And socializing in the US...
Terra Plana Evo II →
I’ve been running “barefoot” for quite a while now. Mostly in minimalist FiveFingers but sometimes truly barefoot. And the hardest problem to solve has been the cold. Where I live the ground gets cold often dipping below freezing. FiveFingers are not good at this or at least they aren’t for my feet. Anything below 2C or so and my toes are frozen.
I picked up some Terra...
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A diet plan somewhat similar to mine →
This diet plan has some common elements such as announcing the plan, making it a bit extreme, not setting a specific weight goal, etc. I think one of the most difficult things about dieting in general is that there is a goal (## pounds) whereas the real change needs to be a lifestyle change.
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Red Robin, redux
Following on my earlier post there are some extra lovely things worth noting:
Notice the meal calculator photo I got from their web site. Notice the thing that is missing? Yep, all the nutrition information.
I should have taken a photo of their seasoning salt. It was perfectly nice with paprika, salt, pepper, dehydrated salt. Couple of odd choices but nothing too terrible. But the label says...
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Phys Ed: Brains and Brawn - NYTimes.com →
My wife sent me this article, thanks! Interesting information on animals, weight-lifting, and brain power.
Of course I wonder if there isn’t a message here about me lifting more weights or possibly about my brain:-)
A reversal on carbs - Los Angeles Times →
Good article on low carbs. I am not 100% convinced about paleo, slow-carb, or low carbs yet and think the likelihood is reducing the meat and fat will also wind up being important but it causes me to think (and eat more carrots)
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Saturday, go crazy
Here we go… Plans for some wheat today, bread bread and then some more bread. Might be another Jersey Mike’s sub in the mix.
I haven’t had a scale to measure progress but I suspect that not much has changed. To be fair I have not followed the slow-carb diet 100% although breakfast and lunches and have been correct. I also need to incorporate more lifting of heavy things...
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Monday, wrecked
I did well for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. My downfall was three beers after work. Which isn’t that bad. But then after dinner and talking until late it just seemed like a good idea to grab two small cheeseburgers, fries, and a coke. Really. I hate when I make decisions like that as I know that I wont really like the taste and the junk input is terrible for me.
Okay, back to the diet...
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Back in the saddle on Sunday
I had a decent slow-carb day, let’s call it a 5/10. I had some amazing bratwursts while watching football. The brats were good, the sauerkraut was great, spicy and with a lot of garlic. The negatives here came from eating one brat on a bun. For the second i decided the bun was sort of flavorless and didn’t help out so I went straight to brat+kraut. Worked fine. And I had perhaps four...
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Saturday continues...
I snacked on some tortilla chips today and you know what? I don’t really like tortilla chips. I think a) I have an idea that I like tortilla chips and b) I like salsa and the chip is the utensil I use to consume salsa. So this is one more food that I really won’t miss on a slow-carb diet.
We had great cheeseburgers for dinner. Really rich cheddar cheese really makes a burger. Other...
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End of week update
This week has been tough. I knew it would be tough because eating and exercising while traveling is always tough and the food in the US is just…. not healthy.
Normally I complain about the food in the US being fatty or bad. But this week I have been eating at good restaurants, quality ingredients. So the thing I really notice on this trip is how incredibly carb-laden the food is. Yes,...
92.9 kilos to kick off a week
Going to the US is always hard on any diet. But I am trying. Baseline is 92.9 kilos.
Eating on the go is tough. I had an omelette with spinach palak left over from dinner. Today on the plane I had a little orange juice as well as some yogurt. Not a big slip-up but I will need to keep focus on the slow-carbs.
Good news is there is plenty of Mexican food ahead.
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The aftermath
(First of all, yeah Seahawks!)
I spent my first dietcheat day doing what I was supposed to: eating all the junk I wanted. I started with toasted baguette with butter. I also had a lovely latte. For lunch I had two beers, a bacon cheeseburger, a large plate of fries. I snacked on an entire bag of potato chips although admittedly a whole bag in Paris is about the size of the small bag in the US....
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First weekly dietcheat
Yeah, it’s Saturday and the slow-carb / Tim Ferriss plan says I get to eat whatever I want. Not only can but I need to. So here I go. The foods I plan to eat today include, but are not limited to French fries, baguette (lordy living in Paris and not eating baguette has been tough), pizza, And probably some more French fries and oh yeah, the is a bag of potato chips sitting in my cupboard...
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Aux Marches du Palais - Travels with Bricin →
This was what I had for lunch today, totally Slow-Carb! Oh yeah, I had fish and roasted veggies for my main course (plat).
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Questions about Tim Ferriss' Slow-Carb Diet
I am exploring the slow-carb diet during the month of January with a specific emphasis on avoiding potatoes (my kryptonite). The book, The 4-Hour Body has a lot of information and much of it is boiled down to simple rules. But I still have questions.
Why no bread? I think I understand why no bread from white flour, but why not whole grain? Why not sprouted grains.
What about corn? I don’t...
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Mid-week update
93.8 kilos this morning. Lots of possible reasons why this could be a phantom measurement (I have a cold for instance). But still, it’s down from the baseline.
Yesterday was a rock-solid slow-carb day. I made an omelette for breakfast with some leftover veggies from the night before (red peppers and tomatoes mostly with a little corn…. Ferriss doesn’t address corn in the book I...
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Diet update (and weight!)
On Jan 3 I weighed in after a long ski vacation. I tipped (or toppled) the scales at 94.6 kilos. Which is essentially what I weighed before vacation.
Good is that I lost a belt notch. Or is that gained a belt notch? In any event, my belt shows my waist is skinner which is good and likely shows that I gained some muscles after two weeks of telemark skiing nearly every day.
Bad well…. I...
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Some questions about paleo diets →
The article above is about one of the new paleo diets. These diets are all fundamentally around the concept that people who lived 40,000 years ago were healthy therefore if we eat and act like them we will be healthy since fundamentally we are the same.
There are some nuggets of truth I here think and I admit that the idea is appealing and might in fact bear out. That said, there are some...
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First day of the resolution
To recap… I am following the slow carb diet and concentrating specifically on no potatoes. How did it go yesterday?
Yesterday we all came down with a flu. Lovely. So in sum I ate a little bread which isn’t following the diet. But what should one eat when nothing stays down? I also ate a little chicken soup and one hamburger patty. And two bottles of Sprite.
So not a great resolution day but on...
