Addictive chocolate mousse

Yesterday I made the most amazing chocolate mousse.  It is delicious and silky in the mouth, so hard to stop eating. yum!  I have to blog the recipe so that I can remember it and make it again.

Chocolate Mousse

600ml thickened cream beaten to soft peaks
1/2 cup full cream milk
1 tablespoon of gelatin
5 heaped tablespoons of cocoa (adjust to how chocolatey you like your mousse, I like it quite chocolatey)
sweetener of choice ( I used between 1/4 and 1/2 cup of dextrose)

Put milk into a saucepan and sprinkle gelatine over the surface of the milk. As the gelatine soaks up some liquid, whisk it into the milk. Put the saucepan on the stove and turn on heat to medium. Whisk in your sweetener and cocoa.  This makes a thickish paste.  Heat just long enough to dissolve the gelatine.  Meanwhile, whip your cream.

When the gelatin mixture is ready, cool slightly and then add to the beaten cream, continuing to beat as you add the gelatin mixture.

When completely mixed, cover the bowl with cling wrap and place into the fridge to set.

Variations to try in the future are replacing the dextrose with my own stevia concoction which will turn this dessert into a true low carb high fat extravaganza,  and to use raw cream to replace the commercial cream that I used this time.  The raw cream may not whip to the soft peas which will undoubtedly affect the consistency, but I will have to try it to find out.


Speaking of raw cream, our latest shipment of raw milk turned up at the beginning of the week.  It was 50% cream which amounted to 2 litres of pure cream to get through while my main milk drinker was away at school camp for the week.  Necessity breeds creativity, so I looked up some recipes that utilise cream and of course found the mother of all cream recipes.... ice cream.

Now the other thing that we have an abundance of at the moment is lemons.  Our lemon tree has gone berserk this year with lemons.  Last year we got barely any as it was severely attacked by the dreaded citrus stink bug.  After a concerted campaign of eradication that involved physically vacuuming them off the tree, the lemon tree has bounced back with avengence. This photo of the tree is taken after a concerted effort of eating, drinking, storing, preserving, giving away bags and bags of them and using them in every dish we can think of, there are still a huge number of lemons sitting on the tree.
We are getting to windy season and it seems whenever I use up some lemons in the kitchen a gust of wind will blow up and knock at least double the number of lemons I have just used to the ground.  Needless to say that we accumulating lemons on our kitchen bench at a great rate of knots.

So where was I?
Yes an abundance of fresh raw cream and lemons.  My Googling lead me to lemon ice cream. Concerned that the lemons would curdle the cream and having only really experienced lemon sorbet before, I must say that I was a little sceptical of lemon ice cream.
I should have worried not.  The ice cream was delicious and tasted just like lemon cheese cake, mmmmm.

Lemon ice cream

3 cups of raw cream beaten until it thickens.
rind and juice of 2 -3 lemons
3 whole eggs
sweetener of choice ( I used 1/4 to 1/2 cup of dextrose)

Beat cream, add rind and then eggs one by one, beating well after each addition. Beat in sweetener and juice. Put into ice cream churner and churn until ready. Enjoy

The flavours were delicious, but there was a grainy texture to the ice cream which I wondered if it was due to the egg white part of the egg going more icy than the rest of the mixture.  Many ice creams call for just the yolk ( the fatty part) to be used.  I hate wasted egg whites so decided to throw the whole lot in.
This is another recipe I would like to try and remake this time with my stevia concoction as the sweetener.

So continuing the theme of lemons, I have been busy creating a few more recipes. One thing leads to another in this business.  As there is also an abundance of strawberries in the shops for quite cheap, I had a surplus of them to use.  I made a strawberry mousse similar to the chocolate mousse recipe above, using raw honey as the sweetener this time.

Strawberry Mousse

1 punnet of cleaned and hulled strawberries, chopped.
1 cup of raw cream
1 cup coconut cream
squeeze of lemon juice
1 tablespoon raw honey
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon of gelatin.

Sprinkle gelatin over the water, add honey and heat just enough to dissolve the gelatin.
Crush the strawberries with a stick blender and add the lemon juice. Add the creams and continue to blend.  Add in the gelatin mixture in a thin drizzle.  Beat enough to combine and then refrigerate until set.

This was delicious, but was possibly a bit too firm, next time I will either lessen the amount of gelatin or increase the strawberries and cream component.

This recipe left me with some leftover coconut cream.  So I opened two cans of coconut milk and made coconut yoghurt using this basic soy yoghurt recipe.

Then I decided to make probiotic lemonade to use up a fair whack of my lemons.  For the lemonade I needed whey.  How to make whey?  With yoghurt of course, and the only yoghurt I had was the coconut yoghurt.  I'd never heard of coconut cream cheese before, but nothing ventured nothing gained.

I drained the yoghurt through a clean cloth and then tied the cloth with string and hung it up over night while the remainder of the whey drained off.  Voila whey for my probiotic lemonade, not that I had ever heard of coconut whey either, but I wasn't going to let a small thing like that stop me.

So I have followed this recipe from Wellness Mama and have 4 litres of lemonade brewing on my bench at the moment.  I have made her ginger beer before, so here's hoping that it all works out okay.

But that left me with coconut cream cheese. My original idea was to salt and herb it and use it as a savoury cheese.  But coconut is quite sweet, so I soon decided after a few taste tests that a sweet cheese cake was the way to go.  So I invented a coconut and lemon cheese cake a perfect way to use up some more lemons and that coconut cream cheese.

Coconut cream and Lemon cheese cake

(At a guess) 500g of coconut cream cheese
1 can of coconut cream
juice and rind of three lemons
1 tablespoon of gelatin
Sweetener of choice ( I used 1/4 cup of dextrose)

Beat together the coconut cream cheese and cream.  Add the rind and beat some more.
In a saucepan pour in half of the squeezed lemon juice and sprinkle over the gelatin.  Allow the gelatin to soak up some juice and then whisk it into the juice.  Add the dextrose and then heat the liquid until the gelatin dissolves.  Remove from the heat and whisk in the remaining lemon juice.  Add this lemon juice and gelatin mixture to the coconut cream mixture and beat well.  Pour into a dish to set.  You can add a biscuit crumb base if you wish, eat it as is or do what my teenage son did and add blobs of it to digestive biscuits and eat it that way.


So with some inventiveness, access to Google, a surplus of produce and a bit of time it is amazing what wonderful creations can be concocted in the humble kitchen.

LONG OVER DUE UPDATE

My last post here has been ages ago, back in May!

I have kept meaning to get back on here and update my progress.  But time marches on.

So how have things been going?

Firstly adherence to the diet

I'd say I have been about 80%, so not fantastic, but not too shabby either.  The family are still happily chowing down their starchy carbs, but I do believe I have drastically cut down on their sugar consumption, and most notably in Harry (the 12 year old) have reduced his tolerance for sweet food.  He has remarked a few times about certain things tasting too sweet.

I am not consuming carbs in great numbers, though, being winter, I have been partaking in starchy root vegetables.  They have probably had enough carbs to generally keep me above ketogenesis level.  Beetroot, carrot, parsnip, sweet potato, pumpkin and very occasionally a small amount of white potato, or a piece of corn.  The baked starchy vegies strike me as a very wintery type food, with mountains of green salads more suited to summer.  Summer is just around the corner, so baked yummies will no doubt be replaced with more salads.

I haven't eating anymore than a mouthful of things like bread, pasta or rice.  There are occasional cheats, but they can no way be considered staples in my current diet.

I am still struggling to keep my daily fat levels high.  I may manage to get it up there for a few days, but maintaining it on a consistent basis is very difficult, and I have not managed to formulate a regular diet plan that naturally incorporates it.  Therefore I do still crave carbs.  I snack less, have less overall hunger, but still probably tend to eat more often than I strictly need to. Eating has such social connotations that I still feel compelled to engage in the typical 3 meals a day even if I am not necessarily feeling that hungry for a meal.  There is definitely a satiety factor to this diet.

So a typical days eating:
2 rashers of bacon and 2 eggs for brekkie followed by a cappuccino.  (this is probably a little high in carbs as it is made using soymilk).
lunch is more of a snack, as I am not so hungry, so would be most likely some left overs from the night before or some cheese and avocado wrapped in nori sheets.
Dinner is the easiest meal with some form of protein accompanied by steamed and or baked vegies which I add a few knobs of butter to.
85%+ chocolate, nuts and some homemade coconut oil bark constitute snacks and my attempts to try and up the fat in my diet.
Dessert may constitute a piece of fruit, such as kiwi fruit or strawberries and full fat greek yoghurt.

I keep meaning to one day, or for a week, take a true measure of everything I eat and workout the relative fat, protein and carb counts.  I suspect my carbs are sometimes a little high, the protein is probably too high and fat is generally not high enough.

Weight and health

Weight has been pretty stable.  Last time I weighed myself I was sitting at around 71.5kg.  I am slightly disappointed with my body shape.  If any fat has come off my body it seems to be primarily from my limbs.  My trunk (the area that most needs to drop the fat) is stubbornly clinging to its stores. I dropped the initial dress size and now hover between sizes where 16 is too ridiculously large and baggy, but 14 is slightly tight due to the old muffin top poking over the top of my waist band.

Energy and mental health have been great and I have sailed through winter (touch wood) with nary a sniffle.  The odd time I felt I was coming down with something, passed me by without getting its hooks into me.  So I am pretty happy about that.
I am still prone to cramping in my legs at night and feel my bowels could be better, so there is definitely room to tweek my diet in order to address those issues.

I am still reading up extensively on the subject and have begun to listen to podcasts, most notably Jimmy Moore.  I am reading and listening to the LCHF and the paleo commentators, so do find myself oscillating between paleo and LCHF, still unsure of which if either camp I will ultimately land in.

So all in all still chugging along.  We are in holidays at the moment so there will no doubt be some slip ups while we socialise with visitors, but hey, life is for living and I don't want to be stuck on a restrictive diet that hampers my enjoyment in other's company.

I am still breastfeeding so am wary that I don't want anything to strict or restrictive.  I intend to keep going pretty much as I am tending toward high fat low carb and maybe pulling out some more serious ketogenesis as needed. I am also still tossing up the dairy issue and whether I will eventually kick that. But at the moment its inclusion in the diet is helping with upping the saturated fat content.

Hopefully my next update wont take so long.

Current low fat recommendations

I find it interesting to note how dietary recommendations have changed over the years.  It seems the more "low fat" the authorities recommend us to go the fatter we as a population are becoming.  Just today I heard a news report on the radio that commented on Australians now being as obese as Americans and that the rate of obesity has accelerated.  This has lead to calls for an obesity summit.  It does make you wonder if current dietary recommendations are working or are they in fact just plain wrong?
This leads me to compare three separate pieces of dietary information that I have encountered recently.
1. the High fat low carb diet I have been researching and experimenting with for the last few months;
2. a school newsletter article that came home yesterday stating current NSW Health and Heart Foundation dietary recommendations, and
3. An article from 1999 in a mothers' magazine that talks specifically about children's dietary needs of fat and the recommendations from the then Australian Dietary Guidelines for Children and Adolescence.

High Carb Low Fat

1. Low Carb, High fat flies directly in the face of current guidelines.  By reducing carbohydrates, specifically starchy and highly refined carbs we lose weight.  Sugars from all sources increase our blood sugar and trigger an insulin response.  Insulin's job is to process this excess blood sugar and shunt it off into the fat cells. Carbohydrates are digested more quickly than fats and proteins so don't provide satiety and lead to peaks and troughs in blood sugar levels and the resulting insulin responses. This is fueling obesity and other chronic conditions as many of us are developing a condition called insulin resistance by eating this way.  By increasing fat and protein content of our diet we are satisfied for longer so tend to eat less frequently. The fats are essential for satiety and for nutrients and actually assist with weight loss because they keep insulin in check.

2014 NSW Health and Heart Foundation recommendations

2. The school newsletter articles that came home from school yesterday are really interesting and encapsulate the current thinking. The accompanying flyer states a few  "facts" that I will list here:
Did you know?
* National surveys found that the combined level of overweight and obese children in Australia has more than doubled in recent years.
* A major study revealed that the number of overweight and obese children in NSW rose from 1 in 10 in 1985 to 1 in 4 in 2004.
* Healthy snacks help kids and teens meet their daily nutritional needs. Snacks based on fruit, vegies, reduced fat dairy products and whole grains are the healthiest choices. Limit snacks that are high in sugar or saturated fats - such as chips, cakes and chocolate- which can cause children to put on excess weight.
* Reduced fat milk for children over 2 years of age is a nutritious drink and great source of calcium.

And here is a recipe to make for your child's breakfast:
Ingredients
2 eggs
1 tablespoon honey
2 1/2 cups of low fat milk
3 ripe bananas, sliced
2 cups of self raising flour
2 tablespoons of sugar
2 tsp margarine
3 medium apples, peeled, cored and grated.
Method
In a large bowl beat eggs, margarine and milk. In a separate bowl mix flour and sugar, add grated apple and stir into the wet mixture until smooth.
Heat oil in pan over medium heat. Add 2-3 tablespoons of mixture. Flip when bubbles appear and cook until golden. Serve with banana and drizzled honey.
Makes ten.
The picture shows a serve as a stack of three with thick sliced bananas between each layer and a sizeable amount of honey drizzled over the whole thing.

Is it a coincidence that children are eating more often and are getting fatter?  At my child's Primary school there is a breakfast club where the kids can get a feed of cereal and milk or toast and a glass of juice before school.  Around an hour or so later the kids are encouraged to have 'fruit break' to maintain their energy and concentration levels.  Then another hour or so later at ten past eleven they have lunch.  Lunch has been pushed to earlier in the day and been swapped with recess because it was decided that the children's energy was flagging and they needed a nutritious lunch earlier in the day so that they could make it through the next session.  They then have a recess break, for another snack at 1.15pm.  That is a lot of the day focussed on feeding the kids so as to keep them mentally alert. Sounds like the peaks and troughs of a high carbohydrate diet to me.
Then we wonder why they are getting fat and now need to increase physical activity to counteract all the eating. I wonder what would happen if we fed the kids something substantial like sausages and eggs for breakfast.  How many of them would be needing fruit break or even that early lunch?  They'd be able to spend more time playing in their breaks rather than eating too.
A substantial lunch - at lunch time - and they wouldn't be rushing home from school absolutely ravenous and prepared to eat any junk that they could find.  Maybe just a small snack and then they'd be right until dinner.

Now number three, the dietary guidelines I found from 1999.

This article is in response to a mother asking how much fat she should include in her child's diet.  The article is from Nursing Mothers' Newsletter summer 1999 and quotes the then current Australian Dietary guidelines for children and adolescents.
The association between high fat intakes and diseases in adulthood has led to important public health messages urging Australian adults to eat less fat.  It is important to remember that children are not simply little adults and they have special nutrient needs related to their growth and development.
Fat is important for growth because it is a concentrated source of energy. Although children's growth rate slows down during toddlerhood and school years they still require a higher energy intake per kilogram of body weight than adults. A moderate amount of fat in the diet is important to meet those needs.
Fat not only provides energy but also other important components for growth, such as essential fatty acids for cell structure and central nervous system development and precursors for the synthesis of eicosanoids ( such as prostaglandins).  Fat is also a vehicle for dietary sources of fat soluble vitamins. For these reasons low fat diets are not suitable for children under five years......

So in the intervening years 1999 to the present low fat diets have become appropriate for the under fives.  We never hear about the positives to our nutrition of consuming fat.  Fat is labeled as just fat and hence bad for us.  No wonder people get confused about what to eat.  Our health authorities are not exactly being very honest with us. I also don't believe that all of those attributes of fat as an essential nutrient for our bodies cuts out at age five, either.

I am glad that I ignored the low fat advice for my children. I always believed that their growing brains needed fat ( I had never really considered all the other reasons they may have needed fat) and unless they showed definite signs of obesity I would not ever have thought to make them switch to low fat.  My children are 18, 16 and 12 and are slim.  They have never had or needed a low fat diet.  I am glad that I am more informed about fat now and just wish I hadn't spent years trying to adhere to a low fat diet for myself. My skinniest child is now 6 foot 3 and still a bean pole.  He loves his meat and fat.  If anyone is proof that a high fat diet doesn't make you fat, he is. His example is probably the reason why I thought that there may be something in this new way of eating and thus I decided to give it a try myself.

It's now more than two weeks since I have started eating low carb high fat again.  The transition has been much easier than when I first started in February. This time round the sugar cravings (so far) are less and my sweet tooth is greatly diminished, but like any good addict I'm sure it wouldn't take much to push me back to a life of debauchery. Already I have greatly increased energy, I feel lighter and have lost some centimetres around my middle.  I haven't weighed or measured myself, but my clothes feel looser.

Finally, I will end this blog post with some words of wisdom from Dr Seuss.  He has a quote for everything doesn't he? Ellie, my one year old loves the Dr Seuss' ABC book and every time I read this page I think of David Gillespie's Sweet Poison.....

The holiday is over

Yesterday was mothers' day and that marked the end of the reprieve from the new woe (way of eating).  Not such a good acronym in my opinion.  It has given me a chance to assess the low carb high fat diet, or way of eating (woe) as the proponents would prefer to say.  I have also stocked up on a couple of cook books in the intervening time, Pete Evans' Healthy Every Day and Christine Cronau The Fat Revolution; and started to cook with ghee in the hopes that it will be a more suitable fat for the dairy free members of the house hold.

So first.  What exactly happened?
Well with the Easter season upon me I relaxed the rules and ate whatever was going basically.  So no care for high or low carb/ fat etc.  I ate lots of chocolate Easter eggs, that at first didn't taste the best, but I soon developed a liking for them.  I also tried to keep my fat intake pretty high, so lots of butter on my bread and muffins, cream with dessert, that sort of thing.

How did I go, what did I notice?

The first most noticeable thing was after only a couple of days of increasing my carbs my nighttime leg cramps disappeared.  These had been quite debilitating and annoying.  I had heard that they were a side effect of going LCHF but would pass quickly.  Mine persisted, even when I tried various measures to combat them (high doses of magnesium, potassium, epsom salt baths, compression stockings).  This leads me to believe that perhaps my muscle glycogen levels were falling too low over night and causing me to cramp.  I have never read this anywhere, just postulating from personal experience.  But it does seem pretty clear that I need more carbs in my diet to stop me from cramping.

The second thing that I noticed was the skin eruptions that I was starting to have while on the diet did not improve once I increased carbs.  So there is something else in my diet that is causing them.  The muscle cramps seem to be caused by something lacking, the red itchy and scaly skin patches caused by something I am reacting to.  I used to get similar things on my face from using face creams that had chemicals in them that my skin didn't like.  These ones are occuring on my body, legs, neck etc, so are not related to an external skin product.  That leads me to assume that they are caused by something that is now in the diet that wasn't there in the past.  The most likely culprit is dairy.  I having been eating a lot of dairy in the way of butter, cream, cheese and yoghurt.  I was almost 100% dairy free before the diet. So I may need to consider limiting the dairy, either cutting it out altogether or trialing only fermented dairy and see if I can tolerate that.

Thirdly, yes I did put some of the weight that I had lost back on.  I could tell by the tightness of my clothes.  I have been dreading doing a weigh in, but this morning decided to jump back on the scales and get the tape measure out.  Here are today's measurements:
Weight 75kg
waist 92cm
ribs 85cm
hips 106cm

Compared to the measurements from week 8, they are not too horrible and still down on where I started.  Which makes me think that perhaps the initial stages of going sugar free may actually improve the body's state of insulin resistance.  Again another area that probably needs some research.  The more insulin resistant you are the easier it is to regain weight, perhaps.....
Just to compare week 8 (2 April, almost 6 weeks ago) figures were:
weight 73.5kg
waist 89cm
ribs 87cm
hips 105cm.
So a 1.5kg gain, 3 cm on my waist, I could feel that with the tightness of my clothes, a loss on my ribs (but that was probably dodgy measuring) and 1 cm on my hips.  Not as bad as I feared.  It will be interesting if renewed vigour in maintaining low carbs will have an effect or whether I will plateau at this size.  Around 75 kg does seem to be a bit of a default setting for me.
This week I shall focus on limiting sugar and ease back into low carb eating a bit more slowly and hopefully will find a sustainable woe (though we need a happier acronym for sure) that I can live with.

LCHF pikelets

This is a recipe I developed yesterday, but didn't get around to cooking and eating until today.  The mixture thickened considerably overnight. I needed to use up some dodgy sour cream and I remembered seeing a recipe somewhere on the web that uses sour cream and eggs to make pancakes.  Of course when I wanted to find it I couldn't.  I did find a similar one using cream cheese.  This is what I did:

LCHF pikelets

300ml sour cream
6 eggs
4 tablespoons psyllium husk.

Beat all ingredients together and fry in butter.  Put small dollops in a frying pan, cook until golden on one side and then flip.  They will be a little delicate, so flip with care. Fry until golden on the other side and then serve.  The mixture will initially be quite runny.  The longer you leave it the more it will thicken up.

I had both a savoury and a dessert version.  For the savoury version I made some homemade pesto and spread it on top of the pikelet along with avocado slices and tomato slices.

Pesto

Handful or two of basil leaves
tablespoon of grated Peccorino cheese
2 -3 garlic cloves
squeeze of lemon juice
splash of olive oil
2 tablespoons of pine nuts.

Roughly chop with a knife or mortar and pestle til it is at the consistency you like.  I like it chunky.  Just adjust the flavours to suit your palate.  I like mine pretty garlicky.  Fresh basil pesto is sublime.

The dessert version I had later in the day, so the pikelets were cold from having been in the fridge.
I had some chia pudding in the fridge already.....

Chia Pudding

To two tablespoons of Chia seeds add coconut milk, vanilla and cinnamon.  Leave to thicken in the fridge overnight.  How much coconut milk/cream depends on what variety you use.  Chia significantly increase in size.  My kids call them fish eggs.  You will need to experiment, but about a cup should be enough for two tablespoons of seeds.

To the Chia pudding I added whipped cream that had been flavoured with decaf coffee and vanilla, and ever so slightly sweetened with stevia.  The decaf coffee was brewed and I had it waiting in ice trays in the freezer for just such occasion.  Coffee flavoured whipped cream is also divine.  A gentle grate of dark chocolate into the coffee cream can also be an amazing addition.  I didn't do that tonight as I thought teaming it with the chai pudding would be good enough.

Savoury or sweet the sour cream pikelets were delicious and definitely a great LCHF recipe.

New figures

Following on from yesterday's post I decided to take it a bit further and redo my figures from day 1.

There has been a bit of a change and a significant loss of fat.  It would be nice to record that, before I hit Easter and break the diet.

On day one I compared my waist and hip measurements.  They came in at a ratio of 0.9.  The ideal for women is less than 0.8.  With a waist measurement of 89 cm and a hip measurement of 105.5 cm my ratio is sitting at 0.84.  That is a big improvement.

I also redid my lean body weight calculations.
On day 1 I had a body fat percentage of 33.7% or 26.6 kg giving me a lean body mass of 52.4 kg.

The ideal body fat range for a woman of my age (41-50) is 22%-28%.

Today I worked out that my body fat is 28.19% so I am sitting just a smidge outside the ideal range. That equates to 20.72 kg fat.

I worked it our like this:
Waist = 89 cm = 35 inches = 40.46 (according to the chart in Protein Power)
Hip    = 105.5 cm = 41.5 inches = 29.33 (according to the chart in Protein Power)
height = 175 cm = 68.5 inches = 41.6 ( according to the chart in Protein Power)

(40.46+29.33)-41.60 =28.19%

73.5 kg x 28.19% = 20.72 kg

73.5 kg - 20.72 kg = 52.78 kg lean body mass.

52.78 kg = 116.36 pounds

116.36/78 = 1.49 = 149 = 67.6 kg
116.36/72 = 1.62 = 162 = 73.5 kg

So my healthy weight range is 67.6 kg - 73.5 kg.  This has me sitting right on top of my healthy weight range.

At 116.36 pounds of lean body mass I can eat 70 g of protein / day. (116.36 x 0.6 = 70)  Divided by three meals that is about 23 g / meal.  Not that I have been particularly tracking my protein intake.  At a guess I'd say I have been going over that.

Finally, I shall compare BMI, not that I placed much stock in that measurement.
Day 1 my BMI was 25.
Today it is 24.  The site suggests a healthy weight range of 57 - 76 kg.  That is quite a big range really.

Come back wagon!

Yep I was naughty again this week.  I was presented with a piece of chocolate, a slice of Toblerone to be exact and it was in my mouth and melting deliciously before I even knew what i was doing.  So I ran with it and decided to enjoy it.  I could easily have had more too, but no more was offered.....luckily.

My guess before I even weigh and measure is that I have put on weight this week.  I still crave sweet stuff, chocolate in particular and find I am probably eating more than I should in order to distract myself from the sweet desires.  Perhaps if I move towards some muscle building exercises I might have more control over my weight.  I am still being extremely good with avoiding starching carbohydrates but suspect I am eating too much protein, and maybe too much dairy.  I am in two minds about dairy and trying to decide where I will go with it after Easter.  Do I go more paleo based and less high fat based and see if it is the dairy that is making my body retain weight, or do I carefully map and measure my specific carbohydrate,protein and fat needs verses actual intakes?

For the next few weeks I'll ease up on myself while I ponder these things.  I feel that the diet is close to being right, I just haven't quite nailed it yet.  Maybe it's the appetite caused by breastfeeding and waking several times throughout the night, but at week eight,
still wanting to eat between meals and still craving sweet carbs is a bit of a worry.  I had hoped that I had put in the hard yards and should be benefiting from my abstinence by now. Maybe it's the small amounts of fruit or the small amount of sugar in the soy milk which are keeping the sweet meters active. At any rate I need to take stock and decide where to go from here. Perhaps I need to read a bit more.......

Weigh in for the end of week 8:
weight 73.5 kg
waist 89 cm
ribs 87 cm
hips 105 cm

This is the first time that I have created a chart in word. I could probably make the losses look more impressive if I changed the values on the vertical axis, but I am a bit technologically challenged.  I might have a play another day.

That's better... always nice to learn something new, especially when you can work it our for yourself.

Next week is week 9. The last week of school for term 1 and then we start the term break.  Easter falls right in the middle of the term break and I will be going away for a week when I will be at the mercy of whatever I get fed by the people I am staying with.  That gives me exactly two weeks left of me being in control and then I leave the diet to rest until I get back and we have celebrated Steve's birthday in early May.  It will be really interesting to see where I fall on the graph in one month's time.

It was bound to happen

I fell off the wagon yesterday.

After 7 weeks one would think that my need for sugar would have passed.  But no.  I can not equate a beautiful dessert with a plate of broccoli which is what so many people claim happens once you boot the sugar addiction.  I have blogged for a few weeks now that I have really felt like something sweet.

Last night I caved.
I made banana muffins for my daughter who is going away camping for a few days.  It's those dreaded over ripening bananas that are the problem.  I can't stand seeing food go to waste.  So three weeks in a row now I have had to made something with them.  The last two weeks I tried to use a high fat paleo style recipe to add to the bananas in order to reduce their carb load.
This week however I made the banana muffins the conventional way, even using white flour (shock horror).
I added lots of eggs and butter, but I'm not sure that can mitigate the sweetness of the very ripe bananas and the white sugar I also used (eeek).  Anyway I HAD to taste the mix.  And then I had to lick the bowl.  And then I had to taste one of the cooked versions.  White sugar and white flour in one big whammo hit.

I shall climb back on the wagon, I just have these delicious banana muffins sitting between me and the wagon right now.

Before this little transgression I did have the feeling that my weight loss had slowed or reversed this week.  It's a weird thing to weigh and measure yourself each week.  Never before in my life have I bothered to do this.  So maybe weekly fluctuations are normal, I have no way of knowing.  This week however, my weight has stayed the same at 72kg, but my centimetres have increased.  Is there some fluid retention occurring because I have a period due next week, or have I put on some more fat?  No way to know really.

Last week my waist was 87cm this week it is 90.5cm.
Last week my ribs were pretty similar to my waist measurement so I didn't even bother recording it.  This week it is 86.5cm
My hip measurement has stayed constant at 105.5cm across the two weeks.

Wonder what these naught banana muffins are going to do to my stats for next week.  I'm now into week 8, my cravings shoulda been over, I hope this doesn't mean I have to go alllllll the way back to the start again. sigh.
Oh and that's it no more buying bananas, that's three weeks in a row that my carb loving kids haven't managed to eat them before they got all soft and mushy.  Maybe they are losing their carb reliance, hmmm.

Week six and navigating TEMPTATION

Oh this was a hard week.  Temptation everywhere.  It's so obvious I am still hopelessly addicted to the sugary stuff.  The carbs are generally not a problem, I can cope easily with no bread, pasta, cakes, bikkies or potatoes.  But Lollies are another matter.  I am still unequivocally craving sweet stuff. Dessert and lollies and chocolate. Yum.  I would just like to go crazy with some.
As I mentioned last post, my brother was here for a visit.  They stayed a few days in the area and popped over quite often to share meals with us.  They kindly brought all sorts of yummy sweet treats over to share.  There was a daily struggle for me to resist the temptation of a chocolate coated biscuit or some rich ice cream.  I managed it, but I think that I put on weight just looking at all that beautiful food.  Plus it also meant diving into some of my standby craving busters fairly often.  So I was eating to curb cravings brought on by temptation rather than eating to fill an empty belly.
I have also said before that I wonder whether the Stevia is maintaining my craving for sweet stuff. I have been eating a fair bit of fresh whipped cream and homemade chocolate that has been sweetened with stevia.  It addresses the immediate need for something sweet, but I haven't managed to kick the long term need for dessert or sweets after a meal.  This is one habit that is proving rather hard to break.  It basically amounts to additional calories that I am not even hungry for.  My tummy can tell that I am satisfyingly full, but my mouth is telling me to finish off with something sweet.


This week I did weigh myself and my dodgy scales decided that I had put on a kilo. My tape measure has showed me losing another centimetre and my ribs and waist are much in a muchness in size now. 


I'd like to see how I go next week with far less temptation placed before me and I will attempt to listen to my body's full signals a bit better.


Skinwise, I have decided this week that it is looking less dry.  After six weeks it appears that some of this saturated fat might be making its way towards the surface and affecting the upper layers of skin cells. Some sore looking sun spot type marks seem to be looking like they are healing.  I will keep an eye on this in coming weeks to see if this is a pattern that will continue.


I made a banana cake during the week, which is strictly a bit high in carbs but I needed to use up the bananas that the kids haven't eaten.  I didn't add any sugar and I kept it as high fat as I could:
Banana Cake
1 1/2 cups of my Paleo flour  (mix of LSA, coconut flour and psyllium husk)
3 teaspoons baking powder
3 very ripe bananas
6 eggs
1/4 cup coconut oil.


Mix together and bake in two ring tins.  It is quite nice loaded with butter, sour cream or whipped Cream.  I ate small slivers with lots of topping.


I also made (because we had guests) the red kidney bean cake.  For this one I used dextrose as the sweetening agent and again ate it with lashings of cream.
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups kidney beans
1 tablepoon vanilla
1 tablespoon coffee
7-8 tablespoons cocoa
125g butter
1 cup dextrose
Process 1 egg and the kidney beans with the coffee and vanilla.
Beat butter and dextrose together.  Add remaining eggs one at a time.  Add Kidney bean mixture and bake in a spring form cake tin.


This idea of lots of eggs and butter and a little bit of flour or other thickening agent could be worth experimenting with to make other cakes/breads.  It looks like the basis for a few of the paleo recipes I see around the net.


After writing this blog I am going to make another banana cake (yes more soggy bananas to use up).
I am going to use heaps of butter, coconut oil, eggs (three bananas as the sweetener) and I have some almond milk to use up.  Lots of coconut and my paleo flour with baking powder.  I'll see how it goes.  The Almond milk may make things too wet.  I will post a recipe if it is any good.


Okay another week and off we go, ahhhhh sugar if only you weren't so delicious..........

Five weeks down

And yes I am still addicted to sugar!!  I would love nothing better than to jump into a big vat of chocolate and wallow around in it for a few hours. 
There have been loads of temptations over the last week.  I have lightened up on the kids and have allowed them more carbs and sugar than they were getting as they have been complaining bitterly about the totalitarian regime that they have found themselves under. So I relented and bought sugar and digestives biscuits and white pasta. I haven't eaten any and neither have I been tempted to. But Evan was brandishing around some fun sized chocolate bars and some lollies after getting home from camp last week.  So nice of the kids to want to share with their mother.  And it would have been so easy to just have one little one, I so wanted to.  Instead I popped it in the fridge for later, and as happens to anything vaguely yummy around here, IT DOESN'T LAST LONG. I looked a day or two later and it was long gone.  Good. Phew.
My brother is visiting atm and keeps popping over with yummy treats.  The kids are stoked.  I'm so tempted by the Lindt chocolates and chocolate smothered biscuits.  I have resisted so far.  But a girl is not a saint, so I don't know how long I will last.  Particularly as tonight they have offered to bring dessert. Sigh.
I do have a few strategies in place, however.  I have been making my own chocolate with coconut oil, cocoa and stevia which I keep in the freezer.  It is great to have when the cravings strike.  It hits the spot until the desire passes.  I have been eating ALOT of that lately.  Fresh whipped cream with a dash of vanilla is another great thing to have in the fridge.  It tastes so good and definitely feels indulgent.  A great big dollop of fresh whipped cream and a small sprinkle of blueberries makes a fabulous dessert and doesn't leave you feeling at all deprived.  My brother brought some strawberries over too which went a treat with the whipped cream.  Full fat plain Greek yoghurt works well too and of course nibbling on cheese instead of bikkies helps.  But you really do need to have something in place, because these tempting social situations crop up with surprising regularity.


I wasn't going to weigh myself this week, But I kinda did.  I started out just measuring myself with the tape measure.  I had noticed that my undies felt a little looser, so I checked out my hip measurement. Up until now that measurement has sat at around 108-107cm and really didn't look like moving at all.  This morning I clocked it at 105cm, so that would explain the extra room in my undies.  I went on and measured my waist and ribs. It looks like another 3.5cm have come off my waist.  It is now 88cm, last week it was 91.5cm.  My ribs seem to have stayed stable at around 86cm.
My waist started at 98cm five weeks ago.  I have lost 10cm, that is pretty impressive.  My size 16 clothes are now ridiculously baggy and I am wearing size 14 with comfort.  Some garments are even
starting to feel a little looser. than others.
Ok after those positive measurements with which to start the day, I had to jump on the scales. I know my scales are dodgy, so I don't place too much confidence in them, but it looked like my weight was sitting around 71kg...... I wonder, will I make it to below 70kg by Easter?  That is still another 4 or 5 weeks away, so hopefully if I keep on track I will.


Here's to a positive week, with my brother still here for a few days yet I wonder if I will fall off the wagon by next week?  Only way to find out is to tune in next week......

Week four and I think I will give up on the scales

I don't know what my scales are doing.  I jumped on the scales and they seemed to show either 71kg or 72kg, it was hard to tell.  So I switched to my newer prescription glasses and jumped back on and the scales showed 74kg.  It seems to depend a bit on where you stand on them and your exact weight distribution.  That is obviously going to change each time I get onto the scales, so for a weekly measurement of only a kilo or two they are really no good.  Perhaps they will be better at showing general trends over a longer period of time.

This week I know that I have lost, because I have taken my bra strap in another notch or two and my belt needs a new hole in it.  So my body measurements have obviously shrunk.  Now to the tape measure and to see how the numbers stack up.  I hope that the tape measure is a bit more reliable than the scales.

Well that's interesting.  I felt smaller this week, but the tape measure is not showing it.
Waist is coming in at 91 cm and last week it was 90 cm
ribs are  86 cm and last week they were 85.5 cm.
I haven't exercised much this week, I probably only walked to school once.

The good thing is that I am feeling good and my appetite is way down.  I did okay with the Ash Wednesday fast yesterday.  I had a snack of cheese around lunchtime and then a small handful of nuts around 5pm.  Then had dinner as normal around 7pm.

Ok ever onward to another week.  This week I am going to make some chocolate...low carb of course! Adios

I may have turned the corner

I came up with a couple of simple and delicious recipes today.  I have been looking for ways to increase my fat content in my diet in delicious ways.

The first idea I had was to pick some fresh herbs from my garden and mix it through cream cheese.  I spread this herbed cream cheese on my paleo pancakes and also used it as a dip with carrot sticks and slices of cucumber.

Herbed Cream cheese

To half a tub of cream cheese I added 1 heaped tablespoon of chopped fresh chives and 1 heaped
tablespoon of chopped fresh herbs ( a combination of basil, sage and oregano).
Mix together and pop into the fridge for a couple of hours so that the flavours can mingle.

Blueberry smoothie

The second recipe is even easier.  I felt like something sweet and I had not had my fruit for the day. So I grabbed a handful of frozen blueberries and whizzed them up with about 100ml of fresh cream.  It tasted delicious and decadent.  If I wanted it even more ice cream like I could make the same recipe in a larger lot and churn it in my ice cream maker. Easy, tasty and made with real ingredients. Yummo.

This got me thinking about other ways to enjoy cream cheese and cream.  I reckon a delicious cheese cake filling could be made with frozen blueberries, cream cheese and cream.  As I am breaking my sweetness addiction and getting back my sensitivity to sweet stuff, there is no need to add any more sweetness.  This is one advantage of going cold turkey on cutting out sweets and not replacing them with artificial sweeteners.  I suspect artificial sweeteners would just maintain your liking for really sweet stuff.

As the title says, I do feel a whole lot better this week.  I do feel like I have tackled the fatigue of the first few weeks and my body is settling into this new way of eating.  I think it has taken me three weeks for my digestive system to adapt.  I was close to questioning the continuance there for a while.  But I kept telling myself that a couple of weeks really isn't very long and I need to give it longer to truly assess its worth.  That's one reason why it has been handy to set my self a specific time limit in which to trial the diet.  Easter is my marker and now I am more than sure that I can make it to there.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and as a Catholic I am required to fast and abstain from meat.  We are allowed one main meal and two small snacks. I will be interested to see how I go.  Today I didn't particularly get hungry for breakfast until quite late (around 11.30am). Then I ate lunch and breakfast quite close together.  As for lasting all the way to dinner time on only two snacks....hmmmm.  I think that I maybe having a very early dinner tomorrow night.  I am planning on heading to the fish coop and getting something nice and fishy, perhaps calamari or prawns.  I'll serve them with a big salad and I bet they will taste delicious.  For snacks, I guess it will be nuts and cheese.  Or maybe I should just eat slabs of butter.  I haven't quite made it to that level of fat in take yet!

If it's interesting I'll let you know how it goes!

Sweet dreams

 

I had a dream this morning about being surrounded by and eating a delicious variety of desserts. I was trying to only have a small piece of each, but I was determined to have a taste of all of them.  This dream reminds me of what can happen when you break an addiction, when you are close to kicking the habit you start to dream about it.......a lot.  It's like your sub conscious is trying to test you, or maybe your brain is just exercising some old pathways that haven't been used lately.  I didn't feel any guilt or sense of failure over eating the desserts, but I wasn't going nuts over them either.
I think it is a positive step in the right direction.

I do still feel like chocolate.....a lot. I am pretty keen on getting stuck into some over Easter. 

Remember that this experiment with this new way of eating was to last until Easter.  I would go off the diet for Easter, Sarah's birthday and Steve's birthday and then reassess whether I plunge back in and continue it through until December when the next round of parties and celebrations crank up.

Yes I feel like chocolate still.  But I have noticed that already my sweet detector is so much more sensitive now.  So maybe I will be hard pressed to find chocolate that is not too sweet.  I think 70% cocoa is about as unsweetened as I can find.  I will definitely be keeping my eye out for the least sweet chocolate that I can possibly find.

It's interesting that the rest of the family have not had the same effect on their taste buds.  As they haven't forsaken all of their sweet stuff they don't even notice that some of the foods I am picking as sweet have any sweetness in them at all. 
I made some carob yesterday. Technically it is a bit high in carbs, but I had half a packet of powder that was just out of date, so I wanted to use it up.  I simply mixed the powder with coconut oil and then spread it out very thinly on a piece of grease proof paper on a tray.  Then I popped it into the freezer to set.  It is quite yummy, though a bit sweet.  Carob has natural sweetness.  I am eating it (just to use it up) and telling myself that at least I am getting a dose of that good coconut oil for my trouble. :)

The other two things I noticed today is that I seem to have a bit more energy and my appetite has lessened.  This morning for breakfast I cooked bacon and eggs and I insisted that we all have 3 eggs with our bacon.  I added butter to the top of my eggs.  I found that I could not make my way through all of my breakfast.  I had to stop with half a rasher and most of my third egg to go.  I then did not feel hungry or need to eat until about 4.30pm and that was after I had spent a few hours digging in the garden!  At 4.30 I had a bit of watermelon and a piece of the carob I had made.  Then I was satisfied until dinner time which came at 8pm.  For dinner I had delicious calamari fried in garlic and salt and pepper, served with a big salad swimming in a dressing of lime juice, olive oil, sesame oil and fish sauce. Yum, yum, yum.

Paleo pancakes or bread

I'm not 100% sure whether this is paleo, but it just has a better ring to it then LCHF.
I have read various recipes for pancakes/bread and have let them permeate around my brain for a while.  Today I really felt like something with more of a carb feel.  So I threw together these, and I think that they tasted pretty good and had a decent texture.

1/2 can coconut cream (I used the solid cream on top and used the liquid bit for something else)
1/2 cup of LSA (Ground Linseed, Sunflower and Almond)
2 tablespoons of coconut flour
2 tablespoons of psyllium husk
6 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon vanilla ( I was aiming for something sweet-ish, if I wanted a savoury version I would omit this)

Beat together eggs and coconut cream.  Mix in vanilla and dry ingredients.  Fry in a pan in melted butter.
I served mine topped with a hunk of butter and a sprinkle of cinnamon.
I found it quite sweet enough, but I have been sugar free for a number of weeks now.

Week three and we see progress

I know it's only two days since I posted the week 2 progress, but the measurements for week two were taken a week ago.  I was just slack in getting them onto my blog.

before, day 2

Another week down and as I gazed at the numbers on the scale this morning I realised that I had dropped another kilo. So I am now 74kg.  My size 16 pants do feel quite loose and this is born out by my measurements this week.

Waist 90cm
ribs 85.5cm
hips are still staying pretty much the same.  But I have tended to always have slim-ish legs and carry my weight around my middle.

week 1

Lets line up the photos from the three weeks and see how they compare. Before, week 1 and week 3....

 week three (this week)

I am not seeing a huge difference from  front on between each of the weeks. I know my photography is dodgy and blogger is being a right pain with its formatting.  I am having all sorts of trouble posting these photos on here.  The formatting keep jumping around on me.

I will post side on photos, there seems to be more obvious progress there.

before shot at day 2

I realise that given I weighed myself on day 3 and had lost three kilos already,  this probably isn't a true "before" shot. I had no idea at day 2 that weight loss would be so dramatic.

 week 1, hmmm not sure.

I don't think the photo shows much difference.  I wish blogger would let me line them all up next to each other.  I either don't have the technical know how or blogger's formatting rules suck.

 week 3, this week.

Yeah I can see progress. 8cm from my waist, 7.5cm from my ribs and 5kg. There is something happening, for sure.

A typical day's food is as follows:

Breakfast:

Muesli made with nuts, seeds and coconut flakes. Around 100ml cream. A handful of frozen blueberries.

cup of tea

Lunch:

Salad of mixed leaves, cucumber, tomato, capsicum, snow peas and a hunk of meat, egg and cheese. Either all three or whatever I have on hand.

cup of dandelion tea

Dinner:

Meat of some variety with either steamed vegies or a salad.  I try to add sour cream or butter to dinner to try and up the fat content.  I am finding it hard to add fat to things and it mostly seems to be in the form of dairy.  Before this LCHF diet I wasn't really a dairy eater, so I'm not sure about the inclusion of so much of it into my diet now.

For snacks I have nuts or  full fat yoghurt and sometimes mix double cream with my yoghurt. I drink heaps of water, I find I am quite thirsty.  I have another cup of dandelion tea before bed.

I am not hungry, but still do wish I could sneak something sweet sometimes.  Every now and then I will satisfy my sweet desires by sucking slowly on a frozen blueberry.

Until next week.........

Progress week 2

I'm a bit behind with getting the week 2 progress written up.  It's almost time to weigh in and measure up for week 3.  But I did take the readings last week, I just haven't gotten around to recording them on the blog until now. And I didn't get around to taking a photo. Oh well.

Progress has definitely slowed after the lightning take off from week one.  I still feel tired and am not sure that my body has quite converted itself to being keto-adapted. I went out for dinner during the week and easily left the rice and bread roll on the side of the plate.  I used the pat of butter to eat with my chicken.  I did eat the cream and cheesecake for dessert, but resisted with no difficulty at all the chocolate mud cake that was placed in front of me. I am starting to feel less like I need to snack, though MKR does still get me feeling like eating when I watch that.

Last week I put on 2kg so my weight went back up to 75kg.
But..
My body measurements changed, so the fat is being redistributed around my body.
Day 10 my waist was 93.5cm, whereas day 14 it was 91cm. 
At day 10 my rib cage measurement (the smallest bit of me) was 90.5cm and by day 14 was 87cm.  To me it's under the rib cage that has all of those major organs, so cm's lost there should be significant. I have noticed that I can go 2 notches tighter on my bra and have tightened the shoulder straps too.

I find it interesting that there was no weight lose, in fact a slight gain and yet there were more cm's lost that week than in the first week. It will be interesting to see what the next weeks weight and measurement bring.  I really hope that I start to reap more energy out of this diet, because so far I feel a bit drained.  (But then baby isn't sleeping real well either, so perhaps it's non diet related).

Day 10 update

I am still in a state of disbelief about how much and how quickly the weight falls off by eating LCHF.  I keep jumping on the scales each day to see if they are lying about yesterday's weight and low and behold another kilo has disappeared.  Maybe I am dreaming, and I will wake up soon and discover it has all been in my imagination.

It does seem to be true however, fat does not make you fat.  Sugar and refined carbohydrates do.  And a calorie is not a calorie in the traditional sense, it is all to do with how your body metabolises its food.  Eating carbohydrates is like pouring fluid into a blocked up funnel.  Eventually you overload the funnel and the excess pours out (or get stored as fat in the analogy relating to our body) However your body in ketosis seems to be an incredibly efficient user of what goes into the funnel, there are no blockages, and excess energy requirements are taken out of your body's fat stores.  It just seems like a more sensible way to run your body, by not glugging it up and making it sluggish and slow.

I do have more energy now, but still feel I haven't quite hit my strides yet.

I am fairly sure that the less than pleasant taste in my mouth is the ketosis at work.  Some people test their urine with special strips from the pharmacy, but I am reasonably sure I can tell my body is in a keto state by the taste in my mouth.  Hope I don't have bad breath.  I haven't asked anyone yet if I do.  It also feels like a good hit of something lovely and sweet would sort that out too.  Yes I still feel like some lovely desserts, but it's not a bad craving, just a little bit tempting.

So the new measurements, let's compare:
The most dramatic change has been my weight.  In just 10 days:
At day 1 it was 79kg, 10 days later it is 73kg.  6 kilos or one stone in the old money in just ten days.  That is crazy, I've never experienced anything like it.  And this is coming from me who had a very severe gut bug where I barely ate and anything I did eat ran virtually straight through me.  I lost weight that time, but not that fast.

Ok waist measurement at the narrowest point is slightly less impressive, especially as this is the area where I am supposed to get a bit thinner.
At day 1 I was 92cm, 10 days later I am 90.5cm
My tummy that measured 98cm on day 1 is now 93.5cm which is a bit more impressive.
My hips are unchanged and are still 108cm.

Visually, I think that I look thinner in my arms and upper body, I don't think it is very noticeable around my middle at all.  I was going to post photos but I don't think with my ordinary photographic skills they will show much change from day 2.

Anyway, I still feel a bit dubious about my scales, my brain doesn't want to believe what my eyes see.  Perhaps if I drop below the magical 70kg mark I might finally believe.  Let's see what the new week brings.......

Day Seven Feeling pretty good

Day seven already and I haven't felt in anyway food deprived.  I have been able to eat as much as I wanted so long as it was low carbohydrate.  I have missed a few carby things, but the deprivation of the sweet tooth has not been difficult at all.

Today I started to research some recipes for vegetarian recipes using LCHF principles.  My vego daughter thinks I have slightly lost my marbles, but none the less I still need to provide food for her.  My Carnivore sons are loving all the meat, but I also feel like I would like to try the odd vego meal too.

So LCHF vego version seems to go heavy on cheese, eggs, nuts and cream. Also the soy protein alternatives and tofu.  We have all of this in the house, so it shouldn't be a big problem.  Usually, though, when I'm getting sick of meat I am not particularly in the mood for eggy or cheesie things either.  A tofu and nut stir fry could be the go.  Also a vego lasagne made with eggplant as the noodle layers and lots of cheese could be really nice as the acid in the tomato can help with the cheese.

Looks like there are fun times ahead experimenting in the kitchen.  Just hope the weather cools down a bit as 32 degrees Celsius  (as advertised for the weekend) is too hot for oven cooking.  I have had to put off making my next batch of beef jerky, as it's just too hot to have the oven running ( even on low) all day.

Today's menu
Breakfast
Same as yesterday, love this coconut muesli with mango, blueberries and cream.  So refreshing on a warm summer's morning.

Snack
Just nibbled on some cold meats while I packaged them up for the freezer.  I bought a heap from the shop yesterday and have broken them up into smaller portions and put them into the freezer to use as needed.  We are quite well stocked now.  I am wondering how the thinly sliced hot salami would go if I dehydrated it jerky style.  Next time I make beef jerky I think that I might try a few pieces and experiment with which thickness would be best.

Lunch
garlic creamy chicken
dandelion tea

Snack
Piece of cheese

Dinner
Lamb rump steak and salad and feta cheese


Exercise
walked to school and back

I think that I will hold off weighing myself until tomorrow.  Then I will have had a full week eating LCHF and be able to compare with my measurements from last week.  I am looking forward to that.

Day 6 - Will my bowels ever move again?

I am still sleeping really badly and not getting anywhere near enough sleep at night.  It's hard to know if it is the diet or the external factors that I mentioned in yesterday's blog.  I seem to spend the first two hours of the night from about 11pm to 1am wide awake, just laying in bed wondering if I should actually get up and do something useful.  Needless to say I haven't managed to derive any great amounts of energy from this diet yet, a good night's sleep must surely help in that department.

My dodgy gums turned out to be the precursor to an ear infection.  My left ear feels sore, but is improving, I think.

I feel quite thirsty today, so have been drinking a lot.

After starting the day lamenting the fact that I hadn't poohed for 3 days, and wondering what is happening in the downstairs elimination department, I have finally had some action. Up to that point not a lot, in fact nothing had been happening.  I didn't feel uncomfortable, I didn't feel like I needed to go. I felt just fine.  But three days, going on four with no movement?  Is that normal?

It reminds me of those fully breastfed babies that sometimes go up to 10 days without a poo.  When they do eventually poo, it is a big one.  It goes everywhere.  Luckily, it was quite normal. Good now I can stop obsessing about it, I promise not to write anymore about my bowels.

I am guessing that a radical change in diet, like removing a large proportion of carbs is going to take some adjusting to.

Today's menu is:
Breakfast
Coconut flake muesli with mango a couple of blueberries and fresh cream.  It is an absolutely delicious breakfast, yummo.

Lunch
Two roast chicken legs and some breast meat
coconut cream and chai seed ball rolled in cocoa
cashew, almond and macadamia nuts
dandelion tea

Dinner
roast chicken, bacon, egg and salad with Caesar dressing

Exercise
Walked to school with Harry
Swam in pool

Day 5, and the natives are getting restless

Sixteen year old son looking decidedly underwhelmed

Actually, one of the natives, aka my sixteen year old son, came to me while I was in the shower (no less) and reported that the crowd was rioting.  For some reason, my first thought was the winter Olympics.  So I asked him what crowd.

He told me there were, wait for it...... no bikkies in the cupboard, so nothing to eat for school.  He would have to settle for a vegemite sandwich.....again!

So basically, the crowd wasn't rioting as such, I prefer to think of them as revolting.

I pointed out that there was ample cold sliced meats and salad in the fridge for sandwiches, and that we weren't buying bikkies anymore, so get used to it.  Previously, our sweetest biscuit in the cupboard were McVites digestives, but 16 year old son was pretty fond of packing himself a handful of digestives, half a packet of rice crackers and a juice popper for his day at school.

I am lucky in that my three older children all want to make their own lunches for school.  That saves me a job, even though the kitchen does tend to look like a bomb hit it after they are finished.  A few years ago the 16 year old decided that he didn't like sandwiches, so his school lunches have been a bit ordinary ever since.  The other two pack a pretty good lunch. 
They started the year knowing that there would be no more juice poppers, drinks would have to be water only. I am still buying them bread, even though I don't eat bread myself.  The fridge is full of salad, cold meats and cheeses. There are also nuts and we are still making our way through a glut of mangoes. So they just have to think a little harder to come up with school friendly lunches and snacks. There is no way that there is 'no food'.  And there is no way that they will starve.  They just have to get used to less sugar and less refined carbohydrates. I am sure they will cope.

As for me.
Another ordinary night's sleep, I really hope that that improves soon. I don't think that it has anything to do with the change in eating as I have three things that are conspiring to keep me awake:
1. It's hot and humid
2. I have a breastfed baby who wakes at least once in the night, usually more like three or four times, and
3. There is an industrial machine that is running all night long, it has a very annoying vibrating hum, that is quite frankly driving me nuts.

I haven't poohed for two days.  Wonder when that when that will happen?  From explosive watery diarrhoea to nothing, weird.
Gums are still a bit dodgy too.

Today's menu
I was a bit decadent this morning and had the following for breakfast:
Chai seeds soaked overnight in coconut cream, vanilla and cinnamon.  These tasted very rich and naughty.  I was supposed to use coconut milk instead of cream I think, as instead of being porridge like it was quite solid.  I was thinking about rolling them into balls and coating them in cocoa or coconut and then being able to eat them as a snack.
Mango and fresh cream  ( I guess this is my limit of carbs for the day, but I've had three days on very low carb, and those mangoes need eating.  It's not every year we get a mango glut like this)
Snack:
Havarti cheese
Lunch:
Bacon and eggs and salsa
Havarti cheese

Dinner:
Chicken thigh in creamy garlic sauce with "zucchini noodles"
mushrooms and cauliflour

Snack:
coconut muesli and cream  - watching MKR makes me really hungry.  All those carbs in the pasta and dessert....yum.


Watched a promo for Cereal Killers today.  That guy ate 70% of his calories from fat.  I am really struggling to fat-ify my diet.  I have the mental block that I still think saturated fat will clog my arteries and I just don't find all that fat very palatable.  I still find myself discarding the fat off my meat and fatty chicken skin.  I am no where near being able to eat straight butter.  I do like the A2 cream and cheese however.

Exercise was mopping the floors in the house.

Day 4 and another kilo disappears?

Couldn't sleep last night, so woke up late and pretty tired.
My gums are a bit swollen too, so something must be lacking in my diet somewhere.
Besides that feel pretty good today, not overly hungry or craving sweets.
The tiredness left me through out the day too.

Today's menu
Breakfast
Finished off the bolognaise sauce
cup of tea

Lunch
ham slices rolled around pesto and salad mix
a few pieces of brie
dandelion coffee
a few nuts

Snack
very small mango
communion wafer

Dinner
Garlic prawns and fish on shredded lettuce, carrot, snow peas, red onion and cucumber.
butter and cream garlic sauce
coconut muesli with cream

Exercise
Went sailing for about an hour, capsized and swam a bit too, lol.

I weighed myself after breakfast again today to see if yesterday's 3 missing kilos would turn up.  I didn't have any diarrhoea yesterday. Surprisingly, another kilo seemed to disappear.  Is someone messing with my scales?

I decided to check my waist measurement and found that absolutely nothing had changed there.  So It is a complete mystery to me where that 4 kg has disappeared from, hope it wasn't my brain, lol.  Having only taken three measurements in the beginning, I guess it could have been from anywhere, but it certainly wasn't around my waist, the only bit of me that seems to cause the health authorities concern.

Funny, with that 4 kg weight loss it puts me right in the middle of my preferred weight range, yet still almost 20cm too wide in my middle.  Ah, what's a girl to do?

Keep eating fat and avoiding carbs, the experiment continues.....

Day Three - Miraculous weight loss?

Last night following dinner I had a little bit of a headache.  I though here we go, another withdrawal symptom.  I was quite tired yesterday, so after I had a bit of a lie down and a rest the headache disappeared. 

Today I feel fine.

Just to be stupid I decided to jump on the scales, as if anything could have happened in less than three days.  The scales showed my weight at 75kg....what????
No that's not possible, On day one when I weighed in I was 79kg.  I jumped off the scales and checked that they were calibrated correctly, and then I moved them to the exact spot on the floor where I had weighed myself on Thursday.  They showed 76kg.  Is that possible?  To lose three kilos in less than three days?

Weight loss that is that quick is dangerous, isn't it?  Yes I have had diarrhoea but not chronic stuck on the toilet bowl, tummy bug type diarrhoea.  Just the couple of times I went each day it was a bit liquid.

I haven't starved myself.  Far from it.  I have eaten as much as I wanted, with snacks.  I just haven't eaten much in the way of carbs.  This experiment has suddenly just gotten a whole lot more interesting, I am intrigued to see where it goes from here.

Today I ate
Breakfast:
Still going with the left over bolognaise sauce ( got one more serve to go for tomorrow)

Lunch
Leftover roast pork from last night's dinner
roast pumpkin, roast onion, fetta, walnuts, salad leaves, cucumber, tomato and red capsicum with lemon juice and flaxseed oil dressing.
Soy decaf cappuccino

Snack
two slices of cheese

Dinner
BBQ steak and lamb chop
salad
pesto
salsa

Exercise
More housework, focused on doing squats while I picked up all the crap off the floor.  With four kids, one of them a toddler there are a huge number of opportunities for picking stuff up off the ground.
Swam laps in pool

Day two - The "before" shot

Not sure that my photography is much good, but here are a couple of pre-diet photos taken with my mobile phone.  I should have taken them on day one, but here they are on day two, I'm sure it wont make much difference.

Dreadful photography, but hey it gives a pretty good representation of where I am at now, and the fact that my face is blurred, can only be a good thing, lol.

Today the sweets cravings are not too bad.  I had a brief moment at 3pm, that's the danger time for me.  I think by not having carbs for lunch, I'm not having the rebounding sugar low at mid afternoon.

I also think that it has definitely helped the transition to have dabbled with the diet a bit before hand, that is, reducing carbs and changing my consumption of fats to the more desirable fats.
Still, I am having watery diarrhoea that is slightly explosive.  Very strange, I didn't expect this. I seem to be weeing more too.  I wonder if this is where the early weight loss that is attributed to 'fluid' comes from?

I am also feeling a bit tired, but Ellie did wake up more times than usual last night, so I could just simply be sleep deprived.

Today I ate:
Breakfast
Bolognaise sauce (still finishing off left overs)

Snack
plain yoghurt, coconut flakes, walnuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds.
slice of cheese

Lunch
salad of mixed leaves, carrot, red capsicum, tomato, cucumber, snow peas, red onion, walnuts, feta cheese, salami and flaxseed oil and lemon juice dressing.

I couldn't finish mine as I was full, so gave it to Steve to finish.
Harry was offering lollies around, but I had no trouble declining the offer.

Snack

Cup of tea

Dinner
Roast pork
roast veg
steamed veg

Exercise: Didn't get to walk Harry to school this morning, so just the general activity from doing light house work, hauling baskets of washing and small children around.

So, by and large feeling pretty good, bring on day three.....

Day 1 - the weigh in

Time to bite the bullet and get started on this thing.

First things first, however, I need some base line measurements to see if there are any effects.  I am not going to get my blood checked, as I hate having blood tests, so the previous results from other historical tests will just have to do.

Today's weight: 79kg
Height : 175cm
BMI : 25 which I calculated from this site.  They have categorised me as 'overweight', even though their own information that follows says this:

Healthy Weight (BMI 18.5 to 25)

You are a healthy weight for your height. But we recommend that you also check your waist measurement. Aim to keep within the ideal weight range by eating a healthy, well-balanced diet and exercising regularly. Most adults should be active for 30 minutes on most days. For older Australians, your general health may be more important than being mildly overweight. Some researchers have suggested that a BMI range of 22-26 is acceptable for older Australians.     Also the graphic that they show of the figure looks nothing like my body shape.  The women in the line drawing has much smaller boobs.  As I am breastfeeding, I'm pretty sure that I am carrying a couple of extra kilos in my breast tissue, and this would be perfectly normal.  Hence the problems with BMI's there are so many exceptions to the rules.   So I moved onto the waist measurement page and there is no joy there.  Their information says:   Your waist measurement compares closely with your body mass index (BMI), and is often seen as a better way of checking your risk of developing a chronic disease. Measuring your waist circumference is a simple check to tell how much body fat you have and where it is placed around your body.  Where your fat is located can be an important sign of your risk of developing an ongoing health problem. Regardless of your height or build, for most adults a waist measurement of greater than 94cm for men and 80cm for women is an indicator of the level of internal fat deposits which coat the heart, kidneys, liver and pancreas, and increase the risk of chronic disease.   So how did I do? Abysmally. Today's waist circumference:  98cm.  Yep that's right, almost 20cm too fat.  That's huge. I must have some fat organs sitting in my abdomen. Another indicator is waist to hip ratio. With that you measure your waist and your hips and then divide the waist measurement by the hip measurement.  Wonder how I did there? Today's hip measurement : 108cm.  So, 98/108 = 0.9 Hmmmm, women are meant to have a waist to hip ratio of 0.8 or lower and men are meant to have one of 1.0 or lower.  Kinda makes me wonder how accurate all this stuff is.  I've never had a cinched in waist.  Some women, even with fairly high body fat, still seem to have a defined waist line.  I've always kind of had a boy shape with boobs.  I'm not sure that my ratio would change greatly with weight loss anyway.  I'd still have essentially the same shape, just in a smaller size. The other thing that I wonder about waist size is that the area you measure, that is, between the top of the hip bones and the bottom of the ribs is out side the area of the essential organs, that presumably are the ones that are at risk when they are fatty caused by visceral fat. So if they are fat and stretching your abdomen, wouldn't they be stretching your rib cage out further and the proper measurement should be perhaps about where your bra sits? Or at least between the bottom of your boobs and the top of your waist.  That's pretty much where all those organs that are at risk sit. See the thing with waists, is that they are supposed to be the smallest part of your abdomen. You know, like an hourglass shape, for women.  But my body, and I suspect a lot of other bodies don't work like that.  My smallest part of my abdomen is around my rib cage.  If I move the measuring tape until I find the narrowest part of my abdomen, it is actually about 5cm higher than where I am told that my waist is supposed to be.  This is evidenced by examining myself in the mirror.  So if I measure where the most obvious narrowing of my abdomen is (both visually and according to the tape measure)  my 'waist' measurement is actually: 92cm. Ok, still no where near 80cm.  But if I was harbouring heaps of fat around my organs, surely I'd expect that number to be higher.  That new number gives me a waist to hip ratio of 0.85, which is better.  Now all I have to do is get fatter in the thighs, no just kidding. So just to labour the point, lets do some more calculations, see if I can work out my body fat percentage.  Now this is not going to be pleasant. According to the book Protein Power, this is how you determine body fat: Add together your hips and abdomen then subtract your height. Here goes: (92 + 108 = 200)- 175 = 25 Following their charts it would look like this: abdomen =36 inches which is 25.6 hips = 42 inches which is 50.24 add these together 25.6 + 50.24 = 75.30 now subtract height = 68.5 which is 41.60 75.30-41.60 = 33.7 percent fat.  Wow that's a lot. Now calculate lean body mass, this will be interesting, and depressing, I suggest. total weight X %body fat = weight of fat.   I am almost too scared to do the calculation. 79kg X 33.7% = 26.6kg So therefore my lean body weight ( in a parallel universe, I think) would be body weight minus fat weight. 79kg-26.6kg = 52.4kg Now no fat on my body would likely kill me, so 52.4 kg is not realistic.  So what is realistic, how much fat should I have and therefore would be able to add to my lean body weight.  I am guessing it's not 26kg worth. Again, according to Protein Power, the ideal body fat percentage for a female aged 41-50 is 22-28%. So at 33.7% I am riding over that amount. Calculated lean body weight = 52.4kg which is 120 pounds Ideal body fat range 22-28% step 1 subtract each percentage from 100 100%-22% = 78% 100%-28% =72% step 2 divide your lean body weight by each of the numbers from step 1 120/78 = 1.54 120/72 = 1.66 step 3 multiply each number by 100, this will be your ideal range. 1.54 X 100 = 154 pounds which is about 70kg 1.66 X 100 = 166 pounds which is about 75kg So my healthy weight range is 70-75kg.  That's only 4kg to lose, I can't imagine 4kg or even 9kg would shift 20cm of belly fat off me.  It is going to be very interesting to see just how my body composition changes over the next few months. The final thing is to calculate my protein needs based on my lean body weight.  I am doing this as a point of interest, but as I will more me focusing this diet on low carb/high fat, the protein will just have to come along for the ride. 30g or less of carbs/ day 25g of fibre/ day (this maybe hard without carbs to deliver them) 8 glasses of water / day Exercise, which I have covered by walking to school with Harry everyday For protein intake, every pound (don't you love American books) of LBM or lean body mass requires 0.6g of protein.  My LBM is 120 pounds so that means I require 72 grams of protein per day, minimum. Or about 24 grams/ meal. Okay, now that that is all worked out, what did I actually do today? Breakfast: Leftover bolognaise sauce from last night's dinner (no pasta, obviously) lunch: 100g chicken breast 2 slices of edam cheese snack: nuts Dinner pan fried lamb rump fried onions, mushrooms and tomato steamed vegetables snack piece of beef jerky slice of cheese Exercise: Walked to school and back with Harry. Interestingly I watched a TV show tonight on ABC that measured BMI and body fat.  It said that women with body fat percentage below 35% was good.  So that makes me feel better.  :) Feelings I think that I coped really well today and without suffering too much from hunger or cravings.  When it was time to cook dinner I didn't feel particularly hungry, I just cooked it because it was dinner time.  I didn't crave dessert afterwards either. While watching MKR I did feel like dessert when I saw the trifle dessert course come out.  I countered that with my snack of beef jerky and cheese. I had a sudden burst of diarrhoea tonight which was interesting. I feel a bit light headed and tired. Lets see how day two goes tomorrow...