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.