Friday, July 31, 2009

Feats and Eats #6

Breakfast: Large cheddar omelette. I ate this around 10 am and wasn't hungry again until 4 pm.

Dinner: Tried and failed to make a proper eggwich. (I have since found a blog post with a few helpful hints and I intend to perfect this.) Instead ended up with some layered, cheesy concoction. I offered to share it but ended up snarfing about three quarters of it all by myself. My lovely man then fried up some kielbasa with walla walla sweet onions. That was delicious as well. I returned for more meat around 8 pm, as I felt hungry again.

Exercise: Workout #19 is finished. I also ran around at the park with the bigger caveboy, did a few errands that involved a lot of walking, and generally had a hot, sweaty, fun day.

I've been reading up on the zero-carb or carnivore approach, mostly on various blogs and at the Zeroing in on Health forum. This is a direction I want to explore further. I've begun to experiment with eating fewer fruits and vegetables and so far I feel quite good. There will be more on this subject in an upcoming post.

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Feats and Eats #5


Breakfast: Sausages with scrambled eggs and apple slices. Lovely man took this photo of his plate halfway through the meal, tucked back in his home office (aka our bedroom).

Dinner: I took inspiration from MDA's Asian Cucumber Salad post, adapting it to the items I had on hand (which included neither freshly grated ginger root nor black sesame seeds, I'm afraid). There's no photo, mostly because it wasn't pretty. I was seized by an intense desire to see what happens when a hunk of beef roast meets the Cuisinart fine shredding disc and then add the meat to my salad. "What happens" is that the resulting meat product could be mistaken for something a mother hawk might regurgitate into the gullets of her chicks. Mmm... stringy beef paste. Still, it tasted good. I can't complain about the flavors of ginger, lime, and chilies combined. 

Exercise: I did my 18th EA Sports Active workout. Two to go.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

POTS on Paleo--Big Meals or Small?

I'm having to figure out my ideal meal size through trial and error. Eating low-carb/paleo, I naturally tend toward eating large meals and going several hours between meals. When your blood sugar is stable throughout the day, there's no need to eat those 5-6 small meals recommended by today's mainstream nutritionists. I have what is almost a nostalgic desire to eat more frequently, but I'm not truly hungry.

That said, a number of articles on POTS state that large meals tend to divert too much blood to the digestive tract in POTS patients. This means that blood is drawn away from the brain, causing excessive fatigue, sleepiness, foggy thinking, irritability, and other symptoms of insufficient cerebral perfusion. Obviously these observations were most likely made regarding patients who consume typical high-carb modern fare. However, I have been experiencing these symptoms lately--just not to the extreme degree that I once did.

This heat wave throws another variable into the equation , so right now is a bad time to experiment with this. I'm looking forward to figuring it out though--hopefully soonish.

Here is a good page on POTS that I haven't seen before today.

I probably won't have many interesting meals to share this week. Until it's cooler out, I shudder at the thought of cooking. We're mostly eating from the fridge. There's still plenty of roast beef there, along with blueberries and salad fixings.

Monday, July 27, 2009

Feats and Eats #3



Breakfast: shirred eggs topped with bacon; fresh blueberries topped with whole milk yogurt; spinach, peppers, and onions in peanut sauce

Lunch: Not hungry

Dinner: jamaican ribs, adapted from this delicious recipe (we did beef rather than pork and a dry rub rather than a marinade); cucumber and tomato salad

Exercise: Completed workout #17 of the 30 day challenge on EA Sports Active. There are 20 workouts in the challenge, so I have only three to go and I'll have finished it. I did today's workout after an 18 hour fast, before eating anything beyond my morning fish oils. Honestly, it didn't feel good. I was weak and a bit tachycardic. I wussed out on one of the strength training exercises for the first time since week one and I ended up doing some wimpy half-reps 'cause I just couldn't take more.

This last bit of IF (Intermittent Fasting) also made my POTS symptoms act up. Usually I do not have symptoms so long as I avoid eating too many carbs, but by the end of last night I was losing vision on standing again. I'm not sure why sometimes IF feels great and sometimes it doesn't feel so great, but I'll keep a record and maybe I can find some clues. One possibility is that I can handle either hot weather or IF, but not both at once.

Breakfast today may have been a bit too carby. Brain fog was threatening to set in within ten minutes of eating. I ate some extra meat when the feeling started and am happy to say that the fog abated. Coincidence? I can't tell. No symptoms for the rest of the day.  

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Feats and Eats #2

Breakfast: coconut flour crepes; sliced apple wrapped in havarti; mini sweet peppers; sliced eye of round with rosemary crust (That last one is thanks to my sweetie! He cooks a nice roast or two near the beginning of most weeks and we slice it in the food processor for easy meat foraging later on.)

Exercise: Completed workout #16 on EA Sports Active

Nobody was very hungry for lunch, though we snacked around a wee bit in the early afternoon. The weather has been intense and I think this has been affecting our appetites. Our portable A/C keeps the temperature down a bit indoors, thankfully, but things still tend to feel somewhat muggy and oppressive. The baby wants to be naked, which seems to help him bear the discomfort of teething. The cats choose their respective corners early in the day and barely move except for necessities (such as the scent of meat on the breakfast table).

At any rate, I'm feeling great on what I've already had, so I'm going to fast until breakfast tomorrow. The bigger little boy is still weaning off grains and tonight's dinner for him will be of his choosing--most likely a sandwich. The little one will have his milkies. My lovely man... who knows?

Friday, July 24, 2009

Today's Feats and Eats

Breakfast: tuna cakes; carrots sauteed in butter, ginger and lime; plain whole milk yogurt, sriracha

Lunch: emphatically not hungry

Dinner: hamburger patties fried with onion, basil and oregano on a bed of lettuce; sliced tomato with mozzarella; black olives

Exercise: EA Sports Active 30 Day Challenge, workout #14

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I'm mostly paleo, but rather in love with cheese.

Yo

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