December 3,2007 Entry # 5

This blog is still in its infancey being not quite two weeks old. I am still learning about being a blogger. I am very technologically challenged, which is why I have a technical advisor to set it up and deal with computer matters. I have a confession to make. Before I became a blogger, I had never even read a blog, or know how to find one if I wanted to. So, I am slowly finding how to navigate this new world. One thing that overwhelmed me was the vast number of blogs out there. A few days ago I googled diet blogs and hundreds of pages come up. I tried scanning through them to find mine and before I could randomly locate it, the "system" shut me down because my rapid flipping through the pages made them think I was a robot.

So I now need to start a marketing program to guide people to my site. I don't know whether I have anyone out here who has accidentally stumbled upon it or not, and I have actually only told a couple of friends about it so far. So I would appreciate your help. If anyone has found it and is reading I would greatly appreciate your doing two things.

1. Please send me a comment to simply let me know you found it. Its OK for you to remain anonymous, I just want to know if anyone is reading at this time.

2. Please forward it to someone or (many someones). Even if you don't like it, maybe they will. And you don't have to forward only to those who might have an interest in weight loss. As you will see from future postings, I will be discussing lesser known foods which are healthy and tasty as well as including recipes which will be of interest to dieters and non-dieters alike.

Thank you all in advance for helping to get me started with this venture.

And now : The continuation of THE JOURNEY

At this point my snacks have consisted of yogurt for mid morning and for lunch yesterday. Mid-afternoon has been leftover Medi-Fast bars all three days, and probably will until I run out of them. Other snack options will include small amounts of nuts and fruits. If anything else comes up, I'll announce it chronologically.

So far lunches have been pretty simple, a small piece of leftover chicken, a cup of yogurt, and a boiled chicken hindquarter. I will probably diversify some as time goes on, but will probably still be fairly simple at lunch. I will probably have low fat cottage cheese fairly often because I like cottage cheese and find it filling. I realize many of you are probably totally grossed out by my menu choices, but I am trying to get you to think about what you do like which might have similar calories, fat and carbohydrates. My whole thing is not to dictate your choices, but to inspire your imagination. The main thing you need to either eliminate or drastically reduce from your diet are carbohydrates, transfats, sugar and most fried foods.

I had a pleasant surprise at dinner last night. I had planned to have soup left over from my Medi-Fast diet with a salad. Then my Ladyfriend came home with a product I had not seen before. It was a package of freeze-dried tuna. She fixed it with some frozen stir fry veggies which we beefed up (like we do almost all commercial products) by adding sliced red bell pepper, onion and fresh mushrooms. We did not make rice, even brown rice which would have been the kind to make if we had made any. We sauteed it in a small amount of omega oil. The tuna had sixty-five calories for each of us plus whever was in the veggies and oil; not a whole lot you can bet. I'll elaborate on the recipe in my recipe section.

The morning of my third day after the menu just described I weighed in at 262.5 pounds, no loss. This is a good argument for not weighing every day. As I mentioned earlier there are many reasons for this. In spite of my very limited intake of basically healthy foods I didn't lose any weight. The reasons could include 1. Water retention - I drink a lot of water as the general dieting wisdom suggests (I will discuss more about water later). 2. Scale inaccuracy - I have a pretty good quality scale, but I can step on it twice sometimes and come up with up to a two pound difference. 3. Metabolism - when the body thinks hard times may be upon it as when a person starts a diet, it will sometimes refuse to burn fat reserves. 4. Habit change- I mentioned earlier I always weighed first thing in the morning - this morning I went outside to check on the livestock. Dogs had killed several of our goats in the last few days and I wanted to be sure they weren't around this morning. After making my rounds, I read the paper and drank a couple cups of black coffee before going back and completing my routine, including weighing. 5. While any of these reasons or a combination could be the culpret, the real reason might be that I cheated at happy hour last night and had three Manhattans instead of one or two.