Category Archives: progress report
Day 15: Experimenting with pork rind crumbs
Weight loss: .5 pounds Total weight loss: 9.5 pounds
Well, the scale finally moved in the right direction. Not that this diet has been hard to “swallow.” LOL
Yesterday’s breakfast and lunch didn’t deviate from the usual pattern. When I find something that works, I stick with it.
After work, my brother took over hospital visiting duties, so I went straight home and continued building my new desk. This thing came with hundreds of pieces, and Rick and I have been assembling it bit by bit since the weekend. When I finished, it was about 7:30 and I was famished!
Due to Murphy’s Law, I was unable to quickly get online using my Macbook. I just wanted to find a quick and easy dinner idea. Rick discovered that our two heads of cauliflower had started to mold, so I decided to check out what other veggies needed cooking ASAP.
I cleaned the cauliflower, micro’d and made into garlic mashed potatoes. Then I grabbed one of the eggplant, sliced, and dregged through an egg wash. I dipped the slices in ground up pork rinds (a GREAT breading option!) and fried in olive oil. Once fried, I sprinkled a little shredded mozzarella on top of each slice.
Rick and I enjoyed the meal alot. The fried eggplant was quite tasty. I didn’t even taste the horrendous pork rind flavor.
I’m going to try doing this same method with some chicken strips.
Day 14: Spaghetti [squash] alfredo is the bomb
Lost: 0 pounds Total weight loss: 9 pounds
Well, the scale isn’t moving. However, I am not discouraged. This diet is the easiest I’ve ever encountered. Rick isn’t even on keto, and he’s scarfing down all the meals with relish!
Yesterday began with the usual eggs and sausage at work (prepared by Mr. Palmer’s Kitchen). Lunch was a high fiber wrap with bologna and cheese.
After a 2-hour hospital visit, we didn’t get home until 7 p.m. I was second-guessing my plan to make “spaghetti” alfredo. I assumed the whole process would be complicated.
It was easy-peezy. The spaghetti squash had microwaving directions printed on a stick-on label….”pre-micro” for one minute to soften a bit, cut in half, scoop out seeds and membranes, put one half in a microwave safe bowl with 1/2 cup water and micro for 12 minutes.
While that was cooking, I melted butter in a pan, added 1 cup cream, and reduced a bit. Then I added 1 1/2 cups of Dubliner cheese (we never have Parmesan in the house since we love the pungent Dubliner taste just as well) and some parsley. I could find the basil, so that was that.
I whisked that around a bit while 12 shrimp were frying in butter in a small pan on the next burner.
The squash finished cooking, and I scooped out the cooked flesh and fluffed with a fork. I added the shrimp to the alfredo sauce, cooked another minute and poured on top. Voila! 15 minutes tops!
And it was delicious! I called Rick in for a taste and he loved it. I microwaved the other half of the squash for him, and left him half the sauce, while I scarfed down my portion. Yummy!
The moral of the story: the numbers on the scale may be stuck, but I’m eating healthy delicious meals, so I’ll just continue with the keto plan and keep my fingers crossed.
Sidenote – my clothes are getting roomier!
Day 13: Staying the course
Weight loss: +.5 Total weight loss: 9 pounds
Hmm. I don’t like this upward trend, but my clothes are getting looser, so I won’t panic. Considering the alternative (going off the plan) isn’t going to make me lose any weight, so I’ll keep plodding along and hope something shakes up the progress. I’m feeling better and coughing less, so maybe I can get more exercise and show more progress.
It was back to work for me yesterday. Rick made me my usual morning breakfast sandwich, sans the muffin. It is really good heated up…all gooey goodness.
Lunch was an oddly thrown together wrap. I had intended to take tuna, mayo, and cheese and put it all together in a Flat Out wrap. Rick discovered these tasty, high fiber wraps awhile ago. Unfortunately, as I was running out the door, I couldn’t find any tuna fish in the cupboard, so I grabbed bologna instead.
At lunch time, I cut a wrap in half, layered it with a piece of bologna, some grated cheese, and a dab of mustard. A minute in the microwave, then rolled it up to make an odd, but tasty sandwich roll. I had a small salad with blue cheese on the side.
After a visit with Dad at the hospital (he looks quite a bit better), Rick and I went to trivia. Another salad, and the tops of 3 pieces of pizza, then home for some mousse and strawberries.
I’m still running short on carbs each evening. I’m just not hungry enough to eat a lot. I’ll have to plan larger meals.
Day 12: Too full for dinner
Weight loss: 0 Total weight loss: 9.5
I would normally be disappointed to see no progress on the weight loss, but this huge nearly 10 pound loss has kept me motivated. This is the first diet where I’ve see a big weight loss, so I’ll just keep biding my time and eating right and it’ll come.
Yesterday I almost goofed up. Rick and I went to a local diner for breakfast and since I love hollandaise sauce, I ordered the eggs benedict. Rick ordered the breakfast buffet. As soon as the waitress left, I decided I’d better check the carb content, but I was pretty sure I’d read online that the sauce was an okay keto diet choice.
Well, the LEAST amount of carbs I could find listed were 6.5. The most said 31 (perhaps with the muffin?). Anyway, thinking about it, I’d end up eating 2 runny eggs with sauce and no muffin, and I don’t even like Canadian bacon! Bad choice all around.
Rick caught the waitress on his trip to the buffet and cancelled my order. I hit the buffet and had 2 servings of scrambled eggs, 4 pieces of bacon and 2 pieces of sausage, all for a total of 4 carbs!
The exciting part of the meal was that I walked past biscuits and gravy, cakes, hashbrowns, and all sorts of high carb food items and didn’t even blink. I have never experienced any diet like this. I simply do not crave the bread, pasta, and sweets!
We spent the day putting a desk together and I had a late afternoon lunch of 2 cheeseburgers, topped with mustard, and a few BBQ pork rinds with spinach dip on the side.
By 9 pm, I just wasn’t hungry for dinner. I had a snack of natural peanut butter and 2 70% dark chocolate squares. I tried some almond milk (1 net carb) and added 2 drops of sweetener. I think I like it better than the coconut milk, but they are both a nice substitute because I do miss drinking milk.
Day 11: Testing myself at a buffet
Weight loss: gained .5 Total to date: 9.5
We started our Saturday at the local diner. I had a sausage and cheese omelet and gave Rick my hashbrowns and toast.
Lazy day around the house, the off to the hospital to see my dad. Before we knew it, it was 5 pm, we hadn’t had lunch, and were both famished.
We decided to go to a buffet, assuming there were enough keto-friendly choices that it would work for me. I’m not craving carbs at all, and it didn’t bother me to pass up the potatoes, fries, cakes, breads, breaded everything that the buffet offered.
I settled for taco salad ingredients, minus shell or chips. I threw a few veggies on the side.
I followed up with a salad topped with blue cheese dressing.
We stopped off at Kroger, where I picked up some natural peanut butter, polaner grape jelly, coconut milk, and almond milk. Dessert during the late movie was chocolate mousse with 1/4 cup strawberries.
Day 7: One week and I’m not dead yet
Weight loss: 2 Total: 7
Whew! Rick felt better yesterday and went out to forage for produce. Well, okay, he went to Randazzo’s. I’m loaded up on veggies: cauliflower (one for pizza, one for “mashed potatoes”), romaine lettuce, spinach, avocado, squash, mushrooms, and spaghetti squash.
Rick also went to Kroger to pick up the other staples needed to work this keto plan: meats, 2 cartons of eggs, cheese, bacon, heavy cream, and…something I’m not too sure about… the Better Made BBQ pork rinds that my son insists taste like spicy BBQ chips, but have zero carbs. We’ll see. I already had a bag of regular pork rinds to use as a bread crumb substitute in recipes, but YECK, I wasn’t planning to eat them as a nosh.
I ordered virgin coconut oil from Amazon Monday. Should be delivered today. I understand a couple of teaspoons a day are essential for keeping “regular.” Enough about that.
I am blessed to have such a supportive husband. He’s always been a hard worker, and now that he’s retired, he is working on our website business, doing home improvement chores, helping with my father, and generally taking care of all the little details around the house. Best of all, he’s the chef at the Palmerosa, and he now has more time to prepare some great meals…and he also LIKES grocery shopping. Am I lucky, or what?
Back to the plan. I had the usual eggs, cheese, sausage breakfast with Taco Bell sauce. Reheating really improved the flavor (I’d been eating it about an hour after Rick made it, at room temp).
Still being without groceries in the A.M., meant Rick dropped by with a BK bacon cheeseburger and salad for late lunch.
My prospects improved at dinner with all the lovely ingredients waiting for me.
I decided to try oopsie rolls, which were a semi-failure because they were way too liquid to set up on the pan, so I made them in my mini-muffin pan and they turned out pretty well.
Rick reminded me that we had a couple of NY strip steaks left in the fridge, so I whipped up the creamy onion sauce again, Rick steamed 1/2 head of cauliflower which we turned into “potatoes,” and we enjoyed a lovely repast complemented by a glass of Flip Flop cabernet. What a life!
Of course, this gourmet meal was followed by chocolate mousse, and I made it through another day of hard-core keto dieting.
See my separate oopsie roll blog soon.
Day 6: Surviving my first trivia league night
Weight loss: +1!!
Total: 5.5
Yow! That was a rude awakening. I’m really not too upset, though, because I know I’m on track. AND I still feel fantastic. I even woke up on time this morning, and I am a notorious over-sleeper. I tend to hit the hay around one a.m. and the 6:30 alarm is pretty irritating. That snooze button is a delight. Today I only hit it twice. And, I made it to work two minutes before my starting time…a miracle for me!
However, I’m still not totally prepared for meals on the keto plan yet, so I keep winging it as best I can with what we have. I made it through yesterday on plan, but I was sadly lacking in greens. That should be remedied by this evening. (And I’m hoping Rick will pick me up a big salad for lunch.)
Yesterday morning it was Monday morning and back to work for me. Rick helped out by cooking up his famous breakfast sandwich without the whole grain muffin. Scrambled egg, 2 sausage patties (instead of the usual 1) and 2 small slices of dubliner cheese. He layered it in a small plastic bowl and dribbled on a packet of Taco Bell border sauce. I ate it with a knife and fork at my desk when I got to work.
Lunch was fly-by-night. I took the leftover pulled pork taco, and grabbed a can of tuna which I mixed with mayo. The funny thing was that I forgot the taco shell was made of hardened cheddar cheese. When I heated it up in the micro, it came out a pile of cheese with taco fixings inside. It still tasted just fine, despite it’s awful appearance.
Monday is trivia night, and our team usually orders a pizza. I read up on advice from keto redditors who said it’s perfectly acceptable to take the cheese and toppings off the crust, so that’s what I did. It was delicious and satisfying. The only difficulty was in not being sure how much cheese to calculate in my food diary. I guessed at one cup, plus onions, and sausage.
As an added bonus, Sassy, our Bluetick Coonhound, enjoyed my dinner biproduct. Pizza crust is her favorite pizza snack. (See the leftovers in the picture). Waste not, want not.
Almost forgot, in between lunch and getting off work for the day, I ate 2 ounces of hard cheese for a snack.
After trivia, I entered the last of my food portions into myfitnesspal.com. I was short 11 carbs! Hmmm. what to do? I grabbed 2 tbsp of peanut butter, and one square of 70% chocolate. I dipped the square in the pb for a scrumptious snack while reading a new novel loaned to me by a coworker. It was delicious, and my carbs were done for the day.
The only problem I see so far, is the lack of vegetables yesterday. Rick was supposed to go to the grocery store, but thought he was coming down with the flu and I gave him the day off (joke). He promises to go to the fruit market tomorrow while I’m at work. Today/tomorrow=more greens.
Day 5: Zero progress
Weight loss: 0
Total: 6 1/2
I was slightly disappointed to see no progress on the scale, but I was expecting it. I assumed that losing a couple of pounds a day was only a fleeting accomplishment due to water weight loss. I didn’t think that I would continue to lose at that rate, but I could always hope!
On the bright side, I have energy to spare. I haven’t felt this good in a long time. And I’m not really hungry at all. I guess lots of fat and protein leads to a satiated appetite.
Yesterday, I had some scrambled eggs and sausage for breakfast; the eggs had onion and cheese in them.
Lunch was pulled pork tacos and some home made cheese-its with a tsp of avocado dip on each. I made 3 tacos, but was full after two.
Dinner was rushed. We took Dad back to my nieces, and by the time we got him settled, I was pretty hungry. I fried 2 Hebrew National Kosher hot dogs in butter, then topped them with Hormel chili/no beans. I was still pretty low on my calories/protein, so I through on some grated cheese and ended up with a satisfying, if gooey mess. I laugh every time I think of the odd combinations of “fattening” foods I’ve been cooking up. It totally goes against my grain to not seek out low-fat cheeses, condiments, and other foodstuffs. This takes some getting used to, but it’s certainly a pleasant way to lose weight.
Rick and I sat down to watch the Golden Globes and I literally whipped us up some dessert: heavy whipping cream with a tsp of cocoa. Yum.
Day 3: Three more pounds?!
OMG! I lost another 3 pounds. Total so far: 4 1/2 pound weight loss.
And I have ENERGY. Wow, is there such a thing as being allergic to carbs? Because I already feel very very good.
Yesterday’s meals –
Breakfast: 2 fried eggs, 3 pieces of bacon
Lunch: chicken/greens salad with caesar dressing
Dinner: 5 chicken strips, fried, with Frank’s red hot buffalo sauce, dipped in blue cheese sauce
Snack: 2 pcs Lindt 79% chocolate and “cheeze-its” made from microwaved grated cheese
Day 2: Seeing progress already
Wow! I lost 1 1/2 pounds in a day. I realize it was probably all water, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The first day went well. I wasn’t as prepared as I should have been, but a bacon cheeseburger with no bun was a fine “emergency” lunch.
I’m staying under 21 carbs a day and I easily met the goal.
Recap of yesterday –
Breakfast: an egg, 2 pcs sausage
Lunch: salad with lemon garlic dressing/bacon cheeseburger, no bun
Dinner: a DELICIOUS strip steak with an onion/cream sauce I found on reddit/cauliflower mashed potatoes
Snack: one glass of cabernet and chocolate mousse made from heavy whipping cream and a pinch of cocoa