Entries from December 2008 ↓

I’m not exactly sure why it’s all collecting here, but water and snow coming off the roof of our office building has been collecting outside my window… combined with hot exhaust coming out of the mechanical room next door and I’ve been getting what seems to like a termite mound made out of ice.

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The year is almost to a close… and the last couple months have been… a heck of a ride.

I figured I’d jot a few notes on where things are at with the whole losing weight/considering surgery thing.

On the balance scale at the gym today I was 349, in shorts, socks, t-shirt. The fact that I could use the scale is a milestone… the thing only goes up to 350. The scale at home here has me at 344. Let’s be optimistic and use that one… which means I’m down 25 pounds since the day before Thanksgiving and 30 from my highest. And I’m starving.

Ok, maybe not starving. But it has been tough. Not that I thought it wouldn’t be… but… Well, I’ve been eating more than 1500 calories a day I’m sure. Maybe not every day… but I’ve tried a Cliff bar before working out the last couple days cause I feel almost weak from hunger otherwise. That’s an extra 200 calories right there. I made a pita bread pizza for dinner… but one wasn’t near enough… even two left me still hungry. That was with an ounce of turkey pepperoni, green onion, red pepper, tomato purée, and 2 oz of cheese. The only reason I could have two was I didn’t do any starch with breakfast this morning, so I had four portions left instead of just two.

So actually, today I was likely fairly close, maybe even under. But last Friday I broke. I went to a pizza place for their lunch buffet. About 5 slices of thin crust pizza and a large salad with plenty of French dressing. I’m sure that put me over the top in one sitting. But I left full.

Don’t get me wrong… it’s not all doom and gloom or anything. Last night I baked up a northern pike fillet that I baked with a crust of soy nut crumbs with a lil parmesan cheese, topped with a cucumber dill sauce, a side of cooked apples and some of my peppered green beans. I seem to have those about once a week…

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While browsing through some old web page archives of mine, I came across some cooking related stuff I had done up as part of a “MN Room” newsletter associated with the “Minnesota” chat room on AOL. Here’s one that talks about the history of pizza, along with some recipes….

Pizza, pizza! (mar-28-1999)
American’s love pizza. We eat enough every day to cover 90 acres (that’s almost 4 million square feet), and on an annual basis that comes to 23 pounds per person. Historians think it dates back to sometime around the 11th century when Italians were eating bread baked with herbs and spices topped with olive oil or lard. Because it could be made from basic ingredients had by the peasants in pre-Renaissance Naples, pizza was long considered a peasant’s food. As times got better, people were soon adding mussels, ham, anchovies, and sardines.

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I originally posted this on my website back in mid-1999. At the time I attributed it to Bill of Non-Rights as having been written by State Representative Mitchell Kaye from Cobb County, GA. I’ve since found out he did not write it, but likely was done so after forwarding it to folks via email. It was written in 1993 by Lewis Napper, a self-described amateur philosopher and from Mississippi who ran for a U.S. Senate seat in 2000 as a Libertarian.

We, the sensible people of the United States, in an attempt to help everyone get along, restore some semblance of justice, avoid any more riots, keep our nation safe, promote positive behavior and secure the blessings of debt-free liberty to ourselves and our great-great-great grandchildren, hereby try one more time to ordain and establish some common sense guidelines for the terminally whiny, guilt-ridden delusional and other liberal, commie, pinko bed-wetters.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that a whole lot of people were confused by the Bill of Rights and are so dim that they require a Bill of Non-Rights.

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Years ago… before Atkins was the thing to do when it came to low/no-carb diets, there was this… The Mayo Clinic Diet. I titled this “So Called”, because this never had anything to do with the Mayo Clinic, and the Clinic has done a lot to make sure people know that, in fact they now have their own actual “Mayo Clinic Diet“. The stuff below is basically a no-carb, high protein diet that promises you will loose 50-55 pounds in 10 weeks.

I followed this plan about 10 years ago, and I did lose weight.. 40 pounds in about three months, and then I stalled out for the next 2-3 months and decided if I wasn’t going to lose weight I wanted my potatoes back.

This appealed to me at the time because I could eat as much as I want, until I was full. Yea, I’m losing weight on this 1500 calorie a day thing… but I’m never full (unless I cheat… which I have a few times). And the two days off thing… that was kind of appealing as well. Though after no potatoes for over a month, I had some McDonald fries… and they just tasted… off. Anyways, there’s a variation of this out there too called the 12-Day-Diet or sometimes the Grapefruit Diet. Same basic premise, but it’s about eating like this for the long term, not just for 10 weeks.

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I’ve been doing a bit of cooking lately that involves testing new stuff… like the from fresh, pumpkin pie I did for Thanksgiving. Over the weekend I made a cranberry sauce and had it tonight with some breaded pork chops and peppered green beans.

Other than the sauce, it was all very easy to make in a quantity for just myself, and could just as easily be done for a family.

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