Simple baked eggplant recipe

Recipe for baked eggplant:

1 eggplant
Salt
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 cups tomato (pasta) sauce
4 oz mozzarella or other cheese

Cut off the ends of the eggplant and discard. Cut the remainder into rounds about 1/2 inch thick - yield about 8 slices. Coat with salt and leave to sit about 20 minutes, until a brown liquid leaches from the eggplant (I hear this removes bitterness). Rinse the salt off of the eggplant. Coat eggplant with olive oil on both sides and bake on a cookie sheet at 350 F for about 15 minutes, until it displays a soft, spongy texture when poked with a fork. Remove eggplant from the oven and top each slice with 1/4 cup tomato sauce and 1/2 oz grated cheese. Return to oven until cheese is melted. Serve with bread or pasta.

Serving size 2 slices, servings 4, about 210 calories per serving.

Sugar binge

Monday 12/27

Toast, scrambled eggs with chard and swiss, and 1/2 grapefruit (90+140+30+100+100=460)
2 chocolate truffles (210)
2 caramel waffle cookies and coffee (250)
1/2 TLC sandwich and tangerine (90+110+100+30+40=370)
Mini cupcake, pistachios, and chocolate (100+160+150+220=630)
Skinny Cow ice cream, 2 bars and 1 cup (200+150)
Chicken vegetable soup and a stroopwafel (500+125=625)
2 mini cupcakes (200)

460+210+250+370+630+350+625+200=3095

This is the diet of someone who has had too much sugar sitting right in front of her face for too many days in a row. But I tried! I started off with a healthy breakfast, see...

Hoping for better luck tomorrow.

Merry Christmas

I'm not weighing in this week because the number is unreliable - I had a super low weight yesterday due to special circumstances on Thursday, and a fairly high number today due to special circumstances yesterday, also known as Christmas Eve dinner.

However, I will talk about today a little. I figured I'd go to my parents' house, eat lots of chocolate and some teff muffins and also a real breakfast, stop by home and eat salad if I was hungry, and then go the dinner and not eat a ton of appetizers because I would have either eaten salad or not been hungry in the first place.

Unfortunately, my parents' plans did not involve a real breakfast and so until one o'clock pretty much all I ate was sugar. I'm sure the fiber-y, protein-y teff muffins helped a bit, but they were still basically a sweet carb-based food. So I was really pretty strung out by the time I got home and I ate some leftovers with my salad for lunch. I got myself back on basically the level, but it wasn't a good foundation for the day and I also ate a little cupcake on my way out the door and I did not have particularly good calorie control at the dinner.

I ate enough today to gain half a pound. I don't feel bad about it, but I'm a little worried about tomorrow. We're out of eggs, as well as many other things, since we usually shop on Saturday, so there isn't an evident protein source to get back on track with a healthy wholesome breakfast. I don't want to end up eating the waffle-pressed caramel cookies with coffee for breakfast. Maybe I will have a rice cake with cheese?

Solstice dinner observations and low calorie muffins

Last night my parents hosted Solstice dinner. I had allotted 1500 calories for dinner and I'd planned out my meals in the day and gone to Bikram in the morning such that even with the big dinner I'd have a small deficit for the day.

Solstice dinner is always a root vegetable soup, lots of bread and fancy cheese, and often a dessert that varies. I also made an appetizer that was on sample at the grocery store with chocolate and sea salt melted over oiled baguette. So I had a couple pieces of chocolate bread, then sat down to dinner. Starting off with a bowl of soup, and the various cheeses made their way around the table. I took a few pieces of bread and took small samples of each cheese that was available. There was a lot of cheese, but I didn't think I'd have trouble putting it away. I certainly had less on my plate than I've eaten in previous years. But this year, I was barely halfway through my cheese when I started to get full! I slowed down, sipped some wine to cut through the fat, and had another bowl of soup for nutrients and fiber. I managed to sample each cheese without becoming uninterested in food, but I was totally stuffed (a phrase I never truly understood the meaning of before now) by the end and only had a few bites of the funny raw-food "cheesecake" that was for dessert.

So that's the downside of losing weight and the dietary changes that come with it. You get used to eating small portions, and then when you get to an event where there's lots of good food you want to eat, your body has forgotten how to take it in stride. I used to have a similar problem with Thanksgiving anyway - after having a little of everything, I was too full for seconds of the things I really loved. Anyway, it's interesting to see the internal changes as well as the external changes to my body. I'll have to come up with strategies for satisfying my mouth and my eyes without taxing my stomach too much at events like these. Fortunately (or not?) there will be plenty of practice this week.

In other news, I tweaked the muffin recipe and achieved my goal of yummy, 150 calorie muffins! Now I have to do it all over again with teff flour so I can bring something gluten free to my mom, but here is the wheat recipe:

Low-calorie multigrain wholemeal muffins:

2 Tbsp white sugar
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp oil
2 eggs
1 cup applesauce

1 1/4 cups whole-wheat flour
1/2 cup oatmeal, crushed
1/4 cup cornmeal (polenta)
3 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp salt

300 calories' worth of add-ins, for instance:
- 1/4 cup dried cranberries, 1/4 cup chopped walnuts, and zest of 1 orange
- 1 diced banana, 1/4 cup chocolate chips, and 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup cubed butternut squash, 1/4 cup sunflower seeds, and a few Tbsp grated ginger

Preheat oven to 375 F. Mix dry and wet ingredients separately, then add dry to wet. Fold in the add-ins. Divide into 12 muffin cups and bake for 15-25 minutes.

Notes:

* Calorie content will vary slightly depending on the add-ins and also things like the brand of flour you use. However, as written, this recipe should give 12 muffins at about 150 calories each.
* A high volume of add-ins will result in slightly bigger muffins, and high moisture add-ins will increase the cooking time. So your cranberry-walnut muffins will be smaller and cook more quickly than banana or squash muffins.
* Some possible substitutions: use skim or 2% milk instead of applesauce (approximately calorie equivalent), use another kind of vegetable or fruit puree in place of applesauce, use all-purpose flour instead of whole-wheat, use more oatmeal or less cornmeal to lower calories further (I would keep 1 cup of wheat flour), use all white/all brown/raw sugar, use honey or agave syrup instead of crystalline sugar while cutting down the applesauce/milk a little, vary spices.

Day 99, round 2 - conclusion of phase 2 (posted late)

Yesterday was the last row of my second spreadsheet and my weight was 144.4 pounds. At 29.9% body fat, even! This means that in the past 99 days, I've lost:

18.4 pounds
6.3% body fat
2.5 inches off my waist
a little more than 1 pant size

as well as another 1.75 inches off my thigh. I switched my hip measurement to where it's supposed to be during this phase, so I don't have comparable measurements from beginning to end, and I haven't changed my bra size since the end of last phase.

I can't post a graph because the new Google graphs are funky and don't save properly, and my boyfriend's computer (my power cord broke) doesn't have the program I use to take screenshots. So, no eye candy - sorry.

I've refined my spreadsheet again for phase III. The biggest difference is that I split the exercise column into "calorie burn exercise" and "strength/toning exercise". I need to keep track of them separately, because I need to see clearly whether I'm doing my strength exercises or not. The sheet may look a little more confusing sometimes because certain things, primarily yoga, apply to both - but since it's my sheet, as long as I know what I'm talking about and put the right numbers in the right boxes, I think it's fine.

It's super awesome that I'm only 10 pounds away. I hope that I can meet the next microgoal - 139.6 - by the time school starts back up at the end of January. It will be a little slow-going during the holiday week, and my Europe trip will be a total wildcard, but the final week of winter break I have all the space I need to push for a couple more pounds.

How'd that happen?

Today I weighed in at... 148.8? How did I gain 4.2 pounds in 2 days? Certainly not from the extra calories I've eaten. If I was up to 145.0, I'd understand. I kind of binged over the weekend. But this is clearly a load of crap (well, that, and water).

I've been reluctant to use the word "binge" for my episodes of overeating. I know that true binging is a much uglier affair. When I "binge", I eat about 2500 calories in a day. Many bulimics and binge eaters can eat 2500 calories in a sitting. I also don't have the sense of uncontrol that characterizes problem bineing... I think. I don't feel like I can't stop myself, just like I don't care. I will think "damn it, this is going to put me over maintenance calories, but resisting what I want is just not worth it right now." So... that happens sometimes, and I am reluctant to use the word "binge" not only because it may trivialize a more serious issue, but because I don't want to start thinking of it in terms of that more serious issue, i.e., feeling like I start to lose control simply because I'm using a word that implies that. I brought it out though because I don't know a lighter word for it.

I look back at this weekend and think, what happened? On Friday we spontaneously stopped for a Peanut Buster Parfait after Bikram yoga. I actually thought that was great, because I'd been feeling an itch to have some ice cream, and also chocolate, for a while. I'd been trying to figure in a time when I could afford those calories, and as we were riding home from our 670-calorie workout my boyfriend commented that the 700-calorie dessert sounded real good. I figured - yes, great exchange, I'll still be in deficit for today and this'll satisfy my ice-cream craving so I don't have to think about it anymore. And that seemed to work out great. I don't think this was the trigger. I just bring it up because this was my idea of working to avoid a "binge."

I would be in denial if I didn't acknowledge that pot has something to do with it. Pot causes munchies, and it always seems to cause more irresistible munchies when I go back to it after a break. I don't always go over calories when I smoke pot, but it makes it harder.

I usually "binge" on particular foods, but they aren't "trigger foods" because most of the time I eat those foods in normal amounts. Bread and cheese, particularly mozzarella cheese for some reason, ice cream or chocolate... and then peanut butter is in a special class. Peanut butter is my food that I eat when I'm craving something, but I know I will feel satisfied after just a tablespoon of it.

I might have been pushing it with the carbohydrates in the past week. We did have enriched-flour bagels during the week, and I had made those muffins which, while whole-wheat, obviously contained sugar. Boyfriend wanted to make pizza Saturday night, so that contributed some carbs. And I had eaten random food from the library and coffee on campus earlier in the week. Once I realized I was on the decline, I tried to at least eat protein-heavy foods rather than carbs in the hope of helping to terminate it.

What really I think screws me up though is going off my routine. I get routinized easily, and so I end up forgetting things when the schedule changes. Exercising is harder to make sure I do when it doesn't automatically fit into a slot in my day. I got that intro package at Bikram to go to over the break, but there are two things that aren't working great about my plans to go almost every day: one, I don't actually like Bikram enough to want to go often, and two, their schedule sucks for me. They have classes at 6/8, 9:30/10, 4/5, and 6/7 depending on the day. It's hard to go to class before eating in the day because it's such a hard workout, but it's also hard to get up early enough to eat breakfast, digest, and still go to 9:30 class on a relatively empty stomach - and then you've spent the whole morning. It feels terribly inefficient. By four o'clock, though, I'm not interested in exercise anymore. I would go all the time if they had, say, a 12 noon class. The other problem with falling out of routine is it's very hard, even just on weekends, for me to remember to drink water when I'm not at school. At school, I sit down with my backpack in front of me and my water bottle ready to jump into my left hand while I take notes with my right about four times a day. At home, I leave my water bottle or water glass in one room, wander into another, and forget about it. Finally, without a schedule of tasks, it's easy to think it's time to eat sooner, because there's nothing I have to accomplish first.

So here I am, four spurious pounds up, and tomorrow is the end of phase 2. I really want to shed most of this by tomorrow to get an accurate view of how much I've lost in these 99 days. I took a Cascara Sagrada this morning, which may sound a little bit bulimic, but it's really not, because the calories are long since absorbed - I just want to get the poop out. I'm also going to drink at least 4 bottles of water today (what I was drinking during the cleanse, 3 being typical for a schoolday) to flush out the bloating. I'll check my weight throughout the day and possibly take another Cascara in the afternoon, pay attention to fiber and salt content, etc. I admit it's rather shallow to be so concerned about my weight on a particular day, but okay, I care, and to be fair, it's as much about accuracy as anything else.

What's a little disturbing about these "binges" is that they tend to peter themselves out between 2000-2500 calories. Why should that be disturbing? Because the "that's enough" response is neither totally overridden nor occurs at an appropriate level. My body naturally stops me between 2000-2500 calories in a day. There's evidence of adaptation, because I usually feel rather stuffed and not entirely comfortable after that large amount of food, and also, if I am eating slowly and have been eating good food and gotten my exercise, I notice the cues coming in at the level I want them to - feeling satisfied at each meal at a point that lets it all add up to 1500-1800. But it appears that some aspects of my appetite are resistant to change. I just hope I am not fighting the urge to eat 2300 calories a day and weigh 165 pounds forever.

Cranberry-orange walnut muffins

So I made some delicious kinda-low-calorie muffins today, adapted from a few different recipes I found on the internet:

Dry:
1 1/4 c. whole-wheat flour
1/2 c. dry oatmeal
2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp. cinnamon

Wet:
1 egg
1/3 c. sugar
3/4 c. unsweetened applesauce
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp water

Mix dry and wet, then fold in:
1/3 c. dried cranberries
1/4 c. chopped walnuts
Zest of 1 orange

Drop into muffin cups and bake 12-20 minutes at 375 F. I was expecting to get 12 muffins from the recipe, but it only made 8, and at that rate these are 205 calories apiece. They are really good, but I'd like to get a muffin of similar size down to 150 calories. If I could do that, I'd probably bake a batch of muffins each weekend and have them as an alternative to toast or bagels at breakfast, and take them to school for afternoon snacks.

Skinny fat and the next two weeks

I'm still fat.

I don't mean that I'm big, wide, or round. Definitely not. I look thin enough that overweight people tell me I shouldn't lose any more weight, my mom told me I carried 150 pounds very well, and would probably start looking skinny by 135. Shirts that fit my B cup chest hang loosely over my abdomen and I wear "petite" pants. I'm relatively small, apparently, and shapely enough - it's just that a lot of that shape is made up of fat.

I think "skinny-fat" is the appropriate term for my condition. It's odd that it's easier to see how fat you are when you're actually less fat. It's not a body image distortion, either - it's the fact that you can actually feel bones and muscles, so you can tell where the texture changes and you have a fat roll. When no matter where you poke there's an inch or two of fat cushioning, held in tightly by the skin, you don't realize how small your lean core is.

I have 10 pounds to go before the end of this weight-loss project. I suspect that when I get to 135, though, I will just switch my focus from straight weight loss to finer tuning of my body composition. The next two weeks, there are at least four undoubtedly high calorie days: Solstice (bread and cheese and wine), Christmas Eve (likely celebration dinner), Christmas (lots of chocolate), and New Years Eve (alcohol). Since two weeks from now will be New Year's Day, I don't expect the reading to be terribly reliable. So I want to say in the next 17 days - until I leave on Tuesday the 4th to travel - I want to lose between 1.0-1.8 pounds, for a leaving weight of 143.6-142.8. That keeps me making measurable progress while allowing for the season, y'know. Then I'll probably set something like 1 pound for my vacation loss goal, but we'll see a little later about that.

Quick weigh in

144.6, 30.1% body fat. Up some irrelevant amount from last week, but down 3.0 pounds since 2 weeks ago, before the cleanse. I'm satisfied with that. Hopefully I'll read a few more 29-point-somethings for body fat soon.

Gotta go, more thoughts later.

Oh yeah, and MICROGOAL. Another 5 pounds down. Only 10 left! Pretty exciting.

First body fat goal!

Aiee! Today I'm 144.6 pounds, which has me straddling the 40/10 line, and 29.4% body fat, which (1) IS LESS THAN 30% and (2) gives me an mLean of 102.1 pounds, making me think I'm probably at the top of my rebound curve. We'll see about that one, but as per my usual policy, the first day I see the number I like is the day I count it. I'm less than 30% fat now!

Am I back up?

So I'm back up to 144.0 today, back within my usual lean-mass range at 99.6 pounds, and my ticker says 40 point something pounds lost. I'm going to hold off declaring that microgoal, though, since water might want to bump me back up into the 145 range: I consider 99-103 to be my typical lean-mass range, but 100-102 comprises even most of that. Once my weight either stays steady for several days or goes down again, I'll consider the cleanse rebound over and celebrate if warranted.

I'm tantalizingly close to breaking under 30% body fat. I weighed in at 30.8% this morning and a) I might get another pound of free lean-weight from water, b) even assuming no more lean, that means I only have to lose about 2 more pounds of fat to break under 30%. Can I do it before Christmas? Possibly maybe!

I had super low calories all last week during the cleanse, and I ate up yesterday, having a delicious greasy breakfast and lots of yummies at my parents' house decorating the tree. Now it's time to buckle back down, eat right, eat light, and work out during finals. Don't let up in this last stretch toward the holidays - there will be a couple of particular days that will be sacrificed as break-evens or even surpluses, but that doesn't mean the whole week has to be a stall-out. Let's say 143-142 by the time I go traveling in January, eh?

Cleanse summary

So day 6 was... meh. About the same as day 5. I ate a banana, an orange, some almonds and some greens right before my Bikram class and felt pretty much fine during the class.

Day 7 I was surprised at how hungry I wasn't. I drank about 600 calories' worth of juice before dinner and wasn't really that hungry. I learned that if you make your own juice, you should peel your citrus before putting it in the juicer. My mom said I could just put it in with the peel, so that's what I did at first, but it imparted a disagreeable bitter taste and made my stomach feel not so good.

I was actually a little worried my metabolism might slow down due to the low calories all week and the fact that I was getting suspiciously not-hungry, but I kept exercising all week and have eaten two quite-large meals now, so I hope any slowing will quickly reverse itself.

I doubt I will do something quite like this again. The individual components (liver support herbs, laxatives, various diet restrictions) might be useful, but the salt restriction in particular (which my mom said was the most important part) really didn't do much for me. I felt crappy when I stopped eating salt, and yeah I got used to it, but I felt weaker than usual the whole week and now that I've reintroduced it, I feel much more robust and am experiencing no ill effects at all adapting the other direction. If I do the raw thing again, I'll have to prepare ahead of time, looking up raw recipes and making sure we have a food processor and maybe a dehydrator and sprouting some beans and such. People who live a raw lifestyle have those additional tools to help them get good nutrition, especially protein, which was very much lacking in our raw phase.

For the sake of interest, here was my diet during the cleanse. The last dinner on Saturday was obviously breaking the fast, and the Saturday before, not shown here, we had a psyllium shake as well as our Cascara sagrada after dinner:

---END CLEANSE---

Saturday 12/11

12 oz apple-lemon-ginger juice (180)
12 oz carrot-orange juice (235)
6 oz unsweetened blue/cranberry juice (60)
8 oz apple-tangerine-lime juice (120)
Tofurky, yams, greens, and chocolate (500+150+20+105+40=815)

180+235+60+120+815=1410

-BEGIN JUICE FAST-

Friday 12/10

Banana, soaked almonds, and 1/2 small apple (100+200+40=340)
Banana and unsweetened blue/cranberry juice (100+60=160)
Banana, orange, almonds, and greens (100+100+200+10=410)
Greens under avocado, dried cranberries, and sunflower seeds (20+150+130+50=350)
Psyllium shake in water

340+160+410+350=1260

Thursday 12/9

1/2 green pummelo, 1/2 pear, and sunflower seeds (30+50+210=290)
Unsweetened blue/cranberry juice (60)
Peppered large tomato (60)
Baby carrots (35)
Dates with coconut butter and grapes (130+140+75=345)
Tangerine (40)
Psyllium shake in water
Spinach and tomato salad with avocado, apple, and sunflower seeds (60+100+40+50=250)
Dried cranberries (130)

290+60+60+35+345+40+250+130=1210

--BEGIN RAW PHASE--

Wednesday 12/8

Apple with unsalted peanut butter and 1/2 grapefruit (100+180+30=310)
Salad with nuts, raisins, avocado, and a rice cake (30+65+100+100+70=365)
2 tangerines and a rice cake (80+70=150)
Psyllium shake with grapefruit juice (90)
Nutritional yeast (25)
Rice, sweet potatoes, and broccoli (320+150+50=520)

310+365+150+90+25+520=1460

Tuesday 12/7

1/2 grapefruit, 1/2 apple with unsalted peanut butter, and unsweetened blue/cranberry juice (30+50+90+60=230)
2 tangerines (80)

Rice and beans (160+115=275)

Dried cranberries and walnuts (200+130=330)
Psyllium shake with dilute apple juice (60)
1/2 tangerine (20)
Rice cake (70)
1/2 acorn squash filled with rice, raisins, and almonds (85+120+30+50=285)

230+80+275+330+60+20+70+285=1350

Monday 12/6

Oatmeal with unsalted peanut butter and raisins (150+90+65=305)
Apple (100)
2 rice cakes, walnuts, almonds, dried cranberries, and date pieces (140+200+130=470)
Psyllium shake with grapefruit juice (90)
Baby carrots (35)

Rice and beans and broccoli (160+115+50=325)

305+100+470+90+35+325=1325

Sunday 12/5

Rice cake with unsalted peanut butter and dried cranberries (70+180+65=315)

Date pieces (130)

Vegetables and chopped nuts over rice and dried cranberries (150+200+130=480)

Unsweetened blue/cranberry juice (60)
Psyllium shake with dilute apple juice (60)
Rice noodles and tofu in seaweed broth (200+200=400)
Grapes (100)

315+130+480+60+60+400+100=1545

--- BEGIN CLEANSE ---

Weigh-in

My weight this morning was 142.2 pounds at 31.7% fat. This is... erm... 5.4 pounds down from last week which tells me that in the next few days about 3 pounds should be coming back. This is confirmed by the fact that my lean mass is about 3 pounds under usual. However, my calories have been very low so I should have lost around 2 real pounds this week. I'm hoping that by next week, when my water weight will have re-stabilized, I'm still under 145.

I'll post later about the conclusion of my cleanse, and what I ended up eating during it.

On the cleanse

Last paper is now turned in and I have a few days of breathing/studying room before exams, so I finally have time to talk about my cleanse. The funny thing is that this ended up being the "lets celebrate end of classes with yummies" week (perfectly predictable, I just wasn't thinking) and so I had the unique opportunity to observe my reactions to unusual temptation under unusual restriction.

Day 1 was horrible. Note to self, if I need to withdraw from any substances taper off BEFORE the cleanse starts. I had a nasty caffeine headache and basically took naps all day, which compromised my ability to do work I needed to do. It would have been okay, though, if it wasn't on top of the salt withdrawal. There's plenty of sugar and fat in natural foods, but it turns out there's not a whole lot that naturally grows with significant salt. I felt thirsty and drank and drank but water hardly helped, my skin became dry, and I felt so sluggish and hungry. I felt like I was starving on a perfectly normal amount of food and calories. My body suddenly had no help holding onto its water. At the end of the day, I saw a packet of ramen seasoning in the kitchen and involuntarily twitched toward it. I had to just walk myself away.

Most of those salt issues were gone on day 2. I felt kind of rundown and messed-up physically because I took too much of the laxative herb the night before, but mostly I was just frustrated at all the food I couldn't eat. "This must be what it's like to be on a restrictive diet", I thought, and then realized, oh wait, I AM on a restrictive diet. It's just not one that has weight-loss as its primary aim. But seriously. I went to my conference class where people bring snacks and it was the last class so lots of people brought something, and you know what the menu was? Baguette, cheese including BRIE, crackers, jams, lemon curd, and mixed nuts. All delicious, and not a SINGLE thing on my fucking diet. I was so annoyed.

On day 3 I pretty much felt normal. Donuts appeared in one of my classes, which brought back a brief wave of "god damn it why did I do it THIS week," but there were also tangerines so I took a couple and ate them, allowing me to save the one I'd brought from home until after my workout. I didn't particularly want the donuts at the moment, just regretted passing up the opportunity, so I considered wrapping one in a napkin and putting it in the freezer, but then I decided what did I want a calorie-bomb like that for? If there had been a cream-filled donut I probably would have, but I didn't see one. At this point I began to notice that I was eating only as absolutely necessary, and really not caring very much, because food I was allowed to eat just tasted so boring.

By day 4 I just felt like a weirdo, or maybe an anorexic, as I accepted chocolate kisses from my yoga teacher and cupped them to my nose to smell them, then put them in my pocket knowing I wouldn't eat them until Saturday. I was merely amused as I passed over the donuts, bagels, cream cheese, and coffee outside my 9am class for a cup of Tazo Wild Sweet Orange, which happens to be my favorite herbal tea on the planet. On the way out I grabbed a cup of chamomile. There were kisses at the front of my 10am class too but I didn't take more. This was the day I remembered why I chose this week: next week is finals when I can't be compromised, and the week after is Solstice.

It wasn't until day 5 that I started fantasizing about off-cleanse food. Cheese bagels with asiago cheese-flavored cream cheese, Annie's macaroni and cheese from a box, Caesar salad, Indian curry. And coffee, oh my, I would love my coffee back (funny enough, I haven't thought much about pot in the course of all this). Yet it was in such a way that if someone put it front of me, I'd feast my eyes and my nose and not be tempted at all to put it in my mouth. This was the first raw day, and it was just so hard to eat enough. Coming to dinner and realizing our only chance to top off our calories and get some protein was avocado and a shit-ton of seeds on the salad... well, okay, it works, but geez, no rice and beans even.

It's now day 6. It's not a moment to moment struggle or anything, but I'm ready for this shit to be over. Honestly, I don't particularly feel cleansed - I feel nutritionally depleted. I need some fucking protein (among, I'm sure, other things). My strength in my workouts has been on the decline this week, and I just hope the bananas and almonds I'm going to eat today will pump me up for the Bikram class we're gonna go to this afternoon. I have lost a ton of weight, but I'm not saying how much until tomorrow when I weigh in officially, because I know it's largely bullshit, that is to say, water that was attached to salt.

Today is one more raw day, and then tomorrow will be the juice fast until dinner. I'm actually looking forward to the juice fast a bit, it's just so extreme, I think I can't help but enjoy it for that reason. Also, I'll know that at the end of the day I get to eat Tofurky and yams, and it will be amazing-delicious. Until tomorrow...

Late weigh-in and first day of the cleanse

Yesterday I weighed in at 147.6 pounds and 31.1% body fat.

I went to a Bikram class and got the introductory package, as planned. I went to my mom's birthday dinner, which was Ethiopian food, and had this yummy bread called injera made from a gluten-free grain called teff. After dinner I had a psyllium shake, which was disgusting and should probably only be taken on an empty stomach, and some Cascara, to kick off the cleanse. We (my boyfriend is doing most of it with me) were too tired to wait an hour between the shake and Cascara, so we took them together, and I think the Cascara might have gotten absorbed by the psyllium because it didn't seem to have much effect, but we'll solve that later by taking the psyllium midday.

This morning I took a milk thistle and dandelion supplement and had a delicious rice cake with unsalted peanut butter and dried cranberries. I also had a piece of kombu (a kind of seaweed) steeped in hot water. I've had a little bit of a cold (just some sore throat/itchy nose in the morning) which I think is making me want salt more than would normally be the case. More than that, I'm feeling very low energy, which is partly because it's cold and probably mostly because I'm not having caffeine.

The official program, then, is this:

Liver support herbs with breakfast
At least 1 psyllium shake per day at any convenient time
Cascara sagrada before bed
Nothing with added salt, sugar, or oil (my boyfriend is allowing honey, I'm not)
No meat, eggs, dairy, or wheat
No mind-altering substances

Sunday-Wednesday: just wheat-free vegan
Thursday-Friday: raw food
Saturday: liquid fast until dinner (my boyfriend will just continue on raw)

Going back to Bikram yoga, and next semester plans

Today I got 147.8, another new low. I hope that it continues on its way down tomorrow for official weigh-in, although my period is coming up and sometimes that causes a loss and sometimes it causes a gain, so I don't know what will happen. That's not the main point of this post, though.

I want to start doing Bikram yoga again. I did Bikram for 2 years in high school - somewhere between daily and weekly, usually closer to daily, and I did a double (two classes in a day) maybe twice. I quit when I felt it was no longer rewarding, my academics were becoming more demanding (this was the beginning of junior year), and the teachers' answer to me was "come more often and work harder."

I've been back for a drop-in class at my old studio a couple of times since then. I also took a yoga class at my high school senior year, and have been taking yoga for P.E. credit all this semester. I do like yoga. The reasons I'm thinking of going back to Bikram are: first of all, the yoga class I'm taking is MW or TTh, which leaves you getting rusty over the weekend. Second, I'd like to exercise more on the weekends, and Bikram is a huge shot of calorie burn that would be useful for my weight loss efforts. Third, I like the two kinds of yoga for different reasons. I like Bikram because it is long, hard, HOT, regimented and predictable. I like my morning school-yoga because, in contrast, the poses vary with each class, and it's more focused on breath and making transitions so that the poses flow into each other. Both approaches are valuable.

Most studios, including the one nearest my school and current place of residence, have an introductory offer of $29 for 30 days unlimited yoga. So I plan to sign up this weekend for that, which will give me lots of yoga over the end-of-semester and break, when I will have more time and less access to the campus gym. Then I'll go traveling, and when I get back for the semester I'll get a 10-class card and just come once a week. It's not what the Bikram cult recommends, but it's what'll work for me.

Which brings me to next semester's plans. I intend to keep going to my morning yoga class, and I'm going to start going to Bikram on the weekend - so far so good. The thing is, there are other PE classes that are interesting and could replace some of my cardio or supplement my pitiful level of strength training - but I can only register for one class at a time for credit. My yoga teacher says I don't have to be registered to come to class, so I think I will try to take one of the other PE classes. The second thing is that the class I most want to take - step aerobics - conflicts with my lab lecture Thursday night. I will have to ask my chem instructor, then, if he will approve the conflict and allow me to take it anyway. Another option is Pilates. So I'll get that worked out. Finally, I don't really know where to look for this, but I'd really like to find a place that will teach and then host dancing on a weekend night, and go with my boyfriend regularly.

Thursdays

148.2 is a new low. It's odd - I don't get to do my hard workouts for the week until Thursday and Friday, but I usually start showing my losses for the week on Thursday morning. Will I break into the 147's by Saturday? Stay tuned.

Diet is going well this week

So far, I am proud of my diet this week. It has been good quality and my calorie counts have been 1740, 1335, and 1500. Today is planned between 1310-1510 (depending on whether someone brings snack to my conference class) and tomorrow is planned at 1415. My strategy has been to eat a fairly low-calorie (~300), but delicious and balanced breakfast, bring two snacks that together would constitute a balanced meal (combined ~500), but eat them separately at about 11am and 3pm so I don't get "bogged down" or distracted by lunch, and then eat a larger, balanced dinner (~500). If I'm doing cardio in the morning, I'll bring an extra post-workout snack and reduce calories in other places. Altogether this adds up to 1300, which leaves room for the 15 here and 10 there that go over the targets, for a coffee-with-milk I didn't plan on, or for a random cake to appear in front of me.

... I didn't talk about the cake yet, did I? On Monday, I walked into my 10am class and there was a half-eaten cake at the front of the room. No explanation was given. My instructor didn't say anything about it at all. Before he started lecturing someone from the back of the room came up and spooned some of it into a jar, so after class, I broke off one bite for what I called 50 calories. By 2pm when I had another class in the same room, it was gone. I have no idea why it was there.

So hopefully this week will go well and show results. I am certainly pushing enough deficit to merit them, and I will get to work out hard tomorrow and Friday. Then it's my mom's birthday, yummy dinner, and next week I start the cleanse! I'm excited about that for the most part, although it will be hard to stop using caffeine and pot. Hopefully determination and elation from the restricted diet and detoxing will carry me through.