Feeling Sorry for Myself

I woke up last Sunday thinking perhaps I had a cold.  Sure enough, I had a head-cold all this week, and it threw me off stride.  It was (still is) just a head-cold, but I haven't had a real cold for quite a while - maybe not at all last year. This was the real thing: completely stuffed nose, throat too sore to swallow at times, sneezing fits and coughing fits.  But no fever - not the flu (I had my shot early this year). It could be that the added stress of three nights in the forties in my bedroom lowered my resistance to ever present cold germs, so I'll add my cold to Pepco's sins.

We are fiercely busy at work doing some very stressful stuff and so I kept on going to the office. But I wasn't up to full speed there, and the effort to pull myself together there took just about everything I had, so of course I blew off both early morning gym sessions in an attempt to get more sleep besides not having the energy to face it. I found with the extra hour's sleep, then getting up to immediate cold medicine and lots of hot coffee, my mornings in the office were relatively productive. By afternoon I was dragging, and the evenings were quite sluggish.

So I didn't have the energy to do much planning or executing good food for the diet.  Everything in my body was suggesting staying in bed with a big plate of pasta to knock me out and sleep until recovery.  In my younger days of living alone and tending to myself, I invented a "feed a cold and stuff a fever" dish that always helped me sleep it off, basically a form of spaghetti carbonara with onions instead of bacon.  (Sautee one or two sweet onions in a pan while boiling thin spaghetti; when both are done combine into the onion pan and scramble an egg into it. Smother in parmesan. and eat until your stomach is comfortably full.  Sleep for twelve hours.)

Luckily for both me and the family, we're actively eating down all the food in the big basement freezer and basement storage closet before doing any more major restocking. For dinners I was able to serve pot roast, spaghetti with meat-balls, and baked salmon with pesto.  There were main dishes I could eat every night, but we didn't have much in the way of fresh vegetables, and what we had I didn't get around to cooking.  A couple of times, at the last minute, I tossed some frozen green beans in the microwave and brought them to the table.  For breakfast and lunch, I either had big hunks of cheese from my fridge or else bought something on the fly. Lunch out can usually mean a salad, except with the cold (and the freezing rain) I craved the comfort of hot food, which is far more problematic.

I found overall that "coasting" on this Atkins way of food choices means not eating enough carbs by the diet's rules, and certainly not enough fresh vegetables. What is easy to do is get a meat meal, and ignore the carb sides that usually are offered. I wasn't hungry afterwards, but even Atkins would say I was not eating a healthy diet.  I did have almonds for a snack in my office desk drawer, so I wasn't carb free, but it wasn't anything fresh. I did have an evening appetizer (while fixing dinner) of celery with almond butter.  I did take my vitamins, and picked up a container of blueberries along the way for an evening treat, so I got some vitamin C, at least.  But getting my leafy greens and other fiber-rich vegetables into my diet takes planning, shopping, and working ahead - all efforts I wasn't prepared to make last week. I didn't actually track my food at the time, either, and it's possible that my "treats" piled up on top of each other, eroding the insulin control.

The other thing that kind of frustrated me is the inability to eat sandwiches.  There is a reason they are so popular - they can be so very convenient. When I need to grab something in the cafeteria to take back to my office and talk to folks while I eat (something I had to do more than once in our crazy busy week), a sandwich is the portable and neat and convenient form. I didn't do it, but a salad or hot dish that requires a plate in front of you, a knife and fork, both hands and a napkin involved is way more an obstacle than a sandwich held in one hand off to the side.

Thinking about convenient hand food turned me to my cookbook shelf. Sure enough, I found in one of my low carb books a suggestion for lettuce packages, inspired by Vietnamese cuisine. Basically, to make the lettuce pliable enough to wrap the contents, you have to blanch whole romaine leaves briefly in boiling water, then immediately transfer to an ice water bath. The leaves should be big enough to wrap the meat contents completely. Not something to be slapped together at the last minute, and not something likely that can be frozen and thawed, but never-the-less something to try to see if it is portable and handy as finger food to eat in the office or while out and about.  Leftover taco meat, for example, or pieces of chicken or turkey with a really good mustard or mayonnaise based sauce. Or even tuna salad - something I'm trying to not eat more than once a week, per Consumer Reports.

As a result of all the slugdom and minimal eating, weight loss is going fine but strength and overall health is not up to snuff.  I went to the gym Saturday morning for the first time in a week, and was totally exhausted at the end. The rest of my Saturday was totally inactive. Now, on Sunday, I'm sore in that muscle way after working out, more than usual.  I have yard work to do today. I have some dinner plans for the coming week, and that should result in some leftovers for lunches. I am lacking in the breakfast department, and I don't want to default to eggs and sausage in the company cafeteria.  (It's not actually that bad from an overall Atkins viewpoint, but I know for a fact they use factory farmed eggs and pork, and I bet they use the nastiest fats possible for cooking.) I've got a bunch of spinach, and maybe I can sautee in olive oil with some onions and pecans and call it breakfast. Re-nuke briefly each morning and eat with a fork, maybe with some parmesan cheese.

So here's where I am after the month of Atkins: I'm definitely losing weight, and I'm definitely doing ok with the concept of the diet, and I'm generally eating about 1500 calories or more when I'm tracking.  I need to focus on adding more vegetables to the diet. I am at the stages where the book says to add back fruits, still no starches. I'd like to track more carefully, and get a handle on what I'm actually doing. But vegetables need to be my focus, and they remain hard to incorporate.  Meat from home warmed up and put on a salad at work is a very successful and fulfilling lunch option, so I need to try to incorporate that into my dinner planning.

And back to the gym this coming week!