Positive Comments

I've started getting positive comments about my weight loss, so it is showing! My most recent weigh in was 14 stone 10.25lbs and my short term goal is 14 stone. I very much look forward to being able to fit into size 16 clothes. I have some ready from when I was a size 16 before (a long time ago!) and I even have some size 12s in a bag on top of the wardrobe. I KNOW I will get there at some point, even if it takes me another year.

My diet mostly consists of meat, eggs and veg at the moment, together with some coconut milk and a variety of oils. I had some wild salmon baked in tin foil with olive oil and lemon this evening, which helped to make it less dry. I have found that farmed salmon is much more oily and moist, but research suggests that it is much lower in omega 3 than wild salmon.

I seem to get an upset stomach whenever I eat the jerky I've made myself, so I'm going to lay off it for a while and buy some pre-made online, just so i can check it really is that causing the problem. I expect I'm leaving the meat in the fridge too long before dehydrating it. I also wonder whether it's actually cheaper buying it pre made, as the cost of running the dehydrator may well cancel out the convenience mark up. I'm investigating some British jerky makers and will report back.

Dreaming of Cake and Babies

I weighed in at an exciting 14 stone 10.25 this morning! The 14 stone milestone is in sight, which means that the very low carbing is working! I'm currently eating: meat, fish, eggs, green leafy veg and coconut milk. These are all very satisfying, tasty foods, but I have noticed that people are eating cake, wherever I go. It is usually very nicely decorated cake with coloured icing, or a wedding cake in a film on TV, or an advert for an instant cake mix, during which a child is licking the cake mixture spoon, watching the cakes bake in the oven and then for the grand finale he eats one in front of me. I've been dreaming about cake, and I mostly give in and eat it in my dreams, but in reality I have not eaten any cake or any other form of non-primal, high carb food. I have will power! I think it helps that even eating butternut squash makes me feel unwell due to the higher level of carbs, and I imagine how much worse I'd feel after eating cake. I may begin to indulge in a little cooled coconut cream when I've lost all the fat I want to. A friend asked me what my target weight was and I realised I didnt have an exact figure in mind. Having thought about it, I reckon that 10 stone would be ideal, given that I'm 5'6" tall. Since it's taken me nearly 3.5 months to lose 20.25lbs, it should take around a year to lose the reamining 66.25lbs. However, I expect that it will become easier to lose the weight as I become lighter and more able to exercise, so it may even happen sooner.

Oh, and the babies reference. Another friend recently announced that she's pregnant, which makes the total number of friends with either a baby, child or prenancy equal to 4299483202. They're everywhere, and I want one.

Very Low Carbing

I felt very hypoglycemic a number of times during the weekend. I asked for advice on the Primal Blueprint forum and a number of people suggested that I need to increase my carb intake. However, I tried this and felt even worse (panicky, anxious, irritable, brain fog, sweating etc), so on Monday I ate NO carbs at all until the evening. I felt better but still lightheaded. It was an improvement on how I felt on more carbs though, so I stuck at it. Today I've eaten only meat (duck leg, lamb chop), 2 boiled eggs, a stick of celery and a small avacado, and I've had no hypos at all. I can occasionally feel my heart beating quite strongly, and these palpitations are apparently caused by the extra adrenalin that is being secreted in response to a lack of easy access fuel in the form of carbs. I assume that their occurrence will cease once my body has adapted to burning fat and using ketones. Hopefully this will accelerate the weightloss a little, as I am disappointed at having only lost just over 1 stone in 3 months, regardless of my dedication.

I'm currently back at the grindstone making corrections to the book chapter. The new LaTeX format for Springer contributed books makes it look very professional though and it will be exciting to see it in print (end of 2011).