Weight Loss Report #5 + Re-Thinking Blog Goals

Sorry for the late update. It’s been a busy week in my household — moving house and all. Fun times. We’ve almost settled in and now I have to get ready for the return of Uni. But this time I’m not that excited but instead glum resignation of my upcoming fate that involves stress, assignments and obligations. I admit… what I was studying, it’s somehow lost its charm for me. I still enjoy it, but I’m not as passionate about it as before and over the last year I’ve been slowly developing new interests which I get passionate and excited about, and love studying.

Anyway, measurements: 38.5″/31.5″/36.5″. Nothing to see, I have gained a little as I’ve veered off a little in my diet thanks to moving/cleaning/doing other new house things. Although perhaps all that box-carrying and running around town doing errands made sure I didn’t gain too much 🙂

I’ve also gotten digital scales. They are funny little things. I weighed myself 4 times in oneday and was anywhere between 59kg to 61kg. Way to go for accuracy. It also taught me not to take those things too seriously, except as novel curiosity every now and then. Like reading your horoscopes.

I’ve also been re-thinking my weight loss goals, especially after reading some women’s weight loss threads on Mark’s Daily Apple forum. The general idea I got from the threads is that eating primally is firstly for health and general wellbeing and secondly, weight loss can be a restrictive and narrow-minded way of seeing the big picture of health.

I’m sure I stated at the beginning of this blog that my reasons for losing weight were largely vanity-based and also for the experience of being a member of the flat belly club. Often I would eat and exercise and live life with the frequent thoughts of ‘If I don’t do X, Y or Z… I’ll be part of the fat belly club forevaaaaahhh!!111!’ — so my mentality felt narrow, flat, controlled and fear-based. I would also have thoughts of ‘Can’t eat sugar, sugar is BAAAAADD. Makes you look old and gives you arthritis!!’ or ‘Bread’s bad. Bread’s poison.’

So it was a mix of ‘Must do this to look and feel good or else’ and ‘Bad for health. Avoid avoid avoid.’ – there never was a clear or concise mentality or motivation but a muddy mixture inside my mind. To me, it seems that eating right and do things right is more than actually doing it and going through the motions, but having the actual spirit and mind behind your work. A clear, strong spirit… not something muddy and confused.

What do I want? Do I just want a flat belly? Or do I want lifelong good health? What are my driving reasons? My current actions? I feel like I do a lot of things in my life out of obligation and for shallow reasons like prestige, social respect/popularity, vanity, because ‘it’s the right thing’ (whatever that means)… and most of what I do consequently feels empty and pointless and I soon forget about it. I feel like having a re-boot, but I have to be careful. Too fast and enthusiastic and I’ll come crashing down like Icarus, but too slow and cautious and I’ll never get there and lose motivation.

Primal Experiment: Wacky Flaxseed and Coconut porridge

The Beach

Yesterday was a great day; we finally got approved for a lovely little one bedroom  place. It’s small but newly built and very nice. It’s a bit far from my uni, but that’s okay. I’m sure I can cope/find a way around.

We also went to the beach yesterday. It was beautiful. Big blue sky and big rolling sea. We had a walk along the shore and I wished I had brought my swimmers. The air smelt fresh and there was a cool breeze out too. It was quiet too, hardly anyone there and I found a couple of amazing shells.

I also decided to play scientist and invent my own primal porridge! It turned out to be quite yummy and filling, here’s the recipe below:

LSA Meal and Shredded Coconut Porridge

The finished product. Yum!

Ingredients:

2 tbsp of LSA meal
2 tbsp of shredded/dessicated coconut
1 tbsp of flaxseed meal
3 tbsp of coconut milk
1/3 cup of almond milk
1 ripe banana
1 tsp of stevia
Berries of choice (I like chopped up strawberries and blueberries)
Slivered almonds (optional – makes porridge have a nice crunch too)
Pine nuts (again optional – I love my pine nuts)

Method:

1. Mix up the LSA meal, shredded coconut, flaxseed meal, coconut milk, almond milk, banana and stevia together. Put in microwave on high for 2 minutes. Or if you are using the stove top, heat the mix till very warm to hot, but not boiling.
2. Mix in slivered almonds and pine nuts. Top porridge with berries of choice. Enjoy 🙂

Well, that’s all for today. I’ll be enjoying aikido again today, hopefully lure the bf to the beach again sometime this week (him and the sun are arch-enemies apparently) and getting that rising pile of dishes under control 😛

Eating Primally Part 2 – A Most Excellent Breakfast

Well this was my breakfast this morning. Banana pancakes with strawberries and blueberries with a splash of coconut milk and a bit of honey. So yummy! I also had a light dusting of cinnamon on top too. It was very good. But could probably have done with a bit more. I got fairly hungry within 2 hours.

This was my dinner. Sliced turkey with tarragon and lemon, the compulsory pesto (of course!) with a mix of veges (snow peas, zucchini, carrots and onion). Very yummy and have enough for my breakfast tomorrow 😀

Cooking and eating like this isn’t cheap but it’s very filling and satisfying – both mentally and physically. But I do feel it is dollars well spent. Also I’ve learnt the delight of buying just that one carrot, that one zucchini for one or two meals. One carrot is 16 cents!! So now I have enough veges for 2-3 dinners without them spoiling on me and wasting my money. There’s a lot more trips to the shopping centre but I am very lucky to live near one.

Haven’t done much in the way of exercise for the past few days. Tomorrow I will go to aikido and might go for a walk afterwards. Quick tip: Banana Boat sunscreen for babies (comes in a pink bottle) is quite nice; not too greasy, leaves my skin soft and protected. I do like. I am also going to test out another sunscreen called ‘Invisible Zinc’ and see how I go with that one.

A quick update on my house-hunting – bane of my life – no, nothing so far 😦 Renting sucks – I look forward to the day I can own/build my own home.

 

Eating Primally – Best Dinner Ever!

Well that was my dinner — don’t worry, I didn’t have that small of a serving! I had squid in sweet chilli lime with pesto and a side of mushrooms and tomatoes. Om nom nom. I’m so used to having rice as a side in my meals, that I decided to see if I could make a meal that was filling without a big ol’ dollop of rice. Turns out you can just have heaps more veges and/or meat. Yes, I know pretty obvious in retrospect but as someone who comes from a big rice-eating family, it was not so obvious. It was pretty much a staple in my family, even more than bread and it’s weird… but I feel like I’m shunning another family member when I cut back on my rice intake.

Today I also went to see my friend to continue working on our project (which is a digital magazine) today. We laid out themes for our magazine, looked at other magazines that we considered good reference material and discussed a lot of ideas. It was a fun afternoon. It’s rare I get a chance to real have a dig at ideas with someone else.

Besides a primal dinner, I had banana pancakes. They were very good! Just like the old ones I made with flour. Finally, I had a hot chocolate made out of coconut milk watered down with pure unsweetened cocoa. I added a dash of stevia to sweeten it up a bit. Good stuff to drink whilst typing out this entry.

I enjoyed eating today. Trying out new things, but also re-creating old favourites but in a new, grain-free fashion. It tells me I can eat like this for the rest of my life without feeling deprived. Eating less grain stuff has an interesting side effect for my teeth – they’re less furry at the end of the day! I may have already mentioned that but they are. They look cleaner in general too. Perhaps grain-based is like food heaven to bacteria?

I’ve also been researching ways of handling social situations where I’m with people who don’t eat like me. The main points that stuck out to me were either:

• say you have a condition, eg: gluten intolerant
• don’t make a big fuss about it and the other party won’t either
• just don’t eat and wait till you get home – yes another Captain Obvious moment for me, but there you go

My bf told me also that if people mock you for your eating habits (it does happen now and then), it’s because they’re jealous, feel threatened or honestly don’t get the point. Of course, why someone would get up in arms about the eating habits of a relative stranger is a bit bizarre… but anyway.

Eating primally has also made me re-think again the way I spend money. With the exception of meat (which is usually quite expensive in my part of town)… it is fairly viable to go out every few days and spend a few dollars refreshing veges and buying a little bit of this and that — but as long as you know where to shop to make your dollar stretch. It also goes back to the point that even if eating like this is expensive, it’s probably worth the money to protect your health and pays off in the long-run. Plus it’s nice to eat different and new meals every few days and taste things I’ve never tasted or used to just wonder about.

Well that’s all for tonight. Hope you guys had a good day 🙂