So. Today starts my 11th day on the No Carb Diet.
It's really isn't all that bad, actually. I can eat all my favorite foods except bread, some fruits and desert. Since I don't really care for a ton of variety in my diet, its been quite nice. I eat two eggs with cheese for breakfast, and a salad of spinach, kale and chard with nuts, seeds, dried cranberries, cheese, a hard boiled egg and a vinaigrette dressing for lunch. The dried fruit has the highest content of carbs in my diet, but it makes the salad most enjoyable and provides other nutrients.
Dinner is chicken with cooked green peppers, onions, mushrooms and seasonings, sour cream, salsa, and guacamole; ham with savory green beads (mom recipe is the best!); pot stickers with the sauce (I think I ate, like, nine of them. We get a four pound bag for $11 from Costco); plain yogurt with berries; plain yogurt with raw oats, honey, cinnamon, roasted edamame and pumpkin seeds; or a shot of raw, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar (we only did this once and have no desire to do it every again.)
Logan has acquired humus and chips for snacks, since snacks are rather necessary on this diet. The chips are a corn base with quinoa and black beans, or a corn base with pumpkin seeds. The second tastes so much like pumpkin pie that I eat them for desert. Hard boiled eggs sprinkled with salt or soy sauce is also a tasty snack, and I'll occasionally drink the raw, unpasteurized apple cider vinegar the proper way- diluted with water and sweetened with honey.
I'm hoping that tea becomes a more regular enjoyment for me, though it will be rather expensive. I've just learned that tea plants absorb fluoride out of the soil they grow in as an anti-chomp-me mechanism. Apparently, animals who eat the leaves get stomach aches and cease using that plant as a food source. For humans, fluoride can be toxic and cause all sorts of maladies, and drinking too much tea can dangerous. However, there is an apparent distinction between expensive tea and cheap tea because of how long the leaves are on the plant- high end teas are made from young leaves and buds, while cheap tea is made from old or fallen leaves. Therefore, I'll not be drinking two gallons a day, but a cup or two should be quite lovely.
My energy levels are up and I don't crash nearly as hard when I get home from work. My body feels light, much less bloated, and like I can do the things I want to do. My depression has lifted a great deal, and I'm actually doing the things I've been saying I want to do for the past several months. I'm communicating with people more frequently and loosing my train of thought less often. My muscles ache less and I don't have the urge to turn into a caffeinated squirrel quit as often. I believe I may still be losing weight, but I've no way of really measuring that (no bathroom scale and I lost my sewing tape).
I just had an apple. It was tasty.
We have an ice cream date planned for next week. I think a sugar high every once in a while is acceptable. After all:
"This is what I have observed to be good: that it is appropriate for a person to eat, to drink and to find satisfaction in their toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given them--for this is their lot."
~Ecc. 5:18
