Breakfast: 1.5 cheesy bratwursts, leftover corn. Lot's-o-coffee.
Lunch: 2 oz beef jerky, 'Grandma's" home-style oatmeal-raisin cookie. (calories 360, carbos 60 g., for your info.) Shortly after eating it, I was trying to type and having massive spelling errors. Couldn't get my fingers to work correctly, for some reason. I've been typing long enough - should know where the keys are by now, shouldn't I?

Snack - chocolate brownie around 5.

Dinner was a feast, aroudn 6:30. Roast pork loin, roughly 8-10 ounces, large pile of sauteed squash, chocolate sacher-torte for dessert, with extra chocolate. Yum!

Feeling pretty good today - despite some bad news at the base (relating to my 'career' in the Reserves, not overall military related). Life goes on...

I forgot to eat breakfast today.

Yeah. Missed it completely, and didn't even realize it. I had some coffee (w/cream & sugar) - and since I normally eat breakfast in the car (hey, it doesn't require much coordination to drive and eat a hard-boiled egg at the same time, though I unwrap it and the muffin at a stoplight) I packed up and got on the road as usual.

And hit every green light between here and the office. Go figure. Threw me off my schedule completely.

So, I forgot to eat breakfast. I started feeling a bit hungry around 12 - got some roast beef, turkey, and cheese at the cafeteria, and got a large bottle of water (1.5 liter). Around 4 I went to Aldi's - but I was feeling a bit depressed. Bought some stuff for the upcoming week, including a large bar of chocolate and some brownies. Got home and had about an ounce of chocolate and one of the brownies - and I was feeling better about a half-hour later. Felt even better after dinner at 7...

Today's food:

Breakfast: Coffee
Lunch: .6 lb cheese, turkey, and beef.
Snack: Beef Jerky
Snack: Chocolate & brownie
Dinner: Two cheesy bratwursts, big mound of veggies, coleslaw, chocolate.

Mood: Slightly depressed around 4 to 6. Picked up Aaron, felt a lot better after that.

Ah, breakfast. For variety, leftovers from 7/27, the chicken & bacon dish w/peppers and onions. Also muffin, and egg and coffee.
Lunch: 7 oz. roast beef and cheese. Water.
Snack: 1 oz. jerky, water.
Dinner: Waffle House cheesesteak omlet, with jalapenos, and some grits and a slice of toast.
Late night snack - cherry fruit pie.

If I don't list a beverage, figure I had water. BTW, the jerky I'm eating is Jack Link's brand, and it's a lot better than other stuff I've tried. Tillamook jerky wasn't very good. And those little strips you pay 25-50 cents for? Forget it... Spend a bit more, get good stuff, because if you don't like it - you won't eat it.

Mood today - I was getting a bit hungry around 6:30, before dinner. But it passed. I'm still wondering about all this stuff - it actually seems to be working...

J.

The message that started it all.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?

This is what my mother taught me 40 years ago, backed up by the vague observation that Italians tended toward corpulence because they ate so much pasta. This observation was actually documented by Ancel Keys, a University of Minnesota physician who noted that fats ''have good staying power,'' by which he meant they are slow to be digested and so lead to satiation, and that Italians were among the heaviest populations he had studied. According to Keys, the Neapolitans, for instance, ate only a little lean meat once or twice a week, but ate bread and pasta every day for lunch and dinner. ''There was no evidence of nutritional deficiency,'' he wrote, ''but the working-class women were fat.''

By the 70's, you could still find articles in the journals describing high rates of obesity in Africa and the Caribbean where diets contained almost exclusively carbohydrates. The common thinking, wrote a former director of the Nutrition Division of the United Nations, was that the ideal diet, one that prevented obesity, snacking and excessive sugar consumption, was a diet ''with plenty of eggs, beef, mutton, chicken, butter and well-cooked vegetables.'' This was the identical prescription Brillat-Savarin put forth in 1825.

Got a problem with the midnight munchies? Maybe you need to reconsider what you've been stuffing your cake hole with. Cut out the massive carbos, cut back on the sugared drinks - start up with the eggs & bacon and steak. It's not the fat that makes you fat - it's the carbos along with it..

The FDA thinks it's a bad idea. Take a look at the food guide here, and then read the article here. You'[ll need to log onto the NY Times web site, but if you don't already have a login you can use SP500AM as the ID, with SP500AM as the password. (Hey, I try to be full service...)

Considering the way government's been going with some of their pronouncements, maybe the pyramid should be inverted? At least, the idea should be examined with the same sort of scrutiny reserved for Enron or Worldcom. If carbos do make you fat, the food pyramid is a guaranteed way to the next larger pants size.

And I, for one, am tired of it. Pass me a steak, and keep the potato!

J.

Breakfast: egg, muffin, coffee, some "Cinnamon Crunch" cereal. (The stuff was real sweet, I sampled it as I was getting Aaron's bag ready.)
Lunch: can vienna sausages, beef jerky. (I've got the cans in the car - but just no time today to get to something better for lunch.)
Dinner: Heaping pile of vege-all, leftover pot roast and steak, a hash-brown patty, and ice cream cake for dessert.

Again, okay mood-wise until about an hour after the dinner, noticed I was getting grouchy.

Still not hungry, but I think I'm getting some indications that my body would like more bulk & fiber. (We won't talk much about what those particular indications are, just that I'm taking a dump every two or three days now instead of daily as usual. Understandable, since I'm on a low-residue diet.) Also, my skin seems a bit oiler. God, I hope I don't break out in zits.

Breakfast: slice of cheese, egg, & muffin - and coffee.
Strip of jerky.
Lunch: 9 oz. roast beef, turkey, & cheese. Water.
Dinner: 4 slices pot roast, carrots, small potato, ice cream.
Snack: Chocolate cupcake.

Attitude change this evening, after dinner, around 9:45 or so. Got rather impatient with Aaron - didn't need to be. (Sigh) Potatoes & ice cream, maybe? (Didn't have snack until about 5 minutes ago.)

Other than that, the day went well. Feeling pretty good, but I'll be going to bed soon.

Breakfast - slice of cheese, egg & muffin. (See a pattern here? )
Lunch: McChicken Sandwich, hold the bun. Fruit & Yogurt cup. 3 strips jerky, water. A bit shakey around 12, when I ate.
Snack: Strip of jerky, cookie (at Kroger)
Dinner: 8 oz steak, big pile of green beans cooked in ham base, carrots, small nuked potato. Dessert was that pineapple yogurt pie Sue made.

I was feeling pretty full at dinner - ate half my steak and thought: "Well, I'm not hungry..." but I ate a bit more of it anyway.

The slight shakiness worries me a bit. Low blood sugar right before lunch, even though I wasn't hungry? (And I wasn't - it was more a "Time to eat, and there's a McD's" thing than anything else.)

Well, we'll see how the week goes.

J.

Weekly Weigh: 212.

This was AFTER breakfast (two eggs, 8 small sausage links, coffee.)
Lunch - one chicken nugget, one french fry, Dr. Pepper. (Hey, I wasn't hungry, but snagged a couple of bits from Aaron's kid's meal.)

Snack - around 2:30 - one cheezy hot dog, cup blueberry yogurt, chicken wing. Coffee.
Dinner: Pork chop & egg dinner at IHOP. 3 eggs with cheese, two smallish pork chops. Came with three pancakes and hash browns, ate one pancake and a bit of the potatoes.

Note - I got a little bit "empty feeling" around a half-hour after eating. Went away after about an hour, and now (4+ hours later) I still feel full.

If I'm down to 209 at the end of next week, I'll consider this diet a liveable one. This is the first decline I've seen in my weight in a couple of years.

I guess it's the fat that's doing it - keeping me from feeling like I need to scarf down a bag'o'chips to satisfy myself. It's odd, not feeling hungry.

J.