weigh in after first week on no dairy: down 2.4 pounds!!!1 yippee!!

I feel a LITTLE foolish: has the solution really been THAT simple and I've been stuggling so many years ? ah well.

had another outstanding breakfast: almond butter blueberry pancakes with blue berry syrup.

basically just almond butter and eggs, a little bit of salt and some baking powder and bake 'em on a griddle like pancakes, slather with butter and blueberry cooked up with some splenda. delish!!!!!

I'll post the full recipe on my recipe site later today.

On other fronts: started rehearsals on earnest for " and then there were none. its gonna be really fun production--some wonderful talented castmates. here is the poster ( my design as well!)

I finally got the motivation to kick over into weight loss mode--I saw the publicity shots for my play and boy-o-boy do I look big--even my calves looked puffy and fat--blechh. and the boobage ( 34 triple D)--turns out there such a thing as too much of a good thing


Ive had three weeks of clean--but " normal " low carbing-with lots of low carb goodies and LOTS of dairy and lost exactly one pound the first week and have been toatally stabel at that weight (130.8)

so i'm now--third day in--doing a nearly zero carb, all meat, no dairy, limited nuts.

Having my favorite breakfast today: 2 eggs fried in butter over easy served on sliced tomatoes with a healthy squeeze of lemon juice. and bacon lotsa bacon!!!!!!



the reasoning behind all this is that it isn't calorie and it isn't even carbs so much but that some kind of inflamation thingy is going on ( age/menopause/heredity) since inflamation is driven by the eicosonoid balance and THAT is driven by essential fatty acid balance-- i.e omega 6to omegas 3's. Omega 6 fatty acids drive inflamation up and omega's 3's drive it down --too much omega six relative to 3 is a very bad thing--(ideal ratio is 1:1--or as close as possible 3:1 or 4:1 being feasible)or at the and our standard indutrial diet has way too much omega 6--veg oils, grains and grain fed cattle and dairy cows all have an overabundance of omega 6 and unless we supplement we get little to no omega three ( some have suggested that the ratio in the standard american diet is closer to 20:1!!!!!!!)

to acheive that ratio you need to eliminate as many sources of omega 6 as possible and up the 3's so-- we eat grass fed meat,which is also organic hormone free ( and has a much much better fatty acid ratio than grain fed beef) use no veg oil except olive oil--all other fats are butter and ghee, lard or palm oil. and supplement with cod liver oil to up the omega.3's

but I still am having difficulty--retaining water, inability to get to a normal weight etc etc so..

the dairy goes--we don't have a source of affordable organic, raw dairy from pastured, grass fed cows dairy, so there is a lot that could be wrong with the cream and cheese I normally eat ( and goat is absolutly not a possibilty, blech again)

and the nuts will be limited because most nuts are pretty high in omega 6 which i just don't need more of right now and I'm upping my cod liver oil as well.

and I'm going way way down on the carbs--little to no fruit except berries and a few veg with my meat .

I'm down almonst a pound in two days--I'm might be on to something!

Two quotes for the day--( both found in the lastest Oprah Mag)

It's Never too late, You're never too old, never too sick to start over again.

and also in that same vein--to help when you feel stuck...

If you stare at it long enough
the mountain becomes unclimbable
Tally it up. How much time have you spent
waiting for the soup to cool?
Icicles hang from January gutters
only as long as they can.
Fingers pause above piano keys for the chord
That will not form. Slam them down
I say. Make music of what you can.

--Charles Rafferty, from " Against Hesitation"

Christmas/Channukah is finally down and tucked away for another year. (Always a little bittersweet for me--I do love the Holiday season so much. ) but whew!!!--- I don't know how my mom did it--that tree was GONE the day after New Year's every year!

Now I can get on with getting back to proper eating--This year the focus is more Paleo than ever before--instead of just low carb--so no Wheat or gluten grains at all, no sugar, very limited fruit and I'm trying to find better sources for cream and cheeses ( ie grassfed, non pasturized-- since I am never giving up dairy.!!!!!) In order to stay on track I like to read everyday from some of the really fine Paleo/primal blogs out there. It keeps me motivated. My current new favorite is PaNu by Kurt Harris M.D. He really get is right IMHO, writes extremely well and covers a wide varity of topics. its a great site! Others that I read frequently are listed in the blog roll over on the left. The FatHead site is particularly entertaining as well!

Luckily I did NOT gain any this year--even though I ate all the bad/good stuff from Thanksgiving to Christmas. I'm theorizing that my thyroid dosage is finally g correct AND I think my Vitamin D status has improved sith the supplementing I'm doing--Vitamin D is supposed to help with insulin resistance and sensitivity to carbs so maybe that why I didn't gain 20 pounds like I did last year.

I've been supplementing Vitamin D3 gel caps at about 5,000mgs a day since about April of last year.

Here is a really good link to one very cogent article on Vitamin D ( from the above mentioned PaNu site) and how it works. He has a BUNCH of further articles on D3 as well, if one is interested.

On the weight loss front--I still have about 10 pounds ( of the aforementioned twenty that i didn't lose last year ) 10 pounds a years seems to be my maximum so maybe I can get it off THIS year before the Holidays hit again--maybe if I am at my perfect weight I won't feel the command of the evil fudge and cookies so stongly and I won't have to re-dedicate myself to proper living NEXT Jan 1st 'cause I'll already be there!

I really really have be very strict to lose fat. I have the Triple whammy--small stature; HypoThyroid; and Post-Menopausal. The only thing that seems to work is The Drs Eades newest book " The 6 week cure for the middle aged middle" the second phase of their plan is a meat only diet ( nearly anyway; you can have SMALL servings of veg as well ) with no dairy

last year I lost about 5 pounds in 10 days. Then went off the plan and the Hols hit so......I'm easing into it. jsut getting off wheat and sugar while still having nuts and low carb goodies that I love--but I know I wont lose till I cut out the dairy and the nuts. not sure why those things prevent loss--whether it is just a calorie thing--so easy to overeat those things--or whethter there is some inflammation food sensitivity thing going on--but there it is and I (finally ) know what to do--just gearing up to DO it is hard!!!

Happy New Year!