Saturday (Cheat Day) morning; lost 1.2 lbs since last week, making a total of 15.4 lbs since I started just over four weeks ago. Still very happy with my meals, still eating better (e.g., more green leafies and veggies on a daily basis) than I have in years. And for those intermittent cravings, I still have Cheat Day on Saturdays, and during the rest of the week, bacon. This morning, I had both: overnight (yeast-based) waffles with (previously cooked) strips of bacon cooked right in; butter pecan syrup on my first serving and spiced apple syrup and mascarpone cheese on the second serving (with plenty of butter on both).
Through these posts to date (including today’s), I’ve been finding examples of FHBD meals on the web and posting them (with links back to their originating sites). I’ll start taking photos of some of my own meals and posting them instead. I should have taken some photos yesterday afternoon — I did my ‘protein grilling’ for the week, which included:
- 1″ hand-sliced beef tenderloin steaks (7 or so), salted and peppered ahead of time
- lamb loin chops (8), marinated in olive oil, salt and pepper
- several salmon fillets (cut from one large salmon fillet), marinated in olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh lime juice (with more salt, pepper and lime juice applied while grilling)
- some precooked red pepper and spinach chicken sausages (5)
- a pack of (97% fat free) Hebrew National hot dogs
- a large bunch of thin asparagus (olive oil, salt, pepper)
- some sliced leftover onions
It all turned out great, except for the hot dogs — they were a last-minute decision, and that pack was all I had sitting in the freezer. The low-fat ‘dogs don’t grill very well because, well, they don’t have much fat in them. They still have good taste, but they don’t have the mouth feel of regular Hebrew Nat’l dogs. All the meats (except for the ‘dogs) were bought at Costco; the asparagus I bought at Safeway, because the Costco asparagus is too thick (finger-thickness vs. pencil (or less) thinness at Safeway).
To date, I have been relying solely on a change in diet for the loss, and that during a period of enforced reduced physical activity (due to a high ankle sprain I suffered the day after I started the FHBD, and which still hurts; it’s got a ways to go). My goal for the next four weeks is to apply physical activity several times each day. Ferriss suggests some simple do-anywhere exercises (air squats, wall presses, chest pulls), so I’m going to start working those in daily, just before and 90 minutes after meals.
I did do my canonical stretching routine (the last 20-minute segment of this video; been using it for about 20 years) for the first time in several months. I was more sore and stiff during it than I can remember being a long, long time — I don’t know how much of that is due to my general lack of physical activity for the last four weeks and how much is due to other effects of the fall where I wrenched my ankle. My ankle, on the other hand, held up pretty well through most of the stretching routine; there was just one short exercise that I modified a bit because it hurt too much otherwise. In any case, my ankle needs the stretching to working on recovering full range of motion.
That’s it for now. ..bruce w..