What do You Want for Breakfast?

Scrambled Eggs with tomatoes, spinach, green and red peppers, mushrooms, onions and the works. Protein and veggies all in one. Sound good? It is. Especially if you keep it interesting.


Keeping it interesting is a work that has to go on in this new "living diet" we are on. This week I borrowed a book about raw food recipes and was directed to a raw food website to get acquainted with a more aggressive way of eating than just frying or cooking all your foods. It's great. It saves cleaning up all those pans as well.

Raw foods tend to give you more nutrition and enzymes that are alive and needful for your body than the dead foods you eat. I am becoming cynical about dead food and "junk" food around me. It is so much easier to eat those dead foods and feel full than to plan and prepare live foods which will be good for your body and fill you up the same. I'm talking about snack food, chips, and cookies, packaged and processed things that are quick and easy to eat.

But cutting up veggies and eating them is fun and healthy. My wife and I do a lot of this together and it increases our together we have with one another. :-) We don't always agree on what we want to eat or how much I should eat but we figure it out and go on. None the less, we get time together preparing our food and eating it.

We are going into our third week now and we are being pretty careful not to stray from the prescribed allowances of what and how much we should eat right now. This is still the cleansing portion of the diet and we want to start out right. We drink water for the most part and have a protein smoothie twice a day. Other than that we are staying away from all decaffeinated, prepackaged items along with bread, noodles and other items not listed on our chart.

I am holding at 223 for my weight for now but that is still 12 pounds less than when I started. My pants are looser and I wear a belt to hold them up. I used to wear a 34-36 waited trouser but I painfully went to a 40 in order to have something that I didn't have to pour myself into. I still have some 38's left I can move into when the time comes but if I reach my intended goal of 190 I may just have to go buy some 36's or even a 34.

I am feeling great with no side affects other than the popcorn cravings from time to time. I won't go into that again. I think it is clear I have a weakness for popcorn. When we get into the regular daily diet we are working towards I will need to be careful about the carbs and stay away from the salt and butter.

Two years ago I lost 30 pounds on a watermelon diet. The diet consisted of eating a normal serving for meals and eating all the watermelon I wanted between meals or at bedtime. There were a lot of bathroom visits but it did the trick for weight loss. But, as you can determine for yourself, the weight did not stay off and I am back on this diet now to help counteract the outcome of all that additional eating I did afterwards. Actually, I think I could have stayed on that diet if watermelon hadn't gone out of season. Maybe I should try that again?! No, I will stick to what I have now.

OK, so there you have it for week two. Hoping to loose a little more weight and get “the cleanse” past me this week. I like the veggie and fruit part of this diet, just not the protein effects of slower weight loss. I can tie my shoes by myself though. I will check back in and let you know about week three soon.

By the way, the book I borrowed is called The Raw Food Gourmet by Gabrielle Chavez if you would like to look it up or borrow it from the library. If the library doesn't have it you might look on Amazon for it. It's a good book of raw veggie recipes.

Be Careful With the Protein Intake

It is the start of a new week on the Page Diet and the SP Cleanse combo. I am still feeling quite well however I was a little alarmed this morning. Let me explain.

The day before yesterday, when I weighed myself I discovered I had lost 11 pound from the start of this new eating regime. I was elated with knowing something definite was happening. I started eating some more protein based foods (eggs) and some fish/chicken portions. I guess I am not a very good judge of portions and how the protein works. After just six servings of protein-based foods and a bowl of popcorn (with nutritional yeast) I found this morning I was three pounds heavier. :-(

So, I am thinking there is a definite reason for this. I have been sticking to the diet pretty close with regards to eating only the veggies and fruit. The only thing that has changed is the meat portions and the popcorn. Well, the popcorn certainly couldn't be the problem. I doesn't hardly weigh anything! I mean, look at how light and fluffy it is. It's like eating air! So it must be the meat portions. Right?

It's a sad day today. I thought I was making good progress and then pop. The bubble is gone!

Today I am watching my intake. So far I have had two quarts of water, a fruit smoothie with my protein powder and my swamp moss portions, one egg, 12 slices of squash(sauteed) and an apple. It's 10:15am and I am not hungry. For lunch I plan to eat a salmon patty and stir fried cabbage & peppers. I'm not sure about supper yet but I did bring a banana for an afternoon snack. I will continue to drink water like a fish and then we will see where I am at in the morning. Maybe I can be back to where I was a couple days ago. Oh, yes. My current weight is at 226 pounds. My overall goal is 190. 36 more pounds to go. Yoo Hoo!

I wanted to clarify something here. While I do want to JUST loose some weight. My long term goal here is to be eating healthier and feeling better. Weight has something to do with that, but the nutritional value of what I am eating is more important than the weight. I like being able to feel like I can bend over without squeezing the breath out of myself and not have this big bag of fat in front of me but knowing that my body is getting healthy food, food that is actually good for me, is more of the goal.

So, there you have it. The summation of my thoughts today. My new diet plan thinking. I guess I should watch the intake of popcorn, too, Huh? OK. I get it. smaller portions and a more frequent intake of veggies and reasonably sized (3-4oz) servings of fish or chicken. Lots of water. I am thinking about that water. Could be a good thing to keep drinking water. My new mantra needs to be . . . water, water, water.

I'll keep a water bottle filled and with me always. And drink it. At least a gallon a day. That should help wash all those toxins and fat away. I'm thinking that in the course of this 21 day cleanse and new diet I should be ready for summer fun quite soon. I'm thinking like a month or two. Let me know what you think.

My Daily Diet

This is the first entry into my log for my new daily diet. This diet is called the Page diet and it is a popular diet with many success stories. We are starting our with a 21 day cleanse and then maintaining a more healthy life style of eating.

Just to let you know, in the past 57 years I have pretty much eaten whatever I wanted to and didn't think too much about what I ate or how much. Especially a big bowl of buttered popcorn at night, before bedtime. Not that I am grossly overweight but I am overweight by about 50 lbs. I weighed myself before starting the cleanse and I was at 238 lbs. I started the cleanse last Tuesday the 13th of April. Today is the 20th of April and I must say I fell very much better than I did two weeks ago.

Some of my issues with my weight were mostly the ones that get everyone struggling with weight issues. I couldn't tie my shoes without loosing my breath; bending down and getting back up were a struggle. I can't walk very far (especially uphill) without being out of breath, and other assorted issues with infrequent bowel movements, feeling dull minded, insomnia, always hungry, body aches, ear problems (vertigo) and other related ear issues, stuffiness and ringing sound.

So, since I started last week I can actually tie my shoes, the ringing sound has stopped, I don't feel as dull minded and I am not prone to stay awake at night. I'm sure some exercise will help with this program as well, but I am working up to that. I have been over 230 lbs for quite sometime now and not been one for exercise. Not since before I got married 15 years ago. I did like to eat popcorn before bedtime. Is that considered exercise?

I am now eating vegetables and fruits. Last week I had salads, raw veggies, fruit smoothies with protein powder and lots of water. Some of the evening meals I had a kind of stir fry for the veggies which was a nice change. It hasn't bothered me that I have been eating just veggies and drinking fruit smoothies. I don't profess to live for food but just eat to stay alive. It's kind of like a fast but with food! Great trade-off!

OK. So, this is going to be my journal of things I eat and how I feel. I was hoping to do this everyday but I can see that is not going to happen. I get busy and forget to do this. Maybe I can do this at night after the day calms down or early in the morning. We'll see what happens with that. No promises yet.

We have started on the second week of the cleanse and diet. I say we now because my wife is actually doing this with me. It's easier if you have someone to do this with. Being the lone ranger at the table when everyone else is eating french fries and hamburgers with catsup and all the fixing’s is not easy. People are so cruel. They make popcorn and offer some to me. It’s my favorite food by the way.

I started eating more protein today. This morning we had two scrambled eggs, sautéed onions and peppers and spinach. I use to have wheat toast with butter or a bagel with cream cheese but this wasn't bad. Maybe I am getting used to the no bread part of the diet. At mid-morning I had a fruit smoothie with SP Complete protein powder and the new powder we are taking called Jurassic Green. It looks and feels like dried, finely ground river moss. For lunch we had sautéed veggies and a salmon patty. I am limited to about 13 oz of protein a day so we divide that up between three meals.

Last night I had my very most favorite food on the planet (except for my wife’s meatloaf) which is popcorn. I sprinkled some nutritional yeast and two teaspoons of butter on it. No salt. This is probably the hardest part of the diet, if there really is a hard part. We did have some chicken chunks on our salad last night as well which helps curb the appetite. None-the-less, popcorn is a food that is hard to resist.

There you have it; my first week into the diet and some of my thoughts and eating for the week. Maybe I can try to write something each week at least but I will try to write more on a daily basis if possible. If need be I can include pictures but I didn't think anyone would be interested in looking at an overweight hairy belly in this blog. Did I mention popcorn yet?