Thursday, May 17, 2012

Belgian Endive Soup (Day 40)

Did I mention that at my last weigh-in, despite taking off my 2-lb. sweater (this worked last time) I found I had lost only two pounds?  Possibly this is why I have been somewhat discouraged and depressed the past few days.  Not sure whether it was falling short on water intake, doing too many "mini-cheats" like a morsel of chicken skin, or what.  Or maybe it was averaging out the 6-lb. loss of the week before.  I am doing my best to stay positive, anyway.

It does not seem to be pre-period water-weight gain... this diet has apparently catapulted me into menopause.  I should have had two periods since I started, and I haven't even had spotting.  I was having hot-flash-like spells earlier, but they've gone away again.

Another thing bothering me is boredom with the vegetables I am eating.  To combat that, the other day when I went shopping I decided to buy one vegetable I had never eaten before, or at least cooked (I might have eaten it as part of a restaurant meal I can't remember).  Unfortunately the Huntsville FreshCo doesn't have that big a selection... a few weird ones they brought in right after they did their big facelife (and pricelift) are gone now, victims of lack of interest.  I did however find Belgian endive, so I grabbed one.

Casting about on the net I found this soup which I saw could be adapted.  Here is my version (no food processor required):

1 packet IP Cream of Chicken Soup, mixed the usual way
1 Belgian endive, minced
3 green onions, minced
1 portabello mushroom, minced
1 tsp olive oil
2 tsp chopped garlic
1 squirt of lemon juice
sea salt and pepper to taste

Saute all ingredients but the soup together until they're a little cooked, not mush.  Add the soup.  In the original version, you sprinkle it with chopped chives (I was too lazy) and garnish it with a sprig of dill floating on one leaf of the endive like a boat for a very elegant look.  All IP compliant, so go for it.

A day or two before that my lunch IP soup was Tomato Basil.  On first try, I didn't like it much... I should have known, I've never liked tomato soups.  I was hoping the basil would make it palatable.  I think perhaps they don't add enough, so perhaps that would help.  However what I found on this last try was that it is saved entirely by the addition of half a tablespoon of chopped garlic and about a teaspoon of curry powder. Mwah!

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Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Another keeper soup (Day 31)

Last weigh-in before this one I was in a big hurry and so I made my choices for lunch easy by grabbing a full box (seven days' worth) of cream of chicken soup.  (You buy the IP foods right there in the clinic; that's how they make their bucks.)

Accordingly I've been feeling compelled to come up with ways to make chicken soup different each day and have tried all sorts of things.  Here's the latest:

1 packet IP Cream of Chicken Soup, mixed in your shaker as usual
1 fistful of chives ripped off one of the clumps taking over your garden (to feel virtuous, count this as "weeding") (store-bought will do) finely chopped
broccoli                       \
cauliflower                     --  2 cups
portabello mushrooms  /
1/4 cup chicken stock
1/2 tbsp chopped garlic
sea salt & pepper to taste

Sautee broccoli and cauliflower in a little chicken stock until tender.  Add mushrooms, chives and other seasonings, plus more stock if necessary, frying until garlic is cooked.  Add soup, mix and serve.  Non-IP version: use canned cream of chicken soup, or chicken stock and heavy cream.

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Sunday, May 6, 2012

Breakfast keeper (Day 30)

Does zucchini work in an omelet?  Only one way to find out.

(BTW, I'm prettying it up to call the dish as I cook it an omelet.  The IP call the protein package that, and Marv and Melissa certainly cook it that way.  Mad in a hurry as I always am, though, it turns into scrambled eggs pretty quick.)

The mushroom/green pepper omelet has become a morning routine, btw.  For some reason, in the morning I like to know what I am going to eat without any thought or planning.  I do at lunchtime too, actually.  Breakfast I have attained... lunch, not so easy.  That's the hardest meal of the three.

Anyway, I decided I wanted to mix the routine up a bit today, and thus found zucchini does work, quite nicely, at least as well as green pepper.

So:

IP Complaint Zucchini omelet

1 packet IP Plain Omelet
1 tsp olive oil
about 2 1/2 inches of an average-sized zucchini, finely diced
3 white mushrooms, finely diced
1 1/2 tbsp chopped pickled roasted red peppers
1 1/2 tsp chopped garlic
sea salt & fresh-ground black pepper to taste

Start sauteeing the zucch, shrooms and peppers in the oil.  Mix omelet package with 100 ml water plus salt, to have omelet prepared.  When veggies are close to done, add pepper and garlic.  Once the garlic is cooked, pour in the omelet mixture.  Cook as omelet or scrambled.  Serves one who likes looking at herself in the mirror.

Non-IP version, very simple: substitute two well-beaten eggs for the IP packet.

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Friday, May 4, 2012

Weigh-in 4 and new product (Day 28)

This time I asked the ladies at MediSpa (Jane, who is leaving for a new job after today and Donna, whom she was training and who will be working with me from now on) to make a photocopy of my progress chart.

Thus I can tell you that in four weeks on the diet I have lost:
  • 6 inches around the chest
  • 8 inches around the waist
  • 1 inch around the hips
  • 1.5 inches around the upper arm
  • 0 inches around the thigh (I don't hold weight on my thighs)
So... you can see why the difference is now visible.

I counted this past week (loss of six lbs.) as a test of how it will go for me now that I am past the start, past the two weekends away in a row (though Melissa and Marv totally took care of my IP needs while I was with them helping out at Wisdom Toronto 2012 Weekend One)... and into the long middle stretch.  I am confident now that I can average losing five a week, which I wasn't sure about after last week and the week before.

At five a week and now down to 80 to lose, that's 16 weeks... end of August.

Or I might decide that 143, which is about where I'd end up... isn't enough, and take off some more by going into the fall...  I'm going to see how it goes, how I look, and where I want to go.

The stunning thing here is... the feeling of being in control of this.

§

At today's weigh-in Jane and Donna pointed out a new IP product to me -- Chicken a la King pottage.  So I grabbed a packet, said I'd try it, and promised them a review....  here goes.

The first thing you need to know is how to prepare it, because that might not be on your preparation cheat sheet; it's not on mine.  Mix 200 ml of cold water with the packet in your shaker, shake until smooth, heat in the microwave 1-2 minutes, then let stand.  The letting stand part is important, because the pottage has bits of chicken and vegetable in it (including corn!  Yes!  There's CORN in this!).  They are in a desiccated form for packaging and so you have to let the water work its way in, or else the veggies are like little stones and the chicken like chips of wood.  In fact be careful to mash apart any lumps of them... I didn't do that with one that got stuck in my ball and a fairly big hunk of chicken was, shall we say, tough.  I'd say let it stand 5 minutes at least.  I suggest mixing and heating the Chicken a la King first then chopping and cooking your veggies while it stands; you can always throw it back in the nuker for another minute if it gets too cold.

The flavour is similar to Cream of Chicken (and of course I couldn't leave it alone, adding garlic powder and Chinese/Malaysian curry powder, though I'd say it needs no salt)... pleasant, slightly meaty and warming, nice for a chill day.  (In summer I know I am going to switch to the drinks like Pina Colada, Peach Mango etc.)  It's those little pieces that make it, however, adding variety and texture, and, of course... just a wee soupçon of, bwaahahahahahaaa, CHEAT! When you're on a diet, you've got to love that.  I've had lots of chicken since I started but not a speck of corn. I guess the thinking here is that it's such a tiny amount it's okay.

Will I eat it again?  Sure, with the above caveat.  Recommended.

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Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Bad day yesterday (Day 26)

I mean, today is Day 26.  Yesterday, the bad day, was Day 25.  It seemed like I was hungry all the time, from the moment after I finished a meal and felt it was not enough, to just before the next meal when I felt it couldn't possibly be.  I was somewhat depressed too.  I think the hunger was emotional.  I get that.  This diet may not be for those who are susceptible to emotional hunger, unless they have some way of dealing with the emotion.

Anyway, today I'm fine again and... mmmmmmm!  I think I'll say this one's a keeper.

The flavour of cilantro seems to be something you either love or hate. Whichever is the case with you will definitely apply to this filling, delicately green-coloured soup.

IP Compliant Chicken Veggie Cilantro Soup

1 packet Ideal Protein Chicken-Flavoured Soup
1 tbsp chicken bouillon powder or cube
half a green pepper
3 green onions
1 baby bok choi
3 tbsp shredded radicchio
2 tsp chopped garlic
1 tbsp finely-chopped fresh cilantro

(Yes--you are reading that correctly--NO salt to taste, NO pepper.  Can you imagine?  I never do that!)

Chop all ingredients that aren't already chopped except the IP soup packet into bite-sized pieces, set in about 2 cups of water to simmer.  Meanwhile, mix the packet with water in your shaker as usual.  (I made the mistake of dumping it straight into the soup, giving myself the painstaking task of getting rid of all the lumps by mashing them against the side of the pan.)  Bring up to a simmer again but not to a boil or even simmer too long, or the soup mix will curdle.  I think this would work with many different vegetables, really... cauliflower or broccoli (though they need longer to cook so make sure they're tender before adding the IP soup), mushrooms (I was low or I would have put some in for sure)... even lettuce.  If you find radicchio too bitter, don't put it in.  The crucial aspects are the IP packet's seasoning, the garlic and the cilantro. 

Non-IP-compliant: double the chicken bouillon and add a quarter cup of heavy cream.

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Thursday, April 26, 2012

I love looking at myself (Day 20)

Today was weigh-in #3, and I lost 3 lbs. but got no measurements as neither Jo-Ann or Jane were there.  (As I understand it, Jo-Ann was at a conference and Jane told me last week she is changing jobs, to a managerial nurse position.  Congrats to her.)

I was a bit disappointed by the loss being just three.  I understood that after the first big loss, the pace would settle down some, but they tell me on average it's 3-5 lbs. per week for women, and my plan has been to be on the upper end, i.e. five per week.  That would get me to my goal by Sept. 1.

But I also had been expecting it to be more because of how I now look.  I have begun to love seeing myself in the mirror.  My hair looks more luxuriant, I think because it frames my face more thickly since there is less face to make it fade to insignificance.  My face looks younger, because it's harking back to years ago when I weighed less.  My shoulders are more square.  It's like watching myself grow more attractive. It's the most incredible thing.  I also feel lighter, and that it is easier to move, and move fast, but I had already noticed that, the first week.

So are my eyes deceiving me?  Is it all IP-style placebo effect?  Measurements would tell, but that wasn't happening this week.  The three-pound loss made me think I was cheating more than I knew at the trade show and caused me to make myself wrong in all sorts of ways.  But at the same time I hadn't lost that much, I was noticeably more slender.  How was that possible?

I was stymied, and telling myself nasty things about myself, until I remembered something that happened with Melissa in the beginning few weeks.

Her and Marv's coach is rather more technologically-advanced than mine.  She has machines.  All manner of gizmos, no doubt costing astronomical numbers of dollars, that measure all sorts of internal things, somehow.  Including your muscle mass.

What happened with Melissa was: in the first week she lost both fat and muscle.  But in the next week or two, she began to gain the muscle back, and in fact her muscle-mass began to exceed the baseline after that, due to the huge intake of protein.

Now if you know about dieting, or about how a fat person swims as opposed to a muscular person, you know that muscle weighs more than fat.  Thus if you lose fat and gain muscle, you will lose weight, but more slowly, and you will gain svelte disproportionate to the small poundage you're shedding.

So I think that must be what happened to me this week.  I can't think of any other explanation.

Another fantastic thing that has happened since I started the diet, and, I think, because of the diet, at least in part: every now and then I get hit with the most positive, happy, everything-is-going-wonderfully mood.  I feel inspired, expansive, free, capable... amazing.  I can't say I've never had this before, as I have in recent years, but now it is more intense and much, much more frequent.  In fact this morning, or maybe it was yesterday, I was in a funk, thinking about how my Google Analytics are sucking and how I'll never get a readership and so on, when I whined via IM for a bit with a dear reader/friend, and suddenly I just flipped over into that incredible positive.  It was like a switch.  I've never felt anything like it in my life.

Again, not something I expected.

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Fly the IP skies (Day 15)

I am writing in the air, though of course I won’t be able to post until I’m back on the ground.  I’m on my way to Vancouver for a trade show, this weekend.

But before I get to that, I’ll make up the gap a little bit.  I recovered from the stomach flu fine, though it seemed like forever until I got there.  Last Saturday (Day 8) I could stomach absolutely nothing but half a double chocolate protein bar.  Jo-Ann told me that I should log “everything that went into my mouth” on my journal, so I naturally felt that should include everything that came back out, being a cheese and spice omelet and a peace mango drink, not necessarily in that order.  (I know, TMI, I am a homeopath and so have a strong stomach.)  Sunday I gradually began to gain my strength back, but still only managed a little lettuce and one protein package.

Monday morning… I have to make a confession.  I cheated.  I ate an avocado.  I take full responsibility for that action.  I make no excuses.  Well, all right, I make one excuse: I’d hardly had anything to eat the entire weekend.  Two excuses.  It was going to go bad if I didn’t eat it.

With all that privation and only a small cheat, I figured that my weight would drop another substantial amount on my Thursday weigh-in, and actually feared that somewhat; it would mean I had lost muscle.  There was no way I didn’t on the weekend, the only mercy being that I knew it was probably not very much as the almost-fast had been only two days.  The most interesting thing is that Jane (who has been coaching me in Jo-Ann's absence) told me I didn't lose weight because I wasn't taking in enough water.  Not taking in enough water influences how fast you lose?  I had no idea.

Alas… or perhaps to my relief… my weight dropped only two pounds.  A bit of a bubble-burst, but I could still say I dropped 14 in two weeks—a pound a day—which still sounds impressive.  It also was a short week, six days.

The reason for that, of course, is that I couldn’t come for weigh-in on Friday because I’d be travelling.  Leading to the whole thorny question of, how to manage the Ideal Protein diet while on a trip?

Jewel, the receptionist at Medi-Spa, when she found out I was going back on my first consult, actually suggested that I not start until after I came back.  I brushed that off.  “I’m going to go on other trips while I’m doing this,” I told her.  “I have to learn to manage these things.”

So, I am in the air, and blessed with a very decent excuse to turn down anything that resembles airplane food, which, as all you flyers out there know, barely resembles food.

What I did was think out carefully where I’d be for each meal, and plan/purchase IP and other foods that would be possible.  On the plane, for instance, I can do no preparation at all and couldn’t bring liquids either, so I’ve got several bars in my laptop case, which is my carry-on bag.  At the hotel I am assuming there’s no microwave, so I will be able to do cold mixing only, with the shaker that I stuffed into my suitcase.  For the dinners, I will negotiate with the waiter.  “Two cups veggies and eight ounces of meat only.”  I expect that is going to be tough, as I’ll have to look at the whole menu to find the IP-compliant stuff on it.

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I was too busy during the weekend to blog more, sorry.  Now back and into the regular routine.  About travelling during IP Phase One, I have learned:

1) For lunch, it's really hard to find two cups of compliant cooked veggies as a dish on a restaurant menu.  However there are lots of Greek salads.  Practice saying it with me: "Hold the feta and the balsamic."  Olive oil, of course, is cool as long as it's not too much.
2) Dinner is easier.  "Hold the potatoes/rice/pasta."  Or combine a salad and a meat appetizer.  Because it was a coastal city I kept ordering seafood as my meat portion, and in a little Greek restaurant called Maria's I had a garlic kalamari dish that was to die for.  I mean, it melted in your mouth, and the sauce was awesome.
3) You have to carry bottled water to keep track of how much.
4) Getting your daily salt is easy--you just carry it with--oil not so much.
5) In the whirlwind of travel, you'll lose track of all the pieces and forget things.  It's a PITA, really.  So it goes, compensate and go on.

I had one thing happen on the weekend that was very heartening... for the first time, I saw my weight loss.  I was walking past the mirror in the hotel room when I noticed I was narrower front-to-back in the tummy.  Then I went into the bathroom and looked at my face in the bathroom mirror, and saw it there, too.  My eyes and cheekbones and mouth were just ever-so-slightly more prominent.

Instantly it all became worthwhile.