Snack attack

I'm allowed some snacks as part of this regime but they aren't what you might expect. I have a couple of sticks of celery cut into three pieces, some mixed nuts (brazil, almonds, hazlenut & walnut/pecan) and some seeds (sunflower and pumpkin), although in moderation. The surprising thing is home made jerky. It's absolutely delicious and easy to make. This first attempt was with some good lean beef but look out tum 'cause venison, water buffalo and kangaroo are on the list for future versions!

Making the jerky is fairly easy too, slice the meat fairly thin (best if you stick it in the freezer for a bit to firm it up) and then it is marinated for at least 4 hours in our own recipe (secret of course). The meat is then patted dry with paper towels and placed on baking foil and placed in an oven on a very low heat with the oven door ever so slightly ajar (to let the water vapour escape) for 12 hours or so until the meat is dehydrated and not quite brittle. I thought it tasted very similar to a brand I had bought before out of the supermarket but without any nasty additives.

Check out the best way to do it though before you try/die.

Salivating at the thought of it all.

Keeping a level head

Turns out that the floor in the bathroom (where the scales are) isn't ideal for weighing yourself due to the cork flooring we have installed, so my sneaky weigh-ins haven't been as accurate as I first thought.  The more solid kitchen floor gave a truer result, if less lost and will be the place to manage the weigh-ins in future.  Lost a total of 2.82Kg (6.2lbs), still not bad for 2 weeks but I feel a bit deflated as I thought I had lost more.

That's what I get for sneakily checking my weight.

Weight for it!

We've decided that Saturdays will be the weigh-in day to see how effective this new eating regime is.  I'm actually looking forward to it as I know I have lost weight (sneaky step onto the scales) and I'm positive that I can keep it up in the months ahead.

Starting weight was 125.1Kg (275.2lbs) and I have already lost 3.3Kg (7.3lbs).  Seems a lot for such a short period of time, especially as I don't feel like I am trying.  I've tried losing weight before with other diets and always felt like I was missing something but this Palaeolithic hunter/gatherer diet (we'll refer to it as Palaeo from now on) doesn't seem to be having that effect.  I don't miss a thing and have even been turning down offers of cakes and sweets at work (much to the astonishment of my colleagues as I was known for my sweet tooth).

I'm sure my doctor will be happy to see me losing weight although maybe not as quickly as I am at the moment.  I think they'd be happy with 500g - 1Kg loss a week.

Less to come...

Captain Caveman reporting

Grok

Well we're a week in with this new eating regime and I must say I'm not missing all the things I used to like. No more sugary foods, wheat based products, cereals and the like.

"Doesn't leave much" you might think, but there you would be wrong.

Beef chili with sweet potato (two nights in a row, with the second being better than the first - well it's always better the second day), pork belly with mixed salad leaves (watercress is so peppery), chunky lamb chomps with green beans. Mmm mmm all so tasty you don't miss the "bad" things.

We're eating a bread/cake thingy made with mixed seeds, nuts, fresh fruit and lard (but no wheat!) for breakfast, which is remarkably filling and tasty to boot. Eaten with five or six blackberries and a couple of fresh cherries it keeps you going until lunchtime.

Lunch for me is mackerel with salad leaves and a few pomodorino (or any smallish tomato) in a nice balsamic vinegar and avocado oil dressing. Bit boring you might think, but I love mackerel so always love tucking into it.

To cap it all I've lost 2.36 Kg in a week (that's 5.2lbs in old money - come on, keep up) without trying at all. Not going to weigh myself that regularly though, once a month will do and I can give myself a bigger surprise that way. Only weighed myself because I felt I had lost something and was checking.

Time will tell but I think I'm going to enjoy this way of eating.

The Hunter/Gatherer

Started on a new eating regime this weekend, the hunter/gatherer method. I'm straying away from the word diet as most people don't use it in it's broader sense and this is a completely new way of eating. I already feel more vigorous and don't seem to be having the hunger pangs that I did, thanks to all the good food I am eating and which slowly gives me energy and keeps me feeling full.

Now you may scoff at this but it does make sense, eat the way your body is designed to and not the way your taste buds dictate. No more sugar, grains, cereals, chocolate, etc and more of the foodstuffs that we should be eating. Meat, seeds, salads, fruit, vegetables, etc are tasty in themselves and there are plenty of interesting things you can do with them.

Tonight was day 2 of a beef chili (the second day is always better!!) served with sweet potato. Delicious!!

To cap it all off I did lose 2lbs in weight without even trying and am looking forward to slowly losing more.

Having to catch up on though, apparently Mark's Daily Apple is a good place to start, so I will be checking his site out over the next week or two.

Updating my playlist

Decided it was about time to update the music I am listening to on my iShuffle (iPods are over-rated - all I want to do is listed to music) and decided to add in a few albums I've not listened to for a while. Adding the following into my iTunes library:

Chris Rea - Auberge
Act - Laughter, Tears and Rage
Genesis - Duke
Kate Bush - Hounds of Love

Then I need to decide what to take off the iShuffle, what to leave on and more importantly what to add.

This may take a while to do! I was using the iShuffle to listen to while exercising so a lot of the tunes were fast paced but now I want to use it solely for my walk to work along the banks of the River Clyde so just need good music really. I've got really wide tastes in music ranging from Opera to rock with everything in-between (except Punk that sucked!) so the choice is huge. My big constraint is the space on my laptop, photography and music both take up a lot of space.

This could take a while!

And so it starts

Today marks the start of the rollout of some new software at work. I've been itching to get going for months now but have been delayed waiting on approval of policies. Keen to get in and start the whole process. Inform staff of what's coming and what they need to do - activate IM in their existing clients and then push out the new client to them. Will take a few weeks to complete but will be a valuable exercise in ensuring the full roll-out to the rest of the company goes smoothly.

Web 2.0

After spending ages wondering what all the fuss was about Twitter I now get it. As long as you don't overdo things and only post a reasonable amount and some of that useful to others I think it is a very useful tool (if you can call it that?).

Not sure if I'm ready to contribute too much at this point so initially my tweets will be a bit lame but once I get into the frame of mind for choosing the right things to post, I'll start contributing.

Hope to see you out there!

Scottish weather?

I really can't believe it, yet another scorcher of a day. When I went to get in the car to come home from work I was hit with a blast of extremely hot air when I opened the door. Driving back with both front windows open and the sunroof open and the air coming in was still very warm. Probably in for a good electric storm soon but with no sign of clouds at the moment I doubt it will be tonight.

Was in a VC earlier on in the day and it was like a sauna in the room. Thank goodness I was on my own and had some ice cold water to drink.

Boggle eyed 2

Woke up this morning at 6.30ish and picked up my work laptop to start coding and have only just put it down (excluding comfort breaks). Feeling really boggle eyed now! ;-D

Probably find it difficult to get to sleep tonight what with my brain going 200mph. Up early too as I'm off to Dalkeith for one of my twice weekly visits. If the weather stays good I may go for a walk in the park at lunchtime.