A few days ago I heard a guy talking about breakfast being the most important meal of the day. I have heard this many times though out my life, but I have never been a breakfast eating person. I used to either eat nothing or a banana or slim fast drink. Well both of those are high in carbs, so they are not good in a low carb diet. So now every morning I have a 100% Whey Gold Standard, Double Rich Chocolate and sometimes a string cheese stick. So I started thinking, what if it is better for me. So yesterday was my first breakfast, I had two eggs and 3 link sausages and they have 0 carbs.
Supposedly by eating a breakfast everyday it will help me throughout the day. So since I am on a road to improve myself, I figured that I might as well give it a try. Since there are no carbs in them, it will work out fine with my low carb diet and if it helps me throughout the day and keeping more alert, I am all for that. So don’t be afraid to try new things or experiment while on the low carb diet. Just make sure that when you do that you continue to keep the carbs low.
My consumption yesterday was 2535 calories, 20 carbs and 165 fat grams. I weighed in at an even 218.0, I have no problem with that weight at this time in the plan. Last night I changed things up a little, I barbequed a salmon filet for my wife and I and she made a salad with shrimp and grated cheese. Then to top it off I grill some onions and mushrooms in olive oil and the whole dinner had 10 carbs. That is less than half a candy bar and it was more filling and tasted great.
Like I have said in the past, this low carb diet does not have to be terrible. You just have to be creative and find foods that you do enjoy and then cook them in different ways. I have not felt deprived since about the fourth day and that was just my body getting used to the new diet. So go out there and find out what you like that is low in carbs and then change up your meals. If you are just having a chicken salad at every meal, then you will get bored and quit. That is going to put you back on the fat train.
My work out yesterday was back to the stationary bike and stair master. I think that I would die if I did not have a television to watch while I am doing these exercises. They get kind of boring after a while, especially when it is snowing outside and you cannot do the exercises outside. Find something interesting to do while you are working out. Whether it is reading a book, listening to music or a podcast or watching a movie or TV shows. Just do something that keeps your mind off the work out and before you know it you will be done and glad you did.

My consumption yesterday was 2597 calories, 63 carbs and 120 grams of fat. Yes, I did go over my daily limit of 50 carbs per day. I was having a long day, first of all I woke before 4 am and could not get back to sleep. So I started my workout at 4:30 am, I normally start around 6:30-7:00 am. Not only that, but I did not go to sleep until close to midnight and I usually go to sleep around 10:30-11:00 pm. I do not do well when I have less than 7 hours of sleep.

I figured since I was up that I might as well work out and then get to work early. We have our own accounting, bookkeeping and business coaching business, so I can go to work at whatever schedule works for me. But it is usually more hours than I have planned to do. Everyone thinks that when you have your own business you can come and go as you please. I am here to tell you that is not the case, instead you probably spend a lot more time at work and then at home you  think and talk about it  all the time. But I have had my own business my whole life, so I am not sure that anyone would hire me or that I could work for someone else.

Ok I got off topic a little bit, but I want you to know that this blog is part of my life and I am a real person and giving you real results, good or bad. By the end of the day I started writing my blog and I was seriously starting to fall asleep while I was typing. So I finished the blog and told my wife, “we should just go out for dinner tonight”.

 We decided to go to one of our favorite restaurants. I was set on getting another salad, but the steak and mashed potatoes looked really good. I looked up the carbs in mashed potatoes and that at Ruby Tuesday’s their mashed potatoes had 35 carbs in them, so I figured that this restaurant would be about the same. Then I had two beers, so that is why I was up to 63 carbs. Now even with a little cheating, I was still close to my limit of 50 and most days I am way under that. So it was a little treat for me and I think that those were close to the best mashed potatoes that I have ever had.

Even with going over the 50 carbs I weighed in at 217.8, so I lost .6 pounds for the day and I am only .8 pounds from my goal this month and I still have 12 days left in the month. So I am feeling real good about my low carb diet, it is really working better than I expected. I am not feeling too deprived of the foods that I used to eat and I am feeling better every day. The key to the low carb diet is to just stick with it through that first week or so.

My work out yesterday was the P90X:90-Day Extreme Home Workout Program and I did go out and buy some more hand weights and I increased the weight that I am using by 5 pounds. Wow, 5 pounds more is a big change. I could really feel it and today I can tell that I was working out yesterday. It is just one more step on the way to become physically fit.

I decided to reverse my workout yesterday. Normally I do the stair master first for thirty minutes, and then I get on the stationary bike for thirty minutes. I did this because I thought that the stair master is harder, so I should get that out of the way first and then hop on the stationary bike. Well today I did the bike first and then the stair master and let me tell you I felt much better. Maybe it is because when I hop on that thing cold my muscles are not ready for it, so they try to shut down. But when I do the bike, it is not as strenuous, so I am able to get going on it. Then I am all warmed up for the stair master. I made it though much easier, in fact I am thinking about moving up a level on both of them tomorrow.

Yesterday I consumed 1931 calories, 16 carbs and 94 fat grams. You would think that with all of those being so low, that I would lose some weight from yesterday to today. But that was not in the cards for me, I weighed in at 218.4. The same exact weight as I weighed in yesterday. I am sure that it will all work out in the wash. I am now thinking that I will hit 217.0 sometime this week. It is pretty motivating to only be 1.4 pounds away from your first goal. If I can get ahead of schedule, it will just motivate me even more.

There is a slight thought of telling myself, “well you are ahead of the game, so lighten up a little and you will still be able to meet your goal”. But I know myself better than that, if I start to fall of the diet, I will probably fall real hard. Then it will be hard to get back on track. It is always harder to restart a diet than it is to just stay on the one you are doing.

So if things are going well for you and you think that you can let your guard down. DON’T DO IT!!! Just stay with the plan and you will be much happier with yourself in a couple of months. I did do a little cheating yesterday; I was at the grocery store and kept seeing all of this food that I could not eat. Then I started looking at the carbs of all kinds of items in the store. Some were a lot higher than I thought that they would be and others were a little lower than I thought.

I saw that a plain Hershey candy bar had only 26 carbs in it and I am a sucker for Chocolate. And a Hershey candy bar is just plain milk chocolate, so I bought one. Then I thought, should I eat it as soon as I get in the car? No, I will wait until I get home. I returned home and I broke of one quarter of the bar and then broke off the three little rectangles of chocolate. I proceeded to eat each one as slowly as possible and then I put the rest of the candy bar in the cupboard. Guess what? It tasted great and I only took in an additional 7 carbs (I rounded up). So you can still have some of your favorites, just make sure to do it in moderation.

I am still recovering from the long weekend retreat with our youth group. I think that I need a vacation after spending 3 nights with a cabin full of high school boys. I think that I am recovering pretty well; I was originally planning on sleeping in and going to work late. But I woke up early, so I got into my routine and started my day on time.
Yesterday I consumed 3247 calories, 23 carbs and 225 fat grams. Wow that seems like a lot of fat grams to me. I am really getting used to keeping the carbs down; I do not crave things nearly as much as I did the first week. And I have no more headaches to report. So all in all things seem to be right on track.
I weighed in at 218.4, so I technically lost 1.4 pounds yesterday. It is kind of weird how I can go the whole weekend and basically stay the same weight and then I am back for one day and drop 1.4 pounds. I am not complaining or anything, I just think it is weird. So if you weigh yourself daily like I do, make sure not to get disappointed if you stay even for multiple days or even gain some weight. Your body is going through a big change, so I am sure it is wondering what is going on. Even like last week, when I only lost .8 pounds that can be very discouraging. In fact, that is probably one of the worst times for people. They are working hard at staying on a new diet, working out and then the results are not nearly what they were the first week. Whenever I get the feeling to snack on something or fall off my diet, I just make another 100% Whey Gold Standard, Double Rich Chocolate and it curbs my appetite.
Don’t get discouraged in week two or three or any other week. Just keep plowing through knowing that you are doing the right thing for yourself and that you will feel so much better on the other side it will definitely be worth it. But if you give up now you will never know the person that is just waiting to come out the other side. I figure that I have tried lots of different things throughout my life and if I can dedicate just three months to this. If for some reason it does not work, what is the worst thing that can happen? I lose less than I wanted to? So what, at least I did lose some weight, there are a lot worse things that I could do.
My workout was back to P90X:90-Day Extreme Home Workout Program and I have not done one of these in 4 days because of the retreat. It was a tough work out, but I think my body is adapting to it. I am going out shopping today for some more weights; I think that I need to start pushing myself a little harder now that I am in week three. The first two weeks I just wanted to get through it, now I want to get stronger and leaner.

The weekend is over and I think that I will get more rest during the work week than I did this last weekend. The last night of winter youth camp and I think they all had energy drinks before they came back to the cabin. They were jumping around, talking loud and giggling until about 2am. So the sleep was not a good one, but it is expected at a youth retreat.

In the morning I decided to go for my first run of the year. I hurt my Achilles at the beginning of December so I have not been running or playing basketball, hoping that it would get better. Well it did not; at the beginning of the run it was pretty stiff. After running for about a half mile it did start to warm-up and feel better. I was about 20 degrees so everything was moving a little slower and since I have not ran for over a month I did not have the wind to run fast or far. I was planning on running 3 miles, but after .75 miles according to my Garmin GPS watch I was already getting tired. So I walked for .1 mile and then started running again. I made it to the 1.5 mile point and needed to walk some more. Then on the way back I would run .4 miles and then walk .1 miles until I was done with the 3 miles.

It was not a great run by any stretch of the imagination, but I did get it done. I averaged 11:55 minutes per mile, which is slow even by my standards. My goal is to run the Bloomsday race in under 9 minute miles in April and that run is 7.5 miles, so I have some work ahead of me in the running department. I know that it sounds impossible, but I know myself and if my Achilles stops bugging me I know that I can get down to 9min and 30 second per mile within a few weeks. I just have to get my legs and lungs back into running shape.

Yesterday I consumed 2966 calories, 74 carbs and 191 fat grams. I finally was able to check the scale this morning and I weighed in at 219.8. Not a huge improvement over last week, but considering that I went on this youth retreat and cheated on the low carb diet a few times over the weekend. I guess that a .8 pound loss is still okay, the thing that I am more excited about is that my waist is now down to 39.25. So I lost a quarter of an inch in the waist and that is more important to me than losing the pounds. Of course it would be nice to do both, but you can’t have everything.

My goal is to be at 217 pounds or less by the end of the month and I am only half way through the month and I only have 2.8 pounds to go. So if I put that into perspective, I am doing great. I just don’t want to have another .8 pound loss again this week.

Yesterday was my day off from working out, but while at camp I was walking around a lot and playing quite a few games with the high schoolers. Since we went skiing the day before and they stayed up so late that night, at least they were tired last night. Everyone was quiet and asleep by midnight and we did not have breakfast until 8am yesterday, so I was able to get a much better sleep.

It was nice to take a day off from working out yesterday. When starting a new work out program or continuing one, I think that it is always important to take off at least one day a week so that your body can just rest and recover. If you never give yourself a break, then you always feel like you have to be doing something and that just gets annoying after a while.

Yesterday I consumed 2144 calories, 55 carbs and 131 fat grams and again I do not have a scale so I do not know what my weight was this morning. Going to camp with high schoolers is hard to do when you are on a low carb diet. It seems like almost all of the foods that they feed the kids is full of carbs. They had sub sandwiches for lunch with a variety of desserts. Luckily they also have a big salad bar that included ham and turkey, so I would build a huge salad with cheese, and meet on top of the lettuce. It is hard to determine exactly all of the contents of the salad, but I found a club salad on my app and I would think that it is pretty close.

Then for dinner they had a pulled pork sandwich and more dessert. So I just took some pulled pork and then built my huge salad again. I was able to not have a dessert for lunch, but the rice crispy treat looked so good, I went up and grabbed one. Then I ate it is as slow as possible, which is not easy for me. In the past I would normally eat one in a couple of bites, today I took about 20 bites and it was actually quite enjoyable and it hit the spot. Then I ate one instead of the 5-10 that I would normally eat.

It did put my carb count a little bit over my goal of 50, but I have been way under 50 most other days. The funny thing was this morning when I went for a run I was listening to a podcast of Dennis Prager and he was talking about when eating a dessert that you should cut it up into several pieces and then eat it slowly. I guess your taste receptors do not know the volume, just the taste when it is in your mouth. When you have a huge bite, your receptors pick up just as much taste as when you take a small bite. So you can have the enjoyment of a dessert, but in moderation. That is usually my biggest problem.

Well we are in full swing at the youth winter camp retreat. On the first night the high school boys that were in my cabin were talking until 2 in the morning. That seems to happen every time on the first night of a youth retreat. My cabin was not nearly as bad as my friends who had the jr. high boys, they all bought monster energy drinks at snack time at 10 pm. Those boys did not sleep at all, I got up about 5 am to go to the bathroom and 3 of them were just leaving there and were wide awake and never slept a wink. We had to get up a 7am to get on the bus to go skiing.

I went to the cafeteria for breakfast and they had ham, eggs, biscuits and gravy for our meal. I asked for double the ham and eggs and did not have the biscuits and gravy even though I love them. My workout for the day was skiing with high school boys. Man they like to ski all over the hill and to find back country and trees. Most of them snowboard, but I am old school and still ski. Even though they were on snowboards I was able to follow them all over the hill, through the powder, trees and the occasional groomed run. Lunch was the hardest part for me, they had prepared us sack lunches with a sandwich, variety of chips, cookie and an apple. I ate the meat and cheese out of my sandwich which was not nearly enough and gave the rest to one of the high schoolers. Then I went and ordered a bacon cheese burger and it hit the spot.

We were sitting around talking and one of the guys came back with the biggest brownie I have ever seen. I looked like they gave him half of the brownie tray and I love brownies. I held out for quite a while, but he got too full and had quite a bit left over. I checked my app and it said that a 2”X2” brownie was 39 carbs. So I gave in and cut off a 2X2 square and ate it as slow as I could. In the past I would have taken that in one bite and then eaten a bunch more. But I was able to stop and one. Even though I did have one, it was a huge victory for me because I enjoyed the one brownie and did not go crazy and eat a bunch.

I consumed 1987 calories, 75 carbs and 126 fat grams. Again not able to weigh myself today, it is a little frustrating not being able to know where I am at. But it will not change anything it is just information that I want to know. As you can see I was not able to stay under 50 carbs, but it could have been a lot worse if I would have eaten more brownies. So if you take something from this, then learn that you don’t have to deprive yourself of everything. Just have a favorite in moderation and then get back on track.

Yesterday was a very busy day; I worked out, went to work, and had a bunch of appointments outside of my office. So I was running around like crazy and that is usually not a good thing for me to stay on track of my low carb diet. For lunch I had to stop at a Jack in the box for lunch and ordered a burger without the bun. It was ok, but they did not put on any condiments and it was pretty dry. Then after work I went straight to a youth winter retreat for our Church. So no time to go home and have dinner. This time I stopped at Carl’s Jr. for their low carb six dollar burger and it is way better than what I had at Jack in the Box. I know that is sounds weird that am on a diet and I went to two fast food restaurants and I still kept in track for the diet.

I consumed only 1657 calories, 12 carbs and 113 fat grams yesterday. I was not able to weigh myself this morning since I am away at camp. I know that is real low on the calorie count for what I have been doing, but I just did not have time to eat yesterday. I did have quite a bit of string cheese, since that is easy to carry around, quick to eat and the carbs are zero. I think that is good for everyone that is on this diet to find some snack foods that they like and are low in carbs or even zero and then keep the items with you. That way when you start to feel a little hungry you always have something with you to snack on. For me I have string cheese and turkey pepperoni. I like the taste of both, they usually hit the spot and I don’t starve myself.

I think that is where most people go wrong on not just a low carb diet, but any diet. They tend to starve themselves and at some point they just can’t handle doing that and then they eat something that is not on their diet and start getting off track. Then you eat a little more that is not on your diet and pretty soon you are off the diet. You are not starving anymore and you feel a little justified, saying there is no way that I can keep starving myself. So take it from me, always have something that is on your plan available, so you don’t have to starve yourself and suffer.  Like I said at the start of this, I felt like I was hungry all the time for the first week even though I was eating a bunch of food. But now in week 2 my body is adjusting and I do not feel hungry all the time now. I am getting used to it and will too.

My workout yesterday was the P90X:90-Day Extreme Home Workout Program again and I worked on my legs and shoulders. I continue to feel like a weakling compared to them. Not only that I feel like I have no balance, when they do some of the exercises they stand there perfectly still. When I do them, I am falling to one side or the other. I can’t wait until I am better at this and don’t feel like an idiot, but at least I am at home and no-one is watching me.

So I am going to do a little more whining today. Yesterday morning I got on the stair master in the morning and started my routine of 30 minutes on that and then 30 minutes on the stationary bike. Well, I was about 3 minutes into it and it was not even getting to the hard part yet and I was thinking about quitting. I was tired in 3 minutes and I was thinking to myself, “come on man, you have ran a marathon a couple of years ago this should be easy”. But it was not easy to start off with; I kept going and kept watching Modern Marvels. And a little while longer I looked down and I had been going for 10 minutes and was actually feeling better than I did at 3 minutes. I kept going and finished those 30 minutes and was better at the end than I was at the beginning. Stepped over to the stationary bike (covered in sweat) and started that. Same thing, I thought I was over being a wimp for the day. But when the tempo got tougher I was sucking wind. But again as the time went by, I got stronger and by the end I felt fine. So when you are working out, don’t quit when it starts to get a little tough. Just keep going and then your muscles say, “well I guess we are in it for the long haul, so let’s do our job”.

Yesterday I consumed 2876 calories, 29 carbs and 196 fat grams. And my weigh in this morning was 220.0, shoot I was really hoping to drop into the teens today. Oh well there is always tomorrow, I cannot complain too much when I have lost 8 pounds in 11 days. It is slowing down quite a bit right now, but that was expected. I still have 21 days to lose 3 pounds to hit my goal of 217 by the end of January.

I am a little worried about the next 3 days though. I am a leader at our youth winter retreat for our Church starting tonight. I have been on plenty of these and they always have a ton of food and not much exercise. I am probably going to go skiing, so that will be a little bit of a work out. I also brought my running gear, but it is about 20 degrees out now. So if I do go running it will be a cold one. Not only do they have a lot of food, but they always have a dessert at night and I am not good at passing up a nice chocolate dessert. So I packed some string cheese, pepperoni sticks and some little baggies with Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey Gold Standard, Double Rich Chocolate. I am sure I will get a lot of strange looks and questions, but it is something that I need to do to stay on track. I just hope they don’t have a spaghetti night, I am pretty sure there are a lot of carbs in that.

I will be gone for the next three days; I will bring my laptop and log what I am doing. But I don’t think they have internet service, so I will post everything when I get back.

If you want to learn more about my low carb diet go to my website at www.lowcarbdietnow.com.

Had a busy day yesterday at work, but I was still able to stay on track. I woke up in the morning and did my P90X:90-Day Extreme Home Workout Program, I thought it would start getting easier. But that is not the case, it is still only the second week and I want things to be easy. Well they are not and they will probably never be easy, I guess that is why they call it working out, not having fun. When I am going through the work out it seems to be a struggle, but after I am done I am always glad that I did. So I would suggest having that mind set, think about how you will feel afterwards. Everything in life that is worth having or achieving is never easy. It is usually a lot of hard work, but then you can look back and say, “Wow I really did something here”.
So yesterday I consumed 1918 calories, 19 carbs and 119 fat grams and weighed in at 220.6. I would have to look back and check, but I think that is my lowest day for calories and fat grams. I was not trying to go low on those two, it just kind of happened. Not only did I go low, but I went out for fast food yesterday. I went to Carl’s Jr and had their low carb burger again, it really hit the spot and I was not temped by the fries at all. Ten days into this and it is starting to become a habit that is really cool. I know that last week I seemed to be hungry all day long no matter how much food I ate. Now a week later and I do not feel nearly as hungry as I did last week.
Last night I had a meeting at our Church and they served us pizza and I love to eat pizza. So I just took a fork and knife and scraped off the top and then just ate all of the toppings that were low carb. I was able to get the taste of pizza without going off my low carb diet. I am learning that my eating habits are changing, but it is not as much of an inconvenience as I thought that it would be. When I got home last night, I was having a craving for some chocolate so I looked around and saw that 1 tablespoon of Hershey’s chocolate syrup had 12 carbs in it. Then I checked the chocolate chips and it had 9 carbs in a tablespoon, what is that 4 chocolate chips? I figured that would not do much for me, so I mixed up a glass of Optimum Nutrition 100% Whey Gold Standard, Double Rich Chocolate with only 3 carbs in it. Not only did I save a bunch of carbs, but I know that it was a lot more filling than if I would have eaten the chocolate chips or the syrup. Plus I know myself and I am sure I would not have stopped at 1 tablespoon.
Keep on track.