Stellar Path

Archive for January, 2010

In my quest to do a healthy low carb diet, I have been on the search for some good, tasty, and healthy low carb recipes. There are some great webpages out there, but one thing I have found across the board is that they frequently call for ingredients that I don’t have access to.

One common ingredient used in these recipes that I cannot purchase around here is almond flour.

I decided to make a simple substitution, and so far, the two things I have made with this simple substitution have been amazing.

I’ve been using flax seed meal, which has about 10 grams of net carb per cup. In addition, flax seed is an immensely healthy food, containing plenty of fiber, omega 3 fatty acids, and antioxidants. I just put my flax seed in a coffee grinder, grind it on the “fine” setting, and it makes a nice flour substitute. It gives a slightly nutty flavor that reminds me of wheat, but I enjoy wheat and nuts, so it’s a wonderful find for my current low carb diet.

I’ve made a few different things with it, and I’ll be posting recipes pretty regularly for the next few weeks. Some are modifications of other recipes I have found in cookbooks or online, and others were made entirely from scratch by Tina and me. Please enjoy!

My first recipe was made to combat my sweet tooth. I was craving cobbler, and that was what led me to come up with the idea to try flax seed meal as a flour substitute.  I had frozen blackberries on hand (picked locally, so they were 100% organic), which I placed in a 9″ baking dish that I had greased with butter.

I wanted to make the berries a little sweeter, so I sprinkled them with just a little bit of splenda.

In a measuring cup, I melted 1/2 cup of butter.  To this, I added 1/4 cup of splenda, 2 eggs, 1 cup of heavy cream, and a teaspoon of vanilla extract.  I blended this with a fork, and then I tossed in 1/2 cup of flax seed meal and mixed it together until it made a doughy-like consistency.

At this point, I dropped it on the blackberries in the baking dish.  I spread it as evenly as I could, which wasn’t that easy with the sticky consistency, but I was still able to completely cover the berries.

At this point, it went in the oven at 375 degrees for twenty-five minutes.  One thing to be aware of – it did not change color in the slightest as it was cooking.  I took a photo of it after I pulled it out of the oven when it was done, and it literally looked just like this photo of it raw.  I had planned to cook it for fifteen minutes, but it was still quite damp.  Twenty-five minutes seemed to be about right.

When done, I cut it into fourths, put it in a serving bowl, and topped it with whipped cream made with heavy cream and splenda.

The taste was amazing.  This was definitely a wonderfully sweet, fruity cobbler.  If you don’t like the flavor of wheat, you probably won’t like this, as the flax meal to me tasted like it had been made with wheat flour.  However, I like that taste, and it was amazing.  But even Tina, who hates wheat, said she thought the sweetness of the berries and the whipped cream made it taste really good.  She described it as more nutty than wheat-y, so I guess it’s somewhat up to interpretation.

Don’t be mistaken – this isn’t a fluffy, white flour cobbler like grandma makes.  However, for someone on a low carb diet, this thing was AWESOME.  It will definitely be made again.  Obviously, other fruit could be used in this.  I used blackberries because that’s what I had on hand, but I think I may try making some with blueberries, soon.  I think peaches would be great as well.

Total net carbs fora serving of the dessert, if you eat 1/4th of it, was about 4 grams.  To me, this was most definitely worth 4 grams.

Another recipe will be coming tomorrow.

We had our 2nd week weigh-in last night.  Last night’s weigh-in was the last freebie.  Starting next Friday night, we’ll lose one person per week.

Craig, I have sobering news.  Last night, if it had been “for real,” we would have lost Vaughn.

The men’s team lost.  Poor red team.  Stupid blue team kicked our butts last night.

Okay, not really.  They beat us by 0.15%.  As I pointed out immediately, earning a sad head shake from a few and laughs from others who knew I was right, that’s just one good trip to the bathroom.  We’ll beat them next week.

To be honest, I kind of wish we were on teams of mixed gender.  I am not one of these guys who are insisting, “Women can’t win this!  Men must!”

No, I am only saying that because they divided us by gender, and MY team must win.  That’s the only reason.  I could be the only guy among four females, and I’d still be saying the same thing.

Anyway, for my results… I weighed in at 339.0, which is a loss of 1.6 pounds!  I am honestly thrilled with this.

I don’t remember everyone’s results, but I do know that we had only one gain, and that was Daniel, who gained 0.4 pounds.  Last week, he lost 17 plus pounds, so a gain of 0.4 isn’t too bad.

I am, unfortunately, currently ranked fifth.  I’m not worried about it.  I still have time to pull ahead.  I’m just reminded of the winner of the first Train to Lose, who was NEVER in the lead until the last week.

1. Jeanette
2. Chris
3. Daniel
4. Christi
5. Me
6. Angie
7. Kayvan
8. Patrina
9. Deanna
10. Vaughn

This Friday, the team with the lowest percentage will lose a member with the lowest percentage.  One thing that I do like is that the percentage is from the beginning and not the week before.

My trainer is urging me to go a little easier on the cardio, and he really stressed one rest day a week.  I’ve decided to follow his advice, and I’m going to take today as my rest day.  For a few days, I’m going to limit my cardio to 2 hours a day.  I’ll just see if it really does make a difference.

Today is an easy day to take a day of rest for one big, snowy reason.

We finally have snow!  And for south central Kentucky, this is a decent snow!  We currently have about six inches of the stuff on the ground, which for us, is HUGE.  This is a city that sometimes shuts down at the mere mention of snow.  This is a lot.  I’m not housebound by any means, I do have a four-wheel drive, but it’s just nice to stay in.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Just a quickie post with my video weigh-in this week. For some reason, the videos don’t always work on this page, but they always work on the page with just a single post, so if you can’t see it here, if you click on the title of the link, that should bring up a page where the video WILL work.

I hope I have lost at least four pounds this week. I don’t feel like I’ve done fantastic, but I don’t feel like I’ve done awful, either. My exercise has declined, just because I’ve been so busy with work. I’ve only managed about an hour and a half to two hours a day. I will DEFINITELY be getting four hours tonight. I have to. Weigh in is in just two days!

However, WBKO posts their weigh-in videos on Wednesday, and here is last weeks! Apparently, I have gotten the amazing honor of being the first one in the line up. I’m not sure why; my name isn’t first, but I’ll take it anyway. And no, I don’t remember what I was doing with my hands right after my single hand clap. Apparently, I turn into shades of Ricky Bobby on camera.

One way I am going to be getting in some more activity, if not aerobic exercise, is to do workouts with my kids. At my job, I run an after school program for kids Kindergarten through about sixth grade at three different sites. I plan to travel to a different site, or maybe even sites, per day and do some activity with them. I’m on the lookout for some kid-friendly exercise videos. If you know of any, please let me know. I found one by a PE teacher named Judy Howard that may be good I’m going to try and get a hold of.

Random fact about me: I once wrote a blog that featured MST3K-type commentary from an imaginary blue dragon named Mason. It was fun; I enjoyed it. I think I’m bringing Mason back tomorrow.

We are still in the pool. I’m beginning to think we may be in the pool forever. In all seriousness, I think we’re staying in the pool until the third week is over, with perhaps some land cardio in between. I’m ready to hit the weights.

One thing I can say positive about the pool is that our trainer, who has never trained anyone in the pool before, is kicking our butts. I literally leave the pool sweating. (Well, I’d leave the pool sweating if I didn’t keep ducking my head under to cool off.) Over the course of an hour, we do running suicides, flutter kicks on the side of the pool, knee jumps (where you jump out of the water as high as you can and get your knees as high up as you possibly can), underwater squats (where you go under and explode out of the water as high as you can), flyes with weights, jumping jacks, butt kicks, and a variety of other things (usually done for a minute or more at a time) until we are out of time and all wiped.

I’m still trying to get my own workout in as well. I want to do three hours a day. It’s tough. My routine is to be at the gym by 5:45 to do an hour on the treadmill (elliptical if possible, but the gym is so busy at that point it’s almost possible), an hour in the pool from 7 to 8, and then elliptical from 8ish to 9. I also have an elliptical at home, and if I’m up for it, I do a little more. I am being VERY sure to get in 8 hours of sleep though, which I sadly missed last night, just to give my body time to heal.

Dietwise, I’ve started adding a few healthy carbs back in. I’m avoiding the white stuff, but I am eating fruits and vegetables. I found myself slipping into an Atkins mindset of, “Well, I can’t have an orange, but I can have four servings of pickled baloney!” Not good. So I’m trying to eat healthy fats, lean meats, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables. In fact, I have a spiralized zucchini with pesto for lunch. On Weight Watchers, that’s a nice 1-point lunch, and the pesto should help my body assimilate more nutrients out of the zucchini. (I’ve always heard that fat helps your body do more with veggies, which is why I tend to go for full-fat dressings and just use less than to drown a salad with low-fat dressing, which also tastes weird to me.)

First place may elude me this week. My weight loss has, indeed, hit the second week slump. We’ll see. My week isn’t over, and I still have three more nights of good workouts ahead of me. I may even squeeze in an hour of cardio Friday morning just for good measure.

They should air our video update in the morning, and I’ll post it here as soon as they do. But for now, I have the video intro they had us film the night the contest started. It’s just a short video about why we joined the competition.

More tomorrow! (If the video above doesn’t work, my apologies. I’ll try to fix it later!)

I am currently in 4th place with a loss of 11.4 pounds this week. Given that probably three or four pounds of that was water, I am pretty pleased with my weight loss. I would have liked a bigger number, (who wouldn’t?), but given that I have been exercising and watching my diet for weeks, that just wasn’t to be. So this makes me think that perhaps I can have a big loss again next week. After all, HOURS and HOURS of cardio, combined with a healthy low carb diet, may do it.

I am not a fan of low carb. I do not like the spirit of it, I do not like the practicality of it, I do not like anything about it. I do not like the way I smell when I do low carb. I do not like the way I feel when I do low carb. (Although I must say, the excessive cardio is releasing some major endorphins, so I feel pretty good right now.)

However, my trainer (my personal trainer, who has known me for a year, not my contest trainer who has known me for a week) has recommended I do low carb because she’s noticed signs of insulin resistance in me, and this is one proven way of getting the weight off. I trust her judgment on this, because she is a big advocate of a balanced diet and recommends low carb only as a last resort to prevent diabetes.

I do low carb now because I am in a contest to lose weight and I want to drop big numbers. The handful of times I have done low carb, even for a few days, I’ve lost big. We’ll see if this maintains. I certainly hope so. When I am clearly over the hurdle of being insulin resistant, I will go off low carb and do a healthy, balanced diet of lowered calories.

I’m not sure if I’ve told exactly how the weigh-ins work, so I’ll give the rundown now. (And I’ll post the video as soon as they release it, which will probably be Wednesday.) For the first three weeks, we are completely safe. On the weigh-in at the end of the third week of training, two weeks from tonight, the team with the lowest percentage of weight loss will lose their lowest percentaged member.

The guys, the red team, beat the girls, the blue team, by 0.2% tonight. That’s not much. If this had been the fourth week, the girls would have lost their member with the least percentage, which I believe would have been Denise tonight.

The top winner was Daniel, who lost 17 pounds. After him was Jeanette, who lost 16 pounds. After that was Chris, with 12 even, and then me with 11.4. After me was Kayvan with 9.8, and to be honest, I’m not sure how everyone else broke down, although I do remember that Vaughn only lost 2 pounds this week. I hate that for him; I could tell he was definitely upset about it, but what can you do?

So I’m hitting it as hard as I can this week. Even this contest has rumors of the second week slump. I plan to be the biggest loser next week, and I am going to pull ahead of everybody. I’m winning this contest if it kills me.

They aired our “sort of” weigh-in on WBKO this morning.  It pretty much consisted of us standing in front of the scale, the majority of us (me included) looking like dorks, while a voice over said our name and our weight.  Hey, I was just thrilled I didn’t have to take my shirt off.

Apparently, they’ll be doing our weigh in on t.v. every Wednesday morning.  Here’s the embedded video.

Workouts are going great. We have been in the pool everyday. I’m getting around 3 to 4 hours of cardio a day. I’m a little worried, honestly, that I might not be eating enough. Does anyone know how many calories someone my size (352 according to weigh in) should eat when doing 4 hours of cardio a day? I’m trying to keep it between 2000 and 2500. I hope that’s enough. I don’t want to go into starvation mode.

Train to Lose 2010 has officially started!  There are ten of us, five guys and five girls.  The girls are the blue team, and the guys are the read team.  We have a male trainer named Daniel who has arms the size of softballs.  I haven’t been trained by him yet; I’m looking forward to it.

My diet has been impeccable this weekend, and I have exercised more for the past two days than I believe I may have ever before.

Tina and I did our first water aerobics class at Total Fitness Saturday morning.  I’ve been hesitant to take a swim class for one very big reason.

Man boobs.

I have ‘em and I don’t want mine exposed in public.

However, I made it in the contest, and the entire first week of personal training takes place in the pool.  I decided that the best way to deal with this is to just deal with it.  After all, I’m clearly fat, and it’s not like people can’t see that I have man boobs even with my shirt on.

So we went to TFC at about 8:45, I changed into my trunks, showered off, walked out to the pool, and took my shirt off and got in the pool.  Imagine my surprise when NO ONE burst out laughing.  I was surprised at what a non-deal it was and how comfortable I got with it.  It was surprisingly liberating.

Remember – other than Cancun, I have not been seen shirtless in public since before puberty.  This was a big deal for me.

And the class was an absolute blast.  I loved every minute of it.  It was an hour workout, and it was led by the trainer of the female team in Train to Lose, Linda.  This is the only time I have ever sweat in the pool.  It was amazingly tough, and I plan to go back every Saturday at 9 a.m. that I can.

We went back to the gym later in the day and did an hour of cardio.  After that, we did a ten minute exercise video from Instant Netflix, and then I played Wii Fit for 30 minutes.

Wii Fit was surprisingly fun, too.  Some of it did not feel like much of a workout at all, but others, such as Step routines, cardio boxing, and hula hoops, really had me sweating.  I did 30 minutes Saturday night and 45 minutes tonight.  The Miis kind of freak me out, and the albino personal trainers are a tad disturbing, but other than that, it is so much fun.  Can anyone recommend any other good fitness games for the Wii?  I have Jillian Michaels game, and while I am completely in love with Jillian Michaels and she is one of my five freebies, her game sucks.

Anyhow, today, in addition to the Wii workout just mentioned, we did 45 minutes on the treadmill, steep incline, 15 minutes on the elliptical, and then an hour in the pool, water walking, lunges, kicks, swimming, and the like.  We were both exhausted, and my legs kept cramping up.  I definitely should have eaten more before I came to the pool.

I’ll keep you updated on the status of the competition.  They filmed our commercial Friday night, and I’m pretty sure I looked pretty lame during it.  I’ve noticed that when I smile for a photo, such as a driver’s license, I have a very strong tendency to end up looking like a back alley rapist.  I’m afraid the same thing may have happened when I had to hold a smile for thirty seconds during the commercial.  We’ll see.  As soon as WBKO posts it on their website, I’ll post the link here.

A big thanks to Erin from Erin Takes Control (see my blogroll for the link!) for inviting me to participate. 

10 Things That Make Me Happy (in no particular order, and not including people or other loved ones)

1. Snow Days!

We recently had a few snow days here.  We are southern Kentucky, which is in the northern part of the south, but we’re still not that far north that we get decent snow.  We got about four inches last week, which is, I realize, not much for some places.  But for us, it was a nice snow, and I can’t help it, the little kid that still lives inside me LOVES Snow Days!  I work for a program that works with kids, so if school is out, it completely changes what we do at work, and it was actually fun and a nice flashback, sitting in front of the television and hoping desperately that the Polar Report was going to announce that the schools that would change my day’s work would call off.

Best yet, Tina and I went outside and had a snowball fight.  The snow was way too powdery to make snowballs with, so we more or less flung handfuls of snow at each other, but it was still fun.  I also made my first ever snow angel.  When I dropped down to do it, my shirt rode up and the exposed small of my back didn’t enjoy it as much as the rest of me did, but it was still fun.

2. Streaming Netflix

This one is a new obsession.  We got a BluRay player that allows us to stream Netflix’s Watch Instantly movies.  There are some really good movies in their queue, but my favorite part… the t.v. show Lost.  I didn’t get into the show when it started, for whatever reason, and I heard from everywhere that it was a show you had to watch from the beginning.  I figured I would wait until the show ended and get the shows on DVD.

Well, Lost is part of Netflix’s Watch Instantly, and I am finally, several years late, getting to watch the show from the beginning.  I’m already hooked.

3. TV Shows on DVD

I thought about doing each show separately, but I have too many things I want to do for my top ten, so I’m going to lump it together.  I love full series television shows that are on DVDs, nice and neatly packaged with cool extra features that I’ve never seen before.

My current top two favorites: Buffy & Alias.

There are some others that I wish would come out with legitimate DVD seasons, namely Power Rangers (don’t laugh – I want to point out that I have NEVER denied being a huge nerd/dork/geek) and Clarissa Explains it All.  (They released season one of Clarissa and then decided not to release the rest of the seasons.)

4. Truly Scary Horror Movies

I like the lame ones, too, but if it can really, truly scare me, then I’m very excited about it.  I don’t know what it is; maybe it’s just the release of adrenaline that gets me hopped up, but I like being scared.  One caveat – I do not care for torture porn.  Films like Hostel and Saw don’t do it for me.  I don’t just want to see people tortured.  I want to see people fighting back and trying to survive.  I’m okay with brutal violence, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t want torture and pain just for torture and pain’s sake.

Current favorite horror movie of all time is A Nightmare on Elm Street.  And I have to admit, I really am looking forward to the remake.  I just hope the new Nancy is as good as the old Nancy.

5. Folklore

I stumbled across a class called Urban Folklore that fulfilled a fairly random General Education requirement during my first degree at Western Kentucky University.  I signed up for it, thinking it would be a cakewalk of a course, and I proceeded to not think too much more about it.  The class was taught by Dr. Cam Collins, and this was one of those classes that truly changed my life.  I was amazed at how many stories and beliefs there were, even in the standard American mainstream, and I completely fell in love with it.  I ended up selecting Folk Studies as my minor, and I would have majored (and gotten a Master’s in it) if I felt there were more job opportunities in it.  (Let’s be honest – as awesome as it is, and as truly useful as the experiences and knowledge I’ve gotten from it have been with EVERY job I’ve ever had, the degree itself does not exactly open doors.)  However, I loved it.

My favorite class in my minor was Supernatural Folklore, taught by Dr. Erica Brady.  To be honest, this is probably my most favorite class I have ever taken out of my entire collegiate career.  I’ve always said that if I become independently wealthy and don’t need to work for a living, I would definitely go back to school just to study folklore for my own pleasure.

6. Oranges and Pineapples

These are probably my two most favorite of all time foods.  I don’t have a lot I can really wax poetic about them, but there is nothing that tastes better to me than fresh cut pineapple or a really good orange.

7. I Can Has CheezBurger

This really makes me look like a dork, and it puts me in dangerous territory of looking like a weird cat man, but I think this is one of the funniest webpages ever.  Located at http://www.icanhascheezburger.com, this is a site where people post photos of cats doing weird things with funny captions.

One HUGE caveat – I HATE with an all-consuming passion the ones that are so horribly misspelled and awkwardly worded that it takes someone with a Ph.D. in exolinguistics to read it.  A misspelled word here or there can be tolerated, but I’ve found that the ones I find the funniest are the ones that are spelled and worded properly.  It’s the whole leet-speak thing.  I want to stab people who use leet-speak in the forehead with a pitchfork.  But that has a placement in a separate list.

I think the second picture is far funnier than the first, just because the notion that a cat is trying to do CPR by leaping full-bodied onto his patient is hysterically funny.

Maybe it’s just me.

8. Sleeping In & Naps

Sleeping in is awesome, plain and simple.  There is no greater pleasure in life than knowing that nothing pressing, like work or any deadlines, need to be done, and you can just stay curled up under the covers for as long as you want.

One of the only things that might be better than sleeping in is taking the nap.  I love to have a day where I can afford to take a nap (which will not be happening at all for the next ten weeks that I am in Train to Lose).  I get in my wonderful, soft bed, put something mindless on the t.v., such as The Simpsons on DVD, and just idly drift off to sleep.  Pure bliss.

9. Old School Video Games

After the Super NES, I kind of lost interest in gaming.  I have a Wii, (well, Tina has a Wii), but I’ve noticed that the only games I EVER play on it are Virtual Console games.  I’m currently hooked on StarTropics.  One of the best games for the Nintendo Entertainment System EVER.

I’m also slightly obsessive with Super Mario.  I’m not a big fan of all of the games.  I could care less about any Mario game after SNES (although I do enjoy Super Mario Brothers Wii, but that’s because it uses old school controls), but when I think of my childhood, Super Mario Brothers is one that comes to mind.

10. Traveling

I don’t get to do it nearly as often as I would like, but I like nothing more than going someplace I’ve never been before.  To be honest, I think I would probably even like a job where I had to travel every week.  It might get old, but it would be so fun going to new places all the time.  Better than that, of course, are luxury vacations.  If I had more money, I’d be gone all the time.  And the best job, in the world, would have to be one of those people who work for the Travel Channel who get paid to go to different resorts.

Okay, that’s my list of ten things about me.  I’m supposed to pick ten people to pass this on to, but the majority of the people on my blogroll have already done it.  If you haven’t, do it! 

I was picked to be on the Biggest Loser!

Okay, well… not THAT Biggest Loser, but my gym, Total Fitness Connection, has a contest called Train to Lose.  They pick five guys and five girls, and we compete for ten weeks to see who can lose the most weight.  The top three winners get a year’s gym membership, which isn’t too shabby by itself, and the grand prize winner gets $3,000!

I AM going to win this thing.  If it requires me doing true Atkins because I really am pre-diabetic and my body just can’t process carbs the way it should, then so be it.  I am winning this contest!

More details as I get them.  It starts next Friday night, but we have an informational meeting next Thursday.

And even though she’ll probably never read this, I have to give huge thanks to Dr. Pam Petty.  She’s one of my bosses.  I teach a literacy class at Western Kentucky University a few nights a week from 5:30 to 8:15.  This contest requires a mandatory workout from 7 to 8 every weeknight.  My first thought when I found out about that was that I couldn’t make it to Train to Lose, which would make me ineligible, and I would lose my spot to someone else.  However, with nothing more than a quick email, she is going to let me switch my class to first thing in the morning so I can still workout and be part of Train to Lose.  Dr. Petty is awesome.

It’s 2010!  Let’s take another trip around the sun.

This one will be just a quickie post.  I want to share with you my resolutions.  I know a lot of people are against them, but I’ve always enjoyed making them.  These are mine.

1. Get to 220 by October 4, 2010.  (And then lower after that.  I ultimately want to weigh around 180, I think.)
2. Finish proofing the novel that I wrote during NaNoWriMo 2009.
3. Complete my first 5K.
4. Be happy and productive.

Pretty short list for me this year.  Not that they’ll be easy, by any means, but some things that I want to do.

Have a great weekend everyone!