It’s Day 8 of the challenge, and I’m happy to say I’m down 2 pounds. Who knows if it’s the diet or if it’s hormones. Hormones are such a wild card. Either way, I’m taking it!
It’s been a positive experience so far. Using PaleoTrack has helped me become more aware of eating for nutrition instead of soley based on taste/convenience. I’ve realized that unless I eat A LOT of greens (especially kale), it’s really hard to meet the RDA for minerals. And unless I eat salmon regularly, my omega 6 to omega 3 ratios are waaay out of wack. And, holy cow! I can’t believe how many carbs are in grapes!!
Why the random grape comment, you ask? Let me tell you. We ran the Bix 7 (a local, hilly, 7-mile road race with about 18,000 participants) on Saturday. This is the 3rd year we’ve done this quintessential Quad Cities event. In the past 2 years, we’ve celebrated our efforts with beers at Great River Brewery and then pizza at Harris. No such celebration this year!! Instead, after the race, I made my way through the throngs of people scarfing down the free Little Debbies, Twinkies, Cheetos, granola bars, and Michelob Ultra to the one tent waaaaay in the back that was handing out grapes. I met up with the Timmy Tee there, who finished about 15 minutes before me, and had a couple of handfuls of grapes – about 1.5 cups, I think. Guess how many carbs that is. Guess! You’ll never guess – it’s 41!! When you are trying to stay below 100 for a whole day, that is troublesome!! Oh, well, at least I did a 7 mile, SUPER HOT, super hilly, super crowded road race to compensate for the stupid sugary grapes.
After the race, we collected our phones from the car and then went back into the fray. Since beer and pizza is off limits until August 9th, I filled my craving for something special by going to Red Band Coffee and getting a huge decaf (no heavy cream this time:(). While there we ran into a couple of friends and proceeded to chat for the next 90 minutes while Tim and our friend had a couple of beers at Great River. In retrospect, perhaps standing for 90 minutes after running 7 miles was not a wise choice.
Oh man, I was soooo sore after that stupid run! It took me 2 minutes longer this year than last year. What is eerie is that Tim dropped 2 minutes from his time. At the triathlon, I gained 8 minutes, and he lost 8 minutes. Yin and yang, mange, yin and yang. Anyway, all day long our knees were killing us – super achey. I finally remembered to use the foam roller on my IT bands, and BAM, I was back in business. They need to have stack and stacks of foam rollers at the end of these races.
Today to limber up our limbs we took what was supposed to be an easy bike ride. However, we encountered a wiley wind that made our trip home quite the workout. Even though it was more exercise than I wanted or needed, I’m really glad we went out. The weather today is super odd – it feels like a fall day by the ocean instead of an Iowan mid-summer Sunday. I love it. We have all the windows open and occasionally gusts are lifting up every sheet of paper in the house while also cooling down our hot kitchen.
Yes, it’s July, and I’ve been baking! I have been craving a paleo treat since I’m not really supposed to have one. 🙂 Plus, I found this recipe on the CivilizedCaveman site: Pumpkin Cinnamon Muffins with Pumpkin Frosting. Also, we are doing a wellness challenge at work, and I wanted to bring in a healthy-ish treat to encourage my team. Well, I messed up the recipe from the get-go. I put the coconut milk in the fridge overnight as instructed, but instead of just scooping out the solidified milk, I mixed up the whole can and used some of that for the frosting. There is no way that concoction is ever going to be frosting consistency. But I tried a little bit of it out of curiosity. OMG. It tastes just like eggnog. It’s deeeeelicious!! Tim agrees and says it would probably be bonkers good with some rum. Now I just need to figure out how to keep it good until I can have rum again…
And the muffins? Well, I do believe I have underbaked them. Tim and I just split one (watching those carbs, you know), and it is waaaay too mushy. I’ll need to put them back in the oven and firm them up a bit. Right now the oven is occupied with a chicken that promises (by the delightful smells wafting out of the oven) to be ultra tasty, so we’ll have to wait a bit. Hopefully they will turn out OK. Trying new recipes can be so frustrating!! But how else can you find new, good stuff to make?
Oh, speaking of screwing stuff up – you remember the water kefir grains that I thought I killed? They are alive and well!! I took the advice of the super helpful staff at Cultures for Health and put them in spring water mixed with sucanat sugar. The first batch was very lackluster, but they are slowing regaining their vigor. I have two batches of the second ferment going right now. It’s turning out fizzy and not sweet at all. We love the flavor. So much cheaper than buying kombucha!! It’s helping to ease my transition into alcohol -ree evenings. It is so boring to come home and just drink water all night!! Drinking a cup of fizzy water kefir is an event! Weeeeoooo!
And that’s my update for the week. Some successes. Some failures. Yin and yang, mange, yin and yang.
