Day 37

I'm back after a long weekend on the road. Eating on the road when doing zero carb with the family is tough. It is hard to fill up at the fast food restaurants and sit down restaurants are too expensive for what you get, since they apparently make most of their money by trying to fill you up on cheap sides and not the meat. Everything is also mega-dosed with salt. It's easier when I am on my own because I can supplement with pemmican, but K and the kids don't like it.

Friday night, we ate at Wendy's. I had a bunless triple and K had a double. We were both still hungry after that, so we each had a bunless double-stack (which are really small).

When we got to Moses Lake, all three of were getting hungry again. After getting settled in, I went to the mini-mart next to the hotel in search of a snack to tide us over until morning. The absolute best I could come up with was some no carb pepperoni sticks and a small bag of pork rinds. I ended up eating half of the pepperoni stick, a few pork rinds and some pemmican. Not the greatest but better than what I would have done in the past, which would have been to walk over to McDonald's and get McFlurries.

Saturday morning, we walked over to the Denny's next to the hotel for breakfast. I was looking forward to a big omelette that would fill me up for the day, like I got in Boise. Instead, we got these tiny things that were barely filling. I kind of expected more for $7 (they did subtract some off of the normal price of $10 since we didn't get hash browns or toast).

By 4 PM, when the competition was over, I was extremely hungry. We decided that we wanted to get to my parent's house as soon as possible, so didn't want to take the time to eat at a restaurant. I got some cheese sticks, pepperoni and salami at a grocery store and we munched on that as we drove off.

Instead of eating at a restaurant that night, I bought some grated cheese and hamburger and made cheeseburger bowls at my parents'. I was bad and added some guacamole that my mom had.

Sunday morning, we had a big breakfast of eggs and sausage links. My Grandpa loves to cook us a big breakfast when we stay there. Usually, I am so full and sick from eating carbs at my parents' the night before that I don't eat much. This time, we were both hungry so got to eat a bunch. The sausage links didn't sit the best with either of us but it was okay.

Dinner was cheeseburger bowls again because we didn't have anything else available after being gone. I am looking forward to getting back to real meat and getting all of the salt out of my system. I feel bloated this morning and have a headache.

There were a lot of temptations along the way but I think I did pretty well. I did get a Pepsi Max on the way from Moses Lake because I was super thirsty and water just wasn't cutting it. Not a great excuse but I can't say it didn't hit the spot. I also had some Diet Pepsi with breakfast at Grandpa's (it's part of the breakfast routine). I did turn down the ice cream that my mom offered and didn't eat any of the carby junk available along the way. The times that I was tempted, I just thought about how flat my stomach is getting and it was easy to turn it down.

With the salt bloat and eating all of the processed stuff along the way, I stepped on the scale with some trepidation this morning. I about fell over when it read 186.6 lbs, which meant I actually lost .4 pounds over the weekend. I wouldn't be surprised to see a big whoosh when I dump the salt out of my system. As of now, though, I have lost 13 pounds in 37 days.

On a non-diet note, my son J took fifth place in the individual scores at his math competition. He was a little disappointed because he took first last year and third the year before. However, I think placing in the top 5 in the state three years in a row is fantastic. He was only 2 points out of first, so it wasn't like he bombed; it was just a tough test this year with good competition. Our team took fourth place overall, which is really good considering the high power private schools we were competing against.