Day 81

I haven't updated since last weekend, where I was concerned with being at my folks' for the weekend. It turned out to be a mixed bag.

K and I drove down Thursday night and had dinner at the Golden Corral on the way. Dinner was okay but not great. I have decided that I don't like whatever it is that they sprinkle on their steaks. It has a weird aftertaste and ruins the taste of the meat. I could probably ask to leave it off but it is all over the grill so it would still be on there.

I also had a little mixed meat from the salad bar (chicken and ham) plus a little cheese. This turned out to be a mistake because it glutened me. The rest of the night and most of the next day, I had that familiar "glass in the intestines" feeling. Dumb, dumb, dumb. One of these days, I'll learn to not ass-u-me about restaurant food.

The next day was good, food-wise. Breakfast at my grandpa's was typical - massive amounts of eggs and sausage. The sausage links were supposedly 0 grams of carbs but they tasted a little sweet to me. Not too bad, though. Dinner was tacos, so I had a little meat and cheese and then ate two of the hamburger patties that we had brought. I think my mom was a little put out by that but I wouldn't have done well with more taco meat.

Saturday was a repeat for breakfast. Even though the breakfast was huge, I still ended up getting hungry around lunch and had a couple of burgers. For dinner, K and I had bought a bunch of marked down chuck-eyes from a local store and I grilled those up for dinner. They turned out well and everyone raved about them. Amazing how a little fat on a steak will improve its taste.

That dinner was where the problem started. I was feeling ten foot tall and bulletproof and decided I could handle a little baked potato with my steak. Well, as can be imagined, that potato led to a salad, which led to a few chips, which led to *mumble* chocolate chip cookies.

If that wasn't bad enough, I ended up eating chili and ice cream the next day at home. I had only regained a pound and a half from the episode at my parents' but the other stuff led to a total of four pounds regained. I have been doing well since but have only dropped a pound of the bloat. I am also fighting some severe allergy problems at the moment, which I think is causing me to hold on to the water.

I have decided that I am going to avoid the Golden Corral in Spokane. Not only does their meat taste weird but it has set off cravings both times I eaten there. Taking the burgers worked really well and I'll just do that next time. On longer trips, I'll probably take something in a cooler. Restaurant food is just too big of a risk for me and isn't satisfying from a ZC point of view. It is also too expensive for what you get. It cost K and I $28 to eat at GC. In comparison, on Saturday we shopped for the BBQ and bought eight 1/2 pound chuck-eyes, a bag of chips, a can of Bush beans and a can of olives for $24 (and most of that we wouldn't normally buy). The high cost of the restaurants just isn't worth it to me.

Not too much happened in respect to our way of eating. I was expecting comments from my dad but he never said anything to me directly. My mom said something about me not eating lettuce with the taco "salad" and said I was cold because I had lost weight (I had to put a jacket on because I was sitting by the A/C when we were playing pinochle). I know it is only vanity but I was a little disappointed that no one said anything about my weight loss from a positive point of view. I was down 16.6 pounds at that point and feel that I look a lot better but not one word. I guess they are waiting for my arteries to explode.

I did have to deprogram some nutritional "wisdom" that my dad told my boys. I had to explain to them that the brain can get all the glucose it needs without one having to actually eat carbs and that one can get all the vitamins and minerals from just meat, as long as it isn't cooked beyond recognition. Apparently, the nutritional lectures are going to the kids instead of me.

Because of my epic fail two weekends in a row, I thought about resetting my time back to "Day 1". However, Charles recently told someone that going off plan was actually on plan because it shows you how carbs affect the body. I am definitely learning that lesson. I realize that my results so far are different from someone doing ZC flawlessly over the same time frame but I think these bumps will happen when trying to make a lifestyle change.