Day 254

I haven't updated in a while because I have been super busy getting ready for Christmas.

This last weekend went pretty well. The exception was on Saturday. K and I were getting the presents wrapped and rounding up the stuff we bought for the boys' stockings. We have cut way back on the candy we are buying for them but we did get a few special treats.

As we were dividing it up, I started feeling sorry for myself and feeling deprived. I have avoided Christmas goodies so far but the reality of Christmas being around the corner kind of sunk in. It was almost like all of my habits suddenly resurfaced. I started thinking that going off plan until after Christmas wouldn't be the end of the world and wouldn't be that big of a deal.

Well, I didn't go off plan. What I did instead was take the advice of folks on the Zeroing In On Health forum and ate a ton of fatty meat (ground beef) instead, even though I wasn't hungry. I even included cheese with it partly to have something "special" and partly to up the fat. This worked and the cravings passed. I figured my weight would be up the next morning because of over-eating and because of the cheese but I was actually down about a half of a pound.

I have to say that I am jealous of the people that started zero carb and were never tempted to go off plan. That hasn't been my experience so far eight months in. I hope to get there some day. I think when the holidays are done I should be able to get my "ZC Zen" back. I had it from my reboot in August through our vacation at Thanksgiving. I guess I'll just have to white knuckle it at times until then.

Sunday, I was hungrier than normal and had about a pound of chuck eye for first hunger. I was hungry by dinner and ate meatloaf with the drippings (meatloaf = gb, ground pork and egg only). After that, last night I was super hot and couldn't sleep. I don't know if I went into overdrive burning off excess fuel but it wasn't real comfortable. This morning I was down to 169.0 pounds again. I was there a week ago but had bounced up to 170.2 lbs by Thursday.

I have been feeling more energetic (and have more than a little cabin fever) so have been contemplating adding in some activity. On Friday, I decided to dig out the DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) pad and play a game that I got last summer but haven't had a chance to try yet. I went through all of the songs on Easy, just to check them out. It was weird - my legs felt really heavy during the first two songs and then were fine after that. I could tell I hadn't done it in a while but I could also tell my knees and ankles appreciated having 30 pounds less to move around.

Yesterday we did our shopping for the week and scored big at Safeway. They have their big ribeye roasts on sale for $3.98/lb. These are the cuts where they cut the ribs out and then tie them back together with twine. Having the bone cut out makes it easier to cut at home. I am going to buy another roast tomorrow and leave it uncut. Then next week, I am going to do a ground beef and ribeye only week. I'll just slice off the steaks as needed. I wish I had more freezer room as I would stock up at this price.