Saturday (Cheat Day) morning; lost 1.2 lbs since last week, making a total of 15.4 lbs since I started just over four weeks ago. Still very happy with my meals, still eating better (e.g., more green leafies and veggies on a daily basis) than I have in years. And for those intermittent cravings, I still have Cheat Day on Saturdays, and during the rest of the week, bacon. This morning, I had both: overnight (yeast-based) waffles with (previously cooked) strips of bacon cooked right in; butter pecan syrup on my first serving and spiced apple syrup and mascarpone cheese on the second serving (with plenty of butter on both).

Through these posts to date (including today’s), I’ve been finding examples of FHBD meals on the web and posting them (with links back to their originating sites). I’ll start taking photos of some of my own meals and posting them instead. I should have taken some photos yesterday afternoon — I did my ‘protein grilling’ for the week, which included:

• 1″ hand-sliced beef tenderloin steaks (7 or so), salted and peppered ahead of time
• lamb loin chops (8), marinated in olive oil, salt and pepper
• several salmon fillets (cut from one large salmon fillet), marinated in olive oil, salt, pepper and fresh lime juice (with more salt, pepper and lime juice applied while grilling)
• some precooked red pepper and spinach chicken sausages (5)
• a pack of (97% fat free) Hebrew National hot dogs
• a large bunch of thin asparagus (olive oil, salt, pepper)
• some sliced leftover onions

It all turned out great, except for the hot dogs — they were a last-minute decision, and that pack was all I had sitting in the freezer. The low-fat ‘dogs don’t grill very well because, well, they don’t have much fat in them. They still have good taste, but they don’t have the mouth feel of regular Hebrew Nat’l dogs. All the meats (except for the ‘dogs) were bought at Costco; the asparagus I bought at Safeway, because the Costco asparagus is too thick (finger-thickness vs. pencil (or less) thinness at Safeway).

To date, I have been relying solely on a change in diet for the loss, and that during a period of enforced reduced physical activity (due to a high ankle sprain I suffered the day after I started the FHBD, and which still hurts; it’s got a ways to go). My goal for the next four weeks is to apply physical activity several times each day. Ferriss suggests some simple do-anywhere exercises (air squats, wall presses, chest pulls), so I’m going to start working those in daily, just before and 90 minutes after meals.

I did do my canonical stretching routine (the last 20-minute segment of this video; been using it for about 20 years) for the first time in several months. I was more sore and stiff during it than I can remember being a long, long time — I don’t know how much of that is due to my general lack of physical activity for the last four weeks and how much is due to other effects of the fall where I wrenched my ankle. My ankle, on the other hand, held up pretty well through most of the stretching routine; there was just one short exercise that I modified a bit because it hurt too much otherwise. In any case, my ankle needs the stretching to working on recovering full range of motion.

That’s it for now.  ..bruce w..

Another week, another Cheat Day, a few more pounds gone. I weighed in this morning at 2.2 lbs less than than last week; if I can keep losing 1-2 lbs/week, I will be very happy indeed. I did again gain 4 lbs the morning after Cheat Day last week, which means my weight is actually 6.2 lbs less than it was last Sunday morning. Tim Ferriss states on his website (in response to a question) that post-Cheat Day weight gain is not unusual, but that the weight tends to vanish in a few days. That is been my experience to date.

Note in all this that I’m still limited in my physical activity by my high ankle sprain; I’ve been doing no exercising or stretching, and I’ve been doing fewer physical chores than usual (as evidenced by the snow and ice on our front driveway). However, I will likely start going back to the gym on Monday to see if I can swim — or even just walk in the swimming lane — without undue pain.

My cravings are changing, too. Two weeks ago on Cheat Day, I frankly overdid it because I felt a drive to eat things I had wanted all week long. I was a bit more moderate last week (though I did have both a Big Mac and a Quarter Pounder along with my fries between NFL playoff games). While I’ve got a few “nice to haves” on my list for today (a slice of Costco pizza, a trip to a Mexican restaurant, a toasted cheese sandwich), I don’t feel a need to eat everything that I wouldn’t be able to eat otherwise. In other words, the protein/legumes/veggies diet is starting to feel like normal.

Similarly, during-the-week cravings and impulses are becoming more and more muted — in part because of the diet shift, but also because of the Cheat Day exception. I don’t feel deprived that I can’t run through McDonalds or Taco Bell whenever the urge hits me; if anything, I feel a bit liberated and more thoughtful about my eating. And there’s always bacon.

I had to eat out (on business) three days in a row this week and had no problems. Each time, I ordered a salad that came with protein (e.g., cobb salad, salmon salad) and didn’t worry about beans.

By the way, last weekend I grilled up (a) salmon, (b) hamburger patties (88% lean), and (c) boneless pork chops (1″ to 1.5″ thick), all meats purchased at Costco. For the pork chops, I smeared them with a dijon mustard-chopped garlic paste an hour or so before grilling; they have been absolutely wonderful. The salmon I fixed two ways: two large filets on cedar plans with a savory spice rub (a bit of sugar in it, but eh?), and two smaller filets marinated in olive oil, lime juice, salt & pepper and cooked directly on the grill (using a perforated grilling pan). The latter filets were absolutely exquisite; easily the best fish I have ever cooked and some of the best fish I have ever eaten. All future grilled fish will be cooked that way. The meat I cooked last week not only lasted all this week but will last well into next week also (and that’s with my sweet wife, who is not on the FHBD, making use of it as well).

I came up with a new favorite way of fixing the grilled hamburger patties during the week. In a large (non-stick) frying pan, I saute chopped onions and sliced mushrooms (small Portabellos; again, thank you, Costco), usually in butter. I heat up a (cooked) hamburger patty in the microwave, then put it in the frying pan to saute for a bit with the mushrooms and onions, turning it over at least once. I dump it all on a plate, put some beans on the side, and have some green veggies as well.

The pork chops are big enough that just one makes a meal; I usually slice it up and heat it (gently) in the microwave. Tasty Bite Madras Lentils (yes, available at Costco) make a great and easy side dish with the pork chop. I use the salmon largely to make salads for lunch, typically along with drained canned beans. I changed this past week from baby spinach to a chopped lettuce salad mix; I don’t like that nearly as much and will go back to baby spinach. My favorite green veggies are fresh sugar snap peas and steamed frozen peas, though I also keep a small prepackaged veggie tray in the fridge with broccoli.

My one cooking disappointment to date: I made a large batch of chicken legume soup using a dried ‘gourmet bean blend’ (beans, peas, and lentils — bought, yes, at Costco), my own homemade frozen turkey broth, and pieces of (prepacked) grilled chicken. It was decent when first cooked and hot off the stove, though I added rice vinegar and Sriracha chili sauce to punch it up a bit. However, after refrigerating it and then reheating it, one or more of the beans in the blend turned crunchy, which makes it very unappetizing for me.

Finally, my acne rosacea continues to improve. I find this fascinating, since I’ve dealt with this for 15-20 years and for most of that time was taking high doses of tetracycline (1000 mg/day or more ) to control it. I stopped that treatment a few years ago when I discovered — after running out of tetracycline and being unable to refill the prescription for a few weeks — that my nose was now pretty much acting the same with or without the antibiotic. (In fairness, the overall activity of the acne rosacea was down from its peak about 15 years ago, but was still there, still persistent, and still active.) I wasn’t expecting that as a side effect, and I’ll continue to monitor this to be sure it’s not just an unconnected cycle, but it is interesting.  ..bruce w..

Some months back, I ordered a copy of The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss, probably due to a mention on some other blog. After it arrived, it sat with 20 or so other books on my nightstand, unopened. However, some family members in other states started following Ferriss’s ‘slow carb’ diet from the book and reported steady, meaningful results. So a little over two weeks ago (12/29/11, to be exact), I decided to try it out myself.

Two weeks later, I’ve lost 12 lbs, in spite of being relatively inactive physically for reasons explained below. I haven’t felt particularly deprived, either.

There are lots of explanations of the diet on the web, but here’s a summary of my implementation of it:

• No ‘white’ or ‘bleachable’ carbs: flour, rice, potatoes, etc.
• No sugar or fructose (including fruits and fruit juices); limit artificial sweeteners.
• Drink at least 1/2 gallon of water per day.
• Meats (as used here and below includes fish and fowl), vegetables, and legumes (read: beans) at every meal. Limit corn and carrots, though.
• Eat within 60 minutes (and preferably 30 minutes) of waking up.
• One day a week (for me, Saturday) is ‘cheat day’ — all rules and restrictions are off.

As mentioned, I started this on Thursday, December 29th. The very next day, I managed to give myself a severe high ankle sprain slipping on a wet patch of reseeding soil on the sloping side lawn. This means that I spent my first week on the diet mostly lying on the couch or on our bed with my foot propped up and a cold pack wrapped around my ankle; I’m still limited in what I can do physically and probably will be for weeks.  Nevertheless, by the morning of my first real cheat day (Saturday, January 7th), I had lost nine (9) pounds.

I sort of went wild that first cheat day and the next morning had gained back four (4) lbs. However, my weight started declining a bit each day thereafter, so that, as noted, as of this morning I’m down a total of 12 lbs (which is to say, 7 lbs since last Sunday). I’m eating more modest amounts today and don’t expect to have the same weight gain tomorrow morning.

In preparation for the diet, I made a large batch of my Grandpa Jack’s Mexican beans (you can find the recipe in this post), froze half and kept the other half in the fridge. I also have been grilling a significant amount of protein (beef, chicken, fish, pork) on our large BBQ grill once a week, then sticking it in the fridge and using it each day. I stocked up on canned beans (no sugar/fructose) and various fresh and frozen veggies.

My daily meals have more or less followed this pattern:

• breakfast: some sort of eggs, often scrambled, with veggies (mushrooms and onions, most often), Mexican beans on the side.
• lunch: usually a salad with sliced meat and beans (canneloni, great northern, black) in it, occasionally other vegetables and/or diced hard-boiled egg. Dressing is either a homemade oil-and-vinegar dressing or occasionally a dollop of mayo. (I had a craving some days ago for a BLT sandwich and made a BLT salad instead.)
• dinner: meat of some kind, veggies of some kind, beans of some kind, either as three portions of the meal or combined in some way.

Ferrriss recommends four small meals about four hours apart, but I usually end up having just three most days. If I do have a fourth, it’s usually just snacking on some veggies or having another portion of protein.

For my water, I just use a standard 2 QT plastic water container. I add in one squeeze of Mio and another of lime juice just to give it some flavor. I drink maybe one diet soda every other day, usually Fresca.

Speaking of snacking — following this diet has made me aware of just how often I would usually snack during the day. Of course, most of the things I used to snack on (cheese, crackers, bread, sweets) are off limits now (except, of course, on Saturday). However, I have found a useful substitute for when I’m just really craving something sweet or salty. Once or twice a week, I’ll cook up a half-rasher of bacon in the morning, have a slice or two with breakfast, then wrap the rest in a paper towel, put it in a ziploc bag, and stick it in the fridge. When I get a strong snack craving, I’ll just pull out a cold, salty, crispy strip of bacon and eat it. Frankly, it’s better than candy.

Likewise, this diet has made me keenly aware of how many processed food products contain sugar, fructose, or other sweeteners. Some I can understand, but vinaigrette salad dressings? Soup? Mayonnaise? Really?

Farriss gives physiological reasons for the ‘cheat day’, but I think the psychological reasons are as important. Whatever it is I want, whatever it is I’m craving, I know that I can have it in 6 days or less without ‘breaking’ the diet. Last Saturday was my first real cheat day (I was only a day or two into the diet on 12/31, so that hardly seemed like a big change), and as I mentioned above, I went a tad overboard. Today, however, while I’m enjoying what I’m eating, I don’t feel quite the same compulsion or intensity. In fact, a lot of what I’ve had today have been frozen leftovers (brownies, homemade mac-and-cheese, pizza) from last Saturday. I still have a trip to McDonalds planned between playoff games, though.

Overall, I feel fine. It’s hard to gauge my sleep patterns to date, since I have this ankle and shin that are prone to ache through the night. But I tend to wake up rested and with plenty of energy, and I maintain my energy through the day and evening, even though my caffeine consumption (in the form of diet Coke) has dropped dramatically.

Most interesting is my nose. I suffer from acne rosacea, which for me means a reddish nose that’s prone to swell a bit, with one or more whiteheads each day to deal with. Since starting on this diet, I’ve seen a total of two (2) whiteheads in the past two weeks, there has been little swelling, and even the redness seems to have faded just a touch. I’ll be watching to see if this trend continues.

I’ll keep reporting from time to time. My initial goal was to lose 30 lbs by the end of April, which would put me back where I was five years ago, when my weight started slowly creeping up; I now find that after two weeks, I’m almost halfway there. My ultimate goal is to lose 50 lbs, which will put me back where I was about 15 years ago. Should be fun.  ..bruce w..

…take some time to recenter yourself. ..bruce w..

Now, go wipe your eyes and have a better day.  ..bruce w..

I’m not sure it matters.

I think both apply to the current EU leadership, who — I am sure — have followed Jesus’s sardonic injunction and made to themselves friends of the riches (“mammon”) of unrighteousness, “that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.” Does anyone doubt that — regardless of what happens to the Euro, the European Union, and the citizens of the various countries involved — the various EU leaders and bureaucrats will come out just fine?

I am cheerfully ready and willing to be wrong about the fate of the Euro and/or the EU; both may well survive in some form out of sheer inertia and entrenchment. But there remain the cold equations: debt and deficits and unfunded liabilities can be hid under the financial ocean for a while, but — as Warren Buffet famously observed — when the tide goes out, we get to see who’s swimming naked. And the tide is going out everwhere at once: Europe, North America, Asia.

In the end, we may see a political realignment in Europe that rivals the collapse of the Soviet Union — a development that itself was considered impossible (absent a world war) and yet happened in a matter of months. The resulting financial tsunami is likely to wash over North America and Asia, worstening the financial issues in both regions.

Decades of experience have taught us time and again that in socialism, we do indeed eventually run out of other people’s money; and that wishful thinking and good intentions and desire for utopic justice will not, in fact, somehow bend the unforgiving laws of mathematics.

Keynes, challenged on the long-run implications of his economic theories, quipped, “In the long run, we are all dead.” He might just have well said, “Après nous, le déluge.” We have sold our birthright for a mess of pottage, and our children and grandchildren will wear our shackles.

And a good Monday morning to all of you. ..bruce w..

I did indeed crash. Probably just as well, since it appeared to have been raining durng the afternoon, which pretty much ruled out putting up the new signs, etc. Instead, once I was sufficiently conscious, Sandra and I headed down to the Christmas Market on the lower part of the Champs-Elysees, both to grab something to eat — a room service hamburger here at the hotel costs about US$30 — and to finish up some Christmas/grandkids shopping.

Once again, both the upscale retail section of the Champs-Elysees as well as the (temporary) Christmas Market section were absolutely jammed, so the Eurocrisis doesn’t seem to have damped anyone’s enthusiasm for going out. How actual sales are, I have no idea — but a lot of people in the upscale retail section were carrying purchase bags from the various stores.

True fact: the Abercrombie & Fitch store on the Champs-Elysees actually had a roped waiting line for getting in.

So, what’s my takeaway from a weekend in France? I keep thinking back to what Thomas, one of the Parisians I interviewed, said to me at the start of our conversation: it’s like running along on a flat area, and then you suddenly come to a cliff, and bam! you fall down. The image that came to me, with my own cultural heritage, was of Wiley E. Coyote, running off a cliff and actually going some ways over empty space. Then he suddenly realizes there’s nothing below him, looks to the camera, waves goodbye, and plummets to the gorund. (In fact, I think that this clip sums up Europe’s situation very well.) That is what I suspect will happen to the Eurozone, and possbly to the EU as well. ..bruce w..

France’s future is cloudy.

OK, OK, cheap symbolism, but that’s the best kind, for reasons that I’ll come with eventually. Meanwhile, in case you’re wondering about the strange post name, “Tour Eiffel” is French for “Eiffel Tower”, and yes, we went on a tour of the Eiffel Tower this morning. We had gone last year (just standing in line, not as part of a tour), but it was cloudy, and so I couldn’t get clear photos of Paris. We had high hopes this morning — it was sunny and clear when we left the hotel, and still sunny when we started the tour at the Tower, but by the time we got to the top — well, you can see. All very symbolic.

I asked Hailey — our chipper and informative tour guide from the Maritime Provinces who has been here since last summer — what she thought about the Eurocrisis, and she frankly admitted to knowning almost nothing about it. On the other hand, she has a country to go back to that is frankly in better economic and political shape that most of the rest of the world, so why should she care?

Meanwhile, it was very, very cold and a bit windy to boot up on the Tour Eiffel. I don’t get cold easily, but I’ve been back here in the hotel room for 30 minutes or so, and I’m still a bit chilled. I’m also falling asleep and have to decide whether I want to take a nap or (cue Popeye-eating-spinach music) take a bottle of 5 Hour Energy. In either case, I’m going to have to warm up before I can decide whether to go stand out in the cold again in hopes to getting to interview a few more folks. .bruce w..

Sometime early this morning, while thinking about my goals for this trip, I came to the conclusion that my probability of success was pretty low in doing cold approaches on strangers whose language I didn’t speak and who likely didn’t speak my language in turn. So instead I went to a nearby store, bought some large (A3) drawing papar and a large marker, and made two signs that read:

American writer wants
to interview you about
Eurozone/EU crisis.

(Il ne parle pas français.)

There was an area with low polished stone walls (surrounding three sides of a car ramp doing down to an underground garage) near the entrance to our hotel. I planned to tape the two signs to that wall, set up my camcorder on a tripod, take out my clipboard and notebook, and wait for the interviews to roll in.

Now, before you laugh too hard, stop and think about it. If a French reporter set him(or her)self up in Times Square — and the Champs-Elysees is a cross between Times Square (sans billboards) and the biggest upscale mall you can imagine — and put up a sign saying that he wanted to talk about America’s economics problems, he’d probably have a line a mile long. Of course, if he limited it to those who could speak French, it would be much, much shorter, but given (as we are told) how English is a universal language in Europe (and, indeed, most of the world), that shouldn’t be as much of an issue.

Anyway, the first problem I ran into was the one mentioned in my last post: there was a serious police sweep, with serious-looking police, going on pretty much right where I had planned to set up. After watching them for a little while and realizing they weren’t going to be done any time soon, we moved about half a block up towards the Arc de Triomphe, where there are a similar stone wall around a pedestrian subway. I set up the signs, set up the camera, took out my nootbook, and waited.

And waited. And waited.

Lots of people walked by, reading the sign, glancing surripitously at me, then avoiding any further eye contact. Then, after about 15 minutes of this, four young men set up some audio equipment on the sidewalk about 25-30 yards away from me, turned on some hip-hop music, and began to breakdance. I kid you not: within 30 seconds, a crowd of 100+ people had formed a square around them. They performed (loudly) for about 20 minutes, took a 10-minute break, then started all over again. This continued the whole time I was out there.

[Continuing to write the next morning] I really was lagged last night. Sat down this morning to finish this post and had to un-check several of the categories I had set (Credit Backlash, Holidays, Intelligence, Japan).

Anyway, yesterday I did end up with the two interviews (and the walk-by cursing) I posted about below. I also had two groups of youth — one all female, the other a mix — come up to practice their English on me, giggle, then move on. I had a few people (again, teens/20s) take photos of me (“Yeah, there was the crazy old American out on the Champs-Elysees…”).

I’m going to word the sign differently today, partly as a linguistic experiment, partly because I’m not sure my wording yesterday was felicitous. It struck me afterwards that — given the stakes for France and for all of Europe — it was a bit like setting a sign up outside of an oncology ward saying, “I want to interview you about your relative with cancer.”

More police sirens during the night, though I don’t know whether that’s typical on the Champs-Elysees or not.

On tap for today: a guided tour of the Eiffel Tower (avoiding the enormous, slow lines), and then an attempt to gather more interviews. Stay tuned. ..bruce..

• When Sandra and I went to the Christmas Market on the lower half of the Champs-Elysees last (Friday) night, we saw something that we definitely didn’t see a year ago: Army patrols, in groups of three, carrying automatic weapons. And that in addition to police patrols.
• We also saw and heard from our hotel room — both yesterday and today — a lot of police vehicles (motorcycles, cars, vans) going up and down the C-E. One went by, siren cycling, as I typed this.
• This afternoon, when I went out to start my interviews, the location I had picked out earlier in the day was now crowded, with bystanders watching a large contingent of police — both uniformed (in light riot gear) and plainclothed — questioning a succession of people — all black males — and detaining a number of them, making them empty their pockets and get into one of several parked police vans.
• Later that afternoon, while I was still out soliciting interviews, I was approached by an American couple looking for their hotel (which happened to be the same as ours). They said that they had walked down from the Arc de Triomphe, where there appeared to be two different protests going on: one that he said looked like the ‘Occupy’ protests in the US, and the other comprising what appeared to be all blacks.

Sandra and I were actually up by the Arc de Triomphe this morning — largely to go to the Metro station there — and while the area was crowded, we didn’t see any protests. (We did see, however, quite a few young people blantatly jumping the turnstiles in the Metro.) I can’t find anything on the newswires, either about the protests or about why security would be ramnped up right now, but there you have it. ..bruce w..