Fast(ing) Food - Veggie Scramble with Goat Cheese

Day 52, Fast Day #25

I weighed in a couple times this morning just to make sure I wasn't going crazy. I managed to drop another pound, for a total of 17 lbs lost. It probably helps I didn't overeat like crazy yesterday (2,077 kcal).

Zach and I have the day off today for Memorial Day, so I got to cook a hot meal for my fast day lunch, instead of the salad and soup I usually eat on fast days at work. The result was me whipping up this Mexican-inspired scramble. The goat cheese and cilantro balance the spice from the cayenne pepper, but one could make this recipe without the goat cheese to shave off calories. One can also use sour cream instead of goat cheese. I am lactose-intolerant though and prefer the creaminess of goat cheese. This scramble turned out so good that Zach and I were nearly licking our plates:

Veggie Scramble with Goat Cheese (Yields 2 big servings) ~424 kcal/serving
Takes 30 minutes

• 1 red potato with skin, diced ~150 kcal
• half of a onion (I used a yellow one), diced ~30 kcal
• half of a medium-sized bell pepper (I used a yellow one) diced ~10 kcal
• 1 Roma tomato, diced ~35 kcal
• 1 cup of spinach, chopped ~7 kcal
• 4 large eggs ~294 kcal
• 60 grams of soft goat cheese (two servings of the one we used) ~160 kcal
• 1/3 cup of cilantro, chopped ~1 kcal (optional)
• 4 tsp of extra virgin olive oil  ~160 kcal
• 1/4 tsp or to taste of red cayenne pepper ~1 kcal
• 1 tsp or to taste Adobo seasoning (a mix of salt, garlic, cumin, oregano, and black pepper)

Heat the olive oil in a large pan on medium heat. Add potatoes and cook for about 10 minutes. I also put a lid on them between stirs, to soft them up a little quicker. Stir occasionally.

Add in the onions and peppers, cook until the potatoes are tender, about 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

While the potatoes are softening, beat the eggs in a bowl. Add the Adobo seasoning and cayenne pepper.

Add in the tomatoes and spinach. Cook and stir until spinach starts to wilt.

Add the beaten and seasoned eggs. Scramble up the mixture until the eggs are cooked through.

Plate the scramble and top with goat cheese and cilantro. Enjoy!

Week 7 Summary

Day 51, Feast Day #27

I woke up this morning to good news from the scale. I have lost another 2 lbs, for a total of 16 lbs lost. I also started taking waist and hip measurements this month, and I have lost a half inch from both my waist and my hips. So now I am averaging a little over a 2 pound loss per week. My clothes are beginning to feel looser and friends are starting to notice the change. Here are the numbers:

Calories
Week 1: 1,437 kcal or 76% of baseline calories
Week 2: 1,938 kcal or 102% of baseline calories
Week 3: 1,680 kcal or 89% of baseline calories
Week 4: 2,196 kcal or 116% of baseline calories
Week 5: 1,829 kcal or 96% of baseline calories
Week 6: 1,531 kcal or 81% of baseline calories
Week 7: 1,954 kcal or 103% of baseline calories

While ADFing: 1,795 kcal or 95% of baseline calories
Baseline Days: 1,896 kcal

All Feast Days: 2,966 kcal or 156% of baseline calories
All Fast Days*: 471 kcal or 25% of baseline calories

For reference
Week 1: 4 fast days, 3 feast days
Week 2: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 3: 3 fast days*, 4 feast days
Week 4: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 5: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 6: 4 fast days, 3 feast days
Week 7: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
*Includes faux-fast day that was my mama's birthday dinner.

So I ,obviously like collecting data and using it to evaluate my behavior. I am kind of a numbers junkie in general. I use SaveUp as a free tool to track the money I use to pay down debt and save money. The thing with SaveUp, is you get rewarded in credits for the money you save or pay debts with and you can use credits to enter into raffles for prizes, lotteries, or play other luck-based games. After a little over a year of using SaveUp, I finally won a raffle for a $100 Whole Foods gift card. I don't normally shop at Whole Foods, but $100 of free groceries is awesome. 

I took this gift card as an opportunity to try some non-grain flours and meals and non-corn oils so Zach and I can work on eating less processed and refined corn and wheat products and start eating more primal food, in addition to the produce and meat we'd normally have on our grocery list. Tonight we enjoyed some bison sirloin steaks with mashed red potatoes (without milk) and sauteed asparagus from our grocery trip. Yum! Bison steak is great because it is leaner than regular steak. My 7 oz. steak was only ~210 calories with 47 grams of  protein and 35% of the DRV of iron. In comparison, the same size and cut of steak from a cow has ~368 calories, 44 gram of protein, and 18% of the DRV of iron.

While at Whole Foods, I also bought GT's grape chia kombucha on the recommendation of a friend, since my first kombucha experience was unpleasant. I basically had taken a swig of a friend's kombucha on a hot, humid day not knowing what I was putting in my mouth. All I could taste was a funky, fungal flavor---not refreshing like I had expected from refrigerated tea on a hot day. 

Kombucha is a fermented tea made with fungus that is becoming increasingly popular as a "living" food (there is bacteria and yeast in it). I doubt kombucha is becoming popular because of its vinegary and yeasty taste. However, the glucuronic acid in kombucha may reduce one's risk of cancer, which seems like a good trade off. Luckily, one can find kombucha in flavors, since I am too much of a wuss for the unflavored stuff.

This grape chia flavor kombucha tasted a lot better than the non-flavored kombucha I had previously, although there is more sugar from the flavoring. I like the chia seeds in there because it reminded me of drinking bubble tea. I think the mistake I made with kombucha this time was drinking it on nearly an empty stomach at the end of a fast day. My stomach was making all kinds of strange noises and I think it triggered my heartburn from the acidity. I will try to drink the rest of it on a full stomach and see if that is less cruel to my stomach. Otherwise, I may have to scrap kombucha.

I Could Have Had Wine

Day 46, Fast Day #22

I have gotten into a mundane routine for fast days in the work week. I think is is because the time I would spend on meal planning has gone into wedding planning recently.

Morning:
Drink a cup of coffee or two
Drink water and herbal tea until the hunger becomes particularly irritating

Afternoon (around 1:30-2:30 pm):
Make and eat a salad with a lite dressing
Heat up and eat a can of low-calorie soup

Late Afternoon:
Snack on some raw fruit

Evening:
Eat a small snack with my remaining 60-100 calories at home

The salad varies with what fruits and veggies Zach and I bought that week. Today is was two cups of baby kale (35 kcal), a Roma tomato (35 kcal), 4 mini sweet peppers (53 kcal), and half of an English cucumber (22 kcal).

Today I ended up having less than my usual dinnertime balance of calories. I mindlessly snacked on a large bunch of red grapes and ended up eating around 40 of them (over 130 kcal), about twice as much as what I had planned. Whoops. What is more irritating is that I ate enough grapes that I could have had a glass of wine instead! So tonight's dinner was just some pickled vegetables.

I can't eat all of my calories in one lunchtime sitting like I had been earlier on, probably because my appetite has decreased from caloric restriction. I also have been eating a lot of water volume during my lunch meal, so the size of my lunch is large, but it is not dense in calories. I think I would like to get back to eating just one meal so I save time and so I have more continuous time fasting on down days. I need to come up with some more hearty lunches that will hold me over until the start of the next feast day and take the time to prep my fast day food the night before. 

This all goes back to me needing to spend more time meal planning.

Week 6 Summary

Day 45, Feast Day #24

I finished off Week 6 of fasting. I have dropped one more pound for a total of 14 lbs lost over the last 45 days. Finally the freaking scale moved after 18 days of a plateau. I think it helped I didn't go out to eat with friends during the week, and therefore I drank a lot less calories in the forms of wine and beer. Here are the numbers:

Calories
Week 1: 1,437 kcal or 76% of baseline calories
Week 2: 1,938 kcal or 102% of baseline calories
Week 3: 1,680 kcal or 89% of baseline calories
Week 4: 2,196 kcal or 116% of baseline calories
Week 5: 1,829 kcal or 96% of baseline calories
Week 6: 1,531 kcal or 81% of baseline calories

While ADFing: 1768 kcal or 93% of baseline calories
Baseline Days: 1,896 kcal

All Feast Days: 2,942 kcal or 155% of baseline calories
All Fast Days*: 477 kcal or 25% of baseline calories

For reference
Week 1: 4 fast days, 3 feast days
Week 2: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 3: 3 fast days*, 4 feast days
Week 4: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 5: 3 fast days, 4 feast days
Week 6: 4 fast days, 3 feast days
*Includes faux-fast day that was my mama's birthday dinner.

I feel like I am back on track with this diet now that most of the birthday festivities have passed. It was good to finally see the fourth fast day in my week to be honest. I have become very accustomed to alternating between the up days and down days and just don't get as hungry nowadays. On yesterday's fast day I ended up not eating all of my allowed calories because I had so many chores and other tasks to catch up on. I finally ate around 5 p.m. when Zach was cooking some of the Amylu chicken sausages for his dinner and I finally took a break from laundry, emails, finances, organizing my life calendar, etc. to make a salad for myself.

I am still not happy with the amount of sugar I have been eating (I am my own worst critic). Although I consumed 30% less sugar this past week than my baseline, it is still not what I was aiming for. We had bought a huge amount of strawberries at Costco, so a lot of the sugars were from fruit at least.

Also, this week was my highest so far in average potassium consumed. I think I seriously need to plan my entire eating schedule around potassium if I am ever going to average the recommended amount. This past week I only averaged about 44% of the DRV, which is up from where it was. Once our avocados ripen, that should help boost those potassium numbers. 

I ended up getting a Charley horse in the early hours on Saturday morning despite my increased consumption of potassium. I haven't had a leg cramp like that in years, so I looked back at my food diary and my potassium or calcium weren't low that day, I actually met my calcium needs. It might have just been hormonal or some other fluke. Maybe it was the result of the wedding day nightmares I have been having. I think I need to keep a bottle of tonic water in the house. The quinine in tonic water is shown to lower the incidence of muscle cramps. I luckily like tonic water, although it is better with the gin and lime.

Zach and I also discussed working on cutting more of the wheat and sugar from our diet and eating more "Paleo" or "primal." We are going to work on using up the grains and processed foods we already have, since we don't want to waste money or food, and then just try not to buy more. I have to do some more research in to how primal we want to eat, since like ADF, everyone seems to have a different Paleo rules they follow. I also frankly want to do a bunch more research on the "caveman" diet itself. I am curious about this diet since I have read a lot of people having success with not only losing weight on it, but fixing their own gastrointestinal problems.

Meanwhile, I am working on compiling a list of the science papers I have been citing on a new tab for this blog. I haven't had as much spare time as I had anticipated, but hopefully I will get that done soon.