Day 102 Catching up

I am so not a morning person.  People who've worked with me these past few years know that.  The days when I hit the office pre seven caused a few eyebrows to lift and a few grins.

Coffee doesn't wake me up, although after two or three in the afternoon it will keep me up past midnight.  Hence, I try, and sometimes forget, to avoid ingesting caffeine products in the later part of the day.

In a world that runs off a standard working day, I don't quite fit.


Today, I surprised a few more people by hitting my workout at six. In the morning. Yep, six.  Even my coach wondered if perhaps I'd confused the morning class with the evening one.

It had been about three weeks since I last seriously attempted to do anything strenuous with my body.  Today we did a lot of work with our arms. Nothing overly complicated, pull-ups, push-ups, raises.  I'm sure I'll be feeling some of that later tonight or tomorrow.

We also spent a little time doing work with my walking. That probably sounds a little strange, but my gait is not quite right from spending all the time in the cast and the boot. Being in Baltimore helped strengthen some of those muscles, but today, I was deliberately paying attention and making sure I was walking heel to toe.

I've some work to do to catch up to my former walking abilities, but it gets better every day.

I'm also catching up with one of my friends from work.  It will be nice to socialize here in town and fun to see what is happening in the life of my friend.

In addition to this catching up, I'm also making some strong headway with my diabetes.  Lower blood sugar is an unexpected side effect from not working.  Yesterday my fasting sugar was 100 and today it was 101.  Doc wanted it under 140, normal is under 120.  

We've been eating paleo-ish.  Mostly that means cutting way back on the refined wheat flour and upping the amount of vegetables consumed. This is not a platitude, a trite comment meant to make controlling my blood sugar sound simple.  I just know that it helps, a lot.  Our bodies are so complex, a giant chemistry equation that lives and breathes. 

How much better would we all feel if we cut back on the amount of bread we eat?  We tend to do so much to excess. I'm not sure exactly why, but maybe it goes back to the days of our grandparents and great grandparents growing up during the Great Depression when money was scarce. Dove-tailing into the depression was the Dust Bowl days when even growing food was difficult.

Maybe somewhere deep in our unconscious those days of lack are imprinted and our inner self wired for consumption in the times of abundance.

Throw in some environmental factors such as how you were raised to think of food and you might have the equation for over-eating - at least part of it.

I think the other thing is our obsession with dieting.  We haven't learned to control our diet, so when we gain weight we eventually notice and try to go on a diet.

That is some faulty thinking.  A diet is your way of eating and it is lifelong. Most people go ON diets to lose a certain number of pounds and then go back to old patterns of eating when they hit goal or get discouraged.

The real problem with dieting is that when you go off the diet, you usually end up gaining back what you've lost plus more.  Why? You've tricked your body into starvation mode by cutting calories and/or excising more.

Once the starvation is over the chemistry in your body sends information to your brain telling you to stock up, you don't know when another one of those periods of lack will begin.

Simple changes are often the best. They have a bit more stick-to-it-ness. 

It's like what I mentioned on Day 100 of the blog. I've a habit going now. I don't feel "right" when I don't write the blog. I've been working out for over a year. Exercise makes me feel better and I've not given in to quitting even when wearing the cast would have made not working out very excusable.

Now, I am reaping the benefits of going without wheat flour. I'm going to play around with substitutes like almond flour and arrowroot and others. I'll keep a careful eye on what substitutes do to my fasting blood sugar. I'll figure out which ones are for me and which ones aren't.

For this part of my year of Dangerous Living I am experimenting with new ingredients and new recipes.  The first one I am going to try is a brownie recipe. I haven't had brownies in a significant amount of time, so I'm pretty sure they are going to taste good, no matter what.

The recipe doesn't have a dairy component, and it doesn't use any sort of flour for those that are gluten intolerant.  Take a look at the recipe below and see if it will work for you.  It comes from Paleo Sweets, a dessert cookbook by Kelsey Ale.

Flourless Fudge Brownies

Ingredients:

1 cup almond butter

2 tablespoons maple sugar (I'm using coconut sugar)

1 tsp baking powder

1/4  tsp sea salt

3/4 cup cacao

1 tablespoon vanilla

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Line 8x8x2 inch baking dish with parchment paper and set aside.

Combine all ingredients in medium bowl and mix completely.

Spread batter into the baking dish

Bake 60-70 minutes until the top of the brownies are set and shiny (a toothpick should come out mostly clean)

Allow brownies to cool IN THE PAN until firm, THEN transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Once cooled, carefully remove the parchment paper. Slice into squares using a sharp knife and enjoy.

And, hey, if you are enjoying this blog for any reason, please let your friends know. I'd be thrilled to see an increase in blog traffic!