a hurricane of yuck

I've managed to cut out more meat from my diet, but only in parts. I'm not turning entirely vegetarian, but I'm down to only having actual meat once a day, provided my latest plan works. The basic rule is that whenever one consumes carbohydrates, one should have one serving of protein or one serving of fat to slow down the conversion of that carbohydrate into sugars that trigger insulin production, which then becomes fat.

For morning I have two eggs and one serving of fruit or vegetable for breakfast. Eggs are actually a good source of protein. Sometimes I add cheese if I make an omelet.

For a snack I usually have a serving of nuts, cheese, or cottage cheese with one serving of fruit.

For lunch it's usually a salad with some sort of protein (in the past meat), shredded cheese and salad dressing for fat.

I occasionally have a snack between lunch and dinner, as well. It might usually be either more fruit and protein or three cups of popcorn (hold the butter) and a protein.

For dinner it's usually 6 oz. of meat with steamed veggies.

For lunch now I'm going to try avocado in place of meat so I get good fats instead of the meat. I may also add sliced raw almonds to add some protein and calcium and get rid of the shredded cheese. We'll see how it goes. I don't care for avocado alone, but I'm hoping I might like it more in salad.

EDIT: Avocado in the salad is a go! It didn't gross me out like plain avocado does and blended in nicely.

Yesterday was a better day than Monday, which was certainly a welcome change. The weather was gorgeous, the work situation was calming down and I managed to get some earnest work done. My work day was pretty much spent either in meetings or being a tech monkey doing all kinds of pulling cables, soldering, testing and replacing cables.

After work painted_wolf and I grabbed a small bite to eat. Portion control has worked wonders because on Monday night I had a footlong sub and a bottle of water at Subway and I felt so bloated beyond full. There was a time only a few years ago when I would regularly go in and order two footlong subs, a bag of chips, a large soda and maybe a cookie and/or soup to eat in one sitting. Yesterday I had a hot dog and a soup at Junkyard Dawgs and it was more than enough to fill me up. :)

After eating we walked around a bit and bumped into pyrbennu, so we chatted for a bit. ciliandis showed up. We chatted with her, too, until we parted ways with them so they could do some shopping and we could go see Jim Tyrrell at Cicero's.

Holy crap was Jim's show a blast! We had a lot of fun hanging out with lordpagus and listening to Jim play an incredible assortment of originals and covers on guitar.

I think highlights from the night included the running joke that after each Beatles song he would say "I just wrote that," his song "God Hates Penguins," and a very inventive cover where he sang the lyrics to The Beastie Boys’ "Paul Revere" over the tune "A Horse With No Name" by America. Very cool!

If you are in the Plymouth, NH, area on April 15th, stop in at Cicero’s between 7 - 9 pm (the little coffee shop that just opened between Tom’s Brothers and Plymouth Book Exchange) and stay for a night of great music. He takes requests and has a VERY impressive repertoire listed from which you can choose songs. Hopefully we’ll see some of you there on the 15th. If you can’t make it, he’ll be there every first and third Tuesday of every month and he also has a list of upcoming gigs on his MySpace profile.

After Cicero's we went back to meet up with pyrbennu and ciliandis for some food, conversation and Venture Brothers. Much fun was had! That is, until I fell asleep. Ugh. I've been sleeping like crap lately, waking up frequently throughout the night and getting up well before the alarm sounds. pyrbennu was very kind and gave me some tea in hopes it would help. Sadly it didn't, but it was a very nice gesture and the tea was delicious! I will certainly try it again tonight in the hopes I just need to give it an opportunity to work its way into my system.