In which Sarah Jones documents things.

11/16 Food Log:

Morning:
4 oz. kombucha
1 T. coconut oil
Afternoon:
1 T homemade chicken liver mousse
1 oz. raw gruyere
1 T. sauerkraut
3 mL cod liver oil
Evening:
Dinner at Bistro de l’Hermitage:
1 oz. foie gras terrine
2 confit duck legs
1/2 c. mixed veggies sauteed in olive oil
1/4 c. potato gratin

I wasn’t perfect last night, and I even tried a little tarte tatin, but that is A-OK.

11/16 Morning Stats:

Weight: 166
Waist: 30″

11/15 Food Log:

Morning:
1 T. virgin coconut oil
Afternoon:
8 oz. smoothie with raw milk kefir, pomegranate, blueberries, egg yolk, flaxseeds, 1 t. maca, raw honey
3 mL fermented cod liver oil
Snack:
Small portion of cream-braised brussels sprouts (INCREDIBLE)
Evening:
4 oz. kombucha
1 soft-boiled egg with homemade sauerkraut

I didn’t have much of an appetite, maybe because I ate quite a bit the day before. I’m aiming to only eat when I’m hungry.

11/16 Morning Stats:

Weight: 166
Waist: 30″
Real pushups: 5 halfway down.

Vim:
|||||||||||||||||||||||||iiiiiiii
Majyyks:
|||||||||||||||||iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Pulchritude:
||||||||iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

I started losing some weight. Then I slowed way down. Then I started getting lazy and I can’t stand it. I need to lose this fat. It is actually really bothering me. So, thanks to my persistent chub, I’m trying this “blogging” thing again, here we go: I have a sort of all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to my health, which is really not healthy unless I am perfect. I am good about eating foods that are good for me, but if I have a bite of some sugary starchy crap, I’m done for. Not only has my body learned to hate it, but I beat myself up for allowing it. My life feels transitional right now (still not settled into working, schooling, living arrangements) which stresses me out, which makes it hard for me to prioritize my health, which stresses me way the fuck out. My plan of attack is to prioritize the fuck out of my health and weight loss, sacrificing even some quite nourishing foods I currently enjoy.* So, maybe I’m going to blog about it, because maybe you can help me through this, blogosphere. I can use all the support I can get.

Starting today, strict dietary dietlines. Inspired muchly by the WAPF, much from NT, and EFLF. A big thanks to Ann Marie for her wisdom and insight regarding the GAPS diet and much more.

I will be eating only very nutrient-dense foods, high fat and low carb. I also will be exercising more, blah blah. But I probably won’t blag about it.

Things I have mostly been - and plan to continue - erradicating: refined sweetners, refined flours, refined oils, stimulants.

Things (I have never before attempted) to also cut out completely: confinement animal products (meat, milk, eggs, etc), pasteurized dairy products (Kerrygold butter excused), unfermented dairy products, canned vegetables, refined salt, synthetic additives, grains, conventionally-grown produce.

Restricting: natural sweetners, nuts, olive oil

I do not believe that all of these things are bad for me. I’m cutting some quite healthy things out (fermented grains) that I absolutely plan on reintroducing, later.

Things that will be prominent: organ meats, bone broths, egg yolks, cod liver oil, coconut oil, raw lacto-fermented dairy, raw lacto-fermented vegetables, raw lacto-fermented beverages, butter, shellfish, cooked vegetables.

Here we go hardcore. I will be tracking my progress thuslyish. Stay tuned as I trick myself into doing pushups every morning.

11/15 (day 1) stats:

Vim:
|||||||||||||||||iiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Majyyks:
||||||||||||iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii
Pulchritude:
|||||iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

*Since I am blogging I may as well tell you, blogosphere, that I made (among other confections, I fear) two batches of ice cream yesterday: Fried banana with coconut, and lavender-infused goat cheese. They are divine, and I may someday even post recipes. Any wonder why I’m not losing weight?

Dear blog,

I am not a blogger.

PEACE!

10/16

Morning weight: 166.0 pounds

Physical activity of note: Jogged 2 miles in the morning.

Food:

• Breakfast: 1tsp maca, 1tbsp coconut oil, about 1/2 cup raw whole milk. 2 eggs and beet greens fried in goose fat and sprinkled with raw Gruyere.
• Lunch: Leftover 1/3 eggplant parmesan with steamed veggies. Bottle of Kombucha 2000.
• Dinner: Cauliflower gratin with Gruyere, garlic, and hazelnuts. (Delicious. “Recipe” possibly coming?)
• Snacks: Small slice of whole rye sourdough bread with a smidgen of raw butter. (I actually had the butter separately from the bread but if I told you that I sometimes ate butter out of the tub by itself what would you think of me. So just pretend it was together.)

10/15 (Day 1/45!)

Weights and measurements: I didn’t weigh myself in the morning because the scale is in my mom’s room and I didn’t want to wake her up. I should figure out a solution for this soon. I’m probably 167-168 pounds.

Physical activity: Burned it up (It’s awesome, okay?), half in the morning and half at night because I would have been late for work otherwise. I went for a walk on my lunch break.

Food: (too tired to bother with specific amounts tonight.)

• Breakfast: Smoothie consisting of raw whole milk, pastured egg yolk, banana, blueberries, a bit of raw honey, coconut oil, and maca powder.
• Lunch: Small salad consisting of arugula, sauteed red bell pepper, avocado and topped with two huge wild-caught sauteed sea scallops and raw Parmesan cheese. Some baby carrots.
• Dinner: Eggplant Parmesan with steamed vegetables at Alejo’s. I ate about 2/3.
• Snacks: More baby carrots, handful of grapes, a bit of raw radicchio and raw sauerkraut.

I have been in a good mood all day with plenty of energy, even though I should be PMSing like woah.

Dear Blog, (Okay, that’s ridiculous.)

I am obviously no good at blogging. I mean, I like it! But we all know by now that I am a fickle blogger. It’s not like I don’t still make a lot of kickass food. I just have trouble wanting to take pretty pictures of it before shoving it in my face. Yet, I persist. Sometimes. A little. Because I like it.

So I decided I’m going to start a new series of posts called “How in a Month and a Half I Lost a Lot of Fat in a Month and a Half,” H.I.A.M.A.A.H.I.L.A.BL.O.F.I.A.M.A.A.H. for short.The idea is that these posts will be regular, like, dailyish. I am pretty sure this part will be more difficult for me than the actual fat loss part. But, here’s the deal on that:

My weight has been fluctuating 10-15 pounds for the past couple of years since I started college. Not very unusual, but not something I’m happy about either. In mid-August I had just gotten back down to a size I felt pretty great about. Then I got dumped out of nowhere by this guy I was really into (All your fault, Scott! No not really don’t hate me.) and thus got the fat tire around my stomach rolling. Shortly thereafter I made the decision to move from Seattle back to Los Angeles, which happened two weeks ago. So, this has been (and still is) quite the transitional time. For the past week or two I had been feeling bloated, sluggish, and depressed all of the time. I knew this had to do with my changes in diet. I had been consuming large amounts of white flour and even white sugar, which are things I usually cut out altogether. A few days ago it hit me that having gone off the NuvaRing a couple of weeks ago might have a lot to do with it. Duh. I figured that I may very well have an estrogen dominance issue. Just two days ago I cracked down and began to eat to nourish my body again (I could elaborate, but uh, just go here.) and made sure to include maca root and a crapload of raw sauerkraut for the hormone control. I noticed huge changes in my energy almost immediately. Now that I feel back on track with my eating, I am motivated to exercise more, and yeah, you know how it goes!

So, here’s the real deal. Right now I weigh the most that I ever have. I know I’m hot. But. I know I can be hotter. (Okay, healthier too, I suppose.) And you’re going to help me, blag. You are going to act as my food and exercise log… blog. I like to make lists of things. So I think I can do this. As for results, I am tempted to throw out a number of pounds to lose, but I expect I will gain a bit of muscle so I’m not so much focusing on weight. I will say that I plan on getting my waist down to at least 28.5″, lose at least 10 pounds of fat, or get to where I feel pretty goddamned hot, if not goddamned smoking hot, which I expect might take a couple additional weeks. I plan on keeping a healthy balanced diet and exercise plan. I feel like this is a big undertaking, but I’ve done it before, so why not again. I will post as many or as few details as I feel like, whenever I feel like. OK go.

(This post intends to make up for last night, in which shrimp and grits were inhaled before taking a minute to snap a photo.)

The other night I made up a half batch of Nourishing Traditions’ yogurt dough: freshly-ground spelt soaked 24 hours in whole milk yogurt, sea salt, butter and locally-pastured lard that I rendered that day. I rolled out the dough into thin circles and dolloped in some filling consisting of things that I had on hand: caramelized onions and leeks, chopped shrimp left over from last night, cooked corn, cheddar cheese from grass-finished cows, garlic, chopped hard boiled egg, and spices: turmeric, thyme, sea salt and pepper, caraway seeds and cayenne.

Folded in half and edges pinched, then into the oven at 350° for about 35 minutes.

After chomping up the ugly ones, they went straight into a container to take on our road trip tomorrow to McCall, Idaho for a fourth of July family reunion. Next time I’d like to make a few different fillings, including some sweet ones like banana. (I’ll probably try to work some carob hazelnut spread in there.) There’s a lot of delicious inspiration to be gleaned from the empanada Wikipedia entry - like deep frying them as they do in Cuba.

Scott’s probably eating some right now.

So I have this badass (expensive) industrial blender, okay? It’s a Vita-Mix Super 5200, but I prefer to call it The Annihilatrix. At 240 m.p.h., it will smash the dreams of anything that dares enter. What do I do with it? I mostly grind grains, make (the best ever) smoothies, make nut butters, and generally kick foods’ butts. “Nut butters, that’s cool. Like peanut butter and stuff?” It is pretty cool. And yeah — I’m a fan of peanut and cashew butter. In fact, I made peanut butter today. But, I’m not going to show you that. Why? Because I have something for you that’s even more awesome than peanut butter. But first things first.

Here is a secret that is not a secret at all: I love Nutella. But there is a problem.
Here are some of the ingredients in Nutella that are not currently welcome in my body:

• refined sugar
• modified vegetable oils
• skim milk
• chocolate
• soy lecithin
• modern processed (denatured) whey
• some other stuff that I don’t know the composition of. (Defaults to “not food.”)

So literally everything except the hazelnuts. But there is a delicious solution! Here’s how it goes.

The other day I soaked some raw peanuts and hazelnuts overnight (separately) in water and sea salt to neutralize the enzyme inhibitors a la Nourishing Traditions.

After draining, I dehydrated them on baking sheets in the oven at 150° for oh, about 12 hours. Until they are good and crispy.

OM NOM NOM NOM NOM

I mean, you don’t eat them all right now.

Then I put the peanuts in The Annihilatrix and and that’s when peanut butter magically appeared! Then I put in the hazelnuts and hazelnut butter was created! But I didn’t stop there…

Carob Hazelnut Spread

hazelnut butter (as explained above)
unrefined virgin coconut oil
toasted carob powder
raw honey
any spices and flavorings you want to experiment with - I have added cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla, and even cayenne pepper or turmeric.

Dump everything into your Annihilatrix or similar demonry (food processor), and run until it’s smooth and beautiful. Add more stuff until it tastes awesome. (You can’t ever have too much carob or coconut oil.) Store in an airtight container in the fridge. It will firm up considerably in there.

(Notice there are no numbers in this recipe. I don’t measure things very often, and I encourage you to experiment with amounts, but if you’d like some estimations just drop me a line.)

Aside from eating this out of the jar with a spoon, I like it on fruit, crepes, pancakes, in smoothies, ice cream, baked goods… endless possibilities. A few months ago I made a carob hazelnut gelato. Yeah, I just said that. Yeah. It was awesome.

I love yogurt. Real yogurt. None of that icky frilly stuff - plain, whole yogurt. No - not that one. Dude. If it’s got nonfat milk powder in it, it doesn’t count….

I use yogurt mostly as a garnish for a variety of dishes, and as an innoculant for lactic acid when soaking grains. Today I’ve got a couple pounds of yams that I’ve decided to ferment, which means that I needed some whey. I make whey from yogurt or raw kefir, and as my kefir grains are 70 miles away, I went with yogurt.

It couldn’t be much more straightforward - dump yogurt (plain, storebought is fine) into a clean dishtowel or cheesecloth-lined strainer placed over a large bowl. Leave it alone to drip for some hours or overnight. The yellowish-clear liquid that drips into the bowl is your whey - cool!

And oh, hey, guess what? As a by-product you get CREAM CHEESE. I KNOW, right?

The longer you let it drain the firmer the consistency of the cultured cream. In the Middle East, labneh is traditionally formed into balls, rolled in herbs and spices and stored in olive oil. I love it as a garnish in soup (aids digestion) and… well. You don’t need tips on what to do with cream cheese.* As for the whey, it is a great innoculant for any lacto-fermented fruit or vegetables, like beet kvass, sauerkraut, or fermented yams.

*Unless you are my boyfriend, who is oddly grossed out by the idea of cream cheese. In which case you give it to me.