Celebrating Special Occasions While Sticking To Your Low-Carb Weight Loss Goals

Though special occasions are often reserved as perfect times to let loose and indulge a little, it would appear that I have a dilemma - a good kind of dilemma. Special occasions come too frequently!

Using a fairly loose definition, see how many special occasions fit into a year for our family:

• Celebrating local relatives' birthdays, including my own family's birthdays: 10 parties/year
  
• Celebrating the birthday parties of my daughters' friends, and local family friends: 10 parties/year (at least!)
  
• Celebrating New Year's, the Super Bowl, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas Eve/Christmas Day: 12 parties/year
  
• Anniversaries, Mother's Day, Father's Day: 6 get-togethers/year
  

I could go on and on tallying up the ways that we could celebrate, but guess what? The above alone adds up to 38 parties or get-togethers in a year. If I were to take each of these special events as license to exercise my 80/20 rule...well...I'd be doing so approximately 3 out of every month's 4 weeks throughout the year!

Here I want to emphasize that without a doubt it is a wonderful thing - an enormous blessing - to be able to rejoice in so many milestones and special occasions. The excuse to gather and celebrate with friends and family is priceless.

However...none of these celebrations come without lots. and. lots. of. FOOD. Deary me - the cakes, the cookies, the sweets! Of course many do also come with delicious primal / paleo-friendly party fare like steaks (grilled in the summer, yum!), nuts, veggie trays, and so on.

But here's the reality for me (and I'm betting for many of you!): My body reacts to sugar like a recreational drug user suddenly encountering another high. Simply put: I cannot eat such a significant amount of cake and ice cream (or pie, or crumble, or...well...you get the idea) on average three times per month. What's the big deal? some might rightly ask; It's such a small proportion of your overall food intake, and you can be disciplined the rest of the time.

Well, yes, and no. Objectively, it is a relatively small amount, having a carb spike once per week or so. But there are reverberations from that one sugary indulgence. For one, I personally cannot indulge in much of something so sweet and not immediately develop immense sugar cravings that will last for days afterward. Also, horking down a bunch of sugar can compromise my immune system for more than 24 hours. And, folks? I have a four-year-old in preschool, who also accompanies her one-year-old sister to the church nursery every Sunday. In other words, our household has regular and persistent pathogen exposure. I need every bit of immune strength I can muster, because if there's anything worse than a household of sick kids, it's a household with sick kids and a sick mom, amirite?

So here's how I tend to handle celebratory occasions:

• Skip it. Simple - enjoy other foods present (and if you're low-carbing, go for cheese, nuts, coffee with half & half, etc.), or fast altogether.
  
  
• Enjoy a very small amount. If you consider this an occasion worth the cheat, eat one or two bites, very slowly, and then back away from the cake. I probably personally wouldn't do this with a gluten-based cake (wouldn't want to risk the digestive reaction) unless social circumstances all but dictated it, but I did it this way at my daughter's 4th birthday party -- she had a gluten-free marshmallow cake that we had special-ordered.
  
  
• Offer to make or buy a treat to bring. You could dig into any of the myriad paleo / primal friendly dessert recipes on the blogosphere. Most of them may not be low-carb, but you know what the ingredients are and can indulge knowing that you won't suffer as huge of a blood sugar surge that a trans-fat-iced Costco cake would give you. Even better? Bring some very dark chocolate, or a bowl of fresh berries and some unsweetened (or stevia-sweetened) whipped cream - all delicious and fairly low-carb!
  

How do you deal with your frequent special occasions while keeping on track for your weight loss goals?

Reconciling with the Reality of Owning a Very Low Carb Body

The holiday season really threw my weight loss for a loop. I made way too many allowances for technically primal stuff - carby stuff - that shouldn't be a part of my diet as long as I'm working on losing weight (honey comes to mind). The proof is in the pudding - this past week I returned to very low carb (also known as VLC - less than 20 or 30 grams per day) and suddenly that old feeling returned: I felt back in control. My appetite wasn't in the driver's seat. I wasn't irritable. I had steady energy throughout the day. It was wonderful! And by yesterday morning I weighed 6 pounds less than the beginning of the week (some is probably water weight, but even losing the water weight makes your pants fit better, amirite?).

Eating primal (aka lacto-paleo) is not necessarily low carb. There are plenty of primal and paleo folks who eat moderate carb or (for very active people) high carb real foods as a regular part of their diet and do splendidly. That said, I've been reading a lot more about fructose being obesogenic. While the verdict's still out for me, this much I know: when I avoid fruit (and honey, which has fructose), the weight falls off. When fruit and honey are a big part of my daily meals, I stall or gain. The occasional nonfructose carby food - starchy tubers like sweet potatoes or potatoes, for example - won't derail me as much.

It's hard for me to make peace with this, and I think it will be an ongoing process. After all, in our culture fruit is widely seen as an exceedingly healthy and responsible - nay! - integral part of a weight loss program. But refined carbs or natural carbs, my body just doesn't like carbs! And when they get to be a big enough part of my diet, they make me gain weight and activate a sweet tooth addiction that is hard for me to shake.

So I'm back at blunting my carb cravings with VLC foods and have eliminated honey and very much restricted fruit for now. Eggs, nitrate free bacon, macadamia nuts, Kerrygold butter, heavy cream, brussels sprouts, carrots dipped in guacamole, Kerrygold cheeses, coconut milk, coconut oil, and so on. Doing it this way, I lose weight, and eventually things that weren't sweet before (like those carrots) suddenly take on a wonderfully sweet taste.

Menu Plan, and First Time Roasting Duck!

I didn't have plans to go to Whole Foods on Monday, but it happened - because I made an unexpected trip about 45 minutes away for another errand, and why pass up the chance when Whole Foods is right there and there isn't one near home?

I was perusing the meats and poultry when I came across fresh duck! Remembering a recent Mark's Daily Apple post on roasting duck with a honey tamari sauce, I picked one up on the fly. Turns out, this was a very simple process, one I'll definitely repeat.

First, I Googled, "How to Roast a Duck", and the very first results, a detail and picture-filled tutorial from The Amateur Gourmet, were a good starting point for me. I scored the fat on the duck on each side (used a basic steak knife to cut cross-shaped marks in the fat). Then, I used my mini food chopper (~$10 at WalMart) to blend honey, tamari, and a bit of juice from a Clementine. (I didn't copy the MDA recipe but I liked the general flavor profile so it was good inspiration.) I poured about 1/3 of the sauce over the duck on a roasting pan, roasted it for an hour at 300 F, flipped the duck, poured another 1/3 of the sauce, roasted another hour, flipped and added the rest of the sauce, roasted another half hour, and then broiled at 450 for 5 minutes to get the skin dark and crispy.

So in all: 2.5 hours total roasting time, flipping and saucing the duck every hour, plus 5 minutes broiling at the end. A very hands-off dish, and for a dark meat poultry lover like me, absolutely terrific final results. I used some of the duck drippings to roast some home fries that went into my husband's lunch today, and he pronounced them delicious when I happened to call while he was eating.

Here's the rest of the scoop on this week's menu plan. I'm trying to get the carbs lower because it feels like Thanksgiving has sent me on a bit carb craving roller coaster lately, and I'd like get more of a handle on the cravings.

Wednesday:
Breakfast - Fried eggs, bananas for the girls
Lunch - Leftover grass fed ground beef with Trader Joe's organic vodka sauce
Dinner - Baked chicken, sweet potatoes (I may skip the sweet potatoes)

Thursday:
Breakfast - Almond butter cinnamon smoothie
Lunch - Maybe intermittent fast?
Dinner - Creamy tarragon asparagus soup, bacon on the side

Friday:
Breakfast - Mashed boiled eggs, "egg nog" (this is really just a shot of heavy cream with some nutmeg sprinkled on top)
Lunch - Veggie soup with bacon
Dinner - Beef in the crock pot

Menu Plan - Labor Day Edition

Like many on the Twittersphere under hash tag #SPC2010 (as in: September Primal Challenge!), I experimented with some intermittent fasting last week a couple of times by skipping breakfast. (Just me; the rest of my family ate breakfast!) It is shocking to realize how steady your tummy can be if you're not OD'ing on sugar or carbs all the time - both fasts, I was able to keep myself busy without that distracting, violent urge to locate a Fiber One bar stat - the urge that enslaved my days in my life before Grok. When your body is used to burning ingested fat for fuel, making the switch to burning stored body fat while fasting is hardly a blip on the radar.

I have read on many blogs that folks experience the best metabolic boost when they work out just at the end of a fast - and then fasting an hour or two more. So if I have an early dinner and wait until midday the next day to eat - while getting in a morning workout - I'm supposedly maxing the effects of the fast. Hope to test this out a bit more in the future.

ALSO - this week marks the start of packing lunches for preschool! More coverage to come.

Tuesday:
Workout - Workout of the Week - though I may switch this with Wednesday's workout if needed
Breakfast - Eggs scrambled with butter, add honeydew melon (on sale this week at Giant) for the girls
Lunch - Leftover crock pot ribs from Monday, baby carrots
Dinner - Leftover browned ground beef with salsa and organic sour cream over salad

Wednesday:
Workout - Tabata sprints
Breakfast - Whole milk yoghurt / blueberry smoothies, add bananas for the girls
Lunch - Veggie omelettes
Dinner - Masala chicken thighs, salads

Thursday:
Workout - Rest/play day
Breakfast - Mashed boiled eggs, add bananas for the girls
Lunch - Guacamole curried chicken salad on greens (recipe to come, hopefully)
Dinner - Snow crab clusters, with butter for dipping, and a salad

Friday:
Workout - Kettlebellin'
Breakfast - Apple slices with almond butter, cottage cheese
Lunch - Out with relatives
Dinner - Crock pot ribs with family, salads

Planned preschool lunch ideas:
Lunch #1: Guacamole curried chicken salad, baby carrots, apple, nuts (if permitted by the preschool), and maybe a little piece of dark chocolate. :)
Lunch #2: Hard boiled eggs, cubed honeydew melon and strawberries, cottage cheese, summer squash sticks with yoghurt dip.

Fast Breakfast

This morning I weighed a pound less than yesterday! I'm not really shooting for a pound's loss every day - probably too fast for my liking. But, I will always take weight loss over weight gain, provided that it's fat (and not muscle) that I'm losing.

Yesterday and today I had the most decadent breakfast: four fried eggs (runny yolks, rock on!), and an 8 oz. cup that was half-milk, half-cream. I shake a little nutmeg on top of the drink, and it's like sipping an eggnog milkshake.

This breakfast at 7:30 kept me going without snacks until 12:30 p.m. yesterday. Some of you may say, "So what?" but for me, that's practically a first stab at intermittent fasting. ;)

You see, before primal eating, my blood sugar had me feeling crazy-hungry all. the. time. I call it stabby-hungry, too, because you had better watch out if you were going to get in the way of me and my breakfast. I'd wake up in the morning feeling like I'd been hit by a bus, and ravenous. After a carby breakfast, I'd be snacking throughout the morning - Fiber One bars were like crack cocaine to me, because they just activated some sort of om nom nom switch, and hey, they have fiber, so they were good for me, right? (Wrong: turns out their 10 g of sugar per bar was making my blood sugar go berserk.)

But now, fueled by fat and protein, I feel sated, for hours at a time. Quite the revolutionary state of being for me. Maybe some day I'll get in the zone of intermittent fasting for real - as in skipping 1, 2, or 3 meals without feeling any blood sugar crashes. But for now, I'll take the not-feeling-compelled-to-eat all morning - and the weight loss, too, thank you very much.