Saturday, November 14, 2009

I got the cow!


On Tuesday I went to Wkyertown, New Jersey, to visit Paul at the Plaid Piper Farm and pick up ~300 lbs of beef. Doug and Diana were kind enough to come along as well with their pickup truck. Di took some pictures of the farm while Doug, Paul and I set about loading up the truck. Paul threw in a carton of eggs for good measure, and off we went.

We got back to my townhouse and were immediately faced with a problem: my 14 cu. Ft. freezer wasn’t big enough to fit everything! After some packaging engineering, however, we were able to get all but two boxes worth of beef packed in.


There’s a LOT of ground beef in there, probably upwards of 75lbs.

Di and Doug ended up taking home a box full of soup bones (thanks guys!) and I put the other box in the freezer on my fridge.

I had a T-bone steak for lunch and dinner, and it tasted great. The taste is actually difficult to describe; almost, well, grassy. It tasted much better than the beef I had ordered online, which had a strong fishy flavor.

Looking forward to another six months of beef!

Thursday, November 12, 2009

October Weights and Measures

Third monthly roundup of measured data and analysis.

Data

Since blogger is annoying in how it handles images, I’m going to upload an Excel (2003) spreadsheet. Here’s a link:

http://www.forefrontpb.com/phildiet/Diet%20Records.xls


The "Weekly Graphs" worksheet shows the weekly average of weight and the weekly average combined BM score and quantity.

The "Weight Chart Daily Graph" worksheet shows the daily morning weight.

The "BM Score Daily Graph" worksheet shows the daily combined BM score and quantity.

I'm keeping a food log and notes in a written notebook, which for the sake of putting off an annoying task, I will scan and upload when I'm done rather than every month.

Analysis

Month three was characterized by an increase in mood and energy. I began lifting heavy (at least for me) weights and continued throughout the month. I’ll start graphing those numbers next month – unfortunately, I managed to injure my shoulder playing football, so there’s a decent gap in my log. I also decided to restart the program with more emphasis on form, which reduced my total weight in the squat. I want to get a month’s worth of data with good form before I say anything there.

My bowel movements settled down completely this month. The exception has become a Crohn’s crap, as I call it, with the rule being a normal, boring bowel movement once every one or two days. My three interesting bouts this month correlate nicely with stupid diet behavior the previous day, or strenuous exercise the previous day: I played football while chugging chai tea and cream, with obvious results, I ate heavy cream as ice cream several days in a row, with obvious results, and I went to a Chinese buffet after running around all day playing paintball. Again, with obvious results.

The blergh feeling is almost completely gone. I guess I’m finally keto-adapting. Overall, I’d rate October as a +3 or +4 relative to August.

I ordered a cow from a farm in Wykertown and pick it up November 11. That should be interesting, and hopefully end my trips to the store for several months.

Nine more months to go!