So my first day on the Carb Cycle lifestyle was 80% successful.  I had all my meals planned, and while it felt weird to eat at home, it was nice eating breakfast while scanning facebook and Pinterest, even though the dogs were waiting for me to drop something on the floor.  That usually doesn’t happen if I am at work. 

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My first meal was at 7:30 and it took me 15 minutes to eat it, so I figured I’d have my next meal 3 hours after I finished.  At 10:45 I wasn’t even hungry, but the book said that I needed to eat even if I didn’t feel like it because that’s what’s going to get your furnace stoked, i.e. your metabolism so that your body gets used to eating every few hours for fuel.

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Just a half hour earlier my boss was complaining about how hungry she was.  I brought this to my desk and she actually said “where did you get that?”  Um, the vending machine?!  I knew she was eyeing my string cheese, so I told her I had already taken the amount of insulin with this meal so I couldn’t share any.  Then she walked away – gah.  I actually didn’t take any insulin with this meal since it was so low carb and I was working out at lunch.

So the shredders for Week 1 and 2 – I reread the book and they want you to do these exercises at a PE of 6, 7 and 8.  PE is perceived exertion – 10 being that you can barely speak – so I started off the bike at 85 rpms for the first 3 minutes, then 95 rpms for the next 2 minutes, then bumped it up to 105 rpms for the last minute and repeated for 30 minutes.  I have to admit, I was breathing pretty heavy and sweating – I normally keep my pace even for the whole 30 minutes.

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Again, I got back to work and I wasn’t hungry, but I threw together Meal #3 – a taco lettuce wrap.  Well, I had romaine so I used that – and it was pretty messy to eat at work, so after this picture was taken I chopped it up into a salad.

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I had every intention of going back to the gym for strength, but realized my Meal #4 was scheduled around 4:45 and I had a protein shake.  Those normally take me a while to eat, so I decided to drive home, drink my shake and do T-25 at home.   It was 1 cup of unsweetened almond milk, 1 teaspoon of peanut butter and 2 scoops of protein powder.  I have a smoothie maker at work (duh!) and added about 7 ice cubes to make this shake.  It tasted so good!PicMonkey Collage - shake

All was well until I was about a mile to my house.  I started getting really bad cramps, thought I was going to puke and shit my pants at the same time.  If you are eating your breakfast now while reading this, your welcome!  I made it home just in time to do both.  Guys, I was so sick for 30 minutes.  I’ve had almond milk a million times before so I can only guess I had a reaction to the protein powder.  My head hurt all night and I had absolutely no appetite to eat anything.  Around 9:00 I finally ate a piece of toast and at 10:00 called it a night and went to bed.  I feel fine today, but guess I’ll be finding another low carb snack for the rest of the week.  Have any of you had adverse reactions to protein powder before? Mine was EAS brand.

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So back to the Denver trip – our last stop on the Progressive dinner tour, was a place called The Chocolate Therapist

“Founder Julie Pech refers to The Chocolate Therapist as the intersection of her two loves of life:  chocolate and nutrition.  Although she spent more than 18 years in the sporting goods industry, Julie studied nutrition her entire life.  An athlete in her youth, she learned how to eat for performance and became fascinated by the way foods affected the body.  She later studied nutrition in college, and eventually went on to receive a Nutrition Educators Certificate from Bauman Holistic Nutrition College in Boulder.

Julie decided to leave the sporting goods industry to follow her dream of writing a book, and it was her good fortune that health benefits of chocolate news broke at the same time.  A passionate chocolate lover, she knew immediately this was her perfect topic.  Over the next 16 months, she amassed hundreds of scientific research papers on the health benefits of chocolate, studying intently while eating a little research every day.  Combining her chocolate knowledge, sense of humor and nutrition expertise, she wrote The Chocolate Therapist, A User’s Guide to the Extraordinary Health Benefits of Chocolate.”

A young woman who has no culinary background but was taught by owner Julie herself was our hostess that night – we all found it quite curious how someone who deals in chocolate all day was so thin!  We had a chocolate and wine pairing and it was amazing to see how sometimes the chocolate enhanced the wine and how sometimes the wine choice enhanced the chocolate.  You better believe that I deemed that chocolate insulin worthy!  I did only take a bite of each though, and since I was with a bunch of dieticians, (one of whom specializes in diabetes!) when we were done I pulled out my glucose meter and had everyone guess what they thought my blood sugar would be after eating the chocolate – sounds weird but it was pretty funny!

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For the record, those two wines were my favorite.  And I didn’t care for the chocolate covered beef jerky – while I am all about combining sweet and savory, that one missed the mark on me – although she did say they were out of a spicy beef jerky that’s covered in chocolate – maybe I would have liked that one better?

Then we went back to the hotel to get ready for our beef tour the next day . . . that’s up tomorrow. Open-mouthed smile

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I have to give kudos to Jacob.  On Sunday I went into the bathroom and the toilet was running.   Weird.  So I lifted off the top of the toilet and water started gushing out everywhere.  I yelled to Jacob to come help and he found the water shut off valve and turned it off.  He went to Home Depot, bought a new toilet, watched a YouTube video and within the hour I had a brand new toilet – thanks Jacob!  Although we realized that the water pipe that brings water into the toilet needs to be replaced, and it feels like I have water damage behind my toilet – some of the dry wall is soft by the baseboards.  I swear, if it isn’t one thing it’s another in this house! 

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He was so proud of himself too – he’s realizing that he is very handy, and I so appreciate it.  A plumber would have probably charged me $500 to replace it.

Alright, off to put my meals together since last night the thought of food made me want to throw up again.  Make it a great day!