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Day 2 - Low-carb diet series

My second day was a bit more of a success with the consumption of food, however, my mental state is a bit run down. I believe this is due to the effects of sugar/carb withdrawl. I woke up groggy and stressed and throughout the day I had this strange feeling of being overwhelmed, stressed out and depressed. This is a perfectly normal sensation that one might feel if they decide to quit something like this. Much like quitting cigarettes or drugs, you go through a similar withdrawl when you decide to go cold turkey and remove your carb intake.

Aside from the withdrawal side effects everything seems to be going as planned. I went the whole day only eating a few carbs from a small cup of lettuce. Breakfast consisted of steak, poached eggs, and sugar free pudding. For lunch I had about 2 cups of chilie with a full cup of creme and half cup of lettuce, and for dinner I finished off the rest of the steak from the morning along with some spare ribs and a huge block of Monterey jack cheese. In my opinion it was a very successful day.

I also went to the gym for a light exercise routine as well. It consisted of a brisk walk and quick leg workout and back home, all and all it was about 30 minutes.

I know I promised pictures yesterday but this is being posted from work and the pictures are at home. Dont worry though i have been taking them every day at the same time of the day. With the pictures I will also post up my stats and goals for this experiment.

Make sure you subscribe to my blog so you can get all the latest updates along the way, and please let me know what you think good or bad.

Tags: low carb diet, Weight loss

Day 1 - Low-carb diet series

gym equipment, originally uploaded by jessamyn.

As promised, today I started on a low-carb diet to show everyone out there that it is possible to loose a significant amount of fat over a short period of time on a diet high in fat low in carbs with a moderate amount of exercise.

Instead of writing down everything I eat on a daily basis here on my blog, I decided to use FitDay.com to keep track of my food intake as I go along. You can view exactly what I eat including calories, fat, and carb content for each day. Its fairly hard to put in exactly what I eat, but I will try to be as precise as possible. You can check out my food log here.

Day 1

This morning started off great, I felt a bit groggy but otherwise normal. Ate 2 poached eggs with some salt, a couple slices of cheese and a glass of black coffee. I would have made more but I was feeling a bit to lazy to cook. Tomorrow I will let you in on a little secret, How to cook the perfect poached egg with very little effort.

Work was a test of my mental strength, and most of you know just how hard it is to stay on a diet in todays corporate America. My office, being a startup, is full of snacks, candy and refrigerators full of soda and tea. Luckily for me they have plenty of diet coke, which contains only caffeine and no sugar and is perfect to drink besides water.

My other battle was to resist eating the lunch food provided by our office. Today we had pasta from the wonderful maggianos restaurant, delicious but I had to resist and get food from a local kabob place. Just as delicious in my opinion, I had a combination of chicken and beef, leaving the rice to the side.

The second half of my day was a down hill battle, I gave in to the request of a coworker making me a mocha frappachino and I even felt guilty for drinking it! I guess thats a good thing, maybe tomorrow I will learn my lesson and just say NO. To end the day I had a slice of cheese pizza, calling it a day. Tomorrow is a new day, thats it im packing my lunch!

Also as promised I will post up some pictures tomorrow of my current sad state along with my initial weight and body type stats. Don’t forget to subscribe to my blog so that you can make sure to follow along with my progress!

Tags: diet, diet weight loss, high fat diet, low carb, low carb diet, Weight loss

When you think your weather is bad…

Check out this video! Condition 3 weather is considered a nice sunny day in Antarctica, where condition 1 weather is… well just watch below…

Looks kind of like the gates of hell in my opinion, except a bit colder.

Tags: Antarctica, antarctica weather, bad weather, snow

Low-carb diet - Weight loss series

After reading a post about calories by Tim Ferriss, I have decided to go on a 2 week low-carb diet and against my better judgment, post up pictures and results along the way.

Here are the rules and guidelines that I will follow.

• Week 1, go from my current unknown carb intake to 0 carbs per day.
• Week 2, incorporate a minimum number of carbs into my diet, determined at the start of week 2.
• Post daily pictures of my stomach from the front and side, since thats the main area of fat collection.
• Write my post at night with food eaten, how I feel, and mental status.
• At the end of week 2 determine the final outcome of the experiment. Either successful or not and give my thoughts.

I work on a busy schedule and don’t always have time for the gym but will also try to incorporate a mild amount of exercise as well. Everything I do in regards to the diet will be documented in the daily post.

Tomorrow I will post my first picture and the foods I ate for that day. Im looking forward to this…… Wish me luck and let me know what you think. If you have any questions, comments or would like me to try something along the way please let me know.

Tags: diet weight loss, exercise, low carb, low carb diet, Weight loss

iStraw, Personal Water Filtration System

While stumbling around on Stumble! I came across an interesting little straw that claims it can filter out 7 Nines of bacteria from your drinking water, using micro-filtration technology.

Very cool and a must for any traveler, hiker or backpacker. Its easy to carry in your pocket and can mean the difference between a horrible or enjoyable travel experience.

Price: 39.99 ThinkGeek.com

Tags: bacteria, drinking water, filtration technology, hiking water filter, micro filtration, personal water, travel experience, travel water filter, water filter, water filtration system

5 Relevant money saving tips

Many people think they need to reduce or even stop spending all together just to save money. Changing your thinking about the way you spend your money is the real key to keeping more green in your pockets from month to month.

Improve your credit score

Many of you think that this is an impossible act but its not, its even easier than you think! The amount of money you can save by having a semi-decent credit score is amazing when you think that most people with a a FICO of 4-500 can only get interest rates of 17% or worse on car loans, and might not even be able to get one at all. Many of the negative items on your credit can easily be removed within 4-6 months. I did it and so can you, check out DSI Solutions for more information.

More than 70% of the people out there have some negative items on their credit from the past 7 years, most of which are items like late payments and over drafts. All of which can be removed from you credit score with little or no work from you. The best part is DSI provides a money back garuntee for their services. If you are not satisfied with their efforts you can easily get a refund of service!

Consolidate your credit cards

This seems like a simple thing but many people have multiple credit cards and store specific charge cards, even lines of credit from that computer or furniture purchase. I bet you can not tell me what each credit lines interest rate is right now. If you can’t then thats a definite sign that you need to first find out and second get all those items consolidated into one such as a low introductory rate credit card or a low interest consolidation loan from the bank. Try to stear clear from credit card consolidation companies and work with someone like your bank. Consolidation companies are created by the credit card companies More »

Tags: bank consolidation, bonus points, car loans, charge cards, consolidation companies, credit card consolidation, credit cards, Credit score, fico, furniture purchase, interest rate, late payments, money saving, money saving tips, points, save, save money, saving money, saving tips, shopping portal, shopping portals

Grand Central - Centralized phone number solution

Google does it again, purchasing a startup Grand Central. At this point its a free service that allows you to centralize all your phone numbers into one, allowing you to give out one number that can be routed to any number you may have.

Currently its has been put into a beta state, presumably because its been pruchased by google, but without much wait I was able to obtain an invite into the service. If any of you would like an invite just comment in this post with your email address and I will pass it along.

Noteable features include the ability to dial as your grand central number, from your address book online (currently unlimited but will become a paid service when beta is over). Switch numbers in the middle of the call, this is great if your cell phone is dieing or you are not getting good service inside your home. Listening in on people leaving a voice mail, even answer the call in the middle of the voice mail too! Others include call blocking, forwarding, voicemail and more…

Check it out for yourself over at Grand Central for more information and if you are interested, dont forget to drop me a comment and I will send you an invite.

Tags: address book, beta state, call blocking, call forwarding, cell phone, google, grand central, information, phone numbers, startup, voice mail, voicemail

Bloging Tip: Blog directly from flickr

?, originally uploaded by Chitra Aiyer.

Flickr has a great feature that allows you to post directly to your blog from their site! Its quite amazing and easier than you think.

First you will need to actually have a flickr.com account, which will store your blogging account information.

Once you are logged into your flickr account browse to a photo that you would like to blog about and take a look at the top of the image. Click the link that says: “Blog This” If you haven’t yet setup a blog, you will be able to walk through the process from the options in the drop down menu.

Once you blog type is configured and your user credentials are entered, you can easily post any image to your blog just by clicking the “Blog This” icon! Don’t worry Flickr gives you the option of saving your password or entering it every time if you are one who doesn’t like storing your passwords.

One great thing about posting directly from flickr.com is the ability to set the style and type the body of your message without ever having to leave flickr.com!

Enjoy and happy posting!

Tags: blog hints, blogging tips, flickr, information, photo, setup, tips, Tools, writing

New Snow, Taylor Creek

I love winter!

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