Stella's A Diet Assistant

While Heidi got plenty of rest this morning for a possible walk this afternoon, Stella and I duplicated the start of the morning only she decided this morning I deserved an extra hour of sleep and didn't start her whining to wake me until 6am. She seems to forget at times that I am retired and do not need to get up before the crack of dawn.

It was cold again, below 30°, but really nice this morning as we walked in the field. We had a pretty steady walk, with few stops in between as the photos will show. So, what's the post title about? Well it happened again last night around 9:30pm. I was not the first time it has happened but good old Stella prevented me of making a quick drive to the Dollar Store for some candy, cookies and anything else I could get my hands on. I had a HUGE CRAVING for junk food.

With her on again off again, never knowing when she will have a separation anxiety attack when I leave, I have been keeping her and Heidi in the bedroom as always BUT I continue to use the baby gate outside of the closed door. That door is always tied in a way that she cannot open it.

It takes probably less than two minutes to set up "the wall" but the effort to do that while waking her up from a deep sleep is a huge roadblock for my junk food runs late at night. I really don't like waking her up on the couch just to move her into her 'jail cell' while I am only gone 5-7 minutes, 10 at the most.

Doesn't seem like a lot of time does it? Besides I just told you she is in a deep sleep on the couch. Based on past experiences when I trusted her and was sure I could make it back before she woke up ... NOT ONE TIME did that work out as planned.

She must wake up as she hears my car drive away. Then she will counter surf for any possible food, fruit in bowls, maybe some left over pasta sauce stains on a plate that is waiting to be washed. She has even tried opening the refrigerator. The hanging bloodhound drool on the handle was a dead giveaway last summer.

So ... 7-10 minutes is too long for Stella to stay out of trouble. With it being too much of a hassel to set up "the wall", she slept on the couch and I changed my mind about going. I killed my junk food urge with a raw banana.

You may have noticed I did change the blog design. This was quick and easy since I did not have to do hardly any cusomization after I implemented the change. It still has a sidebar but it has the posts listed one by one instead of a grid. I was getting tired of the grid look on the home page. I did change the font and for the blog posts title, that change automatically reduced the size enough to make all the post titles just one line.

I know I've said it at least four times before but "I like this design"

When Stella heard the word "go" she stopped in her tracks and looked at me is if she would be making the trip when we returned home. All I said was "I have to go to the store" as I was trying to get her to work more and sniff less

I usually don't like shooting directly into the sun but I kind of liked this photo the more I looked at it.

Starting Thursday night I will be back to living on the couch watching "March Madness" through the weekend. Combine that with the start of the MLB season, there will be a lot of games going on at the same time. The split screen will definitely be used. It's a feature I did NOT have with DirecTV but do with DishNetwork. Unless my internet service changes from satellite to through my phone service I don't see many options on how I get my tv signal.

I have 11 months left on my contract with DishNetwork and at the rate things are changing I am sure my options will increase from now until February 2020. Being a sports addict and my locaction most of all, makes it hard for me to become a "Cord Cutter".

One of the problems of getting up at 6am, is that Heidi and Stella now want to have lunch at 10am. They have both given up their barking and howling knowing that I will not feed them until at least 11am, maybe a little later.

Since the release of the Mueller Investigation Report and the announcement by the Attorney General, tv news has been very very interesting. If it wasn't so sad it would be hilarious. I do glance at those channels that are far left and it is just amazing the amount of DENIAL that is going on by current and past members of Congress, the FBI and the CIA.

Just like the Democrats loved Comey in the summer of 2016, they hated him by October 2016. They (the far left media and pundits) have pulled that same whining feature with Mueller. They were positive that Trump would be nailed to the cross by that investigation and when he wasn't Meuller was the bad guy. Some think they can get the truth easier than it took Mueller. Clowns.

Needless to say any comments I make about the political scene from now on will be based on what I read online. I'm done with TV news ... again.

I reset my targets or limits for calories, carbs, protein and fat on the Cronometer app to what the Mediterranean Diet suggested. Calories 1,527 - Carbs 190g - Protein 110g - Fat 30g.

I am back to following "My Diet" which is a little bit from all the top diets. My emphasis is tyring to stay away from fast food, junk food, processed food and sugar. Some of those that I am focused on, I have stayed away from most of the time the past four years. So I am really trying to eliminate those late night junk food runs I have had in the past and combatting against those fast food urges I have.

When I have fallen off the whole food wagon, I have fallen hard and make up for all the ice cream, pizza, cheeseburgers that I have missed. Although the last time I had a Pepsi (months ago) it did not taste good.

I am slowly breaking my sugar habit by cutting the quantities in half. That means only 1tsp per cup of coffee or cup of oatmeal. It has seemed to have worked the past two mornings.

Why is it every time I take a photo where my house is in the background or as we end our walk, that I always have to edit it and level the top of the roof to where it is straight???? Anywhere from an angle of 2°-4°. It's the same way whether I use the smaller Canon G9 or the larger Nikon D3200. I am positive I am holding the camera level when I take the photo.

Is my house sinking 2°-4° on the north end of the house?   (that's a joke ... I think)

The camera didn't catch her but Stella ran a couple of times today. Once she was so fast that she ran into the back of me as I was about to turn take her picture. Oh, one thing I do not want her to find out about, is the "dietitian assistant" job, because she will expect more kibble with each meal.

No matter what the temperatures are, it is always nice when the sun is out and it's not raining.

Stella getting in a little hamstring stretching.

With the library books returned I am back to reading the small font, 600 page book about Steve Jobs. It's a very very slow read. It's not him that I want to read about it's about Apple that I want read about. His partner was the computer whiz, Steve was the salesman. In the few pages I have read they made quite a pair. They are just starting their first computer as a company, when I put the book down and went to bed last night. They combined what money they had and started Apple with $1,300.

My car is a year older but the great state of Indiana let me know I needed to pay more than last year for license plates. They also hit me for a little more income taxes to pay this year. I still see a lot of bridges that need repaired, highways that need repaired ... so where does the money go? This state use to have a huge surplus of funds just a few years ago.

Well I need to go. The hounds are trying a different strategy to get me to serve lunch earlier than normal. No sounds but they are both sitting next to my desk chair staring at me with just a little bloodhound drool on the left jowl of Stella.

It's another beautiful day here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana.

Heidi Tip Toes In The Field

With the sunshine bright, Heidi didn't hesitate to head to the field once I mentioned we were going for a walk. What she did not realize was the path in that field was still saturated from the rain. She hates getting her paws wet and will do anything not to. She decided the best option was to 'tip toe' every step of the way. It may have been the slowest walk in history of hound walks the past 21 years

Teasing Us With Spring

With it raining most of the day yesterday there just wasn't any chance of taking an afternoon walk, otherwise all three of us might have floated away while walking the path. Heidi came out late afternoon but only to relieve herself and then headed back inside. The warmer afternoon temperatures are nice but those overnight lows make it quite cold first thing in the morning.

So when Stella and I went out for our first morning walk in two days, the "feels like" temperature was 23° !!! The forecast is telling me it will get up to 51° later today and that is fine with me. With the wide range of temperatures in a 12 hour period, Spring is teasing us. I want to feel the heat of the sun, not just see its brightness.

Cold temperatures were not the start to our day though. That happened in the dark bedroom a little after 5am when I thought I heard bloodhound toenails pacing back and forth on the hardwood floor in the bedroom. It's a familiar sound and I knew Stella was wanting to go outside. I could hear her stomach making those gurgling sounds again and figured she would eat some grass to settle her stomach

With it freezing cold outside I wasn't going to accompany her, even with a coat. I wasn't planning on getting dressed to go outside and figured she would be back at the door to come inside within 10-15 minutes. With the announcement of Apple updating their macOS, it was a perfect time to download that 2.5Gb of data while I waited on Stella. It would be a total of 5Gb for my iMac and MacBook Air and with the free data period (2am-8am) it would be the perfect time to do the update.

I have noticed Safari is faster than before after that update. There were some updates to their built-in privacy internet program. I found it interesting that I had to give my computer permission to allow access to Google Mail or the other way arround. I had not seen that before anytime since October 2010. I only use my gmail address to log into my blog on Blogger.

With the moon in the southern sky, I had a passenger plane flying from the north. When I see plane traffic I always wonder what their destination is and what model of plane they are flying. I am around 70 miles south of the Indianapolis airport so I do get to see a lot of air traffic, especially at night.  I forgot to mention that within a few steps of our walk this morning my face and hands were freezing as if the temperatures were in single digits.

One good thing about the freezing temperature this morning, the wet soggy path was frozen hard enough to walk on. Just the little bit of sun you see up ahead turned that frozen path into over saturated softness and as we approached the back of the field there was standing water on the path in the two to three usual places.

When you miss a day of walking due to weather you can count on the strength and number of scents will keep Stella more than busy. Just after she made that first turn I didn't know if we would ever leave that area. To get from this picture to the one below where she was on the right side of the path, looking in her direction, it took half the total time we used to finish the walk. She wasn't eating deer scat, just thoroughly investigating what her nose was picking up.

She darted across the path as if she was onto something but it was a false alarm. Within seconds of the sudden change in direction, she was walking toward me.

I did look at the different WordPress Themes yesterday. They have added quite a few new blog designs, or what Blogger calls templates. I've never gotten use to the word theme that WordPress uses. Either I was too lazy to really look for something different or I had lost my urge to make any changes ... nothing happened and I doubt I looked longer than three or four minutes. I decided a late afternoon siesta was the better option.

My own test with grains, beans and wheat bread continued yesterday. I am still eating some of those foods until they are gone. I hate wasting food and I wanted to see what combination caused indigestion. I have confirmed it does not matter if it is normal Jif Peanut Butter or one that is a different brand with "natural" on the label ... I can no longer eat Peanut Butter of any kind.

David's Bread is a high quality organic wheat bread with grain and seeds ... sometimes I can eat it without issues and other times I am reaching for a Tums. I am cutting out all grains anyway, so that will take care of that problem.

I went to the US News & Word Report where a panel of medical experts test, analyze and rank over 40 different diets. I've looked there before in past years. Their latest review was this past January. They have never had anything good to say about Paleo or Keto. This morning I had a different idea. I wanted to look at three kinds of diet and pull off their macronutrient percentages.

The diets I looked at were Mediterranean, Flexitarian and Paleo. For a man my age the recommended daily calorie intake is 2,200 grams per day. That is an US recommendation not the panel of experts. I wanted to see what percentages were recommended for Protein, Fat and Carbs. After writing them down so I could look at them to compare the three diets, there were some pretty interesting results.

For those that don't know how to convert a percent of those three topics into grams of food allowed per day ... the formula is this:  calories times the percentage, divided by the number of grams for Fat, Protein and Carbs. There are 4 grams of carbs and protein per calorie. There are 9 grams of fat per calorie.

An example for a daily intake of 2,200 calories would be:

2,200 x .29 / 4 = 159.5 grams of Protein per day in the Mediterranean Diet. It did recommend to eat only 1,527 calories per day for a man my age, so the amount of protein would be reduced.

As I looked at the different limits by each type of diet, it all fell in line with the way I have been eating for a year or so. I call it "My Diet" because I take a little from each kind, overall. I have tried enough of these diets since 2014 that I know which veggies to buy, which fruits to eat if I want to lose weight and those I can add back if weight is not an issue. I know that most of my diet has been and will be fresh veggies and fruits with more salmon, trout or halibut than chicken or beef.

Some of those days will be meatless, mixed in, not intentionally but because there will be times I will want to eat some veggie recipes I have used in the past, like Spinach Lasagna. Once or twice per month I'll lean Keto/Paleo where it's only meat and veggies. Pizza or burgers on special occasions I guess.

I was about to give up all dairy products because the short time I have eliminated them, my winter cough has decreased and my sinuses are clear of mucus. Yet, there are too many articles that overlap different diets that consistently mention cottage cheese and greek yogurt as beneficial for gut health.

I have to watch it if I add those two because I am addicted to both cottage cheese and yogurt.

Yesterday was my first day in a long time of getting on my road bicycle that is attached to an indoor trainer, where I can ride inside. I am still feeling the soreness after an easy 30 minute ride. Stella sat and watched me, not sure what was going on. Heidi slept through all the excitement. For a while I plan to ride every other day inside and hopefully be in good enough shape by warmer weather in April to take 25-40 mile rides outside. The 40 mile ride use to be the daily norm after work, then a 100 mile ride one day on the weekend.

I am probably past the days of riding those 100 mile rides.

So things are pretty well set up I think as far as eating. I have some new things I want to do besides the to do list. I need to get in better shape because just the short hour of climbing, leaning around the bank along the driveway cutting small saplings had me sore for a couple of days.

I didn't watch the Apple announcements yesterday. I never do but always read the day after articles to see what they are going to do. Since they don't sell software like Microsoft does they have decided they have to make their billions somewhere else. People like me are not upgrading or buying a new iPhone. Once I read that their new version of Apple TV would not carry prime time sports, there was nothing for me.

From what I have read the past year, Apple TV is the best streaming service of all, but if I cannot use it to watch live games in football, baseball or basketball, then this Apple customer will not buy their Apple TV services.

Speaking of sports, besides a day of bright sunshine I will get to watch a Reds game this afternoon in Atlanta and then an IU basketball game tonight at 7pm. Fit in an afternoon hound walk, some steamed broccoli and baked salmon ... that is almost a perfect day.

It's good to see the tables have turned in D.C. All I can say is, payback is a bitch and I hope they nail every one of them involved. I hope Lindsey Graham gets his request for a special counsel to investigate those involved with the real corruption and those whom directed this mess.

How many of you have lost friends due to politics since pre-election 2016 ??

It's trying to get warmer here in 'the tropics' of Southern Indiana and that's a good thing.