Progress on Salt

I have been totally self absorbed lately and spending all my free time on my nutrition. I have a program that lets me change recipes and calculate a standard (or detailed) nutrition facts panel. So now I have a nutritional analysis of what I actually cook.

This info I feed into my food log on fitbit.com. I started this blog talking about mayonnaise recipes. Now, with home-made no-salt condiments and salad dressings, I'm making real progress limiting my sodium intake. And in a tasteful manner. I also dropped the cured breakfast meats, a real sacrifice. The accompanying graph shows my average intake at almost 5 grams sodium/day before these changes. I'm approaching my 1.5 grams/day goal now. I can sure taste the difference.

Friday Night Posting with Soundgarden

I've been blasting my ears with the likes of Chris, Ben and the gang over the past few months.

Working out at Premiere Personal Fitness

Train with a Purpose

I have been weight training with Fred Fornicola at his gym, Premiere Personal Fitness, for the past four months. Fred's place is located in historic Asbury Park, up on the fourth floor. It's a decent aerobics workout just hiking up the stairs. He has crammed his space with all sorts of equipment, the latest being his new Steel Climber. He uses these instruments of torture to great effect, efficiently guiding his clients towards their personal goals of physical fitness.

Fred asked me to write a little bit on what my training means to me. I hired Fred on as my trainer after having quit smoking for a year, and while having to recover from a recent broken ankle. My recovery process and physical therapy showed me how to better recover from life's inevitable set backs. The attitude that I picked up was, "I just have to do this, no excuses." As well as, "One day at a time," tried and true advice. And I have made fantastic progress. Fred has been a big help. My workouts have been very important in keeping me on track with my weight loss. My diet along with resistance training means that I have lost more fat than muscle. I am learning about my body: about safety, how to move, and a very physical sense of my body's capabilities.

Part of what I am learning, and I am grateful for all of it, is the art of weight training. This is a highly developed art: resistance training for body building. I see it as a balance in part. A balance between controlled stress through exertion to failure on the one hand, and the body's ability to heal on the other hand. Body building at my age is unrealistic, of course. I'm in it for the extension of my youthful, energetic years. The youthful, energetic part is happening right now. It's very addictive and I like it a lot. You may see what kind of an extension I can get, if you so desire. I won't be around when that determination is made.

Whatever, it all depends on how I keep up a healthy lifestyle: "Diet, exercise, cardio and you can't go wrong," says Danny. Simple.

Big Sky Country

Kylee, my oldest son, sent some pictures from Nevada. This shot was taken yesterday at sun set in Lemon Valley, north of Reno.

Too Cold to Walk

It's cold out today, in the 20s. Jeremy, our spaniel/beagle mix, was really anxious to get out. He loves the long walks around Shark River Hills. I took him out around the block, but with the wind it's just too much. A shame. The sun's out, clear skies, and without the leaves, we can see Shark River out the back deck.

Breakfast Tostadas

Yum, breakfast tostadas, a variation on a recipe taken from the EatingWell site.
Two white corn tortillas, one slice of diced Canadian bacon, 1/2 cup egg whites, 1/4 cup 4-cheese low-fat Italian mix, 1/4 cup chuncky salsa, 1/4 cup non-fat cottage cheese, 1 turkey sausage patty. Melt the cheese on the tortillas while heating them on a griddle. Cook the egg whites with the diced Canadian bacon. Divide and heap cooked eggs on each tortilla. Divide salsa and cottage cheese to top the tostadas. Serve with 1/2 cup OJ and sausage. 470 calories, 12 g fat, 50 g carbs, 1676 mg sodium, 42 g protein.
Too much salt, from the bacon, sausage, and cottage cheese. I'm gradually phasing those foods out of my diet, replacing them with good low-salt foods such as fresh pork, canned green chilies, and Greek yogurt.

Weigh In for Sunday, Jan 15

Big weigh-in today. I weigh myself every 10 days to avoid ambiguous fluctuations. Today I lost over 4 pounds from Jan 5. This is a large loss for me. I should be leveling off by now, based on previous dieting results. Before I wasn't exercising so hard. The graph looks like I'm going to fall off a cliff and waste away. A good problem to have so far.
I'm within 5 pounds of my target. This was an ambitious target weight back when I started dieting with Nutrisystem in February, 2011. The steeper part of the graph, in December, is when I stopped Nutrisystem and started eating my own cooking. I will have lost fully 1/3 of my body weight when I reach 180. Of course the hard part is keeping it off. Hence the mayonnaise recipes. All my life I have been going up and down like a yo-yo, with heavier and heavier peak weights. Same ol' story. So one of my big goals this year is weight maintenance.

Mayonnaise

Mayo has a long, venerable tradition. From the Joy of Cooking (Rombaur and Rombaur Becker, 1972),

The making of a perfect mayonnaise is the Sunday job for Papa in France and rivalry for quality between households is intense. Mayonnaise or Mahonnaise–as it was first called, after a French victory over the British at Port Mahon on the Island of Minorca–is a great favorite, not only as a dressing but for combining with other foods. It has been made by hand for some 300 years.

Cuisinart's low-fat vs eHow's yogurt-based mayo recipes

I got several mayo recipes from the web (Google search "low-fat mayonnaise recipe"): A more traditional recipe from Jennie's Kitchen, a substitute using cottage cheese with corn starch as a thickening agent from eHow.com, and a yogurt-based substitute from the same place. I also found a mayonnaise recipe for my little Cuisinart Smart Stick. Of the four, I wasn't able to get Jennie's traditional or eHow's corn starch recipes to work. They didn't thicken or emulsify. The Cuisinart recipe worked fine. My particular recipe booklet didn't have sugar and had 1 cup of oil. I also used egg whites instead of whole egg product. It emulsified fine but I didn't like the taste. The oils I used may be to blame. Or maybe I'm just not use to eating saltless, greasy products. I plan to try fresher eggs and will get more flax seed and canola oil on Monday. The surprise was the yogurt-based substitute from eHow. I used 1/2 cup Greek Yogurt, 1 tbsp Almond oil, 1 tsp Dijon mustard. For a completely non-mayonnaise mayo substitute, this recipe seems to do the trick. I made up some Thousand Island dressing and it tasted just fine. I just have to get no-salt ketchup.

Just Starting

I have wanted to start a blog for years. This is good.
My first post will be about my search for a low-fat, low-salt mayonnaise recipe. I'm really into condiments, unfortunately. My German/French heritage, I suppose. But I have been tracking my food intake and belatedly realize that I have been eating about 5 grams of sodium a day. Terrible, way too much, especially for a 57 year-old man with boarder-line hypertension.
My search was very successful, many recipes for mayo out there. I tried three low-fat and one regular mayonnaise recipe. Only two worked (half of the recipes failed to emulsify and stayed liquid even after two tries). Last night it looked like the Greek yogurt recipe has the best potential. Taste tests are today.