Obligatory 1-1-11 Post

This is the obligatory new years’ post. However, I should qualify this by stating that one of my new year’s resolutions, thanks to my friend Kimmie, is to post more often. Namely, once a week. This should be easy, considering there will be a lot of updating to do over this next year.

First, starting on January 3, hubby and I are starting a new diet. My goal: to lose weight. His goal: to build muscle. How do we both accomplish this with one diet, you ask? I’ll tell you. At least in theory, the answer is a low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet. This isn’t Atkins. This is different. And slightly less stupid.

Here’s the basics, beginning with the “No’s:”

No grains of any kind
No sugar
No starchy “vegetables” such as peas, corn, or potatoes (which really have more in common with grains than vegetables in terms of their composition anyway)
No fruit
No milk, yogurt, or ice cream (Yes, J, ice cream does have carbohydrates in it.)

The Yes foods:

Lean chicken, turkey, beef, pork, etc.. (The more natural the better: Grass fed beef, organic, etc…)
Vegetables
Low-fat cheeses
Nuts
Beans and legumes
Tomatoes and (limited) avocados
Calorie free (or very low calorie) drinks (try to limit artificially sweetened drinks to less than 3 a day)
Dry red wine, one glass a day maximum

The potential problems with this diet are threefold: first, the prolonged consumption of very low amounts of carbohydrates can send your body into a state of ketosis, which can put a stress on your kidneys. Just…look it up. I don’t feel like cutting and pasting the science of it from Wikipedia at the moment.

Second, cutting out dairy products could equal a decrease in calcium intake. However, we’re probably getting enough calcium from the vegetables we eat, but we’ll keep it listed as a concern.

Third, cutting something – anything—completely out of your diet could result in an unbalanced level of nutrients in your body.

To combat these three things, we’re doing the following:

One, increasing the amount of water consumed, by a lot. At least twelve eight-ounce glasses of water a day, minimum, more if we exercise strenuously. This should dilute the level of proteins in our bodies and make it easier for our kidneys function properly.

Two, we’re taking calcium supplements to make sure we have the right amount of calcium in our bodies.

Finally, we’re taking multivitamins to make up for anything lacking in our diets.
The best part of this diet: one day a week (our day is Saturdays), you can eat whatever you want. Whatever. Anything. As much as. You get the idea. It’s brilliant. In addition, the possibility is clearly there to make yourself so sick off of junk food that you won’t even want to think about it the rest of the week.

In my weekly updates, I’ll let you know how this is going.

Second! This year I’m going to be starting Julia Child Saturdays. Basically, this stems from the fact that my parents bought me Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking for my birthday (waaaay back in July) and I have yet to cook a single thing from the book. Which is a real shame considering (1) I really wanted the cookbook, (2) I was very excited and pleasantly surprised to get it, and (3) many of the dishes look very, very, very good.

So, essentially, each Saturday I will be attempting to make, for dinner, and hopefully for various friends and family, a soup and/or appetizer, an entrée, a starch, a veggie, and a dessert.

Unlike Julie Powell in Julie and Julia, I won’t worry about repeating recipes that work well, and I definitely, definitely won’t make it a goal to cook through everything; for example, I simply don’t like duck, and Aspics make my stomach roll. But other than that I’ll be making an attempt to make everything that looks good. No time limit, just an endeavor to do it on Saturday nights when I don’t otherwise have plans.

Other resolutions (other than diet and blogging) include using my new Wii fit as often as possible, spending more time on spiritual pursuits, billing a certain number of hours at work and in pro-bono projects, saving a certain amount of money, etc--- the pretty normal resolutions that most of America is currently making.

Of course, I intend to keep them. So does everyone. We’ll see what happens.

What are your resolutions? Anything interesting or unusual? If any of my real-life friends comments, they get a Julia Child dinner at our place! (Although…you most likely would have gotten it anyway.)