Lynn's Famous Fruit and Veggie Diet Part III

This blog post is part three of my fruit and veggie diet. 

Starting weight week 3 ~ 125 pounds

I continued to eat a fresh fruit or veggie approximately every hour as I started into week 3. This included apples, bananas, grapefruits, orange, tangerines, avocados, kiwis, celery, raw green peppers, green beans, broccoli, summer squash, strawberries, blueberries, and others.


Week Three Notes
1.  Monday I was dead tired during the day, even though I slept my normal amount of hours the last night.  Workouts ceased on Monday.

2. Man, did I crave protein.  I wanted meat, fish, beef, chicken, anything.  I ate 2 hard boiled eggs Monday at lunchtime. 

3.  Tuesday I was exhausted.  All I wanted to do was sleep.  I barely made it till 5pm, I just wanted to put my head down on my desk and pass out.  I really felt crappy, dizzy, light-headed, and really worn out.  No workout Tuesday.  I could barely walk, couldn't even consider running or working out.

4.  Tuesday I had a cupcake at 5pm because I felt I didn't have the strength to even drive home.  I had shrimp and veggies for dinner. 

5.  Diet ended on Tuesday.  I didn't like feeling so tired, and decided to eat healthy, but allow meat and carbs.  Maybe three weeks was too long for the fruit and veggie diet?  I had pizza for lunch on Wed and felt great, and went back to working out again.  Also I had 2 cupcakes on Wed.  Bad girl, but I couldn't help it!  There was this party at work, and I made the cupcakes...

6.  On Thursday my terrible sugar cravings were back!

7.  I ate mostly fruit and veggies for the rest of the week, but allowed other foods too.  I have maintained my weight at 125 pounds.  I still have 10 pounds to lose, but I am going to increase my workouts and eat healthy, but not only fruit and veggies, and see how it works out.

Final notes:
I consider the workout a success; I lost 10 pounds in 2 weeks and have kept the weight off so far.  I think 2 weeks is a good amount of time for the fruit and veggie diet.  I wish I would have stayed off sugar; I am going to work on my sugar addiction.

Ending weight ~ 125 pounds ~ Lost 10 pounds on fruit and veggie diet!

Lynn's Famous Fruit and Veggie Diet Part II

This blog post is a continuation from yesterdays where I documented the first week on my fruit and veggie diet.  I lost 5 pounds already!

Starting weight Week 2 ~ 130 pounds

On week two I continued my diet and exercise regime, and boy, did I feel great!  I had so much energy!  My craving for sugar was gone!  I continued to eat  a fresh fruit or veggie approximately every hour. This included apples, bananas, grapefruits, orange, tangerines, avocados, kiwis, celery, raw green peppers, green beans, broccoli, summer squash, strawberries, blueberries, and others.


Week Two Notes
1. I got used to never feeling full.   It was ok.

2.  No more sugar cravings!

3.  I learned what a pomelo was!  It's like a huge grapefruit!  I ate 2 pomelos this week.

4.  Once during this week I cheated and had a small portion of protein, such as chicken or fish or lean beef for dinner. Mostly fish. Still potatoes or bread.

5. I started eating 2 hard boiled eggs a day at lunchtime.

Week two weight loss was 5 pounds. Yeah!

Ending weight after 14 days on diet ~ 125 pounds.  10 pounds lost in 2 weeks!

Stay tuned for week three tomorrow!

Lynn's Famous Fruit and Veggie Diet Part I

This blog post is going to be a little bit different than most - it's going to be personal.  Tell me what you think about me bearing my soul to the public...

About 15 years ago I went on a fruit and veggie diet and lost 20 pounds, and I thought I'd try it again, and this time document it. 

Starting weight ~ 135 pounds

I'm 5 foot 2 inches and at the start of this diet was 135 lbs.  On a short frame like mine, 135 is uncomfortable.  I had eaten a lot of sweets over the winter and put on 10 lbs and my clothes were getting tight.  There was no way I was going to buy larger clothes for summer!  And worse yet, I was gaining on average a pound a day, and it didn't look like the weight gain was stopping anytime soon. 

I wanted to eat mainly fruit and vegetables, and cut out pasta and bread and my personal weakness, sugar.  I planned on dieting till I got to my goal weight of 115 lbs, however long it took.  I wanted my clothes to fit comfortably, and I wanted to tone my muscles for summer. 

One of my pet peeves is that I don't think people eat enough fruit and veggies.  There's too much junk food, fast food, available, and it's convenient, as we all are busy.  I think we'd all be healthier if we ate a whole lot more fresh fruit and veggies and less processed food.

I should mention that I consider myself active.  When I'm home alone I usually never sit down, unless I'm at the computer.  There's always chores to be done around the farm.  I also work out at the gym and at home, I like to work out. However, I have a desk job during the day, and am recovering from "golfer's elbow", which has slowed me town tremendously from what I used to be.   During this diet I exercised every day between 4 and 5pm. I would run or walk, do the stairclimber machine at the gym, or the elliptical. Also I worked out abdominals every morning at 5:00am for 15 minutes. 

This blog is to document my experience on my fruit and veggie diet.  I ate a fresh fruit or veggie approximately every hour.  This included apples, bananas, grapefruits, orange, tangerines, avocados, kiwis, celery, raw green peppers, green beans, broccoli, summer squash, strawberries, blueberries, and others.


Week One Notes
1.  About every hour I was eating something.  And I was starving all the time.  It was really hard to deal with never feeling full.  

2.  Man, did I crave sugar!  I couldn't handle no sugar!  In the beginning of the week, I allowed myself one small sugar treat, like a Tastycake cupcake, or a cookie in the afternoon.  Halfway through the week I changed that sugar treat to a piece of fruit, like an apple or a banana.

3.  After the afternoon workout I was starving and usually immediately ate an apple or pear or banana.

4.  About every other night I cheated and had a small portion of protein, such as chicken or fish or lean beef.  Mostly fish.  No potatoes, though. 

5.  I drink 3 diet sodas a day and plenty of water, and that's it.

Week one weight loss was 5 pounds.  Yeah!

Ending weight after 7 days ~ 130 pounds ~ lost 5 pounds!

This post is getting long, stay tuned for week 2 tomorrow.  I experienced a surprise during this diet that's worth reading.

Breakfast Without Friends

This morning sweet Jerry, the outside cat, came up for his breakfast.  I love Jerry and gave him some milk, his favorite!

Bobby, the black cat on the right, used to live outside with Jerry.  Now that the weather is nice Bob wants to go back outside and play with his old friend.  Bob always gets so excited when Jerry comes around.

Jackie, the orange cat, is a good friend. He can always be talked into an adventure and is ready for a fun time.  It's nice to have a BFF.  Jack is staring at the door above, waiting for it to magically open.

When the door doesn't magically open, the boys attempt to push on and open it so they can escape and play with Jerry.  If they did get out Jerry would hiss and growl at them.  When they both lived outside Jerry tolerated Bobby, but never was close to him.

The door never opened for the boys, much to their dismay.

And so Jerry continued his breakfast without interruption.

Good morning, everyone!

Wild Asparagus

It's springtime, so yesterday I decided I'd better check the wild asparagus.  If you have asparagus, you know it grows super-fast and needs to be picked before the stalks get too large.

And so, I put on some shorts.

Our asparagus patch is way out back, in the middle of a field.  The field is high with grass, and I wanted to be able to see and remove any ticks that may get on me.  Every day I see deer out in that field; I know they carry deer ticks.  Luckily, I got no ticks on me.  I love my guineas (who eat ticks)!!!

Here I am - almost!  Hi everyone!

Ok, here we go, out into the backyard.  We have to go through that gate and off to the right.  See all the high grass?  We'll walk out of this photo range to the right.

Aww, thanks, Randy.  He's mowed a path through the high grass for us to get to the asparagus patch.  The sun was shining bright, but there are these odd white shadows in this photo below.  I guess it's just the light.  Many people say my historic house and property are haunted...  Could these be ghosts???

Here's the asparagus patch.  Yes, it's just part of the field, covered with grass.  We didn't choose this area, this asparagus has been growing here for many a decade before we came here.  We just found it growing wild.  We also planted some new asparagus in the same area, but it wont be ready to be eaten for many years.

 

Let's look closely.  Right in the center of this photo is an asparagus sprout.

Here's another.

And another.

All in all, there was quite a few asparagus sprouting, but none were ready yet.  A few more good sunny days and they'll be ready for picking.  They grow fast.  I couldn't even find the baby asparagus we planted last year.  The stalks are fine and look like grass.

While I was out in the back fields I couldn't help but notice the iris blooming.  My mother gave us some old dead iris roots.  Well, she thought they were dead.  We planted them all around the fields.  We didn't know if moles or squirrels or woodchucks would eat the roots, but figured we'd try.  Many flowers here are eaten by animals before they have a chance to grow.  But the iris are doing fine - the roots must be too bitter for the wild animal palates.

Out by the asparagus there's a huge active woodchuck hole.

Here's our old horse barn.  We're not using it.  It has a dirt floor, old wooden walls, and a roof that's barely hanging on.  We keep the door open in case any wild animals want to use it for shelter.  Sometimes Jerry, the outside cat, goes in, and once last winter some deer found shelter from the cold here.  Many birds live inside in the roof beams.

The vines just take over every year.  These vines are covering a fence and are moving to a nearby tree.  They need to be cut back again.  When time permits...

And now we're coming back to the house.  Here's the weather vane on the back side of the house.

Happy Easter!

I'll bring you along when I check the asparagus later in the week!

I'm expecting!!!

Yes, I'm gonna have a baby!

31 babies, hopefully!

And I'm due in about two and a half to three weeks!

I collected all these guinea eggs from a nest found in the woods before three of our guineas were killed.  We still have eight adult guineas.  No one else has been killed since.

Last year we hatched guineas, and we learned that only about half the eggs incubated actually hatched into keets, so we are going large - thirty one guinea eggs!  If a dozen hatch I'll be happy.

We have an incubator that someone gave us.  It rotates the eggs and has trays in the bottom where we put water to keep it humid.  There's a thermometer to ensure it's at the right temp.  When I opened it to take this photo and add water the temp quickly started dropping.  We open it real quickly every day to add water and close it back up again. 

The keets are actually due on 27Apr12, but eggs always, always hatch early for me.  So I'm anticipating anywhere between 24 through 28 April will be the hatch days.  I don't want to be caught unprepared.

I'm hoping by then that a chicken hen goes broody and raises the guinea keets for me.  But so far, no broody hens.  I may have to be the mama this time - now I don't know that I'm ready for that job!  We'll see!

I'm always excited to see the colors of keets that hatch, as we have a variety of colors of adult guineas (pearl gray, white, and lavender.  Our guineas also have royal purple and coral blue in their bloodlines).  I hope we get another pure white one to replace the white one that was killed.  We only have one pure white guinea now.

Happy Easter!

Guinea Deaths

Warning - this post contains photos of a dead guinea hen.  Turn away if you don't want to see.

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We are still recovering from losing 3 guineas this week.  It breaks my heart to see my birds dead.  They were such sweet and friendly birds.  They didn't deserve to be killed like this.

This is the remains of one of the gray female guineas.  Just a bunch of gray polka-dotted feathers.  Her body was never found.

The white female guinea girl was killed just feet from our front door.  I loved that guinea girl.

The white guinea girl's body was found in the woods.  Be believe a fox attacked her and she ran from her attacker and managed to hide under brush where the fox couldn't reach.  Smart bird.  She died from the terrible injuries already inflicted on her.

This is the white guinea girl.  It doesn't bother me to autopsy a bird after it's dead.  It's very sad to know that she suffered before dieing.

Anyway, this is her back.  The feathers were ripped out, and a big hole was ripped into her back.  Ribs were broken.  A bite, or multiple bites, with strong jaws did this damage.

This is her belly.  Feathers were ripped out.  Multiple small bite marks and sharp teeth marks.  A bite mark from a small jaw can be seen, leading us to believe it was a fox.  Lots of subdermal bleeding.

We've setup a radio playing a talk-radio station outside where the guineas sleep and hang out.  We are going to setup live traps.  It's tough because we live in the woods.  There are other animals here.  We can't get rid of all the wild animals.  If a fox doesn't kill the guineas, a great horned owl could, or the raccoons that visit us every night.  This happens every year here. 

On a good note, we still have all those eggs that we collected from our guinea girls...

Three less guineas than last week

Last Monday I blogged about a missing gray female guinea.  She was never found. We assume she was killed and her body taken away.

Monday night another of the gray female guineas was killed.  Feathers were found.  Her body was never found.

Today (Thursday) one of the two white guineas was killed right in our front yard during the day.  We came home from work and found a crime scene.  Sadly, we found the body.  We believe it was the slow white female guinea.  She fought and ran and hid herself under bushes and brush.  She died from the injuries she sustained before running and hiding.  She suffered a terrible and slow death.  Tomorrow we will see for sure which one of the white guineas is still alive and safe in the tree.

An autopsy was performed on the dead bird and we believe determined what is killing the guineas.

More to follow on this horrible breaking news front.  Stay tuned.

Results of Missing Guinea Hen Search

The search for the missing guinea hen started yesterday and continued today. 

And look what was found - A guinea nest full of guinea eggs!

It was in a stick pile not too far from the house.

Sadly, the missing guinea hen was not sitting on her nest.  She probably is gone.  Surprisingly, whatever took her didn't disturb the eggs.  Maybe she's off sitting on another nest?  I'm hoping she'll turn up, although it's not likely. 

And now the big question - what to do with all the eggs?  Incubate them? 

Maybe...

Stay tuned!



Missing Guinea Hen

We are missing a guinea hen.  One of the light gray females.  She was a shy bird, she was best friends with the white"slow" female guinea.

White slow guinea female

As background- The "slow" female had a problem at birth, she was slow and didn't act right, started having leg problems, not walking well.  We had a baby guinea like that in our last batch a year before, and it died while still a keet.  After some research we learned it was a vitamin E deficiency!  It was as simple as that!  We fed the white female guinea keet one Vit E capsule a night - cut it open and squirted it into the bird's beak.  She immediately started acting chipper and perky and lived, even though just a few days before we didn't think she would live another day.  However, she didn't gain back her sense that she lost - she still acts slow and not quite there mentally.  None of the other guineas accept her, and she's not mated now that spring is here and all the other guineas have chosen mates.

The missing gray female and the slow white female guinea were inseparable friends, until the gray female chose a mate and the white female didn't choose a mate.  Right now the guineas are all paired up (I call it mated) and first thing every morning the mates go off by themselves in the woods and she lays an egg.  Then  they all meet back up in a group in our front yard and hang as a flock for the rest of the day.  When the female feels there's enough eggs in her nest in the woods, then she'll go sit on them for a month, never leaving, until they hatch.  And it's during that time that life is very dangerous for her.  A fox or raccoon or hawk can easily kill her when she's an easy target, alone, sitting quietly in the woods.  We have never let our guineas raise their own keets, instead we collect their eggs and let a broody chicken hen raise them.  It's dangerous enough for the guineas, I don't want to risk letting a female die like that.

And so this morning I decided to go looking for the missing female guinea hen.  I figured maybe she's alive, sitting, or maybe I'd find a sign that she had been killed, such as a clump of gray feathers or a destroyed nest with broken eggs, or something.  Come along and check out what I saw this morning.

The woods were all wet, it's been a wet couple of days. 

I love this tree - it reminds me of a watercolor painting!  What kind of tree is it?

I continue to look for the guinea, although I notice lots of interesting things to photograph!

This is a field of tiger lilies. They will bloom in the summer.

I did find ONE guinea feather in the woods, but it was from a different colored guinea- one of the darker ones, not the light gray female.  And this was just one feather, not a big deal.

I did not find the missing guinea hen.  The search will have to continue another day...