Monday, October 25, 2021

scaling back, moving on

My right shoulder still hurts a lot even when I stay within my limited range of motion, so I'm going to cancel pretty much all the strength training for now, and I'll resume it when things are better... whenever that might be. Sucks not to be able to finish out the year with my hoped-for 2 pullups and 50 pushups, but with Mother Nature being a bitch about my shoulder, I'm not left with much of a choice. Yes, I'll probably visit an orthopede between now and the end of the year, so don't you fret. At a guess, it'll be like with my stress fracture: they'll X-ray me and find nothing, then tell me to just rest the shoulder, which is what I'm doing, anyway. That's why I'm in no hurry to visit the doc.

Meanwhile, I'm continuing my lenient form of Newcastle, i.e., having a morning shake, eating three chicken breasts and two Paris Baguette salads, and downing a handful of nuts at night. Tuesdays and Thursdays are 24-hour fasting days, and Saturday will involve a long walk, a shake in the morning, and maybe some low-carb trail mix in the afternoon. I've also got the materials to make more keto pizza, which I might do this coming Sunday (no more burrata cheese—lesson learned). In all, the lenient Newcastle won't be much different from stringent Newcastle because I'm doing the 24-hour fasting thing. Technically, that sort of extreme fasting is happening only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with Saturday being more of a limited-eating day than a true fasting day. Assuming I eat around 2,000 calories on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday, with maybe 500-700 calories on Saturday and zero calories on Tuesday and Thursday, that puts my daily calorie average at about 943. That's not much more lenient than strict Newcastle was, at (ideally) 800 calories a day. The difference between 800 calories and 943 calories is about 1.5 slices of American cheese or roughly 2 medium eggs.

I do have another cheat day coming up this Friday, though; my coworker's wife is making our October meal. I'll walk some of that meal off in the evening; I usually put in about 140 minutes of walking on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday (in theory, that's around 10K or a tiny bit more). I might, however, go visit the jjambbong place I've talked about before (video here) for dinner that same night. What good's a cheat day if you eat only one meal?

In other news, I continue to read up on the elusive keto pasta. I've decided that the Keto King's pasta, while plausibly pasta-like in feel, just doesn't taste right, so I'm dropping Keto King altogether because none of his recommendations has panned out. I've seen some super-simple "pourable" pasta—with a base of egg, cheese, and almond flour—that looks as though it might at least taste neutral while providing some pasta-like texture; more news on that as it happens. (By "pourable," I mean you mix up a loose batter, pour it onto a Silpat mat, then bake it for a few minutes. You then peel the eggy rectangle off the Silpat, put it on a cutting board, and cut it up into fettuccine. I'm also wondering whether such pasta can withstand a pasta mill.)

I've also got a vegetable spiralizer on the way thanks to Amazon (supply-chain problems won't stop me!) so I can make the infamous zoodles (zucchini noodles) and see they how they taste. I suspect that pan-frying them and seasoning them aggressively will make them tastier than boiling them will (I've seen boiling, steaming, pan-frying, and microwaving as methods for prepping zoodles), but the seasoning can't be such that it overpowers the sauce.

And I plan, finally, to experiment with "riced" cauliflower. I've been avoiding this one for a while. Cauliflower is not my favorite vegetable, especially when eaten straight or boiled and unseasoned. I don't mind turning it into cauliflower hummus or keto mashed "potatoes," but ricing cauliflower feels too much like eating it straight, even if it does end up stir-fried. We'll see, though; tons of people have made cauliflower fried "rice" before, so maybe the time has come for me to join the keto-zombie horde on this one.

Didn't weigh myself this Sunday. More numbers next week.



6 comments:

John Mac said...

Well, I'm glad you are going to get the shoulder checked. I recall Jee Yeun having similar symptoms that ultimately required surgery. I think my tolerance for pain must be way lower than yours.

Charles said...

I have a friend who recently had shoulder problems, and when he went to get it checked out it turned out he had bone spurs. I asked him if he could ride undead horses with them, but somehow he was not impressed with my wit.

On the pasta front, have you ever had spaghetti squash? I don't know if they sell it in Korea, but if you can ever get your hands on it, I would recommend it. It's definitely not pasta, but it does recreate the experience of eating noodles to some extent. I'm not a huge fan of things that aren't things but pretend to be those things anyway, to be honest, but I can get on board with alternatives like vegetables noodles. And spaghetti squash is good particularly in casseroles where you might otherwise use pasta.

Kevin Kim said...

Charles,

I had some adventures with spaghetti squash back in Virginia. Type "spaghetti squash" into my blog's search window.

John,

Thanks for the kind words. Here's hoping I don't need surgery.

Charles said...

Ah, it's been quite some time. Have you ever found spaghetti squash in Korea? I don't think I've ever seen it, but then again I don't think I've looked all that hard, either. If it is procurable, I'd probably prefer that to anything that might be made out of zucchini. Not that I dislike zucchini--I'd just rather sauté or bake it.

Still, it will be interesting to how they turn out when you do get your hands on that spiralizer.

Kevin Kim said...

I was going to ask you whether spaghetti squash was even available in Korea. I might have to visit Garak Market, where they keep all the esoteric stuff.

Charles said...

I will have to start looking around. Heck, they might even sell it on Market Curly for all I know. They have a lot of stuff there.