Sometimes people will want you to change. They will tell you how they want you to be. They will call it growing up or making progress or something like that. They will use words like “Assertive” “Honest” “Open” in combination with “be more”.

When you do what they want, they quickly discover that what they actually wanted was for you to stay the same. And then they get all bent out of shape because you did what they asked you to do and became who they said they wanted you to be!

So, what does Me do when that happens? Does Me turn back the clock and go back to who Me was before, or does Me say to that person.. get used to this Me, forget the old Me.

I’m not going back. No way. No how. I’m feeling comfortable in this new skin. This is who I am now.

Darling Harbour right before heading to Sydney Aquarium at 6pm.

I was not as bad as I expected I would be. I had one gelato a day and I gravitated towards the more savory flavours in any case – salted caramel, salted coconut and mango. Even so I consumed more sugar than I had in a while.

It took 2 days before I felt hungry as a surprise. The amount of calories expended in those 2 days I could not even tell you. It was constant walking from the time we arrived in Sydney.

The gorgeous fish scale style ceramic wall at Sydney Aquarium

The first day we visited Chinatown and n2 extreme gelato, Paddys Markets, Sydney Aquarium, Pancakes On The Rocks for dinner, then off to Star City Casino for a look around there.

And what a look it was – they had mirrored crystal seating booths. I can’t even. The beauty of these cannot be shown in a photograph, I am sorry, you will just have to go and see it for yourself.

The second day was probably the most draining exercise wise as we prowled the shopping district during the day, walked from Westfield Sydney to Grilld at World Square for lunch (we shared a burger and fries as neither of us felt very hungry, it was such a hot day) then back to Paddys Markets, we walked around Darling Harbour multiple times, we liked Grilld so much for lunch we went to Grilld Harbourside for dinner, then to Star Casino for dessert at Gelato Messina.

Sydney City as seen from Darling Harbour.

The Sydney shopping district makes zero sense to me. I grew up in Adelaide where everything is laid out all neat like. Sydney is a mess of secret malls, overhead walkways that link shopping centres which come to you as a surprise, and underground corridors full of shops. It has a very short mall compared to Rundle Mall in Adelaide and the rest of the main shopping strip cars and pedestrians fight for space especially on a busy day.

Even the newest shopping centre – Westfield Sydney – has a dizzying layout which makes it impossible to see every shop without backtracking and walking in circles..

The third day we chilled out, had a lovely Paleo friendly breakfast at Darling Harbour, then I went wandering on my own via the monorail back to Westfield Sydney and the CBD while The Other Half met his friend for lunch. Then to Costco, then home via a Sushi Train.

I’m going to write up some reviews this week – including the longest photo review known to man thus far – and I also want to do some linking to Sydney food sites I read which inspired me to visit the places we visited.

So what did I learn?

For me, sugar, carbs like potatoes and rice, and grains, make me hungry. They also make me crash big time – on the third day I had a major blood sugar spike when I had a Starbucks coffee in the morning without any sugar added but it was a flavoured one and plenty sweet by itself. I then experienced a crash, a low blood sugar thing.

It was interesting to recognise that for what it was and see the symptoms it caused, and to look back and see where that has happened to me in the past and I have put it down to other things.

Things have been going well. I have been eating paleo for 23 days now. This will end tomorrow. It simply will not be practical to eat that way while in Sydney. I will not have a lot of control over the amount of sugar in things or the ingredients. And I have been reading about these gelato places for *months* and longing to try them.

This is going to be a very interesting thing, to see how my body handles sugar now. I wonder if I will get an appetite back. I still do not have one.

My intentions are to go back to Paleo when I return home, and start over again.

MEATINESS

I recently mentioned in my food exhaustion post about the huge amounts of meat involved with Paleo. On second thoughts, it is not truly that meaty. I think the reason it seemed like a lot more meat for me is because I did not eat very much of it beforehand. If I did eat meat, 9 times out of 10 it would be chicken.

I certainly didn’t eat things like pork or beef much previous to going Paleo – unless out somewhere and it was served to me as a surprise. An occasional pork roast, tacos with beef, a hamburger or a spaghetti bolognaise were the extent of my experience with those foods. I’m so excited about pork, I am a huge fan of it now. Beef I can take or leave.

I have been cooking meat in bulk which is not something I ever did before, so it seems like a lot more meat in the diet when you put in a 1.5kg (3 pound) pork roast, a 1.5kg beef roast or 4-6 chicken breasts into the pressure cooker. But most of the meals I cook in there I get 8+ meals out of and some of them end up frozen for eating later.

SUGAR OUTAGE

I think the most important thing for me has been cutting out the sugar. I think has changed everything.

I have always been someone who chooses full fat over fat free because I find what they replace the fat with is generally sugar and I have always believed fat is preferable to sugar because our bodies know what to do with it.

But if someone new to paleo was used to eating the low fat stuff, and they had a mindset that fat is bad, it would be a big change in their mindset. Plus, they would be used to getting those sugar highs from the “fat free” sugary food they were eating.

I was going to update you on my teevee watching but I have run out of time and could not get the images to cooperate, so that will come to you as a surprise later.

Imma gonna be trying some stuff I have been reading about for.. well.. a long time. Many of these things happen to be Gelato. Also there will be Zumbarons.

So I guess this means I will be consuming some sugar for the first time in a while. It will be interesting to see how this makes my body feel.

I will of course, update you urgently. So be prepared, there may be a few quick photo type posts.

I think I’d like this whole strict paleo thing a lot more if someone could just prep all my meals for me. I feel like I’m constantly in the kitchen, constantly defrosting meat and going through protein at an alarming rate.

I am just exhausted by the constant food preparation and the huge amounts of meat.. I am also exhausted by trying to have to *decide* what to cook.

Part of this is because of the Lite N Easy – each day had a menu right down to the snacks so for two and a half months I did not have to make any food decisions.

Sometimes I like being told what to do. When it comes to food I love that because given the option between making a good choice which is difficult to cook, or making a bad choice that I can nuke in the microwave, I will choose the latter every time.

If given the choice between an apple which you have to cut up, and a packet of chips which you merely have to open and eat, I used to choose the latter.

Now I see how completely ridiculous making that bad choice that is. Cutting up an apple takes moments, and a decent knife.

So I wrote a few days ago that everything seemed ok. And it did. But then, the dark days reared their head.

First of all, zero appetite.

None. Nada.

You could pile up a huge feast of the most awesome foods in the world in front of me, and I’d turn up my nose at it. Smell does nothing to change it. I’m eating because I have to, not because I want to. I’m forcing it every 2 hours.

This could turn into a pretty big issue – I’m finding it hard to get enough calories to begin with. If I forget – if I get caught up in something interesting or lose track of time, there is no ding ding HELLO time to eat signal from my body.

Second of all – my internals.

I don’t know why but over the past two days there has been an intense intestinal reaction to this new diet. I won’t go into details – TMI! But I did want to share it because from my googling on the webs, this is not an uncommon thing when switching to paleo. You change what goes in, you change what comes out.

A big part of me thinks that this is toxins leaving the body.

Another part of me wonders if this is a reaction to some of the spices I have used – eg chili which I do tend to react badly to – and the fact that I am using a lot more spices now.

Another part of me kinda suspects this might be because I had a massive pig out on pork crackling about 24 hours before this happened. I don’t usually consume that much fat in one sitting but wow, it was awesome. That was the first time I ever made my own pork crackling.

Actual Results

One week of zero sugar = 4kg lost.

When I say zero sugar, I mean absolutely no added sugar with two exceptions, which is one teaspoon of coconut sugar per day in my coffee, and the coconut sugar used in the chocolate recipe.

What Next?

This looks like something that might work for me. I’m not sure how long term this could be. By the end of January I am going to make a decision on whether or not to try the whole 30 in February.

I’ve been female since my birth in 1975.

I think, I’m pretty certain, I will continue to be female until the day that I die. There are no planned sex changes in my future. Not that there is anything wrong with that, I have just never felt the need myself to go down that path.

And while being female can often SUCK BIGTIME and I have on occasion not been the greatest fan of it, I’d appreciate people not assuming I am male and then reading their own stuff and issues with men into their assumption. That would be really awesome. Thanks in advance!

For those wondering what the, you can read all about it here. The worst part of it for me was this line –

Why, it’s almost as if peppering my comments with smileys don’t affect how privileged men interpret my words! Huh!

But of course being made unable to comment and now having no ability to correct the record to show that I am in fact female, and the fact that one simple click over here to my blog where it clearly states in the sidebar that I am female as well as on the about page.. This has been sooo frustrating.

but why bother trying to find out the truth about someones gender when you can just assume manhood, and assume the person is commenting from the perspective of a man, and trying to bend the female to his manhood will? Or whatever the f**k?

Also too thanks to those who sent me supportive notes. I appreciate it. I know what I was trying to say and it is good to know that others were able to see what I was trying to communicate. And it was good to know others could work out – with zero added effort – that I did not have a penis.

It is enormously frustrating to find your words being misinterpreted. This happens to me on a regular basis thanks to the Aspergers. This is the reason why in the past, I have kept my mouth shut instead of saying what I wanted to say. But you guys know I have declared 2013 the year of me, and therefore I have been trying to break out of that reaction of “say nothing, it is safer for me”.

It is intensely difficult for me to try and break out of the habit of withdrawing into myself, of not being who I am because it feels safer to me, of keeping my mouth shut even though my lips are bleeding from the effort. And then when I try, this happens?

This little hiccup will not make me change my path. I am determined. I’ll just keep trying. Hopefully one day, it’ll turn out better.

Chocolate (Homemade)
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/4 cup virgin coconut oil
1 tablespoons sweetener of your choice (I used 3tsp Coconut Sugar)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
pinch of salt
(I added cinnamon)

I made one small change to the method – I added all the dry ingredients into a mug plus the vanilla extract and added hot water to dissolve them. This was mainly because of the coconut sugar which is quite granular when dry. On this plate the coconut sugar is directly next to the vanilla essence in the teaspoon measurer.

Then – Place all of your ingredients in a bowl with the coconut oil and whisk well until combined.

It’ll look weird because the chocolate separates from the coconut oil until you whisk it enough.

You’ll know it is ready when you can’t see any coconut oil and it is all amalgamated into an awesome liquid.

It is magic whisk time, peoples!

I ladled them into small plastic containers so I can have some chocolate snacks to take to work. Then put them in the fridge – or freezer if you want to eat it soonish. Once the coconut oil hardens, it is ready to eat.

The levels of awesomeness cannot be described.

UPDATE –

I tried a new recipe for chocolate which I found here – Good Girl Gone Green – this recipe turned out great and will be the one I am using in the future.

Chocolate
1 cup of coconut oil, melted
1 cup of cacao powder
1/2 cup of maple syrup
1 Tbsp of vanilla flavor

It works out a lot more solid than the previous recipe.

Here is a link to some other chocolate recipes which might be worth trying. 8 Vegan Chocolate Recipes.

This is one of the best movies I have seen in a long, long time. I’m no Affleck fan – though I did enjoy him in Bounce – I usually find him wooden, as though every facial muscle has been botoxed, nothing moves. However I went into this knowing there was a great supporting cast and an interesting story so I wasn’t so worried about that. Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Victor Garber.. these were all great performances. Bryan Cranston continues to amaze with his talent to completely vanish inside the character he is playing.

I personally would have suggested Affleck focus on the directing and find someone to play the main role that was not himself. However it worked quite well in this case. I guess the character he was playing needed to be pretty unflappable and wooden plays as unflappable nicely. Regardless he did an incredible job of directing this movie. It was a rollercoaster ride of awesomeness.

One of the best things about this movie in my opinion is the travelling back in time – things like stewardess uniforms, eyeglass frames, clothes, furniture, cars, hairstyles.. all of it looked like it jumped directly out of 1979 onto the screen.

This movie was fantastic and I highly recommend it. 6 thumbs up from Snoskred! Click here for the IMDB listing.

Flight

Any movie that involves a plane as one of the major characters, I’m there. Sounds weird when you put it like that, but being an aviation nut the usual thing you see in a movie is a happy jumbo landing at random airport when x character moves away etc. A movie where the story is about something going wrong with a plane and what happens as a result is interesting to me.

When you put that kind of story with someone like Harrison Ford (see Random Hearts) it becomes a movie that whenever I stumble across it on the cable I am glued to the chair, until it ends. Even though there is not so much about the plane in there, it has Harrison Ford and aviator sunglasses, so..

Flight was not another Random Hearts sadly. I don’t think the entire movie is a re-watch. The first half of the movie possibly. The crash sequence is on the edge of your seat stuff and it is extremely well done. However, it goes mucho downhillo from there.

Because the pilot (Denzel Washington) is an alcoholic and takes drugs as well and was under the influence of these while flying and is generally not a nice person, but he was the only person who could possibly have crash landed this plane as well as he did even if he was drunk and high and he meets up with this random woman at the hospital blah blah yadda yadda I have no idea what the rest of this movie was about because my brain drifted off and created a much more fascinating movie.

Where the pilot was not an alcoholic and in fact the movie was not so much about the pilot and his issues as it was about finding out what went wrong with the plane, kind of like a fictional big screen air crash investigations.

I have been reading lately that Denzel Washington is not the nicest of people in real life which may have colored my view of this movie. And contrary to Ben Affleck, Denzel spends much of the movie with a sulky or angry look on his face.

There was a great scene where the night before the NTSB investigation, they put Denzel’s character in a hotel having dried him out and they have emptied the minibar. But did they think to make sure the interlocking door into the next room was locked? No sir, and so Denzel has himself a few drinks drinks the entire contents of the minibar. A condition that can only be fixed with the arrival of a cocaine toting John Goodman (fantastic as always).

On the plus side, it did contain Tamara Tunie usually only seen on Law and Order – SVU – as a flight attendant and she was brilliant as she always is. So for that alone I give it one thumb up. Click here for the IMDB listing.

Oh, I know where. The regular white potato has overshadowed all other forms of potato. Now, I know better.

All I did was cut up some sweet potato, coat them in extra virgin olive oil, then used the salt and pepper shaker on them. Baked for 20 mins, flipped over with the tongs, baked for another 15. Done!

Update on all things Paleo – Saturday was my first day of eating paleo – or a slightly modified version of it. There has been some dairy in the form of yoghurt. I have a huge tub of it to finish off, and I have been eating it for breakfast with fruit.

The main thing I am worried about right now is cutting out added sugar. If there is sugar on the ingredients list, I’m not eating it. And there is sugar on a lot of ingredient lists, found in unexpected places. Like tinned beetroot, tinned tomatoes, vegetable chips – which would otherwise be a perfect thing for me as they have a sweet potato flavour. And stock! Chicken, beef, vege.

I have only found one brand which is sugar free in the health food section of Coles. Please carefully note, it is NOT with the other stocks, but with all the gluten free super healthy foods area. Why make things logical when you can make people wander the supermarket like ghosts unable to leave the planet earth until they find the one thing they are looking for in all these different sections?

So anyone searching the internet as I did for “where can I find sugar free chicken stock in Australia” will hopefully find their way here and know which packet to look out for.

There is one teaspoon of coconut sugar in my daily coffee. That is all. I will eventually cut that out as well.

The second concern is avoiding grains. I have always been somewhat meh about bread – I can buy it and eat a shedload of it as a surprise, or I can buy it and forget to eat it. But I do love my Hot X Buns. I had a packet of them last week as a kind of goodbye to grains.

I am hesitant to say this now because who knows, there could be dark days ahead. I was concerned there would be side effects of cutting out the sugar. As it stands right now, I feel ok. Possibly better than ok. I’m not craving sugary foods nor am I craving foods in general. I’m less hungry than I have been for a long time. Partly that is thanks to the lite n easy teaching me to eat less more often, partly that would be because of all the proteins.

Basically the eating looks like this right now –

Breakfast – plain sugar free yoghurt with fruit

snack – almonds and cashews (bought loads of these from Costco in bulk)

lunch – chicken in coconut cream sauce (recipe to come as a surprise eventually, I made this one up myself and I made a lot of it yesterday)

snack – olives stuffed with almonds or marinated olives

dinner – another chicken in coconut cream sauce

snack – an apple or an avocado

It seems boring but it turns out it is not. I can’t believe how much flavour everything seems to have now. I had an apple today and it was the sweetest thing I have eaten in centuries. It was like an appley can of coke. Is this what happens when you cut out the fake sugar sweetness?