I had (previously) gotten kitchen equipment I felt I 'desperately needed' when I was trying LC some time ago. I was frantic with the time demands for finding/cooking/preparing food last time, and truly believed that this WOL wouldn't be workable for me until I could arrange some time-saving tools.

As I just started LC again yesterday, I am finally using it all!

I can't believe how much easier having a crockpot makes this. Good grief. They ought to bundle a crockpot with the book. Easy and presto, base for a whole lot of meals, already done.

The tiny expensive packages of (preservatives!) pepperoni can't compare to the fatSalami-sized stick in the deli section that my slicer works wonderfully with. Will work awesome I can tell with really thin slicing eggplant, zucchini and other stuff for recipes.

After one messy mincing with cauliflower some time ago, now I was able to cut it up and stuff it in the food processor. Wow! Nearly instant, a big ol' bowl of the stuff (I have to find half a dozen recipes to use it all, sheesh!--not that I couldn't live on Karen's Cauli-Fried Rice!) nicely grated, and everything just rinses off easily. (I wonder if freezing it grated would harm it?)

The bar blender I'd used before but haven't yet this time. But one with power is very cool for crushing ice.

But most of all -- oh, MY! -- for anybody actually trying to count and keep track of what they eat -- is the cordless, digital oz/gram FOOD SCALE. I thought it was expensive when I bought it but now I see it was WELL worth the money.

The USDA has most things by grams. Which is great, more exact, since 1/2 cup of anything chopped can vary. (E.g., the "thin slice" of onion on usda & fitday, I discovered, is 9g. Now I see that what they really meant was "paperthin, transparent slice", lol! What I consider a 'thin slice' is about 4x the size, and on induction carbs, a couple slices--wow, that matters!)

With this scale, which tares to any dish I put on it, I can either (a) easily put in exactly how much I plan, or (b) put in whatever I want, and just write it down (pref in grams, which is much easier to do a quick spreadsheet calc on). I got it at Wal-Mart.

So I was able to make a "Food thing" today -- just tossing in some roast beef, pepper jack cheese, tiny bit of onion and jalapeno -- with exact measures. Making it very easy to later on, when I had time, get real numbers on what I ate.

It gives me this charming illusion I know what I'm doing.

I'm planning to get more ziplock bags and every time meat comes out of the crockpot and cools, write on the bags the date/food/amt and have 4oz bags of various meats in the freezer. Then there will never be an excuse for why I just don't have time or food (and damn but my fridge is out of space, so I need to use the freezer! ).

I also bought a set of reasonably good pans. I didn't have anything more than a few supercheap, mismatched sorts--I never cooked! Now I have everything I need, from the 7oz little stoneware baking dishes to a big boiling pot and everything in between, many with see-through lids and pour point.

Whenever I eat a new food and have to go look up the numbers, I put them in a spreadsheet. I have one for meats/protein, fruit/veg, dairy/cheese, and seasonings/etc. So 'the numbers' are quick & easy to find, my daily totals are easy, I only have to look something up once. I can just screen-shot my daily summary counts to post in my journal (saving me retyping all the detail or not posting it) and can just upload the wks/xls files for anybody else who might want the food details/counts for any given week.

There's so much I didn't know the first time I tried LC (a 3wk trial as an experiment), and my second time wasn't enough of a try to even count (I was basically off it and in denial the day I went on it! ), but I feel like experience--and over a year of this great forum--has really given me both facts and context.

And, a better understanding of what a WAY OF LIFE means... it doesn't mean frantically digging out stuff on the fly, it means arranging your whole life to make one of the focuses lowcarb, but in a way that is do-able, as convenient as possible, etc. I see many more people go seriously off LC for issues of convenience, time, lack of planning etc. than anything else, so they're important considerations.

My cousin is a bodybuilder and we had a PPshake discussion. He doesn't even TRY to make protein powder, which IMO is uniformly semi-gross no matter what you put with it, taste good. I used to labor over PP shake recipes and deluded myself they were 'good' (well you can learn to tolerate it, but...) but no amount of heavy cream, half&half, cottage cheese, ricotta cheese, silken tofu, small berries, splenda, daVinci syrups, cocoa etc. ever made that PPowder taste go away.

He laughed and told me to just put a scoop or two of chocolate flavored PP in about 10oz of super-cold water, shake it up, and drink it down in one long gulpfest. Wow. That works great. I hardly taste it, it isn't as bad as I feared at all, makes no noise, takes no time, adds no carbs for other stuff trying to make it drinkable, adds minimal sweet to my pancreas-response, etc.

Since my weight is high enough to require a ridiculous amount of protein per day, and I cannot possibly eat half a cow (!), this makes it possible to make that goal. I personally think protein powder is healthier than bacon for instance (though I love bacon) so I don't see any harm in ingesting the stuff daily.

(I used to consider it 'cheating', due to some comments made here, but my calories and sheer food intake would be in the stratosphere if I ate meat/cheese/eggs for all my protein. And while LC is best for health, I might actually like to lose weight!)

Already I feel for the first time like this way of eating is actually workable for me. But a great deal of it was making the effort to buy a variety of kitchen tools. In the end, on a plan that requires perishable foods most of which need cooking, one's whole life is going to get a lot more kitchen-focused!

I can't cook worth a damn but I am learning!


PJ

Great post, PJ. The right tools really do make the job easier.

Martha Stewart has nothing on you! Wow! Way to go!

Thanks. I LOVED your 'bowling ball' analogy by the way!

I like the idea of breaking down how to lose about 70% of my body weight into some MANAGEABLE, measurable chunk. Because the big picture... well it's one of those things where I gotta lean so far back to see it I about fall over.

PJ

Out of curiousity.... how expensive was the scale?

This is something I think I could really use... but I'm kind hesitant. *g* Maybe I'll buy it as a reward at my next mini-goal.

That is nice to get all new things for your kitchen to help yourself have an easier way of getting the food prep done.. I like the ease of using a crock pot.. I used one often when I was working.. and had kids at home wanting to eat the minute I hit the door.. They are very handy..

I have sort of been spoiled in the cooking dept the last 8 years... after I remarried... My husband does all of the cooking.. He used to own a catering business here in Cincinnati. He also does all of the grocery shopping. This has been the major problem with my weight gain.. I know I can't blame it on him... I ate it... But gee how easy it was to eat all of that delicious food put in front of me.. The rest of this story... He has about 50 pounds to lose... so we are in this together...

The way we have approached this is different from the way you descibe. We aren't getting into the measuring and weighing of the food we eat.. We are just eliminating all the "bad" things.. The reasons we picked up all this weight are the real excesses of the bad things.. Oh my, the bread and potatoes and snack foods... We even used to eat BIG bowls of ice cream many evenings.. All of that put the pounds on us... so we have stopped all of those things... and the pounds are already coming off..

We still have our meals cooked and prepared much the same way.. Most meats are grilled outside on the grill.. We have been eating lots of meat, fish and chicken... and salads and a small portion of veggies for evening meals.. But we don't measure anything.. We just know we are eating better than before.. Our thought on this is we didn't want to make eating a chore... we just wanted to make some changes in our choices.. and eat regular food... We now don't eat a bite of anything after our evening meal..

I know the way we have approached this might not be the "right" way but in talking with my husband we felt it had to be a big help and it would work help us to get the weight off...

Basically sticking with it is the big issue... and making things as easy for us all as possible will help us to stick with it, I would think.. As long as the scale is going down.. that is a good thing!

Breecita, it was about $37. (I tried to find it at walmart.com to show you, but they don't have it online I guess.) I think once a person has experience with this eating plan they can 'eye' food and have an idea about the quantity and the carbs. I can't though, not with many foods yet, so this is helping.

CincyBev, I'd say if what you're doing is working, don't fix it. :-) In my case, much of my family is apparently so profoundly insulin resistant that merely eating 'better' won't do it, but I think for some people it might, in which case--great! It's awesome that your husband changed his eating plan too, considering he's the one cooking...!

I had actually considered trying to skip the carb counting. It's such a pain in the butt. ;-) But research shows high fats and low carb are fine, but high fats and lotsa carbs are very unhealthy. In fact I think it could be said that the issue with "eating fat" our culture has, would not BE an issue at ALL if it were not for the food industries that amp the average person's carbs up. Since I have to eat so much protein, that tends to translate to high fat as well. I figure it won't help me to get thinner if I fall over from a heart attack due to clogged arteries heh heh! I hope someday though to be at a high enough carb 'maintenance' level that I can bring back at least tiny portions of some of my favorite foods. :-)

I don't know that key lime pie will ever be acceptable tho. ;-)

PJ