Hi Stranger!
I reckon it's time to do more than post pictures. Here's an actual update:
Don't get me wrong. The weather is nice (after a horrid spring) and I've had the chance to visit with lots of old friends. But I'm kind of trapped. I don't have a car and there is no transportation to/from my adopted village of 750.
Most days I just work on the computer or read. I've read a lot. It used to take me months to get through a book, now I finish one in a week. There is a reason for that, too. I don't want to take any books with me when I travel down south this fall. I'm going to buy an e-book reader and leave all my tomes behind.
But back to the present.
Another reason life has been slow is due to a substantial drop in work. I've got sweat-equity projects, but nothing that's bring in cold, hard cash. My bank balance is dropping. Thankfully my expenses are low.
There had been a television opportunity, but it suddenly blew up. I won't get into it here, but suffice it to say that I'm not going to be doing any TV work this summer.
Another factor in my exile is the cost of rental cars. Last month I could get a car for a week from the only rental agency in the area (about 50k from Pugwash) for $185/week all in. That's pretty good. And the last car I had, a Ford Fiesta, was really good on gas. Just $40 a tank. But even those numbers start to add up.
Imagine my surprise when I looked at rental cars just a few days ago. The price per week has effectively doubled. And not just in this part of Nova Scotia -- everywhere across the province. Damn!
But there is some good news.
For the last few months I've been on what is basically a low carb/high protein diet. The first month and a half the weight loss was slow. But then I made some modifications -- meaning that I've actually started following the diet. And what do you know? It worked. From June 1 to July 29, 2011 I've dropped 12.2 pounds with little exercise. But after changing things up, I've dropped 5.4 pounds in the last 7 days.
How?
Well, I don't eat any sugar, carbs or anything white six days a week. When I rise in the morning the first thing I do is slam a litre of ice water mixed with protein powder. Not fun -- but it tricks the body into thinking it's cold, essentially stoking the furnace. I use protein powder because the thought of eating eggs everyday turns me green. The powder is chocolate flavoured, so it's not too vile. And it's an easy way of ingesting 30-40g of protein. Then I'm good to drink my coffee and eat later, when I actually feel like eating.
The rest of the day is full of veggies, hummus, chicken, pork, beef, etc. I make a big pot of chilli once a week and nosh on that whenever I'm hungry. Easy. And I avoid alcohol. Less easy.
Here's the bonus, though: Saturday is my day off. Essentially it is a day to reset your body -- to keep it from adjusting to this new way of eating. You can eat anything and as much of it as you want. Last Saturday I had fish and chips, beer, cider, and 6 pieces of toast with Cheez Whiz. It's good motivation to know that once a week you can eat/drink delicious carbs.
What happened? The weight spiked for a few days and then fell off. As I mentioned earlier, I lost 5.4 pounds after my cheat day.
Tomorrow is cheat day again. I'm planning on a couple of beer, pizza and bread. And lots of it. And we'll see if I have a similar result next week.
It's almost August 1 and I'm starting to look ahead to the fall. I still planning to return to Guatemala unless there is a reason not to. My hope is that the sweat equity projects begin producing some dividends. Passive income has always been the dream, but still isn't the reality.
More to come...
