Diet, Day Four

Today is Thursday, day four of The Carb Lovers Diet and the last day of our Golden Week holiday. We specifically chose this time to begin the new diet because it gives us about a week to actually be grumpy without being in public. 

As of yesterday I've lost  4.85 pounds. The diet itself is still very doable. The food is not bad, and while you're supposed to drink a lot of water to stay hydrated, they have a special recipe for green tea concoction which includes fresh squeezed fruit juice. It's actually very good. 

Yesterday was spent getting new supplies for the diet. My wife went online to try to find some of the grains and seeds that we can't find in Japan easily, for example, pearl barley. For some reason you just don't see it in stores here. She also ordered unsalted sunflower seeds and polenta, the latter of which we've never even heard of before. After that, we went into Osaka tried to find some low fat cheese. Finding low fat anything in Japan is difficult. Of course, many Japanese foods are naturally low fat, but finding any kind of unusual or even slightly unusual western food is difficult. For example, we can find cheese, but finding low fat cheese is not easy. In the city, you can usually find something, but not necessarily the specific types of cheese you are looking for. For example, I can find low fat cheddar but that's just about it. Finding something like low fat cottage/gouda/feta cheese isn't possible. However, you can full-fat versions of most types of cheese, an improvement over what we could find when I came to Japan back in 1983. Then you were lucky to find any kind of real cheese. Velvetta was about the best you can get. 

Going into town yesterday was good for a couple of other reasons. My wife wanted to do some shopping at new store a co-worker had recommended. She was looking for a watch but couldn't find it, so she bought something else. While she was doing that, I went to Tower Records (yes there actually is a Tower Records still in Japan) and bought the new Paul Simon CD So Beautiful or So What along with the tribute CD for the earthquake victims in Japan, Songs for Japan. The proceeds from the latter go to help the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami victims.

Today is going to be spent hanging at home. I'll watch the Mariners/Rangers game, listen to music, and wash my wife's car (yesterday, I washed my car for the first time since I broke my arm): A relaxing end to Golden Week.