Thursday, May 30, 2013

Day 39 - Looking Back, and Ahead

Wow.  It's hard to believe another Survivor Diet Challenge is almost in the books.  I feel VERY good about this one.  In fact, I think the best one I have done to date.  I had virtually no cheating, I lost weight, lowered my blood pressure, stopped snoring and learned several new things in the process.  My rewards, for the most part were excellently planned and I felt like I actually deserved them after performing several primitive survival skills.

One part of the weekly reward system that I will think about improving for next time (if there is one) is the final week.  I seem to remember this happening last year as well and I'll have to check my blog notes to confirm but I think that my last week reward of "any  meal of my choosing" is a bit unnecessary.  Sure, it sounds great.  Especially when I am at the beginning, the thought of a supreme meal at the end seems fantastic.  In reality though, I could basically have the "any meal of my choosing" just one week later when the diet is over.  Additionally, when I get to this point in the SDC I am feeling at the top of my game.  I feel healthy, look slim and see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I know it's not officially cheating because of the rules that are in place for the weekly rewards - but at this point in the challenge it feels almost like cheating if I just go off diet and have any meal of my choosing.  It's not that I don't feel like I deserve it - I certainly do.  I just think waiting one more week for this type of reward would be fine.  So next time around, I think I will re-thing the final weekly reward.

This week I have completely run out of butter and eggs and flour.  Most of that is due to my own negligence, lack of will power and inability to ration appropriately.  But if I were to to have one thing right now that would make my food a lot more palatable til the end, I'd say it would have to be the butter.  I'm back to dry cooking and broiling with sea salt and spices.  It's just not the same without the butter.  I originally gave myself a pound and a half of butter after week 2 reward but if I had just one more half pound it would be great.  I think I used up so much more butter than normal this year because of the addition of the flour and using that to bake bread.  The bread and butter was so fantastic and I didn't ration very well.  My fault.

I suppose I cold easily substitute that final reward of 'any meal' with my choice of just having a meal of butter - and then I could have as much as I need.  Ha!  I also had the thought of getting a duck at the market and cooking it on the rotisserie.  When I do that, the duck fat that drips off yields about a cup of fat or more that could be easily used as a butter substitute.  That was going to be my plan if I had captured a duck or goose using the "Small Animal Clause" in the official rules.  I would have been able to roast a duck and render off all the fat and have that fat on hand to cook lots of fish with.  Not to mention the duck dinner!

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