[diet] Day 2

[eurydicebound]

Supper last night was not nearly as on-target as I'd planned, but that's okay. Upon review it wasn't as bad as I'd thought. I'm doing pretty well today -- no headaches, no withdrawls. It's a good sign. I even went and got an icon for food stuff. Go me. :)

I'm going to keep the snacks going this time. I know they're only mandatory during Phase 1, but I think that letting them slide when I hit phase 2 last time was part of the problem.



Breakfast: 2/3 cup smoked turkey slices + 2 tbsp barbecue sauce (I've decided I don't care overmuch if it's not entirely legal). 6 oz tomato juice. 1 cup mint green tea.

Snack: A few slices provolone cheese.  The provolone cheese was nasty. 1 piece of string cheese, 3/4 cup cherries.

Lunch: 1 Vitamin Water. 1 bacon ranch salad with chicken from McDonalds.

Snack: Another vitamin water, because I didn't think about it ahead of time. A couple small pieces of turkey.

Dinner: Half a salmon filet with salsa verde (not the parsley sauce for salmon, the Mexican green chile based salsa), 1 tortilla, iceberg & romaine lettuce, 1/4 of salsa, 3 tbsp shredded cheese, a sprinkle of salad tortilla strips. Sparkling water.

Dessert: Sugar free pudding cup.

Not too bad overall. About 1 carb, though the Vitamin Waters were a bit off track. Still, better than soda. I'm pleased.

Comments

[ms-monkey.livejournal.com]

I don't think I followed the last time you tried this, so I'm wondering: Phase 1 and Phase 2 of what?

[anaka.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure. It's the South Beach diet. About... oh, gosh, nine months ago now? I went to the doc and found out that my blood pressure was high, my cholesterol was up with LDL a bit higher than HDL though the ration kept them from being too bad, and my blood sugar was too high for normal, which pointed to developing insulin resistance.

I'd known for a while that I needed to lose weight and I'd tried going to the gym and eating right (which would let me shift a couple inches but no pounds), and Weight Watchers (which let me lose about 6 lbs total), but I hadn't really gotten anywhere. So I did some research and found this, which was developed to address both cardiovascular and insulin resistance issues, and has this nice side effect of helping you lose weight too.

Effectively, this cuts back the number of carbs you have and changes them from refined carbs to whole grains, ups your protein and veggies (though not to any sort of insane amount), and cuts refined sugar almost entirely. In comparison to my previous attempts, I lost twenty lbs with this last year until I started letting it slide and I've kept it off since then. When I noticed things creeping back up recently, I started in on it again. I can't say with any authority whether my bloodwork has improved or not given my current lack of health insurance, but my blood pressure had gotten slightly better just from diet alone when last I checked. I'm now on an aspirin and a water pill per day, but my doc has every confidence that if I keep up the weight loss, I'll be off those eventually as well.

In Phase 1, you're trying to jumpstart your metabolism and break sugar cravings, so you cut out all carbs, high-fat meat, and high-sugar fruits. You can have as much in the way of protein (cheese, beans, meat, milk) and veggies as you want, along with artificial sweeteners (or a bit of agave nectar or stevia for sweetener per day if you need it) and good fats (olive oil, avocado, etc.). You do this for two weeks only. To put it mildly, the first week sucks, but it's only two weeks total and it does kill the cravings.

By the third week, when you start Phase 2, you feel a lot better, you've lost between 7-13 lbs on average, and your food choices open up a bit. You start adding back in 1 serving of whole-grain carbs and 1 serving of fruit a day. Each week you add another serving of carbs and fruit until you're up to 2-3 a day of each. You keep that going until you've lost all the weight you need to lose, and then you can loosen things up and try to maintain the habits you've built to keep it all off.

It's not as effective at weight loss if you're already near your target weight, and you are definitely supposed to exercise along with it. But it's something that makes sense to me, that I can maintain, and that doesn't impact my life too heavily -- I can still go out to eat, I can still splurge every now and then if I need to... it just works for me. Even when I let it slide and drank cokes again, I kept to the whole grains, I kept more to the veggies, I kept the carbs mostly down. The sugar is what started to kill me again, but I'm not missing it now the way I'd thought I would again. I'm pretty pleased with this.

[ms-monkey.livejournal.com]

interesting. I've not known anyone to follow SB strictly, and it sounds like you're making a few modifications as you go too. In principle, the SB diet does make a lot of sense. I hope it works for you (again) and that you get healthier, etc.!