Still on track - shockingly!

I have to say, I'm really pleased with myself for managing to stick to this diet for so long, something I've never managed to do with any diet for more than a week or so, ever.  And I"m pleased that it's having such good results.

I'm noticing that the weight loss is slowing down a bit.  Last week I didn't lose anything, and this week I lost one pound, to make it 14 pounds lost, total.  I've also lost in inches - some of my clothes are now too big!  I've lost 3 1/2 inches from my waist and from my hips, too.  How cool is that?

It's becoming more of a habit to follow the diet, as well.  Once I decided that beans were out for me at breakfast, mornings improved immeasurably.  I usually do some sort of scrambled eggs, mixing in onions or mushrooms and garlic, or spinach - whatever I happen to have on hand.  I also discovered the most delicious maple chicken sausages at Whole Foods, made by Applegate Farms.  I have three of them and a couple of eggs, and I'm seriously not hungry till noon or 1 o'clock.  I used to be starving by 11, so that's been a nice change.  The fact that I don't eat pork or beef limits some of my choices, but having poultry and fish seems to be working just fine.

One thing that I have noticed is that preparing meals is more time consuming, and I do have to plan things out to make sure I have things I can eat, particularly to take with me to work for lunch or dinner.  It was sure a lot easier when I could just have a bowl of cereal (or three) and a banana for lunch.

My favorite lunch involves a salad that includes beans, usually great northern, and sometimes I'll add some salmon and avocado, or some tuna and olives, and I make it a really, really big salad.  I also make lots of soups, usually vegetable soup with beans, sometimes spicy, sometimes not, and while I can't say I'm always thrilled to have the soup or salad to look forward to, once I start eating, I'm generally quite happy.  I do have tons of energy these days, without spikes and dives the way I used to.

I could never make it through this without the cheat day, though, which I've taken to calling my "eating day."  (As though I don't eat the rest of the week - ha!).  If it weren't for the fact that I have Sunday to look forward to, I'd have given this thing up months ago.  It has been particularly difficult this summer as so many of my favorite fruits have become available at the farmers market.  Today is a cheat day, and so far I've had two amazingly sweet and juicy peaches and a huge bowl of delicious dark cherries.  Yum!  It is such a nice change to be able to eat whatever and however much I want without any demoralizing guilt!  It is worth it to me to be able to do that, so I honestly don't mind so much avoiding certain foods for 6 days.  It goes pretty quickly, and with the inches lost, and the weight I've lost, it inspires me to keep going.

My goal from the start has been to lose 20 pounds.  I have 6 more to go, and then I will have to figure out some sort of maintenance plan - that's something that seems to be lacking in the book.  There is a ton of information online, though, so maybe I will find some ideas there.

I can never go back to the way I ate before - and that realization would have once terrified and depressed me.  Now I honestly feel great about that.  I am confident that I'll be able to do a modified version of this diet to maintain my weight.  Maybe I'll do two eating days. Maybe I'll just add some forbidden foods a few times a week.We'll see how it goes!

Update

Sorry I have been so delayed in posting here (I'm sure my single reader has been disappointed, ha ha!).  I'm still trying to get back on top of things after being gone for our 2-week vacation.  Now it's that crazy end-of-school time, and I've been spending a lot of time on a volunteer project for my daughters' school.

Anyway, I did a sort of modified version of the diet most days - eating the breakfast right away, doing eggs and meat and beans, that kind of thing.  But when I was in the various countries I always ate what I wanted - who knows when I'll be back?  And I ate whatever I wanted for dinner, but I usually avoided the pasta.

And guess what?  I only gained a pound! 

I've been following the diet faithfully since I got back, and I have now lost 11 pounds total, and three inches off my waist.  I feel so much better, and I have quite a bit more energy than pre-diet days.  Who knew? 

9 more pounds to go.  Woohoo!

Vacation diet dilemma

We are leaving for two weeks' vacation in three days, and I'm kind of wondering how I will manage with this diet while I'm gone.  We are doing a cruise of the Mediterranean, and I have no intention of depriving myself of amazing food from different countries while we're away.  One of our stops is Rome, and I used to live in Italy, and I haven't been back in years.  There is no way I'm not going to get some gelato while we're there.  And some pasta.  Mmmm, authentic pasta.  It won't be quite as good as in Bologna, I bet, but I'm sure I'll manage.

At any rate, it's going to be a challenge, and I haven't quite decided how to handle it.  I know I can follow the eat-within-an-hour-of-waking-up rule, no problem.  And I can certainly avoid many of the carb-loaded foods while we're on the ship.  I don't think I'll follow it while we're in port, though - that's just silly.  There's a workout room on the ship, and I intend to use it.  I guess I'll see what the dining options are like, and play it by ear.  To be completely honest, I'm looking forward to a break from this food routine, even though I'm only on my third week.  This diet is a pretty difficult undertaking!

Sunday, all over again

Yesterday's splurge was a little bit disappointing, I'm sorry to say.  I work at the library every other Saturday, and it was my work Saturday yesterday.  We ordered out for Chinese food from a place that is relatively new to us, called China 1.  My husband and I have been very disappointed in the quality of Chinese food nearby, but this one has fairly good reviews on Yelp.  We gave them a try a couple times, and while it didn't wow us, it was still better than anything else we've had outside the District.  So several of us at work ordered lunch to be delivered.  It took almost twice as long to come as they said it would (55 minutes instead of 30, which left me with 10 minutes to choke down my lunch - on the one day I can eat what I want! - before I had to run out to the reference desk.

Plus it just wasn't very good.  I ordered the chicken w/cashew nuts lunch special, and the food was so bland and blah.  The vegetable fried rice was mushy.  The cashews were soggy.  It was pretty depressing.

But anyway, whine whine whine.  I did start out the day with a Krispy Kreme doughnut, so all was not lost!

I'm going to plan better next time, that's for sure!

So, back to eggs for breakfast.  And turkey bacon.  I also heated up some of the soup that I made last Friday.  Still not appetizing so soon after I wake up, but what can you do?

For lunch I made a salad with tuna, cucumber, pinto beans, shredded carrots and red onions in a balsamic vinaigrette.  Plus more soup.

For dinner we made tacos, but I did mine like lettuce wraps, and they were delicious.  I did miss the cheese, but still, I had guacamole on there, and it was good!  There were black beans, diced chicken breast, red onions, cilantro, guacamole, and tomatoes.  They weren't quite as filling as tacos with tortillas, so I had three.  Oink.

Splurge Saturday is here again!

Finally.  It took long enough!

So, here goes, although there were a few things I forgot to snap photos of, including a doughnut, chicken with cashews, a spring roll, and hot and sour soup, an apple pastry and a chocolate frosted brownie.  Other than that, here it is:

Would you think that would be enough to make me gain 2 1/2 pounds overnight?  It was!

Day of Reckoning

Woohoo!  I have now officially lost 7 pounds!  And not only that, but I've lost inches, too.  Since I first started this diet, I've lost:

• 1 inch from my waist
• 1.75 inches from my hips
• 1 inch from each of my upper arms
• 1.25 inches from each of my thighs

It seems unbelievable.  I don't know that the changes are noticeable at this point, but wow, I can see why the book emphasizes the importance of measuring inches rather than just pounds!  It is something to help keep me inspired as I move into another week of slow-carbing.

Friday catch-up

Friday was a bit rough - it was the longest I'd gone on the diet without a break, and I was getting pretty tired of the same old stuff.  So to change things up a bit, I tried a recipe I found from a link to recipes that mostly (some include optional cheese) follow the guidelines of the slow carb diet.  I made the omelette muffins, and I put turkey bacon and spinach in mine.  They took way longer to cook than the recipe said, though, which meant my breakfast was later than I wanted it to be.  But don't they look tasty?  They tasted like eggy popovers.

The coconut oil I used, as suggested in the recipe, wasn't much help in preventing them from sticking to the muffin pan, so they fell apart a bit when I pulled them out.  I'll have to pick up some muffin papers for the next time I do it.  This would be a great way to get mileage from leftover veggies as well as have eggs in a new and different way.

At lunchtime I mixed up a quick batch of soup.  I used lentils again - I am really enjoying them, particularly with that turkey bacon, and I tossed in a can of diced tomatoes and spiced it up a bit.  I had the soup with a Nicoise-inpired salad I threw together - lettuce, tuna, olives, and onions.  It was pretty tasty.  I wish I'd had some avocado to go with it!

I forgot to take pictures of dinner last night - the chicken I'd planned to use wasn't defrosted enough, so we ended up getting takeout from Chipotle.  I got a burrito bowl with black beans, salsa, chicken, guacamole and lettuce, and it was so filling that I couldn't eat it all. 

So I made it through one more day of slow-carbing it.  Whew!  It is really tough sometimes, but it's doable.  Particularly with Saturday coming up, the light at the end of the tunnel.