Thursday

It seems I'm developing a routine with this diet.  I'm a lot hungrier early in the mornings than I used to be, which I guess is good, since it's helping me adjust to eggs and beans and things a little better.  Today I had more scrambled eggs, and I'm finding that lentils are the easiest legumes for me to eat so early in the morning.  I sauteed some red onions and turkey bacon, and then I threw in the lentils, and I pretended they were potatoes as I ate my eggs.  Luckily I have a vivid imagination.

For lunch I heated up some leftover chicken and zucchini from last night's dinner, and I tossed them with some baby greens, along with red onions, chickpeas, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.  It wasn't bad, and I also added some chicken broth to the leftover lentils to make a quick and easy soup.  That stayed with me, so I wasn't too hungry for the rest of the afternoon.

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I was so excited to eat dinner that I neglected to take photos.  I made some haddock with a quick and easy Minimalist recipe, and it came out great.  First you sautee some minced ginger in some vegetable oil - about a tablespoon or so.  Then you add the fish (any white fish will do), and pour over it 1 1/2 cups of water, a half cup of soy sauce, some sliced green onions, chopped cilantro, a teaspoon of rice vinegar, and you bring it to a boil.  Then you cover it, turn off the heat, and let it sit for 10 minutes.  Then it's ready!  We ended up using  a little cornstarch mixture to thicken the sauce, and that worked out great.  My husband made rice to go with it, but I had soup - yes, more soup!  This time I used the immersion blender to mix the bean (pinto) and veggie (celery, onions, garlic and carrots, along with some cumin, salt, and a dried cayenne pepper) into a creamy soup.  It was delicious.  One of my daughters thought so too, so there are no leftovers for work tomorrow.  I'm glad she enjoyed it, though.  We also had some steamed broccoli, which was tasty dipped in the fish sauce.

I am still feeling energetic, which is great.  Particularly as we are leaving for our trip soon, and there is so much to do!  I do feel as though I'm spending a lot more time cooking than usual, but I'm also thinking that there have got to be ways of streamlining this more effectively. I will figure them out. 

I lost another half pound, which puts me at 5.5 pounds lost, total.  I get the feeling from others who have tried this and other similar diets that the weight loss will probably go a lot more slowly from here on out.  I'm hoping to see progress, even if it's small, because that will help me to keep going.  If there's no progress, I am more likely to throw up my hands and wonder what the point is.  We'll see how it goes!