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!

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.

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!

Wednesday

It's a bit pathetic - I completely forgot to take photos of anything I ate today!  It was a busy day, I guess, and with so much going on, it just slipped my mind.  But I stuck with the diet - it's feeling like a challenge now, so I am not really tempted to cheat.  I know that Saturday is just a few days away.

The best part of today was that my friend D at work has decided to join me with this diet!  I know she's been trying to lose weight, and this seems to be working for me.  It will be fun to do it together - we can help each other out along the way.

For breakfast today I had eggs over easy, turkey bacon and some lentils that I just heated up a little bit.  Even though the beans are not appealing to me in the morning, they definitely help stop me from getting hungry, so I'm going to keep trying to include them.  I didn't have much time to get lunch together before work, so I just threw some baby greens and diced veggies (onions, red peppers, tomato), and some garbanzos, too, in a container, along with a side of balsamic vinaigrette.  I also grabbed a can of Amy's split pea soup, which I'd never tried before, just in case.  I was so glad I brought that, because the salad just wasn't enough.  In fact, D and I ended up splitting the soup later on in the afternoon, which totally hit the spot after we both sat through a staff meeting with banana bread sitting right there on the table the whole time - plus some delicious candy, too.  It's not so hard to resist food when I'm not hungry, but it's a struggle when I am!  We decided we are going to stock up on "legal" foods to help us out when these things happen.

For dinner I made mashed cauliflower, which I was a bit skeptical about, but it turned out great.  I microwaved a cut-up head of cauliflower in a covered casserole dish with a little water in the bottom.  It took quite a while - maybe 8 minutes - until it was soft.  Then I used the lid to hold the cauliflower in while I poured off the excess water, and I added some butter (maybe a tablespoon or a bit more), a dash of cream - maybe a tablespoon or so - salt and pepper, and some Cajun spices.  I whizzed it up with an immersion  blender, and it was surprisingly delicious!  We also grilled some zucchini and chicken.  It wasn't bad!  I did not feel at all hungry for the rest of the night.

Oh!  And I almost forgot to mention that I lost half of that pound that I gained yesterday.  Woohoo!

Two more days, and then Saturday will be here again.  I'm already thinking about foods I'm planning to eat.  I may make some brownies.  And French fries would be nice.  And definitely strawberries and bananas!

Tuesday - It's working!

I weighed myself this morning with some trepidation, but I needn't have worried.  I lost the pound I gained after Splurge Saturday, and one more pound on top of it!  That brings me to a total of 5 pounds lost since I started the "Slow Carb" diet one week ago today.  Woohoo!

I also realized that if I omit the beans from breakfast, I won't get that faint nausea that's been pestering me in the morning.  I'm good with beans at lunch and dinner, but for some reason I just can't handle them first thing in the morning.

Check out this delicious egg scramble that I made today, with diced turkey bacon (picked some up at Whole Foods yesterday - and wow, is it good), sauteed red onions, and fresh spinach.

This diet so does not have to be boring!

Thursday

I weighed myself this morning, and I've lost 1.5 pounds since Tuesday.  I can't get my hopes up too far at this point, because I can fluctuate so much with my weight from day to day - two to three pounds from one day to the next isn't uncommon. 

I had a bit of a problem as far as breakfast was concerned, though.  I had a breakfast date with some friends, but I couldn't meet them till I dropped the kids off at school.  So I made some turkey bacon and had three slices of that, hoping it would be enough to jump-start my metabolism.  For the rest of breakfast , which I ate about an hour and a half after waking up - and I was terrible today about remembering to take photos - I ordered an omelet - a Greek omelet without cheese.  It was pretty bad - I should have just gone for scrambled eggs.  The tomatoes were winter pale and tasteless, and the olives were the bland, sliced kind from cans.  It was rough not having any potatoes, grits or toast - things I love love love!  But I sucked it up and ate my nasty omelet - the company was good!  And it stuck with me - I didn't get any lunch till 3, and while I ate a few carrots between times, I wasn't all that hungry. 

I keep saying I wasn't hungry and being happy about it, but I should say what I really mean is that I felt okay.  I didn't feel grumpy and drained the way I get when I haven't eaten recently.  This is a good thing - I hate feeling that way.

For lunch I had a pretty good salad - leftover salmon from last night, mixed with baby spinach and baby greens, great northern beans and avocado, with a mustard vinaigrette dressing.  I had more carrots to eat, but I ended up giving them to a friend because I was so stuffed!  I just drank water, my usual beverage.

We had another rushed evening - yet another evening school event.  The original plan was to reheat the enchiladas from Monday night, so I did that for everyone but me.  I made some more soup, with beans and tomatoes and onions, and I ate that, and we all had some sauteed spinach.  Things were so rushed that I forgot all about taking photos, but I ate two bowls of soup and had a glass of wine.  All in all, while it's not the best food ever, it's not too bad, and I do feel satisfied.  I also am feeling really good - upbeat and energetic.