Birthday Dinner

Today is my boyfriend's actual birthday and this evening he wants us to celebrate together tonight by having his favorite dinner. I, of course, will oblige. However, his favorite dinner is not exactly of the healthy variety.

Steak, macaroni and cheese (boxed), and crescent rolls. It's so funny how much he loves this meal. Simple, cheap and extremely easy to make. Of all the restaurants we have to choose from, of all the meals that I can make, this is what he wants.

And since it's his birthday, it's what he's going to get. It's not exactly on par with how I'm eating, so I'm adding some roasted broccoli (maybe with some red/yellow peppers) as my main side dish and eat just a few bites of everything. It should be good.

This week's menu has been pretty good so far. Couple of snags but I've managed.

Monday I ended up eating the tomato bisque for lunch and didn't have time to make "the sauce" so I ended up tossing my pasta with a bunch of tomatoes, seasoning and the ricotta cheese. Admittedly, not the best thing but it was a blah kind of eating day.

Tuesday I ended up at the doctor's office for three hours which really threw a wrench in my day. Just a check-up but I kept getting bumped for emergency appointments. Because it took so long, my eating plan had to be revamped so I went to Subway and got a veggie sub on whole wheat bread and ate that throughout the rest of my work day.

When I got home I made my sauce:

onions, carrots, celery, EVOO



add zucchini, garlic, basil and chicken stock



simmer with tomato sauce



delicious!

I made enough to freeze half the batch. I thought I would mainly use this to toss w/ some whole wheat pasta but I've found that I'm enjoying it for breakfast in omelets with some sauteed spinach, garlic and light cream cheese. It's a good combination and pretty filling. So for the past couple of days I've eaten this.



My snack this week has pretty much been low fat cottage cheese and an apple. And, Wednesday and Thursday lunch was 1/2 a veggie burger on ww bun.

As for weigh-in this week. I am up, again, but I definitely came down from that over 2 pound gain I saw. +1.2 lbs. Working out has been lack luster because of the shuffling of my schedule but I did go to a concert last night and danced around for 4 hours so that must count for something!

And this weekend is Memorial Weekend! The weekend that is traditionally filled with barbecues and parties. I've come up with some fall back ideas in the event that I need to face any terrifying food decisions so I'll let you know how that goes.


P1:
Week 1: -4.4
Week 2: -1

P2:
Week 1: +1
Week 2: +1.4
Week 3: -1
Week 4: +1.2


You know, looking at it this way I'm noticing way too many + signs. I'm really going to do my very best to get a - sign come next weigh-in!!!

It's Been One Week ...

since last I posted.

Once again, a week feels like an eternity. However, not much has really happened. I'll recap a few items and some of my food choices.

It was Monday the 16th the last time I wrote and in case you're wondering ...

Monday night, instead of my vegetables, vegetables, vegetables I had Italian food. And not just any Italian food, I had fettuccine alfredo with garlic bread. I found it to be delicious in the moment, but I had some horrific heartburn afterwards.

Tuesday was a day filled with normal eating and then I went to Korean BBQ for a friend's birthday. I found online where on South Beach Korean BBQ is actually encouraged. The meat was very tasty but I found the extreme lack of vegetables to make me feel very unbalanced. Also, I don't think that much meat sat well in my stomach. If I go again, I will order meat as well as vegetarian options to round it out.

Wednesday was weigh in and I was happy to see -1 lb on the scale. Woo Hoo! Also, I got in a nice lunch workout on the stationary bike.

Thursday I ate an entire calzone for dinner. Yup, Italian strikes again. However, I managed to take a nice walk to Universal on my lunch break.

And that brings us to the weekend where I had a mixture of food. Some examples: I had a lovely caprese salad Friday, turkey dogs on whole wheat buns with sweet potato fries (baked) on Saturday, and a pulled pork BBQ sandwich with cole slaw and french fries, and junior mints at the movies on Sunday. The bbq sandwich was from a diner and pretty much straight forward. Afterwards, I wished I had been a little more selective in choosing my meal but I enjoyed it.

I AM pleased to report that I got in two really good workouts on Friday and Saturday but all in all, I do NOT think that I had a successful weekend food wise. In fact, I'm pretty displeased with the entire week.

That brings us full circle again to Monday where, as of this morning, I am up 2.4 lbs from my Wednesday weigh-in. Ideal? no. But I'm pretty positive it is the result of foods I've been eating.

I chose not to cook anything last week. In fact, I didn't even go to the grocery store and kind of just ate what was left in my fridge. It was both a good and bad thing. It was good because I got rid of a lot of produce and other food items that I would have otherwise wasted. It was bad because I really had no plan in place for my meals. I found myself scurrying each morning to try to figure out decent snacks and lunches and then I'd go home for dinner and without a plan in place, ordering food seemed ideal. Hence, the Italian nights.

So for this week, I made sure to plan.

My food for today is pretty normal, eggs for breakfast, vegetable chili for lunch - I also have some tomato bisque that I'm going to try.

And for dinner, tonight I'm going to be making a tomato sauce heavy on vegetables: carrots, celery, onions, garlic, tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms and a few sweet peppers - and then I'm going to throw it over a half serving of whole wheat pasta with some dollops of fresh ricotta cheese.

I thought it sounded decent enough.

So goals for this week:

I feel pretty good about my menu and if I stick to what I have planned and continue working out, I have no doubt that my weight will ease its way back down. Also, I'm going to try to not let so much time go by before I blog again because writing down the food on here is like a check point for me.

P1:
Week 1: -4.4
Week 2: -1
P2:
Week 1: +1
Week 2: +1.4
Week 3: -1

Carb Cravings

Ok, that didn't take too long. This is an excerpt from the boards I read:

"life happens and you will, on occasion, find yourself eating an off-plan meal or a slice of birthday cake. Enjoy! Do not berate yourself, and most importantly, DO NOT GO BACK TO PHASE 1! Get back on track with a healthy P2 diet, continue to exercise, and move FORWARD. P1 should only be revisited if your cravings have returned or you've been off of P2 for a long time."

Ok, that seems like sound advice. With that in mind, I'm going to continue on as I'm supposed to. If I notice that the carb cravings continue, I'll go back to P1 for a few days and hopefully that'll kick it. Also, I had a banana for breakfast yesterday. That's the first time I've had fruit in the morning and maybe that also was a factor.

Unfortunately, I had a banana for breakfast today too. I'll see what happens tonight and then I'll move it tomorrow and figure out if that was a culprit too.

Week 2 ends ...

Yesterday I woke up feeling great. Truly, I had amazing energy and felt like the world was my oyster.

That's all - nothing exciting happened -- I just wanted to share because I LOVE days like those. Where everything just seems to go your way even if it doesn't.

Anyway, I recently divulged my over-indulgences and I stand here now needing to make a correction.

They did have an affect on me. Last night for dinner I ordered Pad Thai. And as I was eating it, I had a revelation:

"SON OF A GUN!!! This is a carb craving"

Didn't even see it coming til I was almost done.

So yes, my little jaunt over the weekend DID have an affect on me. When I got home from work it didn't occur to me that I was overly thinking about eating pad thai or anything. I had had a wonderful day of eating and somehow in a single thought I convinced myself that I would eat it and be ok and blah blah blah. Truly I performed some excellent jedi mind tricks on myself. Very crafty I have become.

Anyway, now that I've indentified it I'm not so sure what to do now. I don't know if I'm supposed to go back to phase 1 or not. Hopefully I'm not because I really don't want to do it again - maybe just a day or two. So today I'm going to peruse my resources and get some advice from people who've "been there done that".

Also, today is Wednesday - so that means it's WI: +1.4 lbs

Yeah, that's a big jump but I was expecting that due to certain choices I made that I am going to forgive myself for and move on ;)

P1: 5.4
P2:
week 1: +1
week 2: +1.4

I'm not too worried about the gain because week 2 for me was *head bowed in shame* not the best for me. No worries though, I will come up with a plan and turn it around.

In food news, I made a dish that I'm very pleased with.

Vegetarian chili:



It's kidney beans, garbanzo beans, pinto beans, onions, carrots, and red peppers with all sorts of chili seasonings. I just mixed it all together and let it simmer for a couple of hours. Very filling and tasty.

Yesterday's menu:
B: banana w/ PB
L: chili w/ 1T shredded Portuguese cheese
S: yellow pepper strips, plum tomatoes, carrot strips w/ hummus
D: pad thai :(

Today starts week 3 for mean and technically I am to add a grain today (yippee!) but before I officially do that I'm going to go see what I can find out about my carb cravings.

Phase 2 week 1 results

My first week on Phase 2 was good. I really have no complaints about it. I think I was super worried about starting because I thought that eating just one serving of grain would be enough to make me go back into a stupor because I really like my carbs. However, I found that the one slice of whole wheat toast that I chose as my grain this week really worked well for me. I switched back and forth between peanut butter toast and half a roasted turkey sandwich. I ate them either at lunch or as my post dinner snack.

I started w/ the PB toast as an after dinner snack because honestly, I was afraid that if I moved it up earlier in the day, it would set me up for cravings for the rest of the day. After a couple of days, I moved it to my lunch and that didn't seem to do any damage so I gained more confidence.

So, as far as my results. I know I weigh in on Thursdays but now I'm thinking I just need to move it to Wednesday because that will make it coincide w/ my SB starting date. So, I'm trading my Thursday weigh-ins for Wednesdays. And thus, my results are below:

P1: -5.2 lbs total
P2: +1 lb - week 1

During the first week I went up almost 2 pounds before things started settling. It also dropped lower but that +1 was my final number so I'm sticking w/ that. And other than the tummy troubles early on in the week, I feel good and have recently noticed my clothes seem to be getting bigger which is always nice.

As of right now, I'm on day 3 of my second week. This week I added back fruit and honestly, I'm not doing so well. Wednesday I added some strawberries and yesterday I forgot completely. Today I have an apple so I'm going to try super hard to remember to eat it. I know it could be worse - I COULD be cheating left and right. I have cheated a little but all I've done is go over my 100 calorie limit of SF treats and eat too much Pad Thai one night.

So far so good.

Today's menu:

B: Southwest omelette (seasoned beans, tomato and cheese omelette topped w/ salsa, guacamole and a dollop of sour cream)
S: yellow pepper strips, carrot slices, plum tomatoes w/ hummus
L: half roasted turkey sandwich, garden salad w/ kidney/garbanzo beans and Ital. dressing

Still here

I've had quite the time since last I posted.

I did finally decide what to buy at the market and what to eat for the week. However, this is the first week where I'm not all that impressed with my selections. Oh well. Maybe I'll come up with something grand for next week.

Many things to discuss so lets talk about food first.

This weekend I had two, yes TWO, different dinner parties to attend. I think I did pretty well :) The first was at a close friends house and they had a plethora of options. I know for a fact that there was sugar in some of the dishes but I think I did pretty good considering. I enjoyed some salad, some peppers and sausage, and a chicken wing. I sat down and talked to the host about how he prepared everything and honestly, it was a little worse than I thought :) But it's all good.

I ate enough to not be starving and then I just sat back and enjoyed my friends company. Once I got home I ate a nice dinner.

The second dinner was with my boyfriend's sister's family. My boyfriend is half Thai and his sister cooks AMAZING Thai food. Now, I LOVE Thai food so I was afraid this one would be just a hair more difficult. Nope! And I have a wonderful boyfriend too. He asked his sister what was in everything and how much sugar. And we both helped cook so I saw first hand. Also, when he saw "bad items" go in, he'd pull me aside and tell me. It was really cute. I had a little bit of everything. And again, just enough to not be starving. When we left, we stopped and got a bite to eat before we drove back home.

So yes, I did well at my first two tries at eating out of the house. It was a lot easier than I thought. The first dinner party I had no idea what they were making so I had a snack before I went to make sure that in the event I had to not eat that I would be ok. The second dinner, I knew beforehand what dishes were being made I just didn't know how they were being prepared. But I feel confident that in the future, I'll be able to maneuver the situation.

Now, if it had been a pizza party that might have been way more difficult ;) Man, I love pizza.

Anyway, Monday was a different story. I got through breakfast and then I was sick to my stomach all day long. I'm not sure if it was something I ate over the weekend or if it was because maybe I had more off limit ingredients (ie: sugar) than usual but I didn't eat anything all day. When I got home from work I was really hungry and my boyfriend wanted Thai. So I ordered Pad Thai. Now, I can have rice noodles but I'm pretty sure restaurant Pad Thai is just off limits in general. Fat, sugar, deliciousness and whatnot. But I ordered it and I ate it. Not the whole thing because I get full really quickly lately. And some interesting things happened.

First, it didn't taste as good as I thought it would. This restaurant has my favorite Pad Thai of ALL TIME so I was a little shocked at this. Maybe it was a bad batch (hey, it happens) or maybe my taste buds have changed (that happens too) - in any case, it just didn't wow me. Second, it KNOCKED ME OUT! Seriously, I ate it and then we sat down to watch a movie but it was no use. By 8:30pm I was gone. It might have been from being sick, being full or eating such a heavy dish when I wasn't used to it. Who knows.

That leads to Tuesday which was ... ugh. So, I'm assuming it was the Pad Thai but I was sick to my stomach all through the morning and afternoon on Tuesday too. I wasn't in as bad a shape as Monday - I still could eat food - but my stomach was gurgling and churning and doing not fun things off and on. Not fun and it will definitely make me think twice about eating such a heavy dish that I'm not really used to.

And that brings me to Yesterday's Menu:

B: omelette w/ onions, mushrooms, cheese, salsa, and sour cream - I didn't prepare myself grocery wise for the apparent mexican breakfast cravings I've been having the last couple of days - so this is my improvisation.



L: Soupe de Pistou (yeah, still eating this and I still like it - but it's gone now) and a half Roasted Turkey Sandwich



I roasted a turkey breast over the weekend. That was a good idea - plus it was on sale!

and dinner .. I tried to come up w/ a new idea for dinner. I'd been wanting barbecue food lately so I tried to come up with some recipes to simulate a SB barbecue

behold:




That's chicken sausage, cole slaw and baked beans. I made a bbq sauce that had no sugar in it - which, mind you, is pretty difficult. I got the recipe off the internet and the ingredients alone made me doubt the whole thing but I made it anyway. The cole slaw was a Bobby Flay recipe but instead of cabbage I used broccoli slaw and instead of sugar I used Splenda. I also was leery of this one.

And guess what? I was right. I wasn't too pleased with either of these. I'm actually going to give them both a second shot today. I brought a little cole slaw for lunch and I might try the baked beans again for dinner. Sometimes food tastes better after its been sitting and the flavors meld. But we'll see.

And now on to my weight.

Today ends my first week of Phase 2. Adding back the carb wasn't all that difficult or mind blowing. In fact, for the first few days I almost forgot to do it. My weight HAS been fluctuating all week. I said I wasn't going to look at the scale but I did anyway. It's just been going back and forth between my P1 ending weight and one pound up. Tomorrow is Thursday and that's my weigh in day so from now on I'm going to use whatever pops up on Thursday as my reference point. So, as of this morning, I weigh the same as I did last Thursday and tomorrow will be the official number for the week.

Also, today is the first day I add back fruit so here's to another week of seeing how my body handles me messing with it :)

Phase 2

I made it through all 14 days of Phase 1. In retrospect, it wasn't that bad but I do remember a couple of moments during the first couple of days that were rough.

In any case, I did it and I lost 5.4 pounds during Phase 1.

Yesterday was my first day of Phase 2.

Phase 2 is where I can add back in my good carbs and fruits. So, whole wheat bread and pasta, whole grains and fresh fruit. Good stuff indeed!

I was at a loss actually at what to eat. I had been reading message boards and everyone has their own suggestion as to what to add. I noticed that almost everyone said oatmeal but I just couldn't do oatmeal. I also hadn't decided if I was going to add back my fruit this week or my grain. So, I chose grain and I chose whole wheat bread!

Honestly, I almost forgot to eat it. I'm just so used to my way of eating right now that eating the bread kind of felt like I was going off track.

So as my after dinner treat I had peanut butter toast with a glass of skim milk.



Simple, filling and delicious. I'm pleased that it didn't have a huge affect on me. I'm not overly craving carbs or anything and when I was figuring out my meals for the day I noticed I gravitated toward the usual foods so that's also good.

However, when I weighed in this morning (Thursdays are really my official WI days) I was up a whole pound. I was prepared for this because almost everything I had read said the beginning weeks of Phase 2 will most likely result in a gain. Not the most motivating thing but knowing ahead of time at least helped a little. When I cut out the grains and fruits I was depleted of my glycogen stores thus resulting in a loss (water weight). Adding back my grain means also adding back to my glycogen stores (which is a good thing!) and thus water weight gain. According to others, it should take my body a couple of weeks to adjust and then I should start losing again. Now, the only thing I can do is stay the course and see if it happens. I'm going to definitely stay off the scale until next Thursday morning and then depending on what I see I might wait 2 weeks for my next weigh in. One person commented that for her it took 6-8 weeks until she started losing weekly so I don't want to get discouraged.

In case you're interested yesterday's menu went something like this:

B: SF/NF latte, turkey/swiss, lettuce roll ups (I'm taking a much needed break from eggs)
L: fake tacos (see previous post)
D: Soupe au Pistou (french soup I made Tuesday night for P2 because it has delicious carrots in it)




and a portabello mushroom pizza
D: PB toast, milk

The pizza I made was very, very good. Even my boyfriend said he would eat it on nights he craved pizza. I used a large portabello mushroom cap as my crust then made a meat sauce with turkey sausage and just topped the mushroom as you would a pizza and broiled it.



It looks like a big pile of cheese and sauce but that's because I put too many toppings on it. The one I made the previous night actually looked like a pizza. But it sure was good.

And today, so far the menu looks like this:

B: ham, swiss lettuce roll-ups, coffee
S: carrots with jalapeno/Gouda spread
L: Soupe au Pistou, cottage cheese
D: ?

Whatever I do for dinner it will have plenty of veggies in it. I need to add more veggies to my breakfast but I recently hit a slump when it comes to eggs and I wasn't really prepared for finding alternatives so I made do with what I had. Oh yeah, I forgot about my grain again. I think I might do the PB toast and milk again. It really fit well in my dessert spot.

And one more thing, now that I'm adding in my grains and fruits I'm going to up my exercise. During Phase 1 I did long walks for my exercise a couple of times a week. In the first week they were actually kind of difficult because of the energy thing. But I feel good and I think it's time to up the ante a little. Besides, I really really want to participate in this 5k that's coming up at the end of May. So hopefully you'll start seeing me log my workouts too.

Almost There!

It's been an interesting couple of days since I posted.

I think it was Friday that I had some trouble. I didn't want to quit but I was ready to just start the next phase. I just wanted a slice of bread. Also, I was incredibly cranky. I think it goes back to not eating enough food. I got out of work early for Good Friday and by the time I got home, I had missed my lunch and a snack and I was so tired that I took a nap instead of getting food. By the time I got up I was in rare form. Truly, I was a beast. So, I fixed some food and voila! I was better.

The weekend was ok. I have a hard time with the weekends and this particular program. Not in that I want to go off course but just in that I don't eat all my foods. Not to mention my water intake suffers. And you know what happens when I don't eat enough food...

So what did I eat?

Saturday:

b: eggs and bacon
l: none
s: SF/NF vanilla latte
d: tacos
d: SF fudgesicle and SF syrup

I ended up starving around bedtime so I cooked some more eggs and bacon. I really didn't eat that great. My veggies were limited to my taco dinner which wasn't really all that much. I cooked some kidney beans in some mexican seasoning and then filled romaine leaves w/ the beans, cheese, salsa and sour cream. And honestly, it was very, very good.



Again, very good. I will definitely be putting that back on the menu at some other point in time. In addition to not eating enough healthy foods, I overate on my sugar free foods. I had the latte and then I had the fudgesicle. And not only did I have the fudgesicle, I even took it off the stick and drizzled some SF chocolate syrup over it and ate it like a sundae. Yeah, not the best eating day I've had so far but I still didn't do anything too destructive.

I woke up Sunday determined to at least get all my meals in and more vegetables.

Sunday:

b: eggs, bacon, spinach, tomatoes



s: garden salad w/ ranch
l: panda express beef and vegetable dish
d: tomato, avocado, turkey sausage, cheese omelet w/ salsa

It was a decent day. I went to Panda Express and got some new beef dish. It was just beef and vegetables in some spicy sauce. I'm positive there was sugar in the sauce but I added mixed vegetables to it and basically ate off of them. I ate a few pieces of beef for the protein but what I'm finding lately is that it honestly doesn't take too much to fill me up. For dinner we met friends at a cafe and I ordered the omelet which also came w/ fried potatoes and fresh fruit on the plate. And you know what? It honestly didn't affect me at all. I really think my carb cravings are at a nice controllable level. But, I am super excited to eat fruit again. Super excited!

And now here I am on Day #13 and I am proud to say that I have stayed the course. I had a horrible stomachache last night and into this morning so my food consumption today has been minimal. I'm just taking it easy to make sure everything is ok. Although, I did take the time yesterday to pack myself wonderful food.

If I feel up to eat today I have:
ham roll ups w/ gouda and romaine
deviled eggs
and
fresh veggies w/ spinach and artichoke dip for snack

Dinner tonight is going to be sushi. I hope. I bought the stuff to make salmon handrolls (w/o the rice of course) and it'll be my first attempt at making it.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Phase 1 News!

Today is Day #9 of my phase 1. At weigh-in this morning I am officially down 5 pounds and I'm very excited and very pleased with that!

Yesterday was actually a really hard day for me. I think it was emotional though and nothing to do with my diet. I was a little cranky and annoyed and somehow that turned into anger over not being able to eat whatever I wanted. Was I having carb cravings? No. I believe this was completely just emotional. In the past, carbs, to me, equaled comfort and because they were off limits I got very agitated and somewhat angry. Almost like a child being told they couldn't have something.

It was interesting and I'm glad it happened. It showed me two things: 1) I think my actual carb cravings are getting close to being under control and 2) I need to be more aware of my emotions and find things other than carbs to make me feel better.

The episode passed and I had another successful day eating wise.

Today has also been a really nice day!

I was running late this morning and managed to pack everything but my breakfast. No worries though as we have a Starbucks right beside us. I treated myself to a SF latte and a turkey and swiss sandwich. I just threw away the bread and had turkey, swiss and lettuce roll-ups. They actually were very tasty and very filling. Starbucks actually has roasted turkey and not the deli sliced kind. I always find that to be extra satisfying.

Work has been kind of hectic today so I had to sneak in my first snack really quick. It was just a mini babybel.



Nothing too fancy and actually I should have eaten more but I figured a little something was better than nothing at all.

The next thing I knew it was my lunch break. I had my gym bag sitting by my desk ready to go but it was so beautiful outside. Actually, I had no desire to rush to the gym, get in a workout, do the shower thing, rush back to work. My gym is 3 buildings down from my office so I have the luxury of walking there and getting in a decent gym workout. It does require some rushing to get showered and office ready again and sometimes I just don't have it in me to do it.

So I went on a walk instead. I usually walk over to Universal Studios. It's sort of 4 buildings down from my office and a really nice walk.



Me passing my gym and heading up to City Walk






It was so nice out today



I go up there a couple times a week. It takes about 10 minutes to walk there and then I just walk around the shops and people watch with my ipod on.



I should probably just a buy a ticket into the park because it's "buy a day get a year" - so I'd get a season pass. Then I could spend my lunch breaks in the theme park and ride some rides!

It was a nice walk today. I was gone almost the whole hour. Sometimes I don't spend my whole time up there. If I'm in the mood to just speed walk, I'll book it the whole time to try to get my heart rate up. I still wear my HR monitor when I take my lunch walks. It motivates me to walk a little faster even when I don't feel like it. Either way I get between 5000 and 6000 steps in by going up there. It's a real boost as I try every day to get in my 10,000.

And on the way back to my office



That's the wonderful LA traffic. It's usually not so busy this time of day but Obama is here and that means by the time I get out of work, there will be complete gridlock on at least one freeway.

Anyway, back in the office I had my lunch. I wasn't really hungry so I had just one component. Vegetable Soup. I usually eat this with some protein but today I'm just not feeling it.



I wanted to get in my veggies so I ate it.

And now I'm a little sleepy which probably means that I haven't eaten enough calories today. It's true, eating this way, I find that I'm hungry less often but I have to make sure to get in my calories because my body needs them to function! And when I don't eat enough, I get really, really tired.

UGH. OK, I'm getting really tired, I think I'm going to go have some cottage cheese :)

South Beach Phase 1 continues

So I had a very productive weekend. We did some good shopping at the farmer's market, did a lot of Spring Cleaning, and I got the chance to cook up my first attempts at "SB approved" dishes.

On Saturdays, we head to the farmer's market as soon as it opens, so I grabbed my last Egg Muffin as I ran out the door. We have to get there early because parking is always a hassle. Also, it was an unusually hot weekend and at 8am it was already in the 80s and rising so we didn't want to be out there in the heat.

After we finished all of our grocery shopping, I came home to cook some food because I was starving. This was kind of my first chance to go about preparing something on the spot that was on program.

So I sauteed up some spinach and garlic in some olive oil and then topped it with a tomato sauce that I had leftover in the fridge. The sauce was just crushed tomatoes, cottage cheese, garlic, and parmesan cheese. It doesn't look that appetizing but it's one of my favorite things to eat.



I then cooked two fresh eggs over medium



And then ended up with a very satisfying, very filling breakfast:



I went the easy route with this breakfast. This is actually close to something I make and so I knew I would like it. In any case, score one for me!

After I finished that I started in on one of my recipes. It's a Garden Lasagna (without noodles) and it takes quite a bit of time to prepare.

I started the sauce.

I sauteed lots and lots of onions, celery, garlic, mushrooms, plum tomatoes, and green onion in some olive oil then added ground turkey that I had previously browned.



Then I added a jar of no sugar added marinara sauce and lots of fresh basil. I let it simmer on the stove for about an hour.

So while it was doing that, my pup and I decided to pass the time playing a little Call of Duty



That's my dog Chloe. If I'm sitting on the couch watching tv, playing video games, reading or doing anything at all, she has to be sitting right in the middle of my lap. It gets pretty crowded but it's very cute.

After the hour, I pieced together the lasagna. I forgot to take pics of this part. Basically, instead of noodles I just thinly sliced a couple of zucchini length wise and used those instead. I layered the zucchini with the meat sauce, ricotta cheese, fresh spinach and mozzarella cheese. I did about 3 layers and then topped it with fresh parmesan and baked it for almost 2 hours.



This is absolutely delicious. And the zucchini actually gives you a semi noodle texture. Yes, you can definitely tell there are no noodles but both my boyfriend and I thought this was absolutely wonderful. And the fact that it's full of vegetables is just a bonus.

I even ate it for two of my meals on saturday!

lunch: garden lasagna

snack: broccoli, celery, plum tomatoes with black bean hummus

dinner: garden lasagna, side salad: romaine with kidney beans, parmesan and caesar dressing

dessert: SF fudgesicle

Also I went to the gym Saturday night. I got in 35 minutes or so on the treadmill and had a really good amount of energy. I was worried to push myself too hard. I didn't run but I walked at an incline and kept my heart rate at about 80% of my maximum and it felt good.


Sunday morning I had another pleasant experience cooking breakfast. Since I've started this phase, I've been trying to get beans into at least one meal a day for the fiber. So, I chose breakfast this time.

I sauteed fresh broccoli, garlic, onion, a couple of tablespoons of my wonderful tomato sauce and about a quarter cup of kidney beans.



And then I just topped it with, of course, farm fresh eggs.



This was my favorite of the 2 weekend breakfasts and it kept me full for what felt like forever.


Since I eat breakfast everyday I usually cook something that I can eat on for the whole week. So I cooked a breakfast casserole for me to take to work for the upcoming week. It was something new and I was really pleased with how it turned out.



That's a slice of it on a very fancy paper plate at my work desk.

All it is is tons of vegetables, some smoked ham, cheese and eggs. It came out creamy and delicious.


The rest of my meals for Sunday:

lunch: breakfast casserole

snack: skinny vanilla iced latte

dinner: garden lasagna

snack: broccoli, celery, plum tomatoes, black bean hummus, skim milk


I did have some pretty major energy problems late afternoon on Sunday. It was around the 3pm hour and TJ and I were out running errands and I was just exhausted. Sitting in the car, I couldn't even keep my head upright and my eyes open.

It finally hit me that I hadn't eaten enough food that day. I told you that my breakfast was extremely filling. It was so filling I wasn't hungry til about 2pm and that's when I just ate a slice of the breakfast casserole. So I missed my snack and my lunch was smaller than normal. I remembered reading that you shouldn't miss your snacks even if you're not hungry. So I won't be missing those snacks again. It felt horrible.

So all in all a very good weekend!

Today marks day #6 so I'm almost halfway done with Phase 1. My weigh in will be on Thursday which will be my 9th day on the plan. I'm actually looking forward to it. I can tell something is working. My clothes fit nicely and I feel fantastic so hopefully I'll have a good showing :)

South Beach Progess Report

I'm officially on Day 3 of my phase 1. Honestly, it hasn't been that bad. I sneaked a peek at the scale this morning and yes it has gone down.

How much?

A good bit but I'm not going to say how much until the end of the first week. I know I was holding on to major water weight so this is it just finally going away.

They say you are to lose 8-13lbs in the first two weeks. I've cut out sugar before in my diet and I didn't experience those numbers but I did experience the water flush. It's not fat but it feels good. I feel less bloated and that helps especially since we women tend to bloat a lot around certain times. I'm hoping for 6 pounds. Why 6? It's just a number that will get me to a vanity point on my bathroom scale. What do I really want? Just a clean slate. To feel like my body is ready for nutritious foods. To get a hold of my reese cup addiction. Oh how I love those things.

I'm also very excited to get my whole grains and fruit back. When the time comes I will eat them with appreciation.

Now, the pros and cons so far of this phase:

Cons:
- I got headaches. The first day at the end of the day, I had a horrific headache. I took advil and it just ever so slightly eased back the pain. I had read that these were a possibility and the length of time they lasted depended on the person. The second day I had a minor one at breakfast, but eating and some tylenol zapped it quickly. Today, so far so good.

- The proverbial you're going to want what you can't have. My meal choices have been great and my selection has been abundant but I still feel restricted because well, I am. I came up with at least twenty different ideas for supper the first night but none of them seem to fit. Even after I chose and we prepared dinner and it tasted fantastic it felt like something was missing. Was I really missing a dinner roll? Probably not. My stomach was pouting because it couldn't have it.

- Energy falter / weird feeling. Just every now and then I have felt a little "off". I went on a walk last night and I definitely felt my energy zapped. I know this is due to the low carbness of it all but what I found was that making my meals well rounded really helped. For instance, bulking up on kidney beans in my afternoon vegetable soup did wonders. And a glass of milk with dinner helped too.

Pros:
- I'm bulking up my meals with vegetables instead of bread and pasta. I'll be honest, I love bread and pasta and given the choice I would bulk up with those instead of my veggies. Now, I have automatically hit my daily servings for vegetables over the last 2 days and it's been nice. So, I'm going to try to keep this balance when I get my grains back.

- Oddly enough, waking up in the morning has gotten marginally easier each day. This is my third morning and I woke up fairly easily. Please keep in mind waking up in the morning is one of the worst times of day for me so if eating like this will help make that easier I say bring it on!

- My pants are fitting better.


And that's it so far.

Today is Day 3 and here's a rundown of my eating plan:

B: spinach and mushroom egg muffins
S: vegetable soup and cottage cheese
L: chicken salad in lettuce wraps w/ chopped tomato
S: string cheese
D: chunky tomato and seafood cajun stew

But we'll see how it goes.

A Day at the Beach

So after much time spent online and reading books I decided that today I would begin Phase 1 of the South Beach diet.

I went to bed last night with my email inbox full of recipes, snack ideas and tips and my lunch bag filled to the brim with "on program" food.

How am I doing? So far so good.

Breakfast was egg muffins that I had already made which happened to be "on program" (OP). Basically, just fresh vegetables, some low fat cheese, fresh eggs, herbs and seasoning poured into a muffin tin and baked.

For my morning snack, I had some low fat cottage cheese with a small bowl of fresh vegetable soup that my wonderful boyfriend brought me.

Lunch was a chicken caesar salad - no croutons of course and my post lunch snack which I'm eating right now is almonds. 15 precious, little almonds.

Oh yes, I had some green tea w/ my breakfast and water throughout the day.

I had originally thought to begin on Monday - that way I could spend the weekend shopping for groceries and cooking. However, when I went to check out my fridge and pantry, I discovered that I had the necessary foods to start today. Also, I WANTED to start today. My meals are a little simple because these are things I'm throwing together with "OP" food that I have at hand but this weekend I'm digging into my treasure trove of recipes and I'm going to be doing some cooking.

The dinner I have planned in my head for tonight: filet mignon, roasted tomatoes w/ crusted parmesan, green beans and deviled eggs (my boyfriend wanted some so I am obliging).

Dessert = Sugar free something. Probably fudgesicles because I actually love them.

As for cravings, I had a five minute episode where I had a desperate need for toasted bread with butter. Desperate. So I had my almonds and it went away nice and quiet like.

I went on a 50 minute walk during my lunch. Nothing too strenuous but it was amazing outside and work is that much easier to handle when I can get out of the building.

Tomorrow - I really, really want to get up before work and do some circuit training. But it's a fact that me and mornings just do not mix.

1 day sort of down / 13 to go