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 :)

Maybe I spoke too soon?

The day is dwindling down slowly. And when I say slowly, I mean S L O W L Y. Nothing too exciting has occurred.

Until now. I went into the kitchen to fix my lunch. Yes, it's late in the day but it's 3 hours since last I ate.

And there in the middle of our kitchen was a giant ice cream cake.

Here's the thing. I don't like ice cream cake. I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world to eat but if I had my choice between regular cake or ice cream cake, I'd choose regular cake every time. And don't even think about putting a scoop of ice cream next to my regular cake either. Gives me the willies just thinking about it. Soggy cake. Yuck.

Anyway, there is cake in the kitchen at my work and I'm thinking about it. Not thinking about eating it, just thinking about it. And I'm finding this extremely entertaining. I was browsing the internet and the next thing I knew I was looking at cake.

Did I google images of cake? No, I actually googled a line from an old tv show that had the words "chocolate cake" in it and the next thing I know BAM! pictures of chocolate cake everywhere.

It was funny.

I just want this day to be over. I want to go home. There's no cake there. It's safer.

:)

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

Teeth, Farmers and the Beach

My tooth has stopped aching and I'm super happy about that. Now if I can just get my jaw to work again normally then all will be right with the world again.

I still can't open my mouth very much because my jaw is still very stiff and sore but it is much, much better than last weekend.

My weigh-in came and went on Thursday. I was up .2 lbs so I'm pleased with my success given my diet.

Speaking of diet. I am having a little difficulty in controlling my food intake right now. My soft carb diet last week opened up a huge door for me. I was eating more processed food and more refined sugar than I have in quite some time. Correction, I still am eating those things and I need to get control quick. Let's face it, those things are incredibly easy to eat. They are things your body will just keep craving if you keep eating them. When I first had my dental work, I was eating those things just out of convenience to avoid pain but I don't need to be eating those things anymore. Honestly, I feel crappy.

Last weekend I went to my local farmer's market for the first time ever and I loved it. I'm fortunate that where I live I have a plethora of markets to choose from and I also have a wide variety of health food grocers surrounding me. And it's about time I started taking advantage of this so I am.

This week, all of my meals are made by yours truly with produce from my local farmers and all natural, organic ingredients from my grocers. It's a good jumping off point but I'm getting ready to take it further.

I've decided to try the South Beach Diet. I bought the book about 7 years ago and I believe I got through one week of Phase 1. I remember receiving quite a few compliments on my appearance but I stopped. There were a few reasons why and one of them was money. 7 years ago I was not in the best place financially and lets be honest, eating fresh produce and good quality protein takes some money.

Fast forward 7 years and after a lot of hard work I finally am in a place where my food budget has a lot more wiggle room. Also, I've reached a place in my life where I'm concerned with the quality of my food and how it affects my overall health. Unfortunately, pesticides, hormones, and chemicals are rampant in most foods these days and I've decided I'm going to try to avoid them to the best of my ability. I'm at an age where I've started to consider my health. I want to have a long, healthy life and opting to buy better, albeit more expensive, food is just an investment in my healthy future.

Also, in full disclosure, my body just can't handle the junk anymore. I can immediately tell the difference as soon as I consume these things. My energy takes a dip and all I want to do is nap. And lets not forget the scale. My body just loves to hold on to every bit of sugar and fat that is ingested.

Seriously, when I eat those things it's like I'm providing my body with the ammo to defeat me in the "battle of the bulge".

I've always been one to avoid diets like South Beach and Atkins - I don't like eating plans that tell me I can't have something. But the more I looked at South Beach the more plausible it seemed. The first 2 weeks (Phase 1) are without breads, pasta, potatoes etc. and fruit. I'm not too keen on the no fruit option but it's only for 2 weeks. This phase is meant to help get rid of/control sugar cravings and then you gradually start adding your fruits and whole grains back in. I would start right at Phase 2 but I have a mean sugar craving right now and it needs to be stopped. Seriously, you'd think Reese cups were my best friends.

So, this week, I'm enjoying my freshly prepared foods and coming up with new ideas for my South Beach diet. I haven't pin pointed the start day. I just came to a solid conclusion today that I'm doing this so I'm going to do some planning over the next 3 days or so and then start with a solid blueprint in place. In all honesty, I desperately just want to start right this minute but I'm a planner. And my best effort is always given when I have a well laid plan in place.

The Giant Hole

Friday, April 1st I had my lower left Wisdom Tooth removed.

No, I was not asleep, I was heavily, heavily numbed and I sat there as my dentist, whom I love, had a heck of a time getting it out. I thought my jaw was going to break. No lie. That sucker did NOT want to come out.

I have known for a month now that I was getting this done and yet somehow I had convinced myself that it would be no big deal. Well, I guess I should have planned better. I was and still am in quite a bit of pain. I still can't open my jaw and chewing is a huge problem. Thankfully, I'm 5 days in and it's getting minutely better each day.

The big obstacle for me this past week has been food. I've managed to eat soup, mashed potatoes, pasta and scrambled eggs and now I am DESPERATE for some other varieties of food. I've tried fruits and cooked vegetables and soft breads but those still required me to open my mouth way too much. The problem has been my calories. Usually I eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, meats and whole grains. Yes, your standard healthy diet. And because these are all very filling I am able to keep my calorie count in check. Well, since I've been on a mainly soft carb diet, I find that these foods don't keep me satisfied long and thus my calorie count has been kind of out of whack.

Ah, the perils of healthy teeth.

I have, however, managed to keep my exercise in check. I haven't done anything too vigorous. I found the harder I worked out the harder the pain in my head pounded. So, mainly walks and ballet strength training for me.

Now I sit and wait for this giant hole in my mouth to fill, for my jaw to start working again, and for the ability to chew food on BOTH sides of my mouth.

It's funny. Pure bliss for me right now would to be able to take a huge giant bite of a sandwich, or hamburger or anything that A) had some sort of meat B) had crisp, fresh vegetables on it and C) required me to open my mouth more than half an inch.

You know, it's the simple things.