Diet progress post: week one
Yesterday was the end of my first week on the South Beach diet, phase 1. This is the strictest phase of the diet - no grains of any kind, no sugar, no fruit, and limited dairy. And I've been religious about it, with no indulgences, despite many temptations.
On others' advice (and for my own sanity), I stopped weighing myself every day, but I did weigh myself yesterday, and found I was down to 169.4.
On one hand: I haven't been below 170 in a long time. And a 2 lb loss in a week is great.
On the other hand: it sure isn't anything like the 8-13 lbs the diet says you'll lose in the first two weeks.
That said, I asked ketsugami if his weight loss in phase one was nearly so precipitous as predicted, and he confirmed that no, it was still about a pound or two a week. I also suspect how much you lose in phase one has a lot to do with how fat you are to begin with, or how awfully you ate beforehand. Despite the BMI's contention that I'm obese, to the eye I'm not that overweight, and I eat pretty well already.
I also debate the contention that you will "never feel hungry" on the South Beach. I've generally been satisfied overall, but I sometimes have a rough time between that afternoon snack and dinner. Perhaps it's because my day is skewed so far forward and my dinner is skewed relatively late due to the length of my commute. I usually eat breakfast around 7-7:30, have a snack at 10-10:30, lunch at 12-12:30, afternoon snack at 3... and it's after that that the hunger really starts to set in. And then I'm on my own until 7 or 7:30, which is when I have dinner. I think the solution to this is just to try to eat larger lunches.
I worry quite a bit about moving to the less restrictive part of the diet. Having rules--having a "plan of eating"--works well for me, and I seem to have figured out that I can abstain but not moderate. Moving into phase two--or moreso from phase two to phase three--the diet becomes more about moderating. I think I need to set my own limits here; maybe add back in fruits but not grains, for example.
Meal planning has really been what has made this come together for us. As I mentioned elsewhere, I've been putting together meal plans using the MealBoard iPhone app I mentioned. I can enter recipes on their website (which avoids having to enter recipes with the on-screen keyboard), sync the app with the website, and then put together a list of meals for each day. I can then auto-generate the grocery list for the week. The app is far from perfect, and could use a few more features (a "pantry" list, accounting for serving sizes, etc), but I'm making it work for me. Thinking ahead about what I'm going to eat in a week takes some effort up front, but it means I can avoid getting into difficult eating situations. For example, when I went to Shut Up and Write last week, I brought my dinner and dessert with me, which helped to avoid just grabbing pizza with everyone else who was there. Given that most recipes I'm using make enough for 4-6 people, I only need to make about four dinners to get us through the week.
As a result of all this, Matt and I have been spending more time in the kitchen. This has its ups and downs. The good is that we're spending more time together, preparing meals. The bad is that we seem to be constantly doing dishes, and we really have to keep on top of cleaning our kitchen so that it's suitable for preparing food.
In any case, even though we're in phase 1, we had natbudin and v_cat over for dinner last night, and I think we served them quite a delicious one despite our restrictions. That said, they were probably one of the more receptive audiences we could have chosen ;) Vik often says that she looks at diets or dietary restrictions as positive challenges, and is convinced that you can make delicious food on any diet.
We've actually been eating quite tastily in general. I've mostly been trying recipes from the core South Beach Diet book, or from the South Beach Diet Cookbook.
The ricotta cremes: The diet insists you have dessert every night, and I am a-okay with that! In phase one your desserts are basically restricted to these dishes called ricotta cremes, which are part-skim ricotta cheese mixed with various legal flavorings. These are quite quite good, and I look forward all day to these. So they are a winner for me :)
Asparagus Omelets with Goat Cheese: This is from the SBDC, and it's a very poorly written recipe--Matt pointed out that it instructs you to cook the asparagus in two different places. It also calls on reduced-fat goat cheese, which is impossible to find in my supermarket. That said, it's hard to mess up asparagus and goat cheese.
Bolivian Spiced Porkchops: this is one of the restaurant-designed recipes from the SBDC. I had this my first night, and it was quite possibly the best entree we've had so far. The spice rub on the porkchops uses cardamom, coriander, lemon peel, and salt, and it's a flavor combination unlike anything I've ever had before. It also comes with a yummy mashed split pea side. The original recipe for the split peas calls for adding in a smoked ham hock to the cooking liquid; unable to find such a thing, we used liquid smoke, which is what I turn to when I want to add umami to something without the meat.
Chicken Mole: This SBDC recipe was only okay. We used cut-up chicken breasts instead of tenders, and I think that meant the chicken overcooked as a result. The sauce was better on reheating, too; fresh from the pan, the flavors were a little raw and un-knit-together.
Greek Salad: This is from the core book. It's a pretty sad Greek salad, considering it doesn't contain feta or olives (strangely, because reduced-fat feta and olives are both legal in phase one), so I added some to punch it up. The dressing--of lemon juice, olive oil, and oregano--is very good, however, and I've used it on other salads.
Hot Scrambled Tofu: I figured I would get sick of eating eggs (or egg substitutes--given my cholesterol, I opted for the latter) for breakfast every day of the diet, and planned this recipe from the SBDC into last week's menu. The first problem is that our market doesn't sell silken tofu in the correctly-sized blocks for this dish, which meant doing some odd measurement conversions. As a result, there ended up being too much turmeric relative to the other ingredients. The second problem: drying silken tofu, which the recipe calls for, is an exercise in futility. Maybe soft tofu would have been better. So it ended up being a watery, very yellow scrambled tofu dish. It tasted good, but the prep and presentation were less than ideal.
Spinach Frittata with Tomato Salsa: The is from the core book, and it's one of the better breakfast recipes. It's also the only frittata recipe that doesn't require a broiler, which we don't have. It's surprisingly easy and filling (a half-frittata is the portion size!), and can be used with any number of fillings or cheeses. Today, for example, we did it with asparagus and reduced-fat feta instead.
Overnight Slaw: This one is from the SBDC, too. I had a small head of red cabbage in my fridge from my winter CSA, so I chose this recipe to use this up. It's a yummy, easy slaw that uses sugar substitute instead of regular sugar. This is one of the things we served last night to Nat and Vik.
Sausage and Cheese Breakfast Cups: From the SBDC, these are mini-quiches you can make to eat on the go. Convenient, considering that we don't always have time in the morning to eat breakfast, and tasy, too. I don't quite feel like two of them--the serving size--fills you up, however.
Spice-Rubbed Chicken Fingers with Cilantro Dipping Sauce: This is what we had last night--another SBDC recipe. We actually purchased chicken tenders this time, and made a double batch. The only complication we had was that the spice rub doesn't seem to make as much as you would need to cover the chicken, but it was easy to just make more of the rub. The cilantro dipping sauce, which mixes almonds and parsley into the dip, was delicious, too, and will be good as a snack dip for vegetables, I believe. This was also a quick-to-prepare recipe, and good for a week night, I feel--so long as you don't mind getting the grill ready in the dark in the middle of winter ;)
Tiered Salad with Lime Dressing: This recipe is from the SBDC, too. It was another dish we served last night. I'm not sure why they call this "lime dressing," because really, it's guacamole. I guess if you mixed it in a food processor instead, it would be more dressing-like, but with three avocados simply mashed into lime juice and salsa as the recipe calls for, it's basically just guacamole. Despite that--and the fact that I don't have a suitable bowl to display it in--it's a very tasty combination of flavors. I was unsure about the raw cauliflower and tomatoes--neither of which I'm too keen on--but it blends well with the other flavors.
Turkey Patties with Fennel: This is a take on breakfast sausage, from the SBDC. You use ground pecans instead of bread crumbs to help the patties keep their shape. This was messy, but turned out good results. I felt like the patty mix could have used some salt, however. The fennel seeds are a nice touch.
Vegetarian Chili with Avocado Salsa: This was perhaps the most disappointing recipe of the ones we tried. See, phase one involves a lot of meat, and I like to slip a vegetarian recipe in here or there. This was one of the few in the SBDC that appealed to me, reading the description. Unfortunately, it turned out overly spicy (that might have been the result of trying to combine our own chili powder from cumin and cayenne pepper, rather than buying store-bought) and not very flavorful. The avocado salsa was good, though, served on the side on top of romaine lettuce.
White Bean Soup with Greens: This one was a bit of a disappointment, too, although that may be due to my own errors. The greens in this recipe were assumed to be fresh; you then are supposed to cook them by themselves for seven minutes, and they are supposed to mostly fall apart in the water. However, I have tons and tons of frozen greens left over from my CSA, so I figured the 2-3 minutes I had already blanched the greens, plus whatever time I spent defrosting them in the microwave, would cook and break them down sufficiently. Uh, no. So I have a soup with large, undercooked bits of kale that don't blend at all well with the white beans. Trying to make it better, I added a fair bit of red pepper flakes and salt, and now it's a salty soup with undercooked kale. I am considering reheating this and blending it, which might make it better.
Aaand now I've probably talked too much about my diet. If these posts bother anyone, I can filter them. Let me know.
On others' advice (and for my own sanity), I stopped weighing myself every day, but I did weigh myself yesterday, and found I was down to 169.4.
On one hand: I haven't been below 170 in a long time. And a 2 lb loss in a week is great.
On the other hand: it sure isn't anything like the 8-13 lbs the diet says you'll lose in the first two weeks.
That said, I asked ketsugami if his weight loss in phase one was nearly so precipitous as predicted, and he confirmed that no, it was still about a pound or two a week. I also suspect how much you lose in phase one has a lot to do with how fat you are to begin with, or how awfully you ate beforehand. Despite the BMI's contention that I'm obese, to the eye I'm not that overweight, and I eat pretty well already.
I also debate the contention that you will "never feel hungry" on the South Beach. I've generally been satisfied overall, but I sometimes have a rough time between that afternoon snack and dinner. Perhaps it's because my day is skewed so far forward and my dinner is skewed relatively late due to the length of my commute. I usually eat breakfast around 7-7:30, have a snack at 10-10:30, lunch at 12-12:30, afternoon snack at 3... and it's after that that the hunger really starts to set in. And then I'm on my own until 7 or 7:30, which is when I have dinner. I think the solution to this is just to try to eat larger lunches.
I worry quite a bit about moving to the less restrictive part of the diet. Having rules--having a "plan of eating"--works well for me, and I seem to have figured out that I can abstain but not moderate. Moving into phase two--or moreso from phase two to phase three--the diet becomes more about moderating. I think I need to set my own limits here; maybe add back in fruits but not grains, for example.
Meal planning has really been what has made this come together for us. As I mentioned elsewhere, I've been putting together meal plans using the MealBoard iPhone app I mentioned. I can enter recipes on their website (which avoids having to enter recipes with the on-screen keyboard), sync the app with the website, and then put together a list of meals for each day. I can then auto-generate the grocery list for the week. The app is far from perfect, and could use a few more features (a "pantry" list, accounting for serving sizes, etc), but I'm making it work for me. Thinking ahead about what I'm going to eat in a week takes some effort up front, but it means I can avoid getting into difficult eating situations. For example, when I went to Shut Up and Write last week, I brought my dinner and dessert with me, which helped to avoid just grabbing pizza with everyone else who was there. Given that most recipes I'm using make enough for 4-6 people, I only need to make about four dinners to get us through the week.
As a result of all this, Matt and I have been spending more time in the kitchen. This has its ups and downs. The good is that we're spending more time together, preparing meals. The bad is that we seem to be constantly doing dishes, and we really have to keep on top of cleaning our kitchen so that it's suitable for preparing food.
In any case, even though we're in phase 1, we had natbudin and v_cat over for dinner last night, and I think we served them quite a delicious one despite our restrictions. That said, they were probably one of the more receptive audiences we could have chosen ;) Vik often says that she looks at diets or dietary restrictions as positive challenges, and is convinced that you can make delicious food on any diet.
We've actually been eating quite tastily in general. I've mostly been trying recipes from the core South Beach Diet book, or from the South Beach Diet Cookbook.
The ricotta cremes: The diet insists you have dessert every night, and I am a-okay with that! In phase one your desserts are basically restricted to these dishes called ricotta cremes, which are part-skim ricotta cheese mixed with various legal flavorings. These are quite quite good, and I look forward all day to these. So they are a winner for me :)
Asparagus Omelets with Goat Cheese: This is from the SBDC, and it's a very poorly written recipe--Matt pointed out that it instructs you to cook the asparagus in two different places. It also calls on reduced-fat goat cheese, which is impossible to find in my supermarket. That said, it's hard to mess up asparagus and goat cheese.
Bolivian Spiced Porkchops: this is one of the restaurant-designed recipes from the SBDC. I had this my first night, and it was quite possibly the best entree we've had so far. The spice rub on the porkchops uses cardamom, coriander, lemon peel, and salt, and it's a flavor combination unlike anything I've ever had before. It also comes with a yummy mashed split pea side. The original recipe for the split peas calls for adding in a smoked ham hock to the cooking liquid; unable to find such a thing, we used liquid smoke, which is what I turn to when I want to add umami to something without the meat.
Chicken Mole: This SBDC recipe was only okay. We used cut-up chicken breasts instead of tenders, and I think that meant the chicken overcooked as a result. The sauce was better on reheating, too; fresh from the pan, the flavors were a little raw and un-knit-together.
Greek Salad: This is from the core book. It's a pretty sad Greek salad, considering it doesn't contain feta or olives (strangely, because reduced-fat feta and olives are both legal in phase one), so I added some to punch it up. The dressing--of lemon juice, olive oil, and oregano--is very good, however, and I've used it on other salads.
Hot Scrambled Tofu: I figured I would get sick of eating eggs (or egg substitutes--given my cholesterol, I opted for the latter) for breakfast every day of the diet, and planned this recipe from the SBDC into last week's menu. The first problem is that our market doesn't sell silken tofu in the correctly-sized blocks for this dish, which meant doing some odd measurement conversions. As a result, there ended up being too much turmeric relative to the other ingredients. The second problem: drying silken tofu, which the recipe calls for, is an exercise in futility. Maybe soft tofu would have been better. So it ended up being a watery, very yellow scrambled tofu dish. It tasted good, but the prep and presentation were less than ideal.
Spinach Frittata with Tomato Salsa: The is from the core book, and it's one of the better breakfast recipes. It's also the only frittata recipe that doesn't require a broiler, which we don't have. It's surprisingly easy and filling (a half-frittata is the portion size!), and can be used with any number of fillings or cheeses. Today, for example, we did it with asparagus and reduced-fat feta instead.
Overnight Slaw: This one is from the SBDC, too. I had a small head of red cabbage in my fridge from my winter CSA, so I chose this recipe to use this up. It's a yummy, easy slaw that uses sugar substitute instead of regular sugar. This is one of the things we served last night to Nat and Vik.
Sausage and Cheese Breakfast Cups: From the SBDC, these are mini-quiches you can make to eat on the go. Convenient, considering that we don't always have time in the morning to eat breakfast, and tasy, too. I don't quite feel like two of them--the serving size--fills you up, however.
Spice-Rubbed Chicken Fingers with Cilantro Dipping Sauce: This is what we had last night--another SBDC recipe. We actually purchased chicken tenders this time, and made a double batch. The only complication we had was that the spice rub doesn't seem to make as much as you would need to cover the chicken, but it was easy to just make more of the rub. The cilantro dipping sauce, which mixes almonds and parsley into the dip, was delicious, too, and will be good as a snack dip for vegetables, I believe. This was also a quick-to-prepare recipe, and good for a week night, I feel--so long as you don't mind getting the grill ready in the dark in the middle of winter ;)
Tiered Salad with Lime Dressing: This recipe is from the SBDC, too. It was another dish we served last night. I'm not sure why they call this "lime dressing," because really, it's guacamole. I guess if you mixed it in a food processor instead, it would be more dressing-like, but with three avocados simply mashed into lime juice and salsa as the recipe calls for, it's basically just guacamole. Despite that--and the fact that I don't have a suitable bowl to display it in--it's a very tasty combination of flavors. I was unsure about the raw cauliflower and tomatoes--neither of which I'm too keen on--but it blends well with the other flavors.
Turkey Patties with Fennel: This is a take on breakfast sausage, from the SBDC. You use ground pecans instead of bread crumbs to help the patties keep their shape. This was messy, but turned out good results. I felt like the patty mix could have used some salt, however. The fennel seeds are a nice touch.
Vegetarian Chili with Avocado Salsa: This was perhaps the most disappointing recipe of the ones we tried. See, phase one involves a lot of meat, and I like to slip a vegetarian recipe in here or there. This was one of the few in the SBDC that appealed to me, reading the description. Unfortunately, it turned out overly spicy (that might have been the result of trying to combine our own chili powder from cumin and cayenne pepper, rather than buying store-bought) and not very flavorful. The avocado salsa was good, though, served on the side on top of romaine lettuce.
White Bean Soup with Greens: This one was a bit of a disappointment, too, although that may be due to my own errors. The greens in this recipe were assumed to be fresh; you then are supposed to cook them by themselves for seven minutes, and they are supposed to mostly fall apart in the water. However, I have tons and tons of frozen greens left over from my CSA, so I figured the 2-3 minutes I had already blanched the greens, plus whatever time I spent defrosting them in the microwave, would cook and break them down sufficiently. Uh, no. So I have a soup with large, undercooked bits of kale that don't blend at all well with the white beans. Trying to make it better, I added a fair bit of red pepper flakes and salt, and now it's a salty soup with undercooked kale. I am considering reheating this and blending it, which might make it better.
Aaand now I've probably talked too much about my diet. If these posts bother anyone, I can filter them. Let me know.