Actually, outside of the fact it’s very wet, heavy snow, not so bad, but it’s snowed since last evening, it’s weighing down trees, and there’s blizzard conditions in the Palouse, where the wind comes sweeping down the valleys with considerable force at all times—
I did get out to get some eggs and some matches/lighter, the latter for the candles, plus the real reason that drove me out into the snow: cat litter. There are some forces of nature that top a blizzard, and cats needing their litter are one.
We’re due about a half a foot of snow. Jane got out and shoveled, and I plied the snowblower—not too hard a task. I was mortally wounded trying to get into the rain-suit: broke a nail way short, ow! but I’ll live. I love our snowblower, I love our snowblower…
Jane had just finished half the drive and the snowplow berm the hard way, with the shovel, and had decided to go out front instead and get the front walk—as I volunteered for the drive; and about that time the snowplows roared past, dumping MORE snow onto her just-finished nice driveway entrance. I got through the drive with the blower and again attacked the berm with the snowshovel…not kind to the blower to drive it into deep berm.
Not sure I like this new plastic shovel: the snow slides freely on it, and I dumped a few shovelfuls in unintended spots or had to chase lumps out into the street, trying to pick them up. But wet snow is still ‘warm’ snow, so a whack with the shovel broke up the foot-across lumps: on a real cold day, the rebound off the frozen lumps will smite thee mightily on the forehead, ruining thy morning.
Anyway, it is still coming down picture-postcard style. We’re having beansprouts with chicken for supper; the Colonel Tso’s sauce you can buy bottled is pretty good and you can’t complain about the speed. An effortless supper, and a diet-friendly chocolate ricotta cream with walnuts. We are not suffering, here.
Your supper description sounds good. I went to the South Beach site for information but didn’t get very far unless I want to join for $5 a week. That’s not a lot of money, but I don’t want to commit unless I think I can do it. Is there a book or other website for the curious?
there are books. The essence of the diet is;
2 cups of veggies, such as tomatos, broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, at every meal. At breakfast, this is V8, but can be made up by more veggies later.
you can have 2 pieces canadian bacon and an egg at breakfast.
You may not have bread, breading, potatoes, rice, carrots, or cereal, no grains, no starch —yet.
You can snack on sugar free jello, string cheese, celery with Laughing Cow cheese, and you can have parmesan on your egg.
Lunch: typically salad, vinegar and oil or Caesar, tossed,
snack again.
Supper, what I described; meat is ok, but not fatty. Olive oil for grease, where needed.
Bread comes back in phase II. brown rice, some whole wheat pasta ok in phase II.
Phase 3 is maintenance, and you just tighten up every time you slip a bit.
The theory is to get your body off the fats and starches, then bring things back slowly in phase II and discover what you CAN eat without screwing up your weight loss. Phase 3 is just adjusting to real life, and not letting yourself fall into old traps.
Thank you for this menu. It’s very helpful to get started with. I know you’ve put the ricotta cream dessert recipe on here and I’ll look it up right now.
I love veggies so that part is great. I love bread more, so that part is scary. But, something has to change!
You can start having bread once you’ve been on the diet a few weeks. 2 is recommended, but we waited a while because we were so excited about losing weight.
Some of our successful recipes:
1. shredded broccoli stems as a kind of slaw: cook with diced white meat chicken with allowable lot of House of Tsang Sezchuan sauce or General Tso’s sauce: bean sprouts also ok.
2. small steak or piece of chicken flanked by a) 2 cups of cauliflower or broccoli, green beans (no peas! no corn, only summer squashes —starch)OR blenderize cooked cauliflower, add butter, salt, and a tablespoon of powdered buttermilk (new product)
3. look up the chicken mole.
4. saute diced chicken in olive oil and Italian spice, then cut heat, add in parmesan while really hot, stir about, serve as parmesan chicken topping on massive Caesar salad.
5. coat skinless salmon filet in Durkee’s Chicken and Fish spice, cook in olive oil or grill. Serve over spinach salad.
6. alternate slices tomato and fresh mozzarella, with light sprinkle of salt, pepper, basil leaf, drizzle with olive oil. [Italian insalata]
7. spinach salad: sliced boiled egg, tomato, mozzarella, and use balsalmic vinaigrette.
8. finely diced fresh cabbage slaw, chilled, tossed with 2 parts Toasted Sesame oil, 1 part Ponzu marinade, allowed to chill while rest of dinner is cooking, served as big side to 2 small breakfast pork chops.
9. corned beef and cabbage: cook corned beef in crockpot (I add a teaspoon of nutmeg to the spice that comes with it). Boil quartered head of cabbage in separate pot: about 3pm, combine them, including all the water from the cabbage. You can eat this for 3 days till it runs out. Sorry, no carrots, no potatoes. Have some more cabbage.
10. 1/2 can black beans, boiled (I add a few jalapeno slices), then dished, smothered in mozzarella, cooked in microwave to melt cheese, then topped with diced fresh tomato and a 2 tbs dollop of low-fat sour cream.
All of these sound very good. I’m copying and printing it out to have when I grocery shop. 😀
Driving to work at 0630 took extra long: 5 mph the entire way down North Division, following behind 3 snowplows, aligned so no one could get around them. Traffic was waaaaay backed up, as you can imagine. It was slick too.
Coming home at 1100, again down North Division: deep in places; slick, & wet heavy snow. We have 9″ new inches at our place & it is still coming down. OSGuy went skiing at 49DegreesNorth in Chewelah & reports it was the best skiing he’s had in 2 years.
He returned home to find me sound asleep, Katie cuddled up under one arm & Emily asleep on my legs. Life is good.
Saw on the news that Mammoth has the most snow EVER!
Aww!
And OTOH, last week our entire beachfront road was ankle deep or deeper in mud. We got our first major rainstorm of the Wet, and all the crud that had built up in the arroyos for the last couple of years when there was no major rainfall headed for the sea posthaste. Naturally it either plugged up the drains almost immediately, or washed onto the roads and was a nuisance on its own. Our main artery was down to one lane; both shoulders and into the lanes were awash in glutinous muck a foot or more deep. Each little channel then eroded away anything that got between it and the ocean: roads, beaches, yards… I don’t envy you your snow, but I don’t like wheel-well deep mud either.
We love our snow. It’s a perfect blanket out there: it’s stopped snowing, has obligingly covered all the fragile plantings and roses, so when the temperature drops tonight, everything will be safe and snug, including the fishes in their pond. 😉
I think our total was about 7-8 inches of snow, less than OSG, who lives upward as well as northward of us. We’re on the north hill of Spokane, elevation I’m not quite sure, but our old digs was about 2000 feet, and we could be somewhere between 1800 and 2100 feet. So when they say the dividing line between who gets snow and who gets rain lies at 2000 feet, we can get snowed on.
Empty Nest… go to your local library and look for the South Beach Diet book, then find a book with listings of the glycemic index on various foods. The listings in the SBD book are fairly short, but give you an idea. I finally understood why the American Diabetic Assoc. diet said half of a small banana. When I read the listings in SBD. Bananas have a very high glycemic index number. Look for the low GI numbered foods. I love tomatoes, but V8 juice remains untasted. I’m a scrambled eggs, cheese and onions cooked in olive oil person for breakfast when I do this diet. It’s the no fruit, no milk, etc. that are hardest for the first two weeks.
I need to chant “Celery with hummus” rather than having tortilla chips with my hummus, which the youngest cat demands I share.
Thank you! I will get these books on my next trip to the library. Years ago I followed the Carbohydrate Addict’s diet and had a lot of success. The failure came when I could not maintain that over a long period of time.
Jane and I both conclude that you can actually reshape your lifestyle around this diet: it’s that ‘dessert every evening’ that keeps us going. I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but such as it is, I demand that one taste. And I grew up eating NO green veggies, actually hated broccoli and cauliflower and squash but find after you’re on them for a while, it becomes actually something you miss.
I wonder if these foods are allowed:
onions(I know you and Jane avoid them for other reasons)
canned tuna in water or in olive oil
the butter-flavored spray
dried beans (although I suspect they are too starchy)
Dried beans: black beans, pinto both ok. half a cup is a serving.
Canned tuna, fine: mayo fine, in single serving amt.; butter flavor, any flavor all ok.
Onions, garlic, all fine.
Fish is fine. Go lean on meats if possible, avoid highly processed meats. In general, given any choice, cook from absolute scratch…I do, and can usually have something on the table in 20 minutes.
Hints: buy 5-10 lbs of skinless, boneless chicken breasts, grill with salt and pepper, dice, freeze. These become the staple of anything and everything, and can go straight from freezer to lidded skillet.
buy raw veggies and dice them into ziplocks: you’re cooking, shake 2 cups of same into corningware lidded vessel, add salt, a few squirts of water, microwave while cooking meat dish, and you’re ready to go. Fish is 10 min on one side, 5 on the other or til it flakes to fork pressure, and chicken 10 on one side, 10 on the other, or 13 in a George Foreman Grill. Pre-prep is golden when you don’t want to spend your life planning.
Another hint: a carton of Swanson CHicken Broth, no msg, is a great way to be sure that chicken comes out well and not dry. 3 tbs with the chicken bits will spiff it right up.
Thanks! Sounds like smart eating, healthy and tasty.
I’ll have to clear out all the Christmas treats and give this a serious try.
I think I’ve gained about 10 pounds back since October of the 25 I lost this summer. I haven’t been trying to stay on the diet and haven’t been exercising much. My New Years Resolution is to have a little discipline and eat right and exercise more. I know its doable and I don’t want to get back to where I was before the weight loss. I am very happy youi gals are having such great success!
I am on Day 7. I have been very strict- no cheating at all. I have not lost an ounce. I don’t know if I can continue, but I will try.
Keep going, Empty Nest. It takes a while. I absolutely believe you no cheating; we occasionally hit a spot like that—you have to wonder, but I think it has a lot to do with what they call set-points. I have one at 230, one at 220, one at 210, one at 195, one at 190…these are all points at which my weight has rested for a prolonged period of time, and to which my body is willing to return given any encouragement. The good news is that it’s a little more forgiving in that you won’t quite as readily gain weight past a setpoint, unless you go at it for several days. But you won’t as readily lose, either. Then it peels off for a few pounds, then sticks again at another old setpoint…sort of like a typewriter with the tabsets of half a dozen former projects still engaged.
Right now, and since November, I’ve hit the 180 mark, and down to 178, and now with the holidays, I hit 185, then 183, 182—today it’s 181, and I had a little glitch with the Champagne—then I’m sure it’ll be another week before I see 178 again. Beyond, I know I have one old mark at 175, and then 172, and then maybe 168. I remember being at all these various weights for a prolonged time. I’m insistent on hitting 162 again. But boy, do I remember the clothes from all the prior stages! And I want to wear those khaki pants again!
Thanks for the encouragement. It is just so hard to give up everything for nothing. I was skeptical of the people who said they lost 10 pounds in Phase 1, but I expected to lose something, even the infamous “water weight” but no. I will go as long as I can.
There ARE hard spots. It’s unfortunate to be sitting on one right at the start, but that may indicate you’d already valiantly worked your way to a setpoint, and now need to break through it to get lower. What we find about this diet is that if you hit the wall and fall off the wagon for a party, a special deal, it’s not that bad. You just reform tomorrow, directly tomorrow, and go on with a clear conscience. Don’t scant those snacks at first, sugarfree jello at 10 and 3, and eventually your form of cheating-guilt gets to be actually ducking the stupid snacks because you’re really not hungry and you don’t want the nuisance of eating them.
I have been faithful to have 3 meals and 2 snacks from the approved list. I have not been hungry, but I *have* been deprived, if that makes any sense. Also, I have a physical and intellectual aversion to any artificial sweetener, which makes it hard. I gamely tried the Splenda, with the predictable physical ailments, so that’s out.
You are right about the set-points; whether I diet, or not, eventually I always get to the weight I am now and don’t seem to go much above or below it whether I “pig out” or eat right. Which would be nice except that weight is way too much for health. Also, when I was younger I could handle it; now that I have arthritis, it hurts and I worry about heart-health now. Hence the attempt at SoBo. I’m going to try to stay with it through the rest of Phase 1 and into Phase 2 to see if I get any positive results.
mmm. My best advice if you’re sensitive to sweeteners would be to take your sweets as fruits where possible. YOu might be better to go straight to phase 2 of South Beach, if sugar is a tough one. That way you can have some fruit, and some bread, while still following essentially the phase 1 diet. If you can tolerate vanilla, try this for a dessert, and it can be frozen if you like, or dusted with cinnamon: blenderize a glass of cold milk, a dash of vanilla, and half a banana, or peach. You can use raw fruit of various sorts, with dairy, milk, yogurts, ricotta, to make a sweet treat. If you can tolerate sugarfree jelly, sugarfree blackberry can also be used with ricotta to make a dessert, particularly good with chopped nuts.
Another possibility…if you like ricotta cheese (I’ll eat it right out of the container if I don’t behave myself), try making the dessert without any sweetener, just vanilla or almond extract. I found that I felt pretty weird after doing Phase 1 for several days, not bad, just kind of overly-distracted. If that’s happening to you, hang in there; for me, it went away after a while.
CJ and Mitha, thank you for the suggestions. I’m going to try them if I can’t hang on until Sat., Phase 2. It’s really the bread/pasta that is the worst craving I have but I have resisted it. We went to the Mexican restaurant last night and I did not eat ONE chip. My dinner was taco loco without the shell. So good and a nice change of taste. I’m making chili beans today. (The meat is ground venison, so it’s lean.)
You are soooooooo good!
Here’s a great tex-mex recipe: I need the fix sometimes, too.
helping of diced chicken or chicken strips. Cook in pan: small can diced chiles,black pepper, [and if I weren’t allergic to onion and garlic and somewhat sensitive to bell pepper: large onion, 1/2 chopped green bell pepper, 1/2 clove minced garlic, TBS chili powder, ground cinnamon, 1/4 tsp ground cloves, small can diced tomatoes, tbs unsweetened natural peanut butter, tbs unsweetened cocoa powder. Pour over chicken in dish, garnish plus mozzarella cheese and microwave until melted and bubbling, final dish with chopped onion/tomato/you name it. This is acceptable on Phase 1.
For a chicken stirfry with a bean-sprout sub for rice or noodles: one bag beansprouts, chicken strips cooked in some soy sauce or teriyaki sauce. Add beansprouts, maybe broccoli, stir, add “House of Tsang” brand General Tso’s sauce or Sechzuan sauce to taste, cover, cook, serve. Quick, filling. Spicy.
Yum! I got a large pack of chicken breasts so I can try this.
I did make this. I love it and will make it again. Next time I will use less cloves but that’s a minor adjustment! I had it over crisp cool lettuce and it was a feast!
@ Empty Nest….I sympathize with your problems with artificial sweeteners. May I suggest Stevia? It’s a tropical naturally sweet, zero calorie sweetener from the stevia plant that has just begun to hit North American markets. I sent a box of it to my diabetic sister in Florida a year ago. She loves it in iced tea etc. A lot of people in the south grow it as a plant and just use a few leaves when they want. If you Google ‘stevia’ you will learn more than you ever want or need to know about it. 😀 😉