15 lbs down.
We started on Atkins, then slipped over to REAL South Beach, and from that point on, though occasionally eating more than we want, we’re losing. Why REAL South Beach?
Ever since South Beach licensed their name and logo to Kraft, people have gotten a bad impression of how the diet actually works. We, female and at that stage when weight loss is nearly impossible by regular means, cannot buy those South Beach foods in the grocery store and lose weight. REAL South Beach involves only non-packaged foods. If you want to try it, go to the South Beach site and sign up: it’s not expensive. You get the recipes that way.
The essence of it: at every meal you eat a little protein, 2 cups of veggies that do NOT include any veggie with starch, and twice a day, a half a cup of dairy. You’re thus getting your carbs directly from vegetables like lettuce, cucumber, radishes, summer (but not winter) squash, cauliflower and broccoli, green beans. You get your protein from beans or meat or eggs. You can have 2 pieces of Canadian (but not regular) bacon.
And you have 2 snacks, typically a sugar free Jell-o cup with fatfree Coolwhip; or 2 celery sticks with either hummus or Laughing Cow cheese; or half a cup of cottage cheese.
Breakfast: 2 Canadian bacon, egg, 6 oz V-8; snack: 2 sticks celery with 2 tsp hummus; lunch: 2 cups of spinach or regular salad with vinegar and oil or Caesar, with mozzarella and tomato slices; snack: Jell-o or stick of string cheese; supper: steak, 2 cups of salad or other veggie; dessert: ricotta cream (ricotta with flavoring set in cold fridge).
The theory runs that you eat ONLY this way until you’ve lost significantly. Then you start working in a little more carb, in the form of whole grain bread (1 slice) or (not ‘and’!)half a cup of brown rice (cooked measure) daily. If you gain weight on that, you back off, and immediately go back to the prior way of eating until you lose it. Then you try again. Ultimately, you get your body used to the notion that a little carb is not an invitation to go hog wild. You gradually increase the carb until you can eat a sandwich with 2 pieces of bread, or enjoy wholegrain pasta in a moderate amount. And you go on inching your way (with occasional retreats) toward a normal eating pattern, but never again unbridled access to starches. It takes a long time to accustom your body to moderation in that regard, and you’ll have to watch it.
Yep, it’s strict. But after trying every diet on the planet, I can say you’re not hungry on this diet: you begin trying to duck ‘snacks’, because they’re too much trouble to eat; but you should go on snacking: the idea is to keep your blood sugar up, and keep your body working.
Work, oh yes. We have to go fix breakfast, two hours later fix a snack; two more hours, fix lunch, which involves salad-making, AND fix the dessert for the evening, which needs to set; and for supper, you have to fix a main dish from scratch, and you have to slice and cook or salad-prep two cups of veggies apiece. It is WORK, my friends. But any diet that has you both losing weight and strongly wanting to duck a meal just because you’re not hungry, is good, in our book. We take our vitamins; and we both eat things we don’t like. I’m not fond of lettuce. Jane’s not fond of tomatoes. But we cope. Clothes are getting beyond loose: I’m going to have to find a belt. I refuse to buy intermediate clothes. But I’m now wearing Jane’s castoffs, and if anybody gets to buy new clothes, she should, because she’s the smallest, and I can wear what she’s dieted out of.
So hurrah for 15 pounds. That means I’ve lost 55 pounds from when I was at my heaviest (when we moved up to Spokane) and I have my heart set on losing more. I have a trunk full of perfectly good size 12 jeans. I am now under a 16 and headed for 14. Due to my height, I’ll never get into a 10-anything. But I’ll work my way into a Misses 12 if at all possible. Hurrah for us!
Yay! It feels good to lose the weight. And you may want to think about getting some “intermediate” clothes… I’ve been where you are and there comes a point where the belt just doesn’t cut it any more. I hit Target for some relatively inexpensive slacks at that point. The added bonus is that it gives you extra clothes to grow out of.
I’m wondering if you might be able to do some of that prep work in batches. For example, make the ricotta cream for several days at once, dish it up into serving size dishes (I find the store brand gladware helpful for this), or prep the salad greens for several days at once and throw them into a big bowl in the fridge? And if you know you are going to need matchstick veggies, make a bunch and throw the extras in the fridge? I have to admit, as a single person trying to lose weight, I do most of my cooking for the week on Sunday. Slow cookers are very much my friend, as are one-pot dishes.
One of the interesting things I have found is that, having cut out most fast food and frozen dinners for the last year, I am finding them a lot less satisfying than they used to be. I mean, I never thought of McDonald’s as haute cuisine, but I didn’t have the “why did I spend my money and calories on THAT” feeling that I now do when I try it. And it was even more interesting to see that my favorite frozen dinners are now kind of just “eh”.
So, keep it up!
LOL! I have to say that’s about the way I aim to eat, except I have porridge with nuts and raisins in it and a bit of cold milk on it for breakfast …. of course the holier than thou doesn’t always happen, and if I’m tired the 80% cocoa chocolate gets nibbled at …. tiredness makes one crave carbs … well done, it’s more work, but it sounds ever so good for your bods .. and hooray for the 15 lbs!
That is so encouraging, congratulations to the two of you. Having hit my own all time high on Monday morning, I started Weight Watchers on line this past week. I think it works in a somewhat similar way to South Beach and I have some hope for myself on it. The thing that strikes me about it is that it is what I have always known was the way to go about it – smaller portions, fiber rich low fat food, but they provide aids that are of great assistance. They don’t tell you you can’t eat something, they just give you a set number of points per day, tell you to mark down everything you eat, and tell you what points each food you eat has. I get 20 points this week (after losing 2.8 pounds last week they took a point away). You can keep track of your activity and you can swap an activity point for a food point if it suits you, although they note you’ll lose slower if you do. The other thing they do, which I think is brilliant, is they give you 35 extra points a week, to use if you go over or really need a treat. It is nice to know that if you find you need a treat you can have one.
good luck with this.
One of the most helpful things; a kitchen scales, and measuring spoons. Underestimating how much I’m eating is one of my worst mistakes.
or there’s the classic thing of buying much smaller plates, hahah … don’t I remember reading some actress or other did that and even had smaller cutlery to help the illusion!
I find that Weightwatcher’s on-line works really well. Just as a note, you lose a point every time you go under a 10 (so at 160, 150, 140, etc). So you don’t have to worry about that happening again for a while. One of my favorite tools of theirs is the Recipe Builder. It lets you take those recipes you already eat, put in the ingredients and the number of portions, and see how many points they are. Some are quite shocking, when you do that! And some things you think should be really high point values aren’t.
And yes, measuring spoons and a scale are ultra important! It’s so easy to over-estimate serving sizes. The one bit of Weightwatcher’s gear which I do recommend to people is their serving spoons… 1 cup, 1/2 cup, and 1/4 cup size, which makes dishing things out much easier.
I also do the small plate thing. It helps keep the portion sizes down, and does seem to help with making me feel fuller. The other helpful thing is to chop and slice things up. 3 oz of chicken doesn’t seem like a lot when it’s set down in front of you in one piece, but if you chop that up and add it to salad, or stir-fry, or soup, it suddenly seems like a lot more. I was allotting myself 4 oz of corned beef, sliced really thin, and after slicing 3 oz of it, decided that there was just no way I was going to eat another ounce-worth of it! But give it to me in one thick slice, and I can easily eat more than 4 oz.
America’s obsession with food never ceases to amaze me. I have spent some time in what is euphemistically called the “Third World”. Where resources are scarcer and there is still great pomp and circumstance associated with its acquisition, preparation, and consumption. We are the only society I know of that produces lower calorie substances so we can eat larger amounts of them in one sitting.
I also made it though Ranger school, where I was systematically starved for four months at a time. I went in at 240 and came out the second time around at 180, looking like I had escaped Auswitch. It gave me a greater appreciation of eating regularly.
I have eaten things that would turn the stomachs of most and came home to be reviled by the things my countrymen consume that come out of frozen little boxes or are handed to them though drive though windows. I grew up in a small town in a class of around 48. We had two fat boys and three fat girls in our class and they really stood out. Now I go by a playground and it the half dozen skinny kids that stick out.
It has been almost a decade since I have eaten “Fast Food” the only thing fast about it for me is how fast it makes me sprint for the bathroom after I have consumed it. Now that I have passed 40 and have to sit behind a computer more than working 10hr days in the field I started gaining weight.
My solution was simple. Walk with 60 lbs on my back in the morning for 40min. Lift weights while I listen to the news in the evenings. Cut out all leavened bread, one sweetened drink a day, and no snacks after eight at night. Other than that I eat pretty much as much as I want, though my tastes tend to run pretty healthy anyway. Like a bowl of cottage cheese with fruit over a bowl of ice-cream. I have managed to drop about 35 pounds since this Spring. I am 7’1” and pushing around 300lbs with a rounded bodybuilder’s musculature. I.e. I’m not down to 4% body fat, but the muscles are in there.
Lifestyle and availability is a large part of it. The city I live in isn’t built for walking, while a lot of European and Asian cities are. I’d love to have their lifestyle as far as food goes and live a less sedentary lifestyle, but I’d get hit by a car or robbed or have to go 20 blistering miles before I could do my daily routine on foot. We just don’t have those neighborhood stores in most cases anyway. New housing developments often don’t even have sidewalks! I’ve noticed less neighborhood playgrounds too. People expect you to drive a half hour or more from your home to the store, gym, and playground.
I fortunately always got sick from fast food even as a kid so I never fell for those kinds of traps because my body wouldn’t let me. I’ve gone through periods of time where I didn’t have much money for food and had to go back to the basics and I found that the regular food everyone else liked from boxes at the store or in chain restaurants tasted bland or over salty to me and then went through my digestive system in about ten uncomfortable minutes. I also found the “American” diet is just hard to do in a healthy way. Much of it was from a time where people worked out in the fields or factories or other labors, not the modern office. It might be traditional and often tasty (I love Thanksgiving day food for example), but we are no longer living the lifestyle of those people. Not sure what the answer is, but I’ve started to reality enjoy foods from other countries that have complex flavors and simple, fresh ingredients. If I want something that will stick to my ribs I’ll make a curry or if I want something lighter I’ll do a thai dish. They aren’t technically low-cal, but the ingredients are fresh, all food groups are accounted for, and I know exactly where the calories are coming from. I’m still young though and never really had a weight problem. Who knows how that all will work for me when my metabolism starts to slip. I know my mom is struggling with it and she is eating better than ever and not making much of a dent.
The diet we think of as “American” now is not what we were eating even 40 years ago. Here is an interesting dissection of the trends in American consumption since 1970.
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/12/us-weight-lifestyle-and-diet-trends.html
Even if you don’t agree with the conclusions of the blogger, it is clear from the data that we’re not eating the way our grandparents did!
I’ve been losing well, too. Must be the mind control satellites.
One carb substitute I find satisfying (but doesn’t turn on the carb-glut switch) is popcorn. It is a vegetable, after all: just corn with enough water in it to pop. I get the low-fat microwave bags from Costco: 2 servings of 120 cal. If you drink water as you eat it, it’s extremely filling.
The hard part is being good during the holidays. Sigh.
Consider that over a sixty year career you will eat about 65,000 meals – finding things that you like can get to be a real chore.
But the real question is – does Ms. Cherryh write better fat or thin?
Have a nice Halloween.
Thin, I swear to you, because I feel better.
One thing that has always blown the diet for me is scheduling, especially around cooking for 2 with disparate tastes. I work the standard 8 hour day, 5 days a week. DH and I have gotten back on the exercise bike, and TiVO is our friend; we can watch episodes of Star Trek while we exercise. He gets home earlier, which means he gets first dibs on the bike, and is ravenous by the time I come home. My bike time gets bumped to after dinner! He’s also a finicky eater; you are fortunate that you and Jane mostly share likes and dislikes. It drives me crazy to prep several days’ worth of meals, only to have him ask for mac and cheese because he’s not in the mood for grilled chicken and asparagus.
Here’s tonight’s offering: another ricotta creme, but this one is especially good:
1/2 cup ricotta for each, dump in several tbs Splenda, another one or two of vanilla, and stir in 2 tbs cinnamon; put in ramekin to refrigerate, dumping a heaping tbs of cinnamon powder atop.
Deeee licious.
My wife and I are doing Weight Watchers and it’s working OK (I’m 15 pounds down after about 15 weeks, my wife likewise only her exact stats are a closely guarded secret). You can eat what you want but not very much of it!
But what made me chuckle is your comment about WORK. My wife comments several times a week about how long it takes to prepare a decent salad.
It’s been doable so far, especially because the fruit has been so good the last few months, replacing non-healthy snacks with healthy ones has been easy. Now the fruits are becoming not so good. Getting through the winter will be tough.
Congratulations! Fifteen pounds! Wow! 😉 😀 😆 The first few weeks while establishing new habits is the hardest.
Dieting has been put on my back burner due to an infected molar (two visits to an oral surgeon, three for a root canal and I am not done.) At least I have not gained anything!
Ricotta is such a mild flavor that it can take all sorts of spices, we like five spice, pumpkin pie, and apple pie. I throw it in the blender to smooth it out; after refrigeration it tastes close to cheese cake. Last summer after beating it I threw it in the ice cream freezer. It’s not quite ice cream but it sure is good!
One rule I have stuck to is ALWAYS sit at the table to eat off a plate. Even snacks are eaten at the table. The one exception is eating popcorn, which I hot air pop, while watching movies.
Happy Halloween! 8)
I am go to throw out one of my pet peeves about recipes here, where I may find sympathizers. And that’s calling for volume amounts (generally cups) of fruits and veggies, when I buy them by weight. Right now I am trying to figure out how much I need for a recipe, and it’s hard to find this kind of info on the net. Plus, of course, the amount you can fit in a cup depends on the size of the pieces… 2 inch cubes have more dead space than julliene. The only thing worse is when they specify “small”, “medium”, or “large”! That’s not even consistent within fruit. A large Pink Lady is probably the same size as a medium Granny Smith or Fuji, at least at my farmer’s market. Specify 8 oz, and then I can figure out what size and type I want to use!
I do sympathize. Then there’s my gran’s really old-fashioned recipes: “4 double handfuls of flour”, “a pinch of salt”, half a handful of sugar…. This was the farmhouse-to-farmhouse recipe exchange. My gran was mini. My hands are maxi compared to hers.
On the other hand, it probably does adjust the recipe to the size of the user!
That feeling good is the best part –
Jonathan
Thrift store? Everyone down here claims they are very good up there. Of course, being University students, their perspectives may be skewed, but with any luck you could find someone else’s intermediate clothes.
Size 14, all! The 16’s were falling off my rear. we celebrated Halloween with coconut cream pie and carrot cake. Now we have to get good again!
When you consider at one point I was wearing men’s 42XXL jeans, we’re doing pretty good even with pauses for holidays!
Good for you! You are inspiring/encouraging me to get back on track.
I find sizing strange to say the least. In August I decided that since I was doing a fair amount of traveling this summer and fall I would buy three pairs of pants. First pair, size14, were too tight so I,*very* annoyed with myself got a bunch of 16’s to try on. The one pair was perfect. The next pair falling off, so I went back to a 14, which fit perfectly. The third pair I looked like I was trying on Mommy’s clothes. Ended up with a 12. Three different brands all fairly pricey. Guys I talk to don’t seem to have this problem.
@smartcat: Women’s clothing sizes are all subjective. Every designer picks some model that _he_ thinks is a size 10, and designs for that person. So one person’s 10 may be a different designer’s 8, or 16, or 4. It’s very annoying.
Congrats! That’s fabulous news.