As usual, I’m already feeling better without the crap in my diet.
The basic rule is “keep the carb-count below about 30,” but the spirit of the law is “no refined foodstuffs.” I’ve had lots of cheese, fish, eggs, and some green stuff like lettuce, onions, and green peppers. Oh, and pickles. Love ’em. I’ve also had a couple of Atkins Shakes — they’re sort of a crutch. I like ’em, but “whey extracts” are, by definition, pretty refined.
And I’m down about four pounds from my start weight. I’ve been packing water (almost a gallon a day of assorted clear fluids, and very little soda), and peeing like the proverbial race-horse. I’m not sure the fat is exactly melting away from my body, but I feel pretty good. As usual, for this diet.
Except for the cravings. I want toast. I want oatmeal. I want to pack an entire bowl of sticky-rice into my drooling maw one dipped-in-curry fistful at a time. And so it goes. I settled for some low-carb masaman curry (sweetened with Splenda, and sans potatos) in a lettuce-wrap.
The funny thing is that when I’m hungry I feel GOOD about it. I feel like I can actually wait until mealtime to eat. It’s when I’m munchy that I run into trouble.
So… Day three, and it’s about par for the course. I’m doing a few calisthenics, and trying to work my way up to a full regimen of do-it-at-home exercises, but I’m still taking it kind of easy.
Once I lose another 8 pounds I get to treat myself to that big bowl of sticky-rice. But the bowl after that one is almost 20 pounds away…
Aaand I just had an avocado. Man, I love those things. And today at Walmart they had ’em for 50 cents each, with little stickers on ’em that said “RIPE.” That means “you can eat this today, rather than having to wait.”
What a treat.
Green peppers are awesome. 😀
I’ve lost 20 pounds on a diet with them, but then I’m terrible with vegetables so it’s either green peppers or asparagus, and is asparagus expensive where you are? It is here.
Kudos on feeling good though, especially with the drinking water because I can never manage 8 glasses a day. 🙂 The only pointers I can give are probably more specific to girl diets, stuff like flaxseed oil and mountain bread.
Sandra and I are looking into doing some hard-core whole-grain bread in our bread machine. I could treat myself to some toast if it were full of whole wheat flour, wheat germ, rolled oats, and such. Granted, it’d go down like buttered particle-board, but with the carb-cravings I develop on this diet I think I’d actually eat it and enjoy it.
This must be why our pioneer forefathers were willing to eat that kind of fiber.
Yeah, nothing really toasts nicely like white bread, it’s a real pity. Soy-lin bread is almost a decent alternative, because it’s a soft bread anyway, unlike a lot of other whole-grains.
Homemade whole grain breads can taste awesome when toasted. Much more flavor and more complex flavor than white bread. I’ll ask my wife what type of bread she made with my dad when we were visiting this weekend. It was pretty good by itself and awesome when toasted.
OK, my wife woke up. It was a molasses rye bread
Ah… depending on the amount of molasses, that would likely be verboten for me. Too much sugar.
I thought about that a bit, and decided to throw it out there since molasses is somewhat less refined than white sugar. The bread was very tasty and has more complex carbs than white bread. This is important for my father becasue he is a sawyer and does a lot of physical labor every day. The complexity of the carbs helps endurance and he is working hard enough that he really doesn’t need to worry about the calories.
You will have to make your own decision on what the dividing line will be, but it does make “healthy toast” that doesn’t taste like ceiling tile. (yes I do have grounds for comparison)
PLEASE go get some L-Glutamine. Get some help with the cravings. Don’t Cave!
You know it’s worth it!
I do 1000mg in the morning and 1000mg at night. You COULD do more if you need to.
Artificial sweeteners with dextrose or aspartame also trigger carb cravings.
Mmmmmmmmmmm, cheese.
By the way: You may be interested in a study by Sweden’s Karolinska Institute that found that full-fat dairy products are actually more beneficial for weight control and weight loss than low-fat or skim.
There’s two types of people in the world; people who are inclined to overeat when they’re nervous, and people who are inclined to overeat when they’re bored. I’m in the latter camp, and it sounds as though you are too. I’d consider coming up with a non-food-related reward for good behavior on your diet, if I were you.