My target is 10 lbs, but I’m in it for the blood lipids. I ususally eat like I am in phase 3 of the South Beach diet, but I have a friend at work who wants to lose some significant wieght so that her back stops hurting (this worked in the past, but she has the wieght on again). I promised to do the Phase 1 and 2 thing with her to give moral support. Her husband may get dragged into it because she does all the shopping and cooking. I am actually quite comfy on the Souht Beach diet, but now that I am thinking about it, it makes me crave celery with peanut butter. mmmm
Been on since early December. I did Phase One right up until Christmas Eve. I’ve lost at least 20, but the most important thing for me is that I don’t have the cravings for all the sugary crap foods like I used to.
I used to come home from a stressful day at work, hit 7-Eleven and polish off a box of donuts right before going to sleep. And I used to like it. These days, the mere thought of it makes me feel sick to my stomach.
Some foods I’m enjoying on South Beach…
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Lowfat cottage cheese. I mix in a packet of Sweet N’ Low or Equal and love this stuff.
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Frozen Edamame. Dunno if you have a Trader Joe’s or similar health food market near you. Mine is about 30 minutes away and I buy edamame 6-8 bags at a time.
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String cheese snacks. Good stuff, but expensive. Sometimes I hit a craving in the middle of the day and these get me by. Be sure to find the low moisture, part skim kind.
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Sugar free Jell-O Gelatin Snacks. Great for dessert.
I love South Beach. It’s the first thing that’s actually worked for me, and I see myself adopting the lifestyle instead of just going on for a few weeks to lose weight and then going back to old habits.
Good luck!
Spousal unit and I are going back on South Beach as soon as I get to the grocery store and stock up on the right stuff. His cholesterol is too high and I gained back almost everything I lost when I did it last year. It did great at bringing my cholesterol down, but with selling the house, moving, buying another house, fixing it up… well, all good habits went by the wayside. sigh
I may have to go back to Phases 1 and 2; I’d gained a few pounds in the run-up to Christmas, and I gained a few more over Christmas at the in-laws’. When I went to work yesterday morning, I had to pull my 36-waist slacks out of the back of the closet. I’m not gonna let that stand.
Mr. Athena and I started South Beach today, for both financial and health reasons. We spend an abhorrent amount of cash on eating out, alcohol, and groceries that end up being thrown away. I have good intentions when I go to the grocery store and buy a lot of greens. Then I come home and order pizza and eat sweets and two weeks later throw out the balls of mush that used to be fresh vegetables.
So we’ve resolved to:
- cut WAY back on the drinking. For the first 2-3 weeks of the diet, no alcohol at all.
- actually eat what we bring home from the grocery store. Even pre-diet, if we did this we’d probably both be healthier
- save money by eating groceries, not drinking so much (we buy the good stuff, which adds up very quickly), and not eating out/ordering in as much.
South Beach looks like it will work for us. We’re following the menus in the book - neither of us has any desire to eat that compicated every day - but instead just printed out the list of “approved” foods and went to the grocery store and stocked up on 'em. We tried Atkins once a few years ago, and both of us had a hard time with it because we just couldn’t get our heads around restricting vegetables. After 3 days, I was so tired of eggs and meat that I just about stopped eating altogether, which made me sick. Eggs+meat+veggies, I can live with. Eggs+meat and very little else, yuk.
So how are you all doing? Any good recipes or hints for Phase 1 that you want to share? Gimme da good stuff!