I’ve been somewhere similar. A Brazilian place called Churrascaria Plataforma, on W 49th at 8th. Fantastic. Pricey, but worth it. They bring around assorted meats on a skewer and just start cutting it off onto your plate.
Aes, might I make another suggestion? Don’t take it the wrong way, and if I’m being too pushy or personal, tell me to shove off. Why don’t you take up walking? You’d be amazed how much a difference such a small thing can make. Also, think about other little things. Do you drink regular sodas and juices? Do diet and water instead. Do you nibble through the day on snack crackers and such? Try not to. If your weight is currently stable, and you lose 500 calories a day through exercise and diet changes (500 ain’t much. A can of Coke is 110, a Snickers is 280.), then you’ll drop about a pound a week. If you don’t want to try the drastic life change way, you might want to do something like this.
on preview: Wesley, my thinking is similar. I’d been stalled for a coupla three weeks, and I figured “I’m gonna have to re-induct anyway, so I might as well cheat a bit. Hey, my vacation’s coming up and I was gonna cheat then anyway, so I’ll do it at the same time.” And I am looking forward to the re-induction. I’ve put on the 10 lb water weight / glycogen bounceback that everyone gets when they go off Atkins, and I want it gone.
I’ve also decided that the next time I post a thread, I will do it when I am less tired. That OP is kinda jumbled, no? Also, I’ll pick up stuff on preview so that I don’t end up with 20 posts in a row. :smack:
I guess I’ll have to sit down and figure it out, but right now I’m shooting for about 155-165, and I’m a 5’8" woman. The last time I had a body fat percentage measured was a long time ago. I can get it done at the gym though. As for cooking, I have everything but a hot plate at the moment. An electric griddle sounds like a better idea for me though.
I haven’t tried many diets, so I don’t have a pattern of failures on them. I tried Weight Watchers when I was fifteen and did pretty well, except that I was rather hungry and my skin and hair became very dry. Judging by the available foods here, Atkins will be a lot easier to follow.
2 things:
[ol][]Atkins helps with the hunger cravings. While cheating, I’m munchy all the time – I’m not used to that anymore, and it’s bugging me. When I go back, that’ll go away.[]Atkins lets you eat as many eggs as you want, and my vet assures me that eggs are good for a shiny coat. ;)[/ol]
[QUOTE=Bambi Hassenpfeffer]
2 things:
[ol][li]Atkins helps with the hunger cravings. While cheating, I’m munchy all the time – I’m not used to that anymore, and it’s bugging me. When I go back, that’ll go away.[*]Atkins lets you eat as many eggs as you want, and my vet assures me that eggs are good for a shiny coat. ;)[/ol][/li][/QUOTE]
Heh. My mother told me based on the eggs alone, I should love Atkins. Eggs make me happy and as you say, they are good for coat shininess.
I’m not bothered… I’m pretty much an open book and so long as I don’t detect any sort of maliciousness behind the words (which I don’t), I won’t be offended.
And since you (sort of) asked: I’m currently on a diet of my own making that’s just eating less and watching what I eat more carefully. For example, on Saturday, I made a spinach salad with cucumber, onion, tomato, and sunflower seeds in a balsalmic vinagrette and had it for both lunch and dinner along with some diet soda (Sam’s Choice… cheap and surprisingly good).
On Sunday, I made a vegetarian lasagna (spinach, broccoli, and zuchinni) to eat for the rest of the week and had a bowl of cornflakes with 1% milk (I need to switch to skim… the 1% still tastes too rich. Bleh) for breakfast and a turkey sandwich on wheat with a bowl of olives and crumbled bleu cheese for lunch. I forgot to have dinner since I was at the movies.
Today, I’ve had a teryaki chicken sandwich with some fries and some hard candy and will probably have a salad and some of my lasagna for dinner. With more diet soda.
I’ll eventually work exercise into my diet but right now, I’m just feeling lazy and don’t feel like doing anything. From January until May of this year, I was on a mostly vegetarian diet (due to my roomate being the cook) and was exercising at least three times a week in addition to sometimes walking around five miles a day just looking for work and dropped from 310 lbs to around 265 in just four months but once I moved to Oregon (I was living in Nebraska), I let myself go and have probably shot up to around 290 right now.
It’s a constant battle. I hope to lose it and keep it off one of these days.
In response to the request for stories of ‘successful’ cheating: I lost 65 pounds on Atkins a couple of years back (and have maintained that loss!) and what I did was allow myself one cheating day per month.
I picked them out ahead of time, mostly based on holidays and other special events (Christmas, Thanksgiving, my birthday, my anniversary, etc.) and refused to even think about the content of the meals I eat then.
What I discovered over time was that a heck of a lot of my old favorite foods no longer tasted as good to me and with the rest I was naturally satisfied with a whole lot less. As in, I used to love pies. I’d bake them from scratch and eat two or three pieces. Now, I take a single slice and pretty much only eat the fruit filling plus maybe one or two bites of the crust. Not because I’m trying to restrict myself, just because that’s enough to sate my appetite.
The other thing that surprised me was how lousy I always felt the day after a cheat day: logy, slow, fatigued, bloated. It actually made me eager to get back on Atkins right away, because I knew that within 24 hours of almost no carbs that rush of energy would come back.
For me, it turned out to be an ideal way to diet, YMMV.
Oh, one other benefit of the cheating days was that it minimized friction with family members who ‘didn’t believe’ in ‘unnatural’ ways of eating. (Yes, they’re all overweight, many of them extremely fat.) Aunt Sally wouldn’t get kicked off into her ranting about my diet when she could see me eating turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy and rolls and pie and all around the Thanksgiving table. So far as she knew (since I only saw her on holidays) I was eating a perfectly normal diet…the pounds were simply evaporating for no reason.
What’s the deal with Atkins and caffeine? I’m a big fan of coffee, and wouldn’t want to give it up. I know some diets restrict caffeine, what about this one?
Just for background, I’d like to lose about 25 pounds or so. I’m about 5’4", weigh about 160, and would like to get down to about 135-140.
You’re supposed to give up caffeine during the 2-week Induction period, but I never did. I have serious migraine issues, and going cold turkey off caffeine would have been impossible for me.
I switched from Equal to Sweet & Low for sweetener, and started using Half and Half instead of milk. It made that morning coffee incredible!
Diet still worked though? I use Splenda in my coffee anyway, and would LOVE to switch to something a little creamier and yummier than milk. Like you, going cold turkey without coffee would be hell. I should cut back anyway, I don’t like the idea of NEEDING it every day, but cutting back suddenly would be too much.
Yes, indeedy. I lost 70 pounds on Atkins. I started in April of '03, and the first 30 or so pounds just melted off like you wouldn’t believe. Between April and December I lost a total of about 70 pounds (I was never sure of my exact weight when I started) and have maintained that loss. I’ve since hit a stall, but I have been cheating a bit (with stuff like bread and Chinese dumplings), but haven’t gained any back. Not really cheating, but not strictly sticking to it, exactly.
I just recently started myself on Induction again, and have lost three pounds.
There have been lots of Atkins-based theads recently (within the last year) and if you search them, there’s a lot of info to read.
I’ve completely changed my way of eating. I used to eat TONS of carbs (bread and potatoes and pasta, not to mention sweets) every day; now I eat mostly protein (chicken and fish) and dark green veggies and salads.
I suffered from terrible, debilitating migraines, and with the encouragment of my neurologist, started on Atkins to get the excess sugar out of my diet. I started with sodas, and went from there. I cut out bread, potatoes, corn, sweets, pasta; crap like that.
I ate mostly chicken, beef, turkey, fish, cheese, and lots of dark green veggies, including salad greens. I used regular salad dressing rather than “non-fat” types. I ate eggs and bacon for breakfast. I drank coffee with half and half in the morning, but only water the rest of the day. I drank about 70-80 ounces every day. I didn’t eat any of the new Franken-foods that scream “LO-CARB” on the package.
I still stick to this menu, but have tried to cut back on the fat. I limit the number of eggs I eat, and also how much fatty meat I eat, like red meat and bacon.
My migraines have nearly disappeared. The ones I do get occasionally are less severe, and don’t last as long as they used to.
I’ve decided this is the way I’m supposed to eat. I feel better than I have in years, I don’t get migraines like I used to, and it’s pretty easy to follow the diet.
BambiH congratulations on your weight loss success. 91 lbs is a wonderful accomplishment you can be proud.
Hope you have fun in NYC. I just got back from 2 weeks there and while I’m an Atkins devotee decided to take a break for my vacation too. I didn’t gain an ounce because we walked everywhere. Walked and walked and walked. Way more exercise than I was getting in the gym at home that counter acted my MIL’s cooking (she’s a feeder and since this was my first meeting I didn’t want to be picky)
I agree, food for the drive would be tricky. We drove and brought nuts and cheese cubes and stuff in a cooler. Fast food salads (which I hate) were available but in the end I ate junk and it tasted like junk. I say if you’re going to have carbs have the best carbs, not fast food, the best bagel you can find, fresh baked bread, homemade pasta.
Enjoy your trip and if you (or anyone else in this thread) is looking for a very cool low-carb message board check out www.thinner.com It’s free, it’s friendly and it’s filled with good people (like me )
Back at Bragg, I ate two meals a day. A huge salad with meat for lunch, and another for dinner. Sometimes, on weekends, I’d have breakfast too. I wasn’t “on a diet” or anything. That’s just what tasted good to me. And it was in the dining facility, so it was free. The fridge in my room was filled with one thing – Diet Coke. I never snacked and I was NEVER hungry.
Now that I’m home, I am eating treats and all kinds of garbage. Mainly because it’s available. Everyone I know keeps junk food around the house. I never bothered to buy any when I had my own place. But one can only walk by the Little Debbies on the shelf so many times before wanting one. So that, in addition to less exercise, has me gaining weight. I hate that. I can’t wait to get back up there.
I just ate some pizza and it…um…yeah, it’s in the toilet now, w/o going through my entire digestive system, and I feel like someone punched me in the stomach.
So far as she knew (since I only saw her on holidays) I was eating a perfectly normal diet…the pounds were simply evaporating for no reason. 