Yesterday’s Menu
Morning snack*: 1 part-skim mozzarella cheese stick, 8 oz. glass of skim milk
At the office: 6 oz. can of V8
Lunch: 1 Subway Chicken Ranch Atkins Wrap (hold the bacon).
6:30pm: 2 more 6 oz. V8s
Supper: 1 homemade 2 egg omelet with part-skim mozzarella cheese, roasted peppers, and garlic powder — prepared in olive oil with salt & pepper to taste.
Dessert: Roasted peppers
Miscellaneous: countless Diet Cokes, Diet Pepsis, and water bottles (sparkling and still) throughout the day.
And the scale says: 174 pounds.
*South Beach doesn’t recommend skipping breakfast, but I’m not a breakfast person, never have been. Instead I choose to eat something light, but filling, to forestall real hunger later in the day.
Filed under: The Diet by Matthew Alexander |
That was disciplined and efficient, not to mention potentially palatable. (I have fears of V8, but I should try it.)
I am a breakfast person, but picking the right breakfast has proved tricky. Thoughts on a good breakfast? Yesterday, tuna hardly sufficed. Given my meeting this morning in a half hour, no time remains for breakfast anyway.
Comment on August 11, 2004 @ 8:54 am
Hollando:
One’s menu need not be as spartan as the one I described. Successful diets, for me, have always included calorie cutting and portion-size reduction. But vigilance in these areas is not a South Beach requirement.
Rather, one is encouraged to eat three square meals and snack as necessary. The idea is not to be hungry, ever. When you are, eat until you’re full. But here’s the beauty part: when you eat the right things, you fill up faster on less and stay full longer. Though I didn’t eat much on Monday, I never felt like I was “dieting.” Indeed, the challenge for me is to resist boredom snacks, which have no relation to actual hunger.
Of course, it takes a couple days for your body to adjust, but once you get your blood sugar under control, it’s really amazing. Pretty much every day, I’d have times when I’d feel slightly irritable, listless, hungry, and unable to concentrate. This was a result of crashing blood sugar. No more.
Another trick to minimize hunger pangs: drink water throughout the day. It fills your stomache and aids in digestion.
I was a little spooked by V8 at first, too, but we’d been stocking it at the office, so I gave it a shot. I quite like it now, tastes like tomato juice with a flavor kick. Definitely chill the cans first.
Comment on August 11, 2004 @ 5:48 pm
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Comment on August 11, 2004 @ 5:49 pm
I’m not really a breakfast person either, if only because I’m not really a wake-up-in-the-morning-at-all person (which is why I can work out for an hour at 11pm, but have extended alarm clock struggles each morning). But I’ve found that eating something in the morning, even if only a few hundred calories, makes it much easier to control portion size and food selection in the afternoon and evening. Skipping breakfast tends to lead to a particularly large lunch.
I’ve found that yogurt smoothies, which are something of a new trend, are great for this. I can buy a bunch at Costco, toss them in the fridge (Stonyfield Farms and Breyers seem to the best) and grab one on my way out this morning. They’re a bit under 200 calories, low in fat, taste good, and even come with a spattering of useful nutrients. Not terribly carb controlled, but since that’s not an integral part of my eating plan that’s not a big deal.
This morning I ran out, so I substituted a bowl of instant Quaker Oatmeal and a glass of orange juice, a combination that is about equal in terms of calories.
Comment on August 12, 2004 @ 8:54 am