Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Phase 2 update

It's been a while since I last posted, but life got REALLY busy. We have continued to follow the Phase 2 plan for our diet, but sometimes it's been hard. I was travelling a lot but managed to do pretty well. One thing I didn't enjoy was a grilled chicken sandwich at the airport. It had a coating on it that I couldn't scrape off, so I had to count that as my carb (not a very good carb, but carb nonetheless). The taste left in my mouth was so awful (oily) that I ate a couple of segments of an orange I was carrying with me to clean my palate. Thank goodness for oranges. Yes, I probably had more carbs than I should have, but I felt it necessary. I guess the days of eating chicken nuggets are behind me. The more good, healthy food I eat the harder it is to enjoy unhealthy food. I prefer a meal of roasted chicken, 3 cups of veggies, and a serving of fruit. It's very filling and makes me feel good that I ate right.

My husband had a harder time being good on the diet while I was gone so much and confessed to cheating. He won't tell me what he ate, only that I don't want to know. He also said he put on 5 lbs. Needless to say, he has been feeling discouraged lately.

For myself, I have noticed that my weight loss has slowed down to about a 1/2 lb. a week. I guess that is better than the other direction. Even the first phase only provided a 1 lb. a week weight loss. Since I'm not that overweight, it is a much slower process for me. I know that a slow, steady weight loss is much healthier, so I am trying to be content.

We found that we were eating a lot of vegetables that we like mayonaise with, so we're trying to cut back on how much we use. I have thinned the mayo with a little water and that helped. Three nights ago I actually ate a large artichoke with only a tablespoon of mayo - I consider that a miracle - and it was good. One of my daughters said that is how much she uses, so I gave it a try and it worked - YEAH!

Lately, I've been trying to watch the calories a little with the bedtime snack and considering not having one, although, I don't think I'm sleeping as well. Since adding the carbs in, I realize that I am eating 400-500 more calories a day, which explains why my weight loss has slowed down. Following this plan of adding the carbs in gives me the amount of calories I need to maintain my weight, so it's very interesting that I am still losing. That says something for only eating good, real food for your carbs.

We tend to have a nice smoothy (with blueberries) every morning, a BIG green salad with protein for lunch to which I add kidney beans for our carbs, and a basic dinner of some kind of protein, 2-3 cups of vegetables, and a piece of fruit. For snacks we eat a handful of almonds. My idea of a handful of almonds and my husbands are quite different, and since his hand is much larger, a handful is misleading. So, we count out 10 almonds per snack and usually have 2 snacks a day.

We are definitely eating better than we have in a long time, and we seldom feel hungry. I don't think our desire to have goodies is completely gone, but for me it is definitely in control.

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