Phase I, Day 9

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Breakfast: V-8, cup of coffee with milk

Brunch: 3 egg omelette with cheese, spring greens salad with tomatoes, 2 virgin marys [meal at friend's home]

Dinner: spring greens salad with pear, tomatoes, mushroom terrine from hotel room service

Late night snack: pistachios

Exercise: none

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I continued to be a Very Bad Vegan today. I ate some slivers of pear on my salad, too. They were miniscule, though, and they looked so lonesome on the plate...

Also, I went to church this morning with my friend, and noticed bread and wine on the alter. But they didn't have actual communion -- I guess it's a Lent thing to have it up there without actually using it. Big relief! Because I was wondering how I was going to explain to the minister that the Eucharist is not on the list of "Approved Foods" for Phase I! (I suppose if I were Catholic, after transubstantiation then it would perhaps... ok, nevermind.)

Tomorrow is the big day (my job talk, plus interviews). Have resisted the urge to order homemade honey granola with bananas from room service for my breakfast. Instead, tore up little card to ensure no last minute changes of heart, and will instead eat a V-8 and more freaking nuts.

Phase I, Day 8

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Weight/Measurements:

Weight: 131 pounds
Bodyfat: 29.0% (no change -- but again, not reliable)
Waist, holding in stomach like I normally do: 28.5 inches
Waist, letting it all hang out: 29.5
Waist around my belly button, holding in stomach like I normally do: 31.5
Waist around my belly button, letting it all hang out: 33.5
Hips: 37
Chest: 31
Bust: 38
Thighs: R22, L21

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My first set of measurements, and they are about what I expected. I've lost three pounds. My guess is that 2 pounds of it is fat (and hopefully not muscle), and about a pound of water. Probably more like half and half, gauging by my calorie count for last week, but hey, I'm an optimist! (I ate about 8000 calories last week; maintenance as I've said is a little under 14000. This leaves a deficit of a little less than 6000, or about a pound-and-a-half of fat.)

Where did it come off? Naturally, part of it came off the two pockets of fat I'd be more than happy to keep--my boobs. I lost a half an inch there. But God is good, so a full inch came off my chest, giving me a net *contrast* of +.5 inches! That happy trend, sadly, can't continue, since I'm pretty much showing bone on the chest already.

The rest came off almost exactly where I'd like: a half inch all around off my midsection. A bit more off my hips, and I guess I did have a little to lose there (my fighting trim is about 36-37 inches in the hips.) Nothing off the thighs, but I don't put my weight there. I still have the freakish difference between right and left. I'm wondering if the bulk in the right thigh explains why I tend to get running injuries in my right knee and right lower back -- the imbalance must affect my stride (more power/muscle on the right).

At 120 pounds, I usually have a 27 inch waist. That means that the rest of my fat loss should start coming off of there now, rather than off my hips and chest, where I had less to lose. (If more keeps coming out of my bra, I'm going to be pissed.)

So on net, I'd call this good news! I've lost a couple of pounds, without ever really feeling hungry. On a normal diet, I'd be so obsessed with food I wouldn't be able to think of anything else. This positive feedback should be just what I need to keep me on the straight and narrow for the weekend.

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Breakfast: Gardenburger breakfast patty with guacamole

Midmorning snack: 3 oz baked asian tofu from TJ's

Lunch: V-8

Midafternoon snack: celery and full-fat hummus

Dinner: restaurant appetizers (mediterranean dips with veggies, beets with goat cheese, asparagus with roquefort, sundried tomatoes with mozzarella, vegetable puree)

Exercise: none

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It's just plain not possible to eat at the times I should while on this trip. And as I expected, I became a cheater-head, eating cheese for dinner. But I didn't cheat on the SBD part. It was easy to stay motivated, since I had such nice news on the scale this morning.

Phase I, Day 7

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Breakfast: American tofu scramble (note to self: tofu scrambles get narsty when they've been in the refrigerator for several days)

Midmorning snack: V-8

Lunch: portobella mushroom salad; iced tea [restaurant meal]

Midafternoon snack: roasted eggplant & red bell peppers [from deli]

Dinner: 3 T hummus with 1/2 red bell pepper; 2 T macadamia-cashew butter

Exercise: none

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Today is the first day I actually felt thinner. My pants were definitely smoother in the front. I'm really looking forward to taking all my measurements tomorrow morning!

I was quite proud of myself -- I ate at a fancy restaurant where there was literally one thing on the menu I could possibly eat, and even then only if they took off the crumbled blue cheese. So I asked for it without cheese and didn't eat a bite of anything else. Good girl! (pat pat pat) But I have much bigger challenges ahead: my wild weekend in Chicago starts tomorrow.

Phase I, Day 6

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Breakfast: a few spoonfuls of baba ghanoush, can of V-8

Midmorning snack: 4 brazil nuts; cup of green tea

Lunch: tofu/cashew stir fry from food court. Thought I'd try a smaller portion than my usual. Regretted it.

Midafternoon snack: can of V-8

Dinner: cup of leftover restaurant chili from last night; 1 T almond butter

Exercise: none

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I was reviewing my goals for this diet. I listed that I wanted to "feel better." I don't know why I said that. I feel fine. I just felt shallow saying I wanted to lose 14 pounds and look good in a bikini. So to pretend I actually care about this diet for health reasons, I wrote that I'd like to "feel better." The truth is, I will "feel better" if I don't "feel tubby."

So today: peed a lot, ate a little. (I think I was overdoing it on the water.) Felt hungry at lunch, but for the most part, I had no problem sticking to the diet. It really is impressive how well the SBD kills hunger. I wonder, will it stay that way? Or will the caloric deficit catch up to my brain soon, and leave me ravenous?

Phase I, Day 5

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Breakfast: cucumber slices with baba ghanoush; can of V-8

Midmorning snack: healthy spoonful of almond butter; cup of green tea

Lunch: tofu/cashew veggie stir-fry [from Food Court]

Midafternoon snack: 4 brazil nuts

Dinner: chili with dollop of sour cream and cheese [restaurant meal]

Exercise: if walking counts, then 1.5 miles walking

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My first cheat! For dinner, I asked the waitress to hold the "3 grain medley" they normally serve the chili over, but didn't ask them to hold the cheese and sour cream. I considered spooning the dairy aside, but my economic vote had already been cast so I didn't see the point. I just ate it. (This is the same argument for why I keep wearing my decade-old leather. But who am I kidding? That dairy tasted goooooooooood!) The chili also had carrots and corn in it, which I didn't expect. But the meal itself was undoubtedly very low GI anyway, given all the various beans and other veggies in the chili. And the reason to avoid carrots and corn is supposedly because they cause "cravings." Since I've never had "cravings" for carbs, I didn't worry about it. For *me*, the reason to avoid the high GI carbs is that they have high calories, without the compensating virtue of filling me up.

I felt physically fine today. Walked the mile and a half to work, but no other exercise (if walking to work counts as "exercise" anyway--I didn't break a sweat). Today, I dreaded the thought of another salad. I went out for chili because I couldn't bear the thought of more raw vegetables. And I can't say I'm feeling any thinner at all, sadly. But then again, it's only Day 5.

Phase I, Day 4

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Breakfast: asian breakfast scramble

Midmorning snack: 1 oz macadamia nuts, can of V-8

Lunch: tofu stir fry with cashews (we have a nice food court grill where you pick your own veggies--like bell pepper, summer squash, spinach, mushrooms, etc.--which they then stir-fry for you. Surprisingly, I didn't miss the brown rice I normally eat with it); can of Diet Dr. Pepper

Midafternoon snack: cucumber slices with baba ghanoush (eggplant spread) from Trader Joe's

Dinner: Stalk of celery, 1/2 red bell pepper, 3 T hummus

Dessert: mug of hot chocolate

Exercise: walked home from work, 1.5 miles

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I feel much, much better today. Still low-grade weak, but no headache. It's been very easy for me to avoid both dairy and high-GI carbs. I walked home from work tonight; that was the only exercise I could bear.

My resolve will be tested this weekend. I just found out I have a job interview in Chicago, and I'm going to fly out on Saturday and return on Tuesday. (Yay me!) This will involve going out to eat. For pretty much every meal. Ugh. I'll try to pack a lot of nuts and V-8, and pray for inner strength and a lack of easily available peanut butter cookies.

I've been giving more and more thought to this 8-13 pounds deal. The 8-13 pound claim could work via water-loss. When the body stores glycogen, which it gets from carbs, it stores 3 molecules of water for every molecule of glycogen. This is why marathon runners gain so much weight when they carbo-load before a race; 3/4 of it is water, the other 1/4 is the glycogen (essentially, circulating blood sugar and liver sugar). On a low carb diet, you're drastically reducing the body's stores of glycogen, and the water along with it. This is why you feel weak; you don't have the blood sugar the body normally uses for day-to-day fuel. (And again, this is why endurance athletes focus on eating carbs -- it pumps up the fast-burning glycogen stores they need for energy).

The diet *could* also work to genuinely eliminate 8-13 pounds of fat (or at least more than 1-2 pounds of fat) in the first two weeks by shifting your metabolism so that you are burning ketones for energy, which your body produces from fat. To do this, you really, really, really have to purge your body of all glycogen stores. If your SBD Phase I is super low carb (like virtually zero), then you will indeed bump yourself into ketosis, and burn fat at an impressive rate. This is how the Atkins diet works, in fact, and it *does* work (though it's hard to sustain and not very healthy). For vegetarians and vegans, though, the SBD is not going to be super low carb, even in Phase I, so we aren't likely to get into ketosis, and we aren't likely to match the 8-13 pound loss the book touts.

On the other hand, we will lose weight, and more painlessly than on most other calorie-restricted diets, because the low GI-carbs, frequently eaten, prevent us from getting hungry. Plus, avoiding carbs makes it easier to keep the calorie counts low. And we *will* lose at least some water weight, since although the diet for us isn't going to be low-carb, it will likely be *lower* carb than our usual diets, and that will make our body release some of the glycogen it's been holding on to. Actually, I'm convinced this is why I was peeing so much on Day 2 and Day 3, well out of proportion to the amount of water I was drinking/eating. Though I'm still drinking about 80 oz. of water today (Day 4), I'm peeing about half as much. All the glycogen is gone now, I guess.

Phase I, Day 3

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Breakfast: American breakfast scramble with tomatoes (for my recipe, go here)

Midmorning snack: 1 cup Trader Joe's gazpacho

Lunch: Salad with garbanzos, olives and cashews [from Food Court]

Midafternoon snack: 4 Brazil nuts, and about 10 kalamata olives

Dinner: 2 cups roasted vegetable salad from the deli; 2 T hummus on celery

Late night snack: mug of hot chocolate

Exercise: no way

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Today, I definitely felt bad. I woke up with a headache, which got worse until I took aspirin midday. Now it's mostly gone, but I can still kind of feel it back there, waiting to get bad again. The headache feels like the kind I get when I haven't eaten enough calories; no surprise there, I guess. I also definitely felt weak, and for the first time I felt really, really hungry (around lunchtime). I can't even imagine trying to go for a run today. And, I've been pissing like a racehorse. Seriously, I have to go about every couple of hours or less. I woke up three times last night to pee. Is it because of all the raw vegetables I'm eating, which really have a very high water content?

I've read on the internet that people say the third day is usually the worst. That seems to be the case so far for me--that is, so long as things don't continue to decline.

Phase I, Day 2

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FOOD EATEN:

Breakfast: Asian breakfast scramble (see my recipe here); can of V-8

Midmorning snack: stalk of celery and half a green bell pepper with 3 T hummus

Lunch: a truly humungous salad, complete with olives and pistachios, and amounting to almost 800 calories

Early-Mid-Afternoon Snack: a sugar free grape popsicle. Tasted nothing like grapes. Or food, for that matter.

Late-Mid-Afternoon Snack: a (modified) mug of Mexican hot chocolate. Tasted like heaven. For my recipe, go here.

Dinner: 1 c leftover chili from yesterday, 1 stalk celery

Dessert: 1 oz macadamia nuts, 1 T almond butter

Exercise: 3.5 mile run

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It occurs to me that this diet entails three profound differences in the way I usually eat. First, I eat far more frequently. Normally, I'd eat twice a day; a small lunch and a really, really, really big dinner. Second, I eat no grains. On a typical day, I'd usually eat several servings of whole grains in one form or another (bagel, bread, pasta), and those calories add up FAST, without filling you up as much as you'd expect, given their physical volume. Third, I don't eat fruit. Fruit smoothies are usually a pretty large portion of my diet.

This makes me wonder, though, if I'm going to see results any time soon. Probably the largest effect of this diet in normal circumstances is on people who normally eat few vegetables and all refined-flour grains (white breads, white pasta, etc.) As a vegan, I already eat lots of vegetables and low-GI carbs. So I don't really have "cravings" to kill, nor do I need to improve my triglicerides or cholesterol count. On the other hand, cutting out grains and fruit does cut out a large source of my calories. Yesterday, I ate far fewer than 1,000 calories. Today, I'll probably eat fewer than 1,500. I ran for about 3.5 miles this afternoon, and while I didn't feel fantastic, I felt a lot peppier than I had any right to, given how few calories I ate yesterday.

In other words, for vegans, this is really just a low-calorie diet, but with the considerable bonus of not *feeling* low-calorie. But at this rate, eating about 500 fewer calories than I usually do in a day, I still should not lose more than a pound a week... 8-to-13-pounds-in-Phase-I promise notwithstanding.

* * *

End of day overview: I wasn't ever hungry; indeed, I occasionally had to force myself to eat all the required items (like dinner). I ran slowly about 3.5 miles and had enough energy to do so comfortably. I took my vitamins/calcium, and tried to drink a lot of water, though admittedly a lot of it was in the form of Diet Dr. Pepper. Unlike my prediction of earlier today, I didn't stay below 1500 calories, but I didn't exceed it by much. I certainly don't feel any thinner (or any better) yet, but of course today is only Day 2.

Phase I, Day 1

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Weight/Measurements:

Weight: 134 pounds
Bodyfat: 29.0% (scale isn't the most reliable in the world, but whatever)
Waist, holding in stomach like I normally do: 28.5 inches
Waist, letting it all hang out: 30
Waist around my belly button, holding in stomach like I normally do: 32
Waist around my belly button, letting it all hang out: 34
Hips: 38
Chest: 32
Bust: 38.5
Thighs: R22, L21

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So I'm a pretty classic apple; I pack it all into the waist. Supposedly, the SBD takes it all off the belly first. Like the 8-13-pounds-in-two-weeks promise, this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. But to be fair, I haven't read the author's justification for it. For me, at any rate, it will probably be true, simply because in any diet, where you put it on is where you will take it off. My earlobes shouldn't be getting any svelter.

Bizarre Fact I Learned About Myself Today: my right thigh is bigger than my left. Why would that be?

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FOOD EATEN:

Breakfast: tablespoon of almond butter, some diet Dr. Pepper to wash it down, a cup of black tea

Midmorning snack: Gardenburger "sausage" patty

Lunch: 3 oz Trader Joe's baked asian tofu; 1 c Trader Joe's gazpacho

Midafternoon snack: 1 stalk celery with 2 T modified hummus, 2 modified mini veggie "quiches" (to see my vegan recipes for these, go here and here)

Dinner: 2 cups chili with TVP & kidney beans (see recipe here)

Dessert: tofu creme (4 oz. lite silken tofu, blended with 3 packets splenda, cinnamon and almond flavor)

Midnight snack: 4 vegan mini quiches

Exercise: none

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OVERVIEW OF THE DAY: I felt full all day, with plenty of energy--despite the fact that I ate fewer than 1000 calories. I did not exercise. I took 4 citrical calcium tablets and basic vitamins, and I tried to keep on top of fluid intake. I did not skip any snacks or meals, even though I wasn't hungry. (Supposedly, this diet works at least in part by keeping your metabolism on a constant slow burn, so missing meals/snacks is counterproductive.) I bought tons of ingredients at the store today, so I should be set for the next week. I look forward to seeing how Day 2 goes!!

(Post script: after I wrote the overview, at about 12:30 a.m., I got really thirsty, and pretty hungry. So I drank a lot and ate 4 of the mini quiches I had made.)

Welcome to my attempt at doing the South Beach Diet as a vegan!!

I don't have the book, but I've read bits of it, and have the updated Foods list. Plus, I've read a bunch of stuff on the web. That's good enough for me. The rule is that you eat 3 meals a day plus two snacks, and you get a dessert. The catch: the items must come from a very narrow list of "approved foods" for the first two weeks of the diet, a period called "Phase I."

Supposedly, you lose 8-13 pounds during Phase I, at which point you get to move to the more generous Phase II. Sounds like bullshit to me,frankly--five pounds a week means you need a caloric DEFICIT of about 17,500 calories in seven days (1 pounds = 3,500 calories). Normally, I eat about 14,000 calories a week (usually a bit less) and just maintain. So if I eat literally nothing, AND exercise off an additional 500 calories (5 miles of a slow run) a day, I should lose 5 pounds in a week.

But, hey, I'm willing to try to bend the laws of thermodynamics if the rest of the country is. And I can suffer through anything for two weeks.

Oh, so the other thing is, this is a meat-n-eggs-heavy diet. And I'm vegan. This means I'll have to be a bit creative. And probably a little bit of a cheater. (I'm kind of a lousy vegan, but well-intentioned.)

I spent today eating up all the verbotten carbs on the list that are hanging around my apartment: down my gullet went all my popcorn, and my mexican hot chocolate, and my frozen fruit bars, and my left-over pasta... Probably, I should down the three beers left in the fridge, too. Fun! They will be way too tempting later in the week once I start getting desperate. Which I'm sure I will get.

So I will weigh myself tomorrow morning, again one week into the diet, and again two weeks in. I will report what I'm eating, how much I'm exercising, etc.

Here are my goals:

--Get down to 120 pounds.
--Get rid of my bloated disgusting Budda-like stomach
--Feel better

FYI, here is a board that describes what is allowed at the different phases, and other things about the diet.