Friday, January 27, 2006

South Beach Diet

It is crucial for you to understand what meditation is. It is not some special posture, and it's not just a set of mental exercises. Meditation is the cultivation of mindfulness and the application of that mindfulness once cultivated. You do not have to sit to meditate. You can meditate while washing the dishes. You can meditate in the shower, or roller skating, or typing letters. Meditation is awareness, and it must be applied to each and every activity of one's life. This isn't easy.

-Henepola Gunaratana, "Mindfulness in Plain English"

    Ok, I said I was never going to diet again but I have been reading this book about this diet and am going to give it a shot.  Why, because it says it targets belly fat of which I have lots and I can't seem to get rid of it, and because of all the diets out there this really is a sensible one you could live with that really does what it says.  I am not going to do it right away however because I still want to eat pineapple for awhile to aide with my healing and swelling and I have a ton of fruit around.  I also have a ton of brown rice and whole grain multigrain breads.  I am going to eat all that stuff up and then give it a shot.  On this diet I am not sure how phase 1 will go with my night job.  The way I have been eating now I fit it around my schedule, it might be harder to do on the south beach, but phase 1 is only for 2 weeks and I can handle that if I do the first week on my week off.  I will miss my beloved rice cake, now multigrain cakes and apples with peanut butter or applesauce but they are not banned forever.  I will also miss beer which I have kept in my diet but limited.  I have to decide what I want more.  Less belly, less beer.  Sounds like I have a problem with beer, I don't, I just like it.

   South Beach has lots of processed foods out these days.  I will not eat any of those and hear alot about the bad things that have happened to the program lately.  I do think if you do it from scratch the way it was originally intended it is a good program.  The problems will be supper.  Can I fix it so my family doesn't have to have a different meal?  My husband can still afford to lose some weight but my son can't.  He is lean as it is.  I don't think he has any body fat and I don't want him to lose anymore.  He did lose 5 pounds when I started cooking different.  I will also miss an occasional pizza.  Also short term.  I know lots of people who have had success with this and would welcome any comments from anyone reading this journal who have used it.  Any recipes also would be great. Also I hear there is a cookbook, worth buying?  Remember I can not afford alot of weird and hard to find items.  I live in Iowa and fresh seafood is hard to get.

   I am going nuts not going to the gym and since I am again feeling so much better I will go this afternoon.  I need to work off some tension from messing with my disabilty company.

   I am going to ask the doctor if I can go back to work on the 5th.  My disability is all screwed up with their new plan and I have no money coming in so far.  My husband doesn't work, so it is going to get very lean around here shortly.  My son is giving me some money which is great and he should anyway, but I can't afford to stay off as long as she wants.  I am going to complain bitterly to the benefit office about this new way of doing your benefits.  Who's wonderful idea was this?  Obviously someone who doesn't live check to check.

   It is almost 10 and I haven't eaten breakfast yet.  Better get busy.  Maybe I'll just have a slim fast, I am not hungry. 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi,
Your comment about it being 10:00 and you hadn't eaten breakfast is not good.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and is important so that you have the energy to keep going the rest of the morning.  If you don't eat you will get exceedingly hungry and be tempted to binge when you do eat.  The other point is that when you don't eat you lose muscle mass.  Good luck

Anonymous said...

Hi,
Your comment about it being 10:00 and you hadn't eaten breakfast is not good.
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day and is important so that you have the energy to keep going the rest of the morning.  If you don't eat you will get exceedingly hungry and be tempted to binge when you do eat.  The other point is that when you don't eat you lose muscle mass.  Good luck

Anonymous said...

The "belly fat" promise is a bit misleading. If you are quite overweight, *any* flab you lose is probably going to come from that area first. The South Beach diet is more sensible than Atkins, but perhaps harder to follow than Weight Watchers. For example, it suggests all these "desserts" that are basically ricotta cheese with various flavorings in them. It doesn't take long for that to get monotonous. But you can lose weight on *any* diet that you stick to, so the key is whether the meals and recipes look good to you. You might find that some of the recipes in the SBD book are so good that you keep them even if you end up incorporating/using another diet. One thing that's good is the recipe for hummus -- I make it for myself and even for parties all the time. There also are some little veggie cups that you bake and freeze, that are tasty. Finally, don't say you'll never have beer again, just say you won't buy it for a while because you're really serious about dropping some pounds -- and that's a lot easier to do if you're not wasting calories on alcohol!  Good luck................Linda

Anonymous said...

 I read that recipe for the veggie cups and they did sound good.  So the diet doesn't specifically target belly fat, bummer.  I seem to working it off well with exercise everywhere else but there.  It is determined to be my best and longest friend.  Wouldn't leave me for anything.  But I don't want to be friends with it anymore.  Ater having 3 belly surgeries I think it is making it even harder to get rid of it.

 I also agree about not eating breakfast.  That is a bad area for me and the one I slip up on the most.  I am much better about it but maybe I have been slack lately which is why things have slown down so much.  Thanks for reminding me.

                   Julie

Anonymous said...

I now have both SB cookbooks and anything you want, you just let me know! I think those processed SB Kraft products are a marketing ploy. Maybe they are better than eating a pasta laden Lean Cuisine but I just can't understand why they have so much sodium!!!

Maybe for your son he could focus on making sure to get some higher calorie snacks in there so that he doesn't drop weight. Cheeses made from 2% milk, nuts. More fruit for him is good, too. Bananas, pears, and pineapple all have a lot of sugar so they have more cals. Plus he could have yogurt or milk w/protein powder. Those are usually 110 - 150 calories per 1 oz. of powder and that will make one "shake." I like the ones from GNC. Particularly the soy protein powder. According to the American Heart Association, everyone should have 25 g of soy protein per day. One scoop of the soy protein powder from GNC fulfills that requirement! Drugstore.com has very good prices on those if you can't find something like that near you. A one pound container is less than $12 and has 90 servings. Plus you get free shipping on purchases over $25.

My SIL is pregnant right now and she's been losing weight. She's been having a hard time eating more food to get more calories so the doctor suggested some of those "shake" drinks like Ensure for her. Same concept, really. Except the Ensure comes in a can and is much more expensive than the dry powders.

Do you have a Sam's club or a Costco near you? I buy a lot of frozen seafood at Sam's. Before we got a membership, we went to that store at least a dozen times and asked someone in the parking lot if we could walk in with them (you have to show your card at the door.) Then we would either ask the same people if we could walk with them and checkout with them, or we would do our shopping and ask someone else at the registers if they would swipe their card.

{{HUG}}
Danielle