diet diatribe

i did it!  i ate all of my servings and i didn’t have to gorge myself at the end of the day to do it.  i always wondered why a ‘balanced breakfast’ included both a bowl of cereal and toast, but now i understand.  in order to get 7 servings of grains you need to be eating at least two at each meal.

i ate within the pyramid today, but i also ate twice as many carbs and protein than i should have and still came out about 400 calories shy of recommended.  i am using the online food tracker that the government has to offer.  it is full of many food and gives you a break down of your nutrient intake for the day.  i know it sounds like i am taking this really seriously, but they don’t even have some basic foods in there and a lot of the foods they do have info on are processed food with name brands associated with them.  i couldn’t find chicken stock and they definitely do not know what coconut water is.  i am probably eating way more calories than it thinks i am, but since this is the method on which i am choosing to base this months study, i have to take it seriously.

one thing this diet does afford me is the opportunity to taste a bite of something and know that i have a little bit of wiggle room in the serving amounts for the day.  you can be off by half a serving and still get a smiley face for the day.

the last three days of eating on the pyramid have been very successful.  i have eaten my allotted servings of grains, meat, dairy, veggies, and fruit.  i have to plan everything out, but that doesn’t seem to be bothering me anymore.  i eat most of my dairy for breakfast and try to eat two servings of grains at every meal.  the hardest part in only eating 6oz of meat & beans.  i am used to eating a whole chicken breast or a 6oz steak for dinner after already eating a sandwich at lunch.  i am thinking about the food choices i am making and it is getting easier to eat within the pyramid.  

on friday night i was expecting to eat chicken for dinner, so i budgeted it into my day. when it came time for the lid to come off of the slow cooker my husband found that the chicken that he had spent the last two days defrosting and a morning prepping for was still not cooked through.  it was 7 o’clock and we didn’t have a back up so we went out for dinner.  we didn’t have a lot of time so we went to our old standby, justa pasta.  i still needed my grains for the day, like always, and the rest of my meat which i had been leaving open for the chicken.  every time we eat here i always order the one of the specials, a pasta with sauteed veggies with a meat, pancetta or sausage, in olive oil.  since i needed a larger portion of meat than this offers and you cannot order a ‘small’ special, i had to order off of the menu, something i almost never looked at.  good thing i did because they had a whole wheat pasta, a better choice that the white wheat pasta.  so i ordered a small with the meatball.  i have never ordered the meatball thinking that i needed more than just one or two large meatballs, i am greedy when it comes to food, but i was glad when my dish came out with only one.  i was able to clean my plate and not feel bad about overeating.  the pasta was so fresh and delicious.  i was afraid of that the whole wheat would be grainy and unsatisfying.  oh and i almost forgot i got to order a salad as well because i still needed to eat my veg for the day.  i was so happy to do so because they have a really delicious caesar dressing, which i love and almost never get to eat.  suffice it to say, even though i had planned out what i would eat for the entire day and there was a wrench thrown in at the last minute i was still able to come out on top.

one thing i have learned about eating a government recommended diet is that maybe my body does not want to eat like this.  in order to not give out too much unwanted information, lets just say that i don’t think my body likes eating three servings of milk a day.  i do not normally eat this much dairy in a day.  i usually have a little half&half in my coffee and then whatever other dairy products are cooked or baked into normal, everyday items.  i don’t start my day with cereal, or have a glass of milk with dinner.  i never noticed that i didn’t eat a lot of dairy until i started to have to eat, what i consider, a lot of dairy.  i might be making march a dairy free month just to see how things go.

i grew up eating very well rounded meals, my mom loves to cook and so we always ate fresh food that was never highly processed.  we never had sugary cereals, soda, or other junk food in the house.  i feel that i am pretty knowledgeable about food.  i know what is good and what is bad and i thought i knew how to structure a meal to get veggies, grains, and proteins.  i figured i could do this with almost no work at all.  i was wrong.  

i picked this ‘diet’ because i thought it would be easy and easily adaptable, unlike my last foray.  i have alway written off the food pyramid telling myself ‘i know how to eat properly,’ but now i have to plan every meal throughout the entire day.  if i want to have 1/2 cup hummus with some veggies for lunch then i can only have 3oz of chicken for dinner, which is the recommended serving size.   this is something i would never have though of before and i would have eaten a cup of hummus and then a whole chicken breast for dinner, which is about 8 oz.  

i bring up this example because by the end of the day i was left with not oz left in the meat & beans category.  i had eaten a sandwich with three slices of deli meat and then had some hummus and broccoli for a mid day snack.  after i put all of this into the my pyramid food tracker i was shocked to find out that i would not be eating any meat with dinner, which i found out later was supposed to be salt & pepper drumsticks (so, so good).  instead i had to finish out my grains for the day and ate a cup and a half of brown rice and kale sauteed with onion, delicious but it definitely felt like something was missing.

i managed to eat my dairy for the day and got it out of the way early by having yogurt with a banana and toast for breakfast.  what i think is hilarious though is that i was able to eat three slices of whole wheat bread and still need to eat the equivalent of four more.  what, seven slices of bread in one day? this is awesome i am just going to eat toast all day long.

which leads me to another point.  on the mypyramid.gov website there is a food tracker that tells you how you are faring in your daily food intake.  another page tells for how you are doing nutrient wise.  somehow i managed to only eat half of my grains for the day, but have more than enough carbohydrates for the day.  how is this possible, i mean i know that there are carbs in fruit and veggies but at that point in the day i also needed to eat more of those too.  

i feel as though i am well educated on food and i think about what i put into my body.  i am following the dietary guidelines but, i am having a really hard time planning a day and making sure i don’t exceed my allotments.  i wonder then, how does someone who has been raised on the average american diet, remembering that 30% of americans are obese, follow this governmental issuance of dietary restrictions, and be successful?

i know that there are many ways to go about eating properly, but this one ain’t as easy as i thought.

it has been 3 weeks since my last post.  i didn’t even return to give my conclusions on my last diet, probably because writing this blog only reminded me of not eating, and only drinking my “meals.”  i have never understood why diet and health experts and everyone else who has ever done a fad diet say that “you gain all the weight back and then some,” until now.  i have not stepped on the scale after finding out that i lost 9 pounds on one week.  i am scared to see the results, because i know they will be bad.  i can see them without even stepping on the scale, and i know exactly why.  

as soon as i gave up the last diet i started cooking and baking more than ever.  i made cookies multiple times, along with quick sweet breads, brownies and i pulled out my slow cooker for the first time in a year and a half.  all of these delicious foods added inches to my waist,  but joy to my tummy.  i am running out of time to diet for the month and as it is i am barley hanging onto the wagon with one hand i fear i will fall off the wagon completely if i don’t start a new diet now.

so what will it be, another fad diet, no i will save that for next month.  this time i will try to eat as my government tells me to, by following the classic food pyramid.  i have used their daily food plan to ensure that i am getting just the right amount of grains, vegetables, fruit, milk, meat & beans.  by following governmental standard i should get all the nutrients, and just the right amount of fat to maintain my weight.  my plan calls for a 2200 calorie a day diet.  this number sounds very high to me and sickens me a little.  i would rather be told to be in the 1800 range, but in order to follow these standards i will follow their recommendations.

i did not think this was going to be a hard diet to follow but by the end of the day i had not had any dairy and only half of my expected grains.  i ate two cups of yogurt, but with no good grains left in the house i will have to go without today.  i also had to eat two different vegetable at dinner to get enough in, and i am missing one fruit serving for the day.

there is also a program for entering the food intake for the day and then rates how you faired in eating correctly.  it also counts your nutrient intake.  i ate twice as much protein as i should have, probably due to the dairy that i hadn’t planned into my day.  i did however eat more than enough carbohydrates, how is that possible if i didn’t eat enough grains.  i know that there are carbs in fruits, and vegetables, but how am i supposed to get all the grains and all of the fruits and veggie at the same time?  i guess i will have to plan my day better.

i don’t know what i am going to eat for breakfast, or lunch tomorrow so planning my day isn’t really going well yet.  maybe i will have yogurt for breakfast, get my dairy in early.

i have made it to the end of day 7 and i can’t wait to eat dinner tomorrow.  i originally thought that i wanted to do this detox for two weeks but i am glad that my husband talked me out of it.  i probably could have done it but i would have been very bored.  that is one thing i have learned about eating with a menu and restrictions there is no variety, no spontaneity.  i cannot even just have a bite of something without breaking the rules completely.  even though this last week was interesting and educational i could not have done it for another week.  

DAY SEVEN:
7:00am {or upon rising}: A glass of room temperature lemon water
8:00am: Herbal Tea 
10:00am {breakfast}: Raspberry & Rice Milk Smoothie 
11:30am: Coconut water
1:30pm {lunch}: Miso Soup with Vegetables
4:00pm {snack}: A handful of almonds
6:00pm {dinner}: Steamed fish, quinoa, roasted squash

so just like yesterday i only ate half of the things on the menu and i only found myself slightly hungry between lunch and snack time, probably because my husband was snacking the entire time.

dinner was enjoyable because i was able to eat a whole meal and it was warm.  it was however slightly boring, since i am not cooking with any added fats or flavors the meal did not leave me feeling satisfied.

i do not know how to finish out the month, but i do hope to continue to eat well and not just gorge myself because i can.

later i will post my conclusions from the week.

i am very surprised at how easy this feels.  beyond the fact that i cannot eat what i want when i want, i have an easy time telling myself ‘this is what i have to eat’ and just eating it.  my husband, on the other hand, wouldn’t last one day, he gets very cranky when he is low on food.  i know i am saying this when i only have one day left, but i haven’t had to force myself to keep going.  i give a full recap of my discoveries on monday, after i have eaten a meal not written on the menu.

DAY SIX:
7:00am {or upon rising}: A glass of room temperature lemon water
8:00am: Herbal Tea 
10:00am {breakfast}: Blueberry & Almond Smoothie 
11:30am: Coconut water
1:30pm {lunch}: Mixed Greens with Steamed Salmon, Olive Oil & Lemon Juice
4:00pm {snack}: Super Greens Juice
6:00pm {dinner}: Detox Teriyaki Chicken, brown rice & steamed zucchini

today i woke up at about noon, when i get the opportunity to sleep in i take advantage of it, sometimes a little too much advantage.  this meant that i had to make a decision about how i would eat for the rest of the day.  i believe that the 6 pm dinner time is an important part of this detox, forcing me to stop eating hours before bedtime and allowing my body ample time for digestion before the next meal.  so with that in mind i chose to just work backwards from dinner giving myself a 4 pm snack and eating lunch at the normal time, 1:30.  i still started off my day with the room temp lemon water, ate what i was supposed to eat for breakfast for lunch and finished the second half of my beat juice for snack time, along with a handful of blueberries.

i changed up dinner tonight and picked what i wanted to eat, within reason.  choosing from the lunch and dinner option for today i chose, steamed salmon, brown rice and green beans (we were out of zucchini.)  it was really good.  i probably ate too much food, but i let myself because i cut out a meal and a snack for the day.

even though i did not eat very much today i did not find myself hungry or wanting more food.  i have also noticed that i have not been low on energy for the last couple days.  i think i am going to spend some time looking through each days menu to see exactly how many calories i am eating.  i think i will be astonished to see that i am able to work, workout, get my chores done, and prep food for myself and still not feel worn out.  however i do imagine that my body is just burning my fat storage or worse my muscles.

things are getting easier, but i would be lying to say that i cannot wait until monday morning.  even though i will probably be eating oatmeal that morning.  not being able to eat whatever and whenever i want sucks.  i have found myself looking at food that someone else is eating with desire and longing, but only for a second and then i am reminded that i don’t need that, i am not actually hungry right now.  the best part of this detox for me is the regimented menu and schedule.  i do really well when having to follow rules and schedules.  i won’t let myself cheat and it forces me to eat at the correct times and eat small “meals” throughout the day.  i am not sure what i am going to do come monday.  i don’t want to just fall back into old habits, but i do want delicious, satisfying food.  i will start off slow, continuing to eat lots of vegetables and lean proteins and i might continue to not eat dairy for a few weeks and see how that feels.  through this i would really like to gain some useful information about my body.  i need it for a long time and so why not take care of it.

DAY FIVE:
7:00am {or upon rising}: A glass of room temperature lemon water
8:00am: Herbal Tea 
10:00am {breakfast}: Peach & Almond Smoothie 
11:30am: Coconut water
1:30pm {lunch}: Raw Crudite with Carrot & Ginger Dressing
4:00pm {snack}: Beet, Carrot, Apple & Ginger Juice

 6:00pm {dinner}: Cucumber & Avocado Soup 

i pushed all of my meals back about an hour today and i felt fine.  i was really looking forward to lunch today and i did not eat it until 2:30 and i was ready for it.  i think i ate way too fast but is was soooo good, i couldn’t help myself.  now my definition of “good” is of course relative to what i have been eating over the last week.  however i really do enjoy the carrot ginger dressing.  

the beet, carrot, apple, (pear) and ginger juice was a beautiful deep red color and i felt really healthy drinking it, i also knew it was good for me because it tasted like beets.  i wasn’t able to finish it, not because i was full, but because i was driven home from work and i was not about to drink beet juice in the car.

dinner came at 7 and it was very refreshing.  i normally do not like cold soups, and i have tried them all, gazpacho, borscht, cucumber, nothing does it for me, but since this was like eating really thin guacamole it was actually good.

i am considering going to bed very early tonight, like now, because i am getting hungry, but i did say that i would have that tablespoon of olive oil again tonight, so maybe that is why i am putting off going to bed.     

day four started out a little rough.  i enjoyed my mango and coconut milk smoothie and went of to my workout.  thats when it got bad.  the workout was a normal thursday workout, high aerobics, low weight.  we did five rounds of five exercises.  after the first round it felt like it was the end of the workout.  i was light headed and short on breath.  needless to say i was not looking forward to the next four rounds.  but as i said before  i am not a quitter, so even though i took it easy for the next four rounds, finished.  it was hard but so many other days have been hard too.  

DAY FOUR:
7:00am {or upon rising}: A glass of room temperature lemon water
8:00am: Herbal Tea 
10:00am {breakfast}: Mango & Coconut Milk Smoothie 
11:30am: Coconut water
1:30pm {lunch}: Miso Soup with Watercress
4:00pm {snack}: A handful of blueberries 
6:00pm {dinner}: Steamed Salmon & Greens

i was not able to eat lunch until 2:30, an hour later than normal, but i found that i was not fully famished until after 2.  today i cheated again.  i used prepackaged miso instead of the bland miso i had at home.  it was satisfying and worth the cheat.  

dinner was my only solid meal of the day and it was delicious.  i eat salmon all the time usually baked with a spice blend, it is really good, but tonight i was able to taste the sweetness of the fish that i hadn’t tasted before.  it was nice to eat it in this way to remind myself that some things are better just barely seasoned to let the natural flavors do the talking.

i find myself wanting to just through in the towel and eat some delicious real food, but then i remember that i am doing this for many reasons and a couple more days won’t kill me, at least i hope not.  i have not stepped back on the scale since monday morning and i can’t wait to do so next monday.  i know that it is not all about numbers, but with the work i have been putting in over the week i hope to see some sort of result.  

so today i confessed to my boss and office mates about my dirty little secret.  i wasn’t driven out of the office but i was told i was crazy about a dozen times.  i know this, i am crazy, but i take it as a compliment.  i choose this exercise in discipline, because it is just that, and exercise in discipline.  through this experience i hope to gain a few new perspectives along with losing a few pounds.  i want to better understand my body; what it likes to digest and what it doesn’t, how it best performs and so on.  on top of that i am forced to do all of my cooking (my husband is a great house husband and generally does the cooking and the cleaning while i bring home the bacon), but now since i am cooking, i mean juiceing for one i come home from work and prep for the next day, make dinner and clean the kitchen.  when usually i would just flop down on the couch awaiting my hot meal, not good and not sustainable.  my skills in the kitchen are not where i want them to be, not by a long shot.  i know they will only develop with time so to be able to become a better wife and future mother, i need to buckle down now to get practice.  my mother is an excellent cook and i wish i had paid more attention to her in the kitchen while i had the chance, now all i can do is force myself to become better by going through with this crazy scheme.  i know that i could have chosen a better way to become a better cook like cook through Julia Childs Mastering The Art Of French Cooking in a year but that has already been done, so i choose a road less traveled.  

i hate to be a quitter, so even though i am only three days and in and thinking about what the rest of the year will be makes me sad, i know that the skills i will learn and the insight i will gain will all be worth it.  lets hope.

DAY THREE:
7:00am {or upon rising}: A glass of room temperature lemon water
8:00am: Herbal Tea 
10:00am {breakfast}: Oatmeal {make with rice or almond milk instead of water so it’s a bit more substantial}
11:30am: Coconut water
1:30pm {lunch}: Blueberry & Almond Smoothie
4:00pm {snack}: Cucumber, Lime & Basil Juice
6:00pm {dinner}: Super Greens Juice/Miso Soup with Watercress

today i started off with my only solid meal for the day, oatmeal made with rice milk.  it was more substantial than my last two breakfasts and something i normally eat for breakfast minus the sugary maple syrup. i went to the gym and to my surprise i made it through the workout just fine and i was even able to do the extra reps because my partner and i finished early.  i know that is due to the fact that i ate a solid meal, because this was day three on under 1000 calories.

i am really surprised at how well i am functioning on such little food.  it makes me wonder if i need to be eating such large meals outside of the detox.  i am able to workout, work a full day, prep the next days meals, and….. thats about it.  not that in my non detox/diet life i do much more than that.  the average woman should consume about 2000 calories a day, i am doing less than half of that and still staying upright, but i imagine that my body is also burning through a good deal of the fat that i put on over the holidays.  

dinner came around and it was a tall glass of green!  pretty good, or at least i though so, my husband not so much.  i think since i am not eating any added sugar, fat or salt, things that would normally not taste good are delicious, well almost.

*one thing i will not be doing again tonight which i know i should be is the tablespoon of olive oil before bed.  wow was i wrong about the room temp lemon water, the oil is the most horrid thing of the day.  i will probably do it at least one more time but i need a little more time to forget how awful it was the first time. 

well day one was a breeze as i knew it would be.  i had eaten like my normal gorging self the weekend before, so my body was still working through the delicious fats.  today is another story.  i woke up hungry, well me rephrase that, i went to bed hungry and then woke up hungrier.  which i guess could have been alleviated if i had followed the directions and had “Take[en] a couple of spoonfuls of extra virgin olive oil at night to help stimulate [the] liver to eliminate bile & keep its circulation flowing” like Dr. Alejandro Junger suggests.  I know this would not have filled me up, but it may have provided my stomach with something to digest through the night.  the one up side of this detox so far has been the sleep last night was great i was out like a light, like usual, but did not wake up when the husband came to bed and read for an hour.  i attribute this too the fact that my body isn’t receiving enough calories so it is just shutting down all systems that do not need to be functioning to conserve what little energy i do have to breath. 

i had planned on working out this morning, but work got in the way probably for the best.  and where do i work?  at a bakery that makes the most delectable cupcakes and cinnamon rolls.  fortunately i have been working there for almost four years and no longer sell the baked goods over the counter, but i still have to set them up in the morning.  they smell so good, but i have already gone a year without eating a cupcake (another stupid bet with myself).  the cinnamon rolls however are knee weakening and i have been eating far too many of them.  i have yet to tell anyone at work what i am doing, for fear of being ridiculed or driven out of the office my food loving boss. 

my emotions are not generally tied to my stomach but i have to say today i could totally sense that i was low on blood sugar, getting easily frustrated, moving slowly and just slightly down.  it did not go unnoticed by my boss either who continually asked how i was.  i made a conscience decision to smile and act like i was full of energy and life, so sad to have to fake that.

DAY TWO:
7:00am {or upon rising}: A glass of room temperature lemon water
8:00am: Herbal Tea
10:00am {breakfast}: Raspberry & Rice Milk Smoothie
11:30am: Coconut water
1:30pm {lunch}: Detox Teriyaki Chicken with Steamed Greens
4:00pm {snack}: Miso Soup with Watercress
6:00pm {dinner}: Pea & Basil Soup

i think that i find the room temp lemon water the most horrid part of the day.  it is the first thing i imbibe, and i have never liked lemon, cucumbers or other fruits and vegetables in my water and i also like my water icy cold.  but hey its a little flavor and it has to last me until my herbal tea.  today i had to wait until 10:15 to have my breakfast and i found that i was not hungry until about 9:45. surprising considering i had upped my breakfast to 9:15 yesterday because i workout at 10.  i was really worried about making it an extra hour with an empty stomach, but it turned out okay. 

it’s so interesting little things you look forward to when all you have is little things, like coconut water.  sugar. sugar. sugar.  i think of it as my energy drink that gives me the boost that my raspberry water didn’t.

and then comes lunch, which i make the night before along with everything else but dinner.  i did not have all of the ingredients for the detox chicken and did not know where to buy Detox Teriyaki Sauce, so i used what i had.  ginger, miso, mirrin, and i added a little toasted sesame oil for flavor, since it was alreay used in the carrot ginger dressing i knew it was approved.  it actually turned out pretty good, but it was a lot of food, compared to the liquid meals, so that made me nervous that i was eating too much and hurting my chances of actually detoxing.  

OMG! not something i say very often, but omg was the miso, mushroom, watercress soup hard to swallow.  i told myself after the first bite that i had to finish the whole serving.  i tried so hard, i tried not breathing through my nose, but it didn’t matter i couldn’t do it.  the mushrooms, which i usually love, were just slimy and and tasteless.  the miso was sweet and tasteless.  the watercress was really spicy, cross between arugula and nasturtium leafs, the only thing i could stomach.  but i had to throw it out, i couldn’t do it.  i felt like i was cheating myself out of precious calories, but the feeling in my stomach and mouth was not worth it.

after work i made my lunch and afternoon snack for tomorrow and dinner for tonight.  pea and basil soup.  the peas have a sweetness that made the meal more satisfying than the broccoli soup.  i also found that i did not need to add the additional salt and pepper that i had cheated with the night before.  one thing i hope that i can discover through this process is my palette, i like a lot of salt and i don’t know if that is learned or genetic.

i do not have that much disposable energy, i find myself just sitting on the couch once all of my chores are done just waiting for bed.  i do plan on going to the gym in the morning which will be a good test of day three of the detox.  will i have enough energy to make it through the workout or will i drag through it?

well i am off to make breakfast and swallow a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil to help the liver eliminate bile and keep the circulation going.