Earlier this week I started changing my eating habits and dropped sugar and junky carbs and am following the South Beach Diet. I don’t follow it to the letter, mainly I looked at the foods I ‘can’ eat and ‘can not’ eat and built my own menus around it. I didn’t get on the scale all week because I’m more about feeling good/looking decent than what the scale says. I’m down 5 pounds since Monday. I’ve been living the week in sweatpants because we’ve been snowed in, so I don’t know if 5 pounds makes a difference in how clothes fit.
For anyone that has done South Beach or has drastically cut sugar and processed carbs out of their diet, you know how tired and slothy it makes you feel for the first week. I know I’m just a few days away from feeling like a million bucks but for now it feels like someone drained all the energy out of me, even when I first wake up. I’ve done this ‘diet’ before, and it is what works for me. I’m already tired of salads. I miss chocolate. Luckily some food company was smart enough to make sugar-free chocolate ice pops. For now, I just need to get over the boredom that comes with eating eggs, salads, lowfat cheese, veggies, chicken and turkey all the time.
The normal amount of time to be on the strictest phase of the diet is two weeks, but it’s not uncommon (or unhealthy) to be on it for a month. I ‘accidentally’ stayed on the strict part for a month last time I tried this, then added back in one fruit or one healthy carb (brown rice or oatmeal) a day and still managed to go from nearly shopping in the women’s department to a small size 8 in ten weeks. I just got in the groove with my menu planning and healthier foods, and by the time I went to put on a pair of jeans for a night out, they literally fell straight off my hips and hit the ground. Sad truth of working from home, you get stuck in the rut of wearing sweats every day. I’m in an office a good number of days a week, so I have to wear real clothes (even if they are jeans).
So, while this started out as a simple status update someplace else, it wound up being on my blog. My ‘reward’ for all of this is to go shopping at a store that I’ve only ever dared press my nose up against the glass and drooled and buy something even if it’s not on sale. I have a few out of the ordinary talks coming up and I really don’t want to be self-conscious about my appearance anymore.
