MmmCarb's Journal

[MmmCarbs]

Going to do a food journal type thing here to help keep me on track. Pardon me for not having my ticker, photo, and all setup yet.

So... to start at the beginning, here's my intro/food/diet history thing viewtopic.php?f=14&t=22477

I haven't eaten any junk food for 3 days now and it feels good. The scales said 126.4 tonight. I know I can't possibly have lost over 3 pounds of fat in three days so I'm sure it's mostly water loss from the sudden drop in sodium intake.

Today was a crazy work day so I didn't have a real dinner. I did make sure to take in a bag of healthy snacks as a starvation/vending machine avoidance tactic.

Breakfast: Oatmeal, coffee

Lunch: Subway 6" veggie, no cheese, no sauce, no avo. It was suprisingly tasty. I know the bread probably isn't vegan or oil-free, but I'm allowing it for now.

Snacks: (a little hazy on the memory here), probably a couple small bananas, one slice nine-grain bread. I had taken in a sweet potato with a plan to microwave it, but it only got as far as my desktop, then I got distracted with work and ended up bringing it home.

Dinner (well sort of): unsweetened apple sauce cup, another slice nine-grain bread, hummus, bubbly water, a mango (yum!). Then I tried a sliced gold potato on the George Foreman grill (never thought of that before-- saw it in someone else's post here). I haven't had great success cooking potatoes without oil yet. The grill was smoking like crazy so I drizzled some water over it. That seemed to help the browning and speed up the cooking. I ate the potato with a bit of ketchup.

Not a great balance here yet-- still too much bread, oil in the hummus, and perhaps not really enough calories for a day. But... at least no soda, no vending machine garbage (that had been my downfall lately. I was probably getting 6-800 calories a day from soda, chips, and candy. Yuck!)

So... I saw some more inspiring menu ideas here-- bed of greens, rice, and steamed veggies. I never considered a streamer before but that would be a handy thing to have. I like anything that times & cooks for me so I don't have to monitor it.

If anyone's reading and has some tips on how to roast veggies without oil I could use a hint.

[MmmCarbs]

Did pretty well for a Friday

Breakfast: oatmeal, coffee
Lunch: Panda Express 2 item combo with steamed rice, veggies, veggie spring rolls (fried in oil)
Snack: banana, 2 slices 9-grain bread, mini-3-musketeer bar, hummus (has oil)
Dinner: Macaroni, white corn (frozen), black beans (canned)

Will probably have a mango later if I'm still hungry.

Started some brown rice in the cooker so I'll have some tomorrow.

Will be spending a day or two at the fiance's house over the 3-day weekend. We pretty much eat separate food already, so me being on yet another odd diet shouldn't be too much of an adjustment.

He's naturally skinny and eats a very repetitive, limited diet. It's sort of comical-- he stocks up on the same 10 or 12 items every week and eats the same limited rotation of meals and snacks day after day. Most of his meals are pretty awful in terms of nutrition, except for the daily apple. I tried eating his staples a few times and couldn't take it, and he won't eat what I cook, so just eating different meals together works nicely for us. There's a bit of a junk food temptation for me at his house, but he'll hide the stuff if I ask him too. He can leave a jar of dry-roasted peanuts on the coffee table and not touch it. I can't quite do that

[MmmCarbs]

Just venting a bit today. I feel annoyed that I have to shop and cook and can't just go grab a 500 calorie scone at Starbucks or other convenient tasty junk.

Had oatmeal, dates, hash browns, brown rice, the last of the hummus with a slice of 9-grain bread. I baked 2 potatoes for later.

Sorry for the TMI but I'm a bit gassy from last night's black beans. So in all I feel bloated, simultaneously stuffed and ravenous, cranky and deprived.

I read the Pleasure Trap (got it as an eBook) and while it all makes sense, that you just can't eat the fatty processed foods and still expect your appetite to regulate your weight, I just don't want to believe it's really true. I want to think I can eat "whatever" and just moderate the amounts. Of course that's never worked for me, and doesn't work for anyone in my family. I see them struggle with moderate to serious obesity and all the results (type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, heart trouble, joint problems). I'm fortunate in that I'm just battling a 20-pound creep and don't have those health challenges currently. But I've seen my 3 pound per year increase, and this year was worse. I went up 3 pounds already this year and it's only May.

So... I know I have to do something, and this looks like a good option to me right now. I just don't like how I feel today!

Well I'm going to get up off the sofa and do something constructive. I'll probably feel better after.

[Chile]

Hi. I cook with my Foreman grill a lot and never use oil on it. With potatoes, you either need to slice them pretty thin or parboil them a bit first. It's hard to get them to cook from a totally raw state.

Hashbrowns, however, seem to brown up really nicely. I've been doing the OreIda shredded (loose, not squares) hashbrowns lately.

I also grill tons of other veggies in it, like onion slices, bell pepper chunks, eggplant slices, asparagus, green onions, and even corn kernels. Pineapple browns nicely and gets really sweet. Instead of rolling beans up in a tortilla for a burrito, I spread them out on one half and fold the tortilla up. Then I put it in the grill (on the deeper baking plate) and it crisps up just like a fried chimichanga!

Re the Subway sandwich, I get those occasionally, too. I like the fatfree Sweet Onion sauce, which is vegan. I went to the website and got the ingredients list and nutritional information for you. It's not completely fatfree, it has a fair amount of sodium in it, not all that much fiber, and also contain high fructose corn syrup. That said, I still plan to get a small sandwich once in a while as it's a better choice than many other places and there isn't a Wendy's (for baked potatoes) anywhere near me.

9-GRAIN WHEAT Enriched Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour, Niacin, Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Whole Wheat Flour, Contains 2% Or Less Of The Following: Wheat Gluten, Oat Fiber, Yeast, Soybean Oil, Wheat Bran, Calcium Blend (Calcium Carbonate, Vitamin D3), Salt, Rolled Wheat, Rye Nuggets, Dough Conditioners (Datem, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate), Yeast Nutrients (Calcium Sulfate, Ammonium Sulfate), Degermed Yellow Corn Meal, Rolled Oats, Rye Flakes, Caramel Color, Triticale Flakes, Parboiled Brown Rice, Refinery Syrup, Honey, Barley Flakes, Flaxseed, Millet, Sorghum Flour, Flavor (Yeast Extract, Salt, Natural Flavor).

6" 9-Grain Wheat Bread
Serving Size (g) 78
Calories 210
Cal. From Fat 20
Total Fat (g) 2
Sat. Fat (g) 0.5
Trans Fat (g)* 0
Chol. (mg) 0
Sodium (mg) 310
Carb. (g) 40
Dietary Fiber (g) 4
Sugars (g) 5
Protein(g) 8
Vitamin A % DV 0
Vitamin C % DV 0
Calcium % DV 30
Iron % DV 15

[MmmCarbs]

Finally got to the store and stocked up on fresh veggies and fruit. They seem like such a treat compared to bland starches. I guess that's the way it's supposed to be, huh?

For dinner I started with a sliced cucumber with a little Balsamic vinegar. (I'm trying to go with minimal condiments so my taste buds will get reset to appreciate the subtle flavors of real food, but wow, that little bit of concentrated flavor was really welcome!) Then I made a big pan of sauteed veggies (red pepper, mushrooms, zucchini) with half a can of no-salt-added tomatoes. Ate that over whole grain pasta shells. I added just a bit of salt, pepper, and red pepper. It was very tasty and filling, but I was hungry about an hour later. I had some air-popped corn and one of the last slices of the 9-grain bread. The bread tastes really indulgent compared to potatoes and rice. I didn't buy another loaf, so I'll try to do next week with just whole grains and tubers as my starches.

Meanwhile, the DF had a big grilled steak, one of my baked potatoes, and a single-size Ben & Jerry's ice cream. I really wasn't tempted by the meat and dairy. I think I've flipped the switch in my brain where that stuff just seems gross and non-food-like to me.

Weight was 128 this AM. So I think it's heading downward already. I'm going to bake another set of yukon golds and sweet potatoes today. The baked golds were tastier than all the (oil-free) pan-fried or boiled versions I'd been eating all week. Sweet potato selection was awful at my store. They were nearly all a bit shriveled and old looking, and many had holes or rotten spots. I managed to pick out 3 that look edible.

[MmmCarbs]

Hi Chile,
Thanks for those tips. I'd been using the chunky cubed hash browns and they do take longer to cook them than I'd like. When I finish the bag I'll try the shredded variety. The grilled tortilla & beans sounds like a winner, as does the pineapple. My GF grill is a bit of a pain to clean up, since it doesn't have removable plates. Perhaps I need a bigger model.

Yeah, Subway will probably be an occasional indulgence for me. Thanks for the nutrition info on the bread. I just need to go out to lunch occasionally and it's one of the few options near my office that's somewhat friendly to this plan.

[Chile]

Even the removable plates are a bit of a pain to clean. But, the shredded ones don't seem to stick as bad. If you like the onion and green pepper in the cubed hashbrowns, you can easily add diced onion and pepper to the other. I used to dump the entire bag into a bowl, mix it with diced onion and pepper and a little pepper, and then put it back in the bag so it'd be ready to go. The veggies freeze just fine.

Enjoy!

[MmmCarbs]

Did well again today. Feels like I ate a *lot* of quantity but I didn't stray from the plan too far.

Breakfast: hash browns with salsa, oatmeal with frozen cherries.

Lunch: I was at the mall and decided to see what I could come up with in the food court. The Japanese place had cucumber/avocado rolls and seaweed salad. The rice was white and the seaweed salad may have had oil, but it wasn't swimming in it. It was all tasty though.

Snack: mango

Dinner: Sugar snap peas (first time trying these, they were in one of those ready-to-eat bags from the store and were really yummy, nice and crisp and sweet.) Then a big skillet dinner with leftover brown rice, half can of tomatoes, frozen white corn, and about half a boiled sweet potato. I guess that's sort of a SNAP meal, right? Anyway I was skeptical of the canned tomatoes in those recipes, since they can taste too acidic to me, but I enjoyed the extra liquid with the rice.

[MmmCarbs]

Well I'm a bit discouraged right now. I went the whole weekend on the plan, the only 'cheat' of today was a plain bagel and non-whole-wheat spaghetti. I took 3 bags of groceries up to the DF's house and ate nearly every bit of it (fresh veggies, a melon, 3 yukon golds, hash browns, corn/bean/pepper frozen mix). I resisted all the candy, alcohol, ice cream, nuts and soda (not to mention meat and cheese) at his house. I can't even recall the last time I didn't eat treats at his house!

Without those treats to fill me up I was very motivated to eat all the healthy food I'd taken along. I was still hungry a portion of today and yesterday, I just didn't feel like cooking and eating more lowfat fare.

So... I was hoping to see a drop on the scale. But no, it's at 130 again. Oh well, I suppose it's like weight gain. There seems to be a delay. I can always overeat and think I'm getting away with it for a couple weeks, then boom! I start gaining steadily.

If it doesn't start to move a bit next week I'll do some calorie tracking. I honestly can't tell what I'm taking in. The quantity of food seems enormous, but my hunger level suggests I'm at a deficit.

[MmmCarbs]

Weight 130 today. Having some GI issues from the black bean/corn mix again.

Went through some more of the journals here and I see I'm not alone in this early phase of feeling like I'm eating and eating and not quite satisfied. Also having quite a bit of bloating so far. My tummy feels like an overinflated balloon at times. This is something I've struggled with for years and have never been able to conclusively identify the triggers. Oh well I'm going to assume this may be an adjustment period and keep going with it.

[MmmCarbs]

Ok, barely hung on today. Breakfast was good-- oatmeal, banana, frozen berries (unfortunately sweetened, could not find unsweetened).

Work day was nuts and I had slim pickin's to take in with me. Just took an assortment of unprepared legal foods to lunch (fruits, sugar snap peas, raw potatoes, and about 1/3 bag of frozen white corn).

Went out looking for something better for lunch. I thought I would be able to find some vegan sushi (perhaps brown rice cucumber rolls?) at the gourmet grocery instead of hitting Subway again. No dice-- they had brown rice sushi but it all had tuna or salmon. Walked around, did not feel like having salad bar, ended up buying a loaf of 9 grain bread. It tastes awful! It's just way too sweet. I guess someone thinks they have to add lots of sugar to get you to eat whole grain bread *eyeroll*. Brand is Milton's original. I'm not sure I even want to finish the loaf.

Once again I didn't nuke my potatoes at work. I made time to go out to try to get lunch, but once I'm back at my desk, somehow the thought of walking to the kitchen and waiting on a potato to nuke is a barrier to doing it. I didn't even slice up my mango. So I think all I ate was 2 bananas, a baggie of sugar snap peas, and one (or two?) slices of the non-tasty bread.

Had to leave relatively early for my music lesson. There was nothing to snack on quickly at home either, so I just had water.

Music lesson done, my plan is to finish just about all legal food in the fridge. So the corn, a half yam, perhaps some black beans, the mango, hopefully that will be enough.

Well... perhaps I can bake some potatoes tonight still and not have such difficulty tomorrow.

On a positive note-- I'm not famished today. It feels odd to eat so many "side dishes" as a result of not having any main dish-like item prepared, but I can't really say I'm hungry.

[MmmCarbs]

Ha ha, boy was I wrong about not experiencing the ultra-hunger today. I guess maybe work and distracting activities are an appetite suppressant for me

I got super-hungry (complete with hunger headache) not long after I'd posted today's update.

Had a couple plain corn tortillas and will probably eat an applesauce, then see if that's enough to get me to sleep. I just feel too lazy to cook again today! I already baked two potatoes for tomorrow.

This may turn out to be one downside of this diet for me. There aren't many quick no-cooking-required staples. I could pop open a can of beans, but beans just don't appeal like bread, cooked grains, pasta, and cooked potatoes. It's ironic that the best no-cooking diets are such opposites-- SAD (fast food! canned ravioli and all manner of packaged garbage!) and the raw diets (fruit, fruit, and more fruit).

=================

Just realized something that seems significant. So when I was trying to do the 80/10/10 diet, I was actually doing only breakfast, lunch, and snacks. Dinner was quite often still a mini-cheese pizza. (Amy's single serving cheese pizzas, I miss you!) So I'm really used to getting that dairy/fat/white flour fix before bed time. I'm just not used to ending the day without a slightly overfed feeling.

[Chile]

If there is a microwave available, here are some quick-cooking alternatives.

Couscous or whole wheat couscous: boil water or broth, add couscous, remove from heat, and cover for 5 minutes. Voila, it's done! Fluff with a fork and eat. Very easy to add frozen veggies to the water when it's coming to a boil to round it out. Mrs. Dash Table Blend is a great all-purpose seasoning mix, too.

Instant brown rice is another very quick-cooking starch. Follow package directions. Use the frozen veggies again or bring diced fresh vegetables to work to add.

[MmmCarbs]

Excellent tips, thanks! I picked up some of the instant brown rice already but haven't tried it.

Well the scales are finally showing a loss. I saw 127.6 tonight.

Breakfast: oatmeal, banana, frozen cherries (yum!)
Lunch: Subway veggie delite on wheat (with sweet onion sauce), small yukon gold potato, sugar snap peas.
Snacks: bananas, cup of apple sauce
Bigger snack: fiesta mix (white corn, black beans, peppers) with a cooked sweet potato
Dinner: hash browns, a little ketchup

I sort of 'gave up' mentally tonight and decided I'd have a mini cheese pizza for dinner. Fortunately I didn't have any in the freezer

[MmmCarbs]

I'm actually starting to love this diet. I get to eat a huuuuge colorful plate of food that's relatively easy prep and digests easily at just about every meal. Pretty cool!

Breakfast: oatmeal, banana, cherries

Lunch: thought of a new restaurant option-- Chipotle "bol", which is a burrito without the wrapper with rice, black beans, fresh tomato salsa, fresh shredded romaine lettuce. (I used to get sauteed veggies on it but skipped them to avoid the oil. It tasted noticeably lighter to me.) One odd thing I'm noticing is that I'm enjoying spicier food now! Their tomato salsa tasted too spicy for me in the past but today it was yummy.

Snacks: bananas, couple slices bread, dates

Dinner: big plate of whole wheat pasta shells topped with mixed veggies and leftover marinara sauce (possibly a bit of oil-- it was from pre-McDougall cooking). Apple sauce cup for dessert.

Does that sound like a lot of food? It really felt like just enough.

Weight was 127.4 tonight. Definitely heading downward!