Weight change +/- in lbs: -0.6
1. Start each meal with a soup and/or salad and/or fruit.
2. Follow the 50/50 plate method for your meals, filling half your plate (by visual volume) with non-starchy vegetables and 50% (by visual volume) with minimally processed starches. Choose fruit for dessert.
3. Greatly reduce or eliminate added sugars and added salts. This includes gourmet sugars and salts, too. If either is troublesome for you, you can eliminate them.
4. Eliminate all animal foods (dairy, meat, eggs, fish, seafood).
5. Eliminate all higher fat plant foods (i.e., nuts, seeds, avocados, tofu, soy).
6. Eliminate any added oil.
7. Eliminate all higher calorie-dense foods including flour products (i.e., bread, bagels, muffins, crackers, dry cereals, cookies, cakes), puffed cereals, air-popped popcorn and dried fruit.
8. Don't drink your calories (especially from juices & sugar-sweetened beverages).
9. Follow these principles, eating whenever you are hungry until you are comfortably full. Don't starve yourself and don't stuff yourself.
10. Avoid being sedentary and aim for at least 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily (i.e., brisk walking).
Victories, comments, concerns, questions: I seem to be loosing my weight more slowly now, so I will have to start being more careful. I followed the guidelines, but I will have to watch my fruits to make sure my servings are not too large. I may also have to increase the amount of exercise I have been doing. Those are my goals for next week. Do I need to be concerned about how many times a week I have pasta? I noticed I had pasta twice this past week. Both times I had a large salad for the preload and a half of plate of broccoli with it. The pasta sauce was the McDougall Marinara sauce. Don't know if that makes a difference as my weight starts to slow.
Have a great week!