Day 19-20 and shellfish are now good for us

Last night's dinner: clams with garlic and onions.
Good taste, bad breath!

Thursday's weight: 213.2 lbs
Friday's weight: 212.0 lbs
Goal: 190 lbs

Several days of actual progress with no backsliding.  My wife has been experiencing the same too.

Without much fanfare, we are now on the second Cycle of the 17 day diet.  What does this mean?  On the good side, we get to eat shellfish, not of the fried variety of course.  On the "sounds good but not really too exciting side", we get to eat some starchy vegetables and legumes,  like potatoes, sans all the things that make said starchy vegetables and legumes tasty, like butter.  We can have fat-free sour cream though.  Oh, and only before 2PM.  Yeah, it's like Gremlins.

We are also allowed to have amaranth and quinoa now, as well as breadfruit.  I think I'll pop right over to Market Basket and pick some quinoa up.

That's on odd days.  On even days it's the Cycle 1 foods.  This will be a pain to keep up with.

The exercise part of the diet is still hard to achieve with our schedules.  We're hoping to get in another snowshoeing adventure today, and I'm planning one with some friends tomorrow as well.  Keeping up the energy level for this is hard, but maybe my plain, pre-2PM potato and some grilled quinoa (is that what you do with quinoa?  maybe quinoa kebabs instead?)  will help.

Day 17-18

Tuesday's weight: 214.2 lbs
Wednesday's weight: 214.0 lbs
Goal: 190 lbs

Mostly back on track after our Saturday of feasting.  We were snowed in today and got up rather late, hence the lack of a lunch below.

Breakfast today:
Green tea
"Smoothie" with strawberries and blueberries

We've found that using the frozen packages of fruit gives the smoothies a texture a little more like an actual smoothie.  Or rather that our taste buds are numbed to the point of not noticing that it doesn't have the usual tasty bits like sugar and milk.

Dinner:
Green tea
Whole chicken, baked with yet another spice mix

We ate the skin.  So there diet.  And the dark meat.

Heck, we might even simmer the whole thing and use the stock to make soup.  At this point, we're finding which little departures from the diet as written can work for us.  In truth, I can't stand the notion of letting so much food go to waste on a bird, just because it has a bit of fat (also known as "taste") to it.

We'll be moving on to the second Cycle soon, and some of these little diet breakers might be becoming legal anyway.  Our plan is to read up on it tomorrow and move into it for the weekend.  We've added a couple days to Cycle 1 because of Saturday.

Unshaven and totally out of fashion,
that's how I like it.

Being snowed in did have some benefits though, as we got a chance to explore the woods behind our own back yard on snowshoes today.  The best part of which is having an excuse to lounge around the house in long underwear afterward.

Sorry, no pictures of that available.

Day 15-16

Sunday's weight: 216.2 lbs
Monday's weight: ???? (I had two eggs, an orange and my morning hot water with lemon down before I realized I hadn't weighed in, so I skipped it today)
Goal: 190 lbs

Tomorrow will be the test to see if I've successfully gotten back on the bandwagon after our Saturday diet holiday.

Today's meals...

Breakfast:
2 hard boiled eggs
Orange

Lunch:
Salad with chicken thigh (really living on the edge with the dark meat)

Dinner:
"Taco" salad (same as before, taco seasoned turkey and greens, minus the tortilla)

Plus green tea, green tea, everywhere.


Keeping up with the water intake was difficult Sunday and I think I've been paying for it today in the form of a day long headache.  That's my diagnosis in any event.  It could possibly have more to do with going back to a job I dislike after a relaxing weekend ("dislike" in this case meaning "would rather have swine flu").

No food pictures today.  I did take a few pictures of the cat, but she's a tad modest and requested I not post them online.

Today's 17 Day Diet madness comes from the second Cycle.  Our good Doctor gives us some great advice on how to spice up bland vegetables.

2. Broth.  Use low-sodium, low-fat chicken and beef broth to sauté meats and cook flavorful rice without adding oil.

Sadly, what this means when translated from doctor-speak, is "water".  Why, you ask?  That's quite a good question.  Here, let's have a little one problem quiz to test your food knowledge.

There is a reason broth tastes nummy.  Actually, two reasons.  What are they?

a) The Emancipation Proclamation
b) salt
c) fat
d) Mt. Etna

If you answered b and c, congratulations!  You're a broth expert!

Day 13-14

A fresh batch of chex mix I made up for my wife's
friend this morning.  I resisted the urge to eat
even a single one.  That fact did not please
me in the least.

Friday's weight: 215.4 lbs (just as predicted)
Saturday's weight: 214.8 lbs
Goal: 190 lbs

This weight roller coaster is getting annoying, though I need to keep repeating that it's the long term trend that matters, and not whether I'm retaining a pound of water day to day.

Speaking of weight, we decided to take a diet vacation Saturday.  Not that we abandoned the whole shebang altogether, but I was getting together for a rare all morning/afternoon get-together with some friends, and my wife was visiting a friend of her's in the North End of Boston.  For those who don't know what the North End of Boston is, allow me to summarize in a picture:

 A few allowances simply had to be made.

By and large, we were fairly good though.  She had a few treats, but a salad for lunch.  I settled on a waffle in the morning (went light on the syrup, though it took a Herculean effort to resist seconds) and some chili at lunch.  I expect we will pay for this on our next weigh-in, but both having lost somewhere around 10 lbs, we figured a small diet holiday wouldn't be too terrible.

I'm still making my way through the book itself.  We'll be moving on to the second 17 day cycle soon and I'll need to see what extra scraps we're allowed to ingest, though we're thinking about extending the first to 18 days to make up for our Saturday lapse.

Today's quote comes from the second chapter of the book, where Dr Hunky is telling us how we're not allowed to have pineapple and bananas, because they have too much sugar and will turn us into walking cans of Crisco.

On the first two Cycles of the 17 Day Diet, you'll stick to berries, apples, oranges and grapefruit, which are lower in sugar.  By eating like this, a fruit tooth will replace the sweet one that rules your mouth.

I will be making a dentist appointment very shortly, because it seems my fruit teeth have been late coming in.  Maybe they're impacted.

Day 11-12, over the hump

Tonight's dinner: flounder with "Mediterranean Rub"
and green beans.  And the ubiquitous green tea.

Yesterday's weight: 217.2 lbs
Today's weight: 214.6 lbs
Goal: 190 lbs

My prediction for tomorrow's weight: 215.4 lbs

Whatever the reason, it seems like my body feels like taking a step back for every two forward.  Fine with me, either way it's coming out to about a pound a day and we're halfway through the first "cycle".

Now if I were a bit braver, I'd have taken one of those "before" pictures of myself with my shirt off and in as unflattering a pose as possible, two days worth of stubble, etc, like they do on TV to make it seem like a huge dramatic change when you see the "after" picture.  But since I lack the guts to actually post something like that of myself, this is a moot point.

Breakfast today:
2 hard boiled eggs
Grapes
Green damn tea

Lunch:
Leftover flamenco salad (a Spanish recipe that both met the 17 day diet requirements and was tasty, a quite shocking thing indeed)
Green tea

Dinner:
Yet another white fish with various things added to make it more tasty and interesting than yet another boring piece of white fish
Green beans
Green tea

We cheated a tad with the beans tonight and added a little lemon juice.  I think there's a point in every diet where you decide to cheat a little here and there.  It's probably also the same point at which people often go off these miserable things.  So far though, this is the one we've been able to stay on the longest, so I suspect having the occasional raisin after 2 PM won't break our resolve (fruits after 2 are a no-no on the 17 day diet, I think something along the lines of feeding Gizmo after midnight happens).

Day 9-10

Weight Sunday: 216.8 lbs
Weight today: 216.0 lbs
Goal: 190 lbs

My apologies to my vast audience of eager readers for the lack of a post yesterday.  It was a busy day and I'm back on track now.

Today's breakfast:
Blueberry "smoothie" - low fat yogurt and frozen blueberries

Lunch:
Romaine and tuna, sans oil & vineger thanks to my forgetfulness

Dinner:
Mixed vegetable & chicken stir fry

Not a bad day food-wise, though dinner was made tastier by cheating a little bit and applying a liberal dose of soy sauce.

I think we're finally over the initial hump of this thing and sticking to it's getting a bit easier.  We've both lost 10 lbs or more and the pace seems to be steady.

The one thing I am really craving and missing though is bread.  Even just a slice of toast in the morning would brighten this diet up.

My wife's been doing some reading ahead to cycle 2 of the diet and it seems there are a few more things to which to look forward.  Bread, naturally, is not one of them.  But it seems beef has now become OK to eat and a handful of other things that contain something I think I once recall as being 'taste'.

Hopefully upon reading it myself, I will have some more witty insights, but for now we're doing well without much new to report.

Day 8

Current weight: 219.4 lbs
Goal: 190 lbs.

This is one of those days that make me hate regimented diets.  After around 4 hours of snowshoeing through the woods of Maine, I come home to find that I have gained a full pound.  The logical part of me knows that it's probably because I ate and drank not too long before, whereas I'm usually on an empty stomach after work when I weigh and wearing different clothes.  The gut feel part, however, thinks he's ready to find out if this book would make 17 days of kindling.

Lesson learned: weigh-ins will now be first thing in the morning, straight out of bed with no food in me and no clothing variables.

Today's food report:

Breakfast
Blueberry smoothie-ish drink (frozen blueberries + low fat yogurt)

Lunch
Leftover chicken vegetable soup (not surprisingly this tastes a lot better after hiking through the snow all afternoon)

Dinner
Sashimi (raw fish)
Edamame (steamed legumes similar to pea pods, I think these were actually a no-no on Cycle 1)
Chicken negimaki (scallions wrapped in chicken, both quite legal, though it had a light smattering of teriyaki, another Cycle 1 no-no)

We caved.  Dinner was out for Japanese tonight.  With the two exceptions above, we did manage to stay on-diet.  Oh, and we ate a fortune cookie too.  Nya-nya, take that Dr. McHunky.

This is chocolate turtle cheesecake.
Three bites are very satisfying, and all you really
want in the first place...right?

No dessert though, we at least stayed on track that far.  Just in case we ever were tempted, though, I checked out what the 17 Day Diet has to say on the subject.  Here we go:

"...you can practice my 'three-bite rule' with desserts...If you truly want chocolate turtle cheesecake, go ahead and have it, but limit yourself to a taste.  Take three bites and set it aside for a few minutes.  You're less likely to come back to ti.  You might even discover that those few bites of a great dessert can be very satisfying, and might be all you really wanted in the first place."

 I'll go ahead and let that one stand on its own merits.

Day 7

Current Weight: 218.4 lbs
Goal: 190 lbs

Breakfast today:
2 hard boiled eggs
1 orange

Lunch:
"Taco" salad, courtesy of the 17-Day Diet book

Dinner will be fish and an unknown vegetable once my wife returns home.

Now, a little bit about today's lunch.  I will include illustrations for those that might have a hard time with certain concepts.

The Taco Salad from the 17 Day Diet book includes the following ingredients:

Lean ground turkey
Taco seasoning
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Onions
Salsa
Low fat cheddar cheese

It is missing a certain something.  I will put a small hint below.

 

This is a taco.

Note the funny yellowish thing surrounding the vegetables and meat.  This is called a 'tortilla'.  Without the 'tortilla', what you see there is called 'a bunch of meat and vegetables on a plate'.

In fairness the salad with taco seasoned turkey burger was actually fairly good and even somewhat filling.

I can't wait for my "steak" dinner to arrive.

Day 6 - A New Scale

Chicken and asparagus for dinner tonight.
The mess in the background is all the stuff we
should be cleaning but don't have time to because
we're busy not eating.

New adjusted weight, taken on our new digital, backlit, ergonomic, eco-friendly, gastronomic, low sodium, high fiber, reduced calorie, California emissions safe scale: 218.8 lbs
Goal: 190 lbs

While obviously I did not drop 7 lbs overnight, we're on a solid track with the new scale.  It has all sorts of fancy features, not the least of which being the ability to accurately report the same weight when I step back on it a second time.

Breakfast today:
Plain fried egg
Green tea
Grapes

These breakfasts are getting a wee bit monotonous, but at least they're filling.  We skipped breakfast a lot in the past, so monotony is an improvement for us.

Lunch:
Leftover healthy chicken soup
Orange

Dinner:
Chicken thighs, generously covered in spices
Asparagus w/ oil & lemon

Meals weren't too rough today, though we're a bit peckish now.  My wife is currently whipping up a tasty bowl of Indian yogurt dip and cutting some veggies to go with it.  Yes, we're really at the point where yogurt + spices + vegetables is a tasty snack.

This weekend we're planning to try to get more active.  The 17 day plan is to get two 15 minute sessions of light exercise a day.  Unfortunately, for the tiny minority of us that have to work during the day, have no treadmill in the house and are surrounded by snow piles the size of the national debt, this isn't terribly practical.  So I'm planning to go snowshoeing on Sunday, and we will possibly get a decent walk or two in tomorrow.

Day 5

Current weight: 226 lbs
Goal: 190 lbs

Tilapia with spices and sauteed onions/peppers.
Already we're repeating food.

 

Ultimately, the goal of most diets is not to lose weight by eating what they tell you, but to come to hate food enough that you stop eating.

We're about at that point.  The restrictiveness of cycle 1 of the 17 day diet combined with the lack of variety in foodstuffs available in East Bummington New Hampshire doesn't leave a lot of room for fun and taste.

Which brings me to my thought of the day.  I wonder how many diet authors, while writing their books filled with bok choy and kefir and East Indian weatgrass realize that a good number of us don't have access to these things.  I'm sure in their neighborhood, there's a Whole Foods across the street from every Starbucks, but up here, we're lucky to find rhubarb out of season.

Day 4 - Mmmmm mmmm good?

Turkey vegetable soup from the 17 day diet book
for our lunch tomorrow.  Had some tonight to
sample and it wasn't too bad.  Filling and faintly
reminiscent of something fatty and satisfying.

Current weight: 227ish pounds
Goal: 190 lbs

Our scale has decided to randomly report whatever it feels like today, so today's weigh-in is a scientific conclusion based on trends over the last 4 days and a highly precise average of stepping on the scale multiple times until it reported something near what I expected it to.

Breakfast today:
Kefir smoothie (some sort of fat free yogurt-ish drink, mixed with berries and other assorted things)

Curiously, the smoothie congealed to the consistency of jell-o in under 15 seconds.  I wish this were a joke.  I could in fact turn the glass sideways with no loss of content.  Next time I will post a picture.

Lunch:
Marinated vegetable salad, from the book

My wife liked this one more than me.  Taste was ok, but not something I could eat a pound of at a time, unlike, say, well, anything I ate before this diet.

Dinner:
Roast chicken, minus skin
Boiled carrots

I think I can still hear whimpers from the other room mourning the crispy, delicious skin.

I spent a while today reading some forums, people discussing this diet and the recipes they've found.  I think I have found the source of all self-delusion in the universe.  Here is a sample:

Person 1:
Here's my recipe for a delicious way to break up the breakfast doldrums!
Jenny B's Awesome Super Smoothee!
1 cup no fat, no salt, no sugar Nufeel reconstituted yogurt substitute
1/2 cup mashed peas
2 tsp flaxseed oil, boiled with a beet


Just mix together in a blender and enjoy!  To really spice it up, add some brussel sprout puree, as much as you want!

Person 2:
OMG this is the most awesome smoothie ever!  I am going to drink it every morning now!  I have decided to rename my first child after the 17 day diet because it's just so delicious.

That was an actual quote.  People really do get this excited over diet food.

I suppose we must all do what we must to survive, but claiming to like anything containing no actual food (that does not come in a foil wrapper with a Mars logo©) is a little extreme.  I see you looking lady.  Stay away from me with that fork.

Day 3

Current weight: 228 lbs
Goal: 190 lbs

Being 6'2 and having a scale that's about as accurate as Dick Cheney's aim, I'm not going to make much of the supposed 4 lb weight loss yet.  But it's going the right way and that's good.

Breakfast and lunch today: more of the same: eggs, greens, green tea.

Dinner:
Turkey burgers (let me clarify: "burger" meaning a patty, bereft of the things that make burgers pleasurable, like, for instance, bread, and tasty condiments)
Stir fried onions, peppers, garlic, mushrooms

Montreal seasoning and good cooking at my wife's hands saved our stomachs from a dreary and dull fate at the hands of the chicken.  I suspect it has a bit more salt than Dr Hunky would like, but I'll tackle heart disease later after I've lost a few pounds.

Day 2 and Hunger Isn't Everything

Last night's meal - chicken breast with a spice rub from allrecipes.com.
It's hit and miss with flavorings to get you through 28 days of chicken
breasts and white fish.

Weight: 230 lbs
Goal: 190

Breakfast today:
2 eggs, fried to a dreary tan color in a pan without any oil
green tea
grapes

Lunch:
"Super Salad", in 17 Day Diet parlance.  To the rest of the world this would be known as a typical side salad.  Oh, but you can have all of it you want!  Goody gumdrops!  More on that shortly
green tea

Dinner:
A surprisingly tasty tilapia w/ herb rub and asparagus, courtesy of my wife and Señor Google.
green...f'in...tea

Probiotic/fruit snacks to fill the requirements.

OK, so why am I bitching about the salad, aside from the obvious fact that it's a typical side salad renamed to sound like you're getting a treat?  It's this insistence that somehow being able to fill up on rabbit food means something.  This does 0 to satisfy my cravings for something fatty, sugary or creamy.  I could stuff myself until I had little carrot shaped bulges protruding from my navel and I would still gladly devour a 12 oz. sirloin, complete with sauce.  Do these diet books really think it's about being full?  It's about being satisfied people!  I think many people fall off the wagon because, no matter how inventive you get with spices, eventually you just need a strawberry shortcake after dinner.  Too much deprivation and you're going to make that a double scoop, three biscuit, half tub of whippit, face stuffing extravaganza instead of a nice after dinner treat.

Tonight's meal was good.  It went a long way to keeping me from that bag of cookies my wife's friend brought over the other night.  We'll see how many more of those we can whip up before that shortcake looks too tempting to pass up.

Day 1 - The New Diet, Same as the Old Diet

Day 1
Starting weight: 232 lbs
Goal: 190

For those who don't already know, the 17 Day Diet is a new diet published by Dr. Mike Moreno (generic hunky looking celeb doctor complete with slicked up fratboy looking hair) and popularized on the Dr. Phil show.

What's so special about it?  Nothing.  Sure, it's got it's own quirks - a big emphasis on anti oxidants and probiotics.  Oh, and you drink green tea until you piss pea soup.  But basically, it's eat leafy vegetables, lean meat, fruit and watery milk products and exercise 30 minutes a day.  Oh, and you're supposed to lose weight fast the first week.  Revolutionary!

Breakfast
2 eggs, fried in abso-f'in-lutely nothing
green tea
orange

This went well enough.  The egg really wasn't that bad.  And the diet does allow 2 tbsp of oil a day, so I suppose I could have cooked the egg in a little something.

Lunch
Romaine lettuce with tuna on top, oil and vinegar
green tea

Thank the blessed Roman gods for balsamic.  This was actually tolerable thanks to that.

Approaching dinnertime now, with herbed chicken on the offering.  And some tasty probiotic yogurt like slop for a snack later.  I can't wait.

Diets

I need to get this out of the way before I write another word: I hate diets.  Most diets work, if followed, but I think they're also so restrictive as to be terribly counter productive.  I'd rather apply a liberal dose of common sense and moderation with what I eat combined with regular exercise.  I've done it before and it's my own damn fault I gained the weight back.  Paying $20 for a book to tell me what I can and can't eat is pointless for me.  It's my own willpower that will help me get back to where I should be.  Being denied a what I want to eat because Dr. Hunky McAbs says I can't have carbs after 2 just pisses me off.  If anything, all the denial is going to make me more likely to slide off it and toss that Skor bar from the checkout down my pie hole just to spite the damn diet.

With all that said, why am I going on the 17 Day Diet?  Because I recognize that, for some people, having everything dictated to you is the only way they're going to lose weight.  My wife is one of those people.  And if she wants to try this diet out, I'm not going to let my own preferences get in the way.