First off, congratulations to all of my fellow Dietbetters who made (or almost made) round one of the August to February Transformer. Even stopping the weight gain is a huge accomplishment! All the best for round two!
I missed several days of posting because of school, work, stress and roommates, but I'm pleased to say I didn't slip up! I felt like I had no time to do my course work with the hours I was still putting in to work, but instead of caving and turning to chips or the Timbits my coworkers brought in, I walked the dogs, enjoyed tea, or slept for 12 hours straight (the last one was after a bit of an argument with the room mates about food.
My room mates really like doing group meals (which is lovely, because it means we all take turns, usually), but because they know my work load is heavy they've been doing most of the cooking. Not wanting to seem ungrateful, I did my best to cut the breading away, or scrape the sugary sauces off the foods, but I drew the line at the carb laden meatloaf drenched in sweet chili sauce. Yes, I know it's delicious, but I'm sticking to my plan.
This lead to them feeling hurt, and lashing out at me, mocking all of the other "fads" I've tried. Instead of making me feel worse, it actually served to strengthen my resolve. I'm sticking to this plan, and I'm not going to let added sugar creep into my diet. I declined to join them for dinner, caught up on some much needed sleep, and the following evening when I was home for dinner, we enjoyed ribs, where I cooked theirs with our usual sugary BBQ sauce, and whipped up a batch of no sugar added sauce for my own. All fences seem to be mended.
The bonus of this spicy tomato based sauce is that it seems to have so many other uses! More on that later!
For my meals on days 9-13, I enjoyed either eggs or yogurt for breakfast, veggies, summer sausage and cheese for lunch, and a variety of entrees for dinner. Fruit was added back in, really changing the caloric breakdown of my meals, but upping the fibre intake.
I would argue that after completely cutting out processed foods, fruit and added sugar for six days really made things taste better when I added fruit and low fat dairy back in. I'm really enjoying my food now, as everything has its own natural sweetness and flavour. (I even ate corn on the cob without salt or butter!).
Average breakdown of meals for the last 6 days
Calories: 1400/day
Fat: 41%
Protein: 28%
Carbs: 31%
Day 13 allowed the addition of processed whole grains and natural sweetners like honey, pure maple syrup or dried fruit. Today I chose to indulge in a whole grain English muffin with an egg (topped with my BBQ sauce from the last night). I also started to eat beans/lentils, and had a warm salad with black beans as the feature ingredient (and a dressing made up of the BBQ sauce and yogurt). Dinner was steak, corn and beans with peaches for dessert.
Today's calories were 1500. Of that,
Fat: 33%
Protein: 25%
Carbs: 42% (70g sugar, 38.5g fibre).
The sugar is higher than I'd like, but I'm realizing that the majority of sugar in my diet comes from my fruits and vegetables, and my dairy, not from added sugar, so I'm okay with that.
Weight at start of plan: 170 lbs.
Weight after phase II: 164 lbs.
That's six pounds in less than two weeks. I will take it!