Hey, this post is in response to Jenny's question. Well, it's been a week on the down day diet. When I weighed myself this morning, I've lost about 4-5 pounds total. That's a lot, I think. My pants fit better, but that's about all. I don't expect this kind of weight loss if I continue on the diet plan. I think it just shocked my body a bit and then I'll plateau and hopefully it will be about a pound a week?? I'm guessing??? 500 calories was a bit too low for me. I tried, but had a really hard time with it. I did more like 800 calories instead and that was more doable for me. I didn't even count my calories on the up day. For breakfast on a down day I would have a slice of toast with an egg white on it (fried or baked or whatever) and a small glass of juice. Or I would make myself a fruit smoothie. Breakfast is usually 150-250 calories tops. Then I drank lots of water. However....for me....the mornings are easy. I'm not hungry in the mornings. It's easy to go until lunch time and not get hungry. Lunch I have a Special K Protein shake. Chocolate. It's 190 calories. I do like the taste of it. It is satisfying. This is good because if I run, I drink this and protein is good for a run recovery. Now comes the hard part. My weakness is the afternoon. By about 3pm I'm starving. However, I noticed in the past, no matter what I ate earlier in the day....if I had a huge pancake breakfast with a big cheeseburger lunch, at about 3pm I was hungry and from then on until bedtime, it's a battle. I am peckish, hungry, whatever. So, for me..it's the same on the down day. 3pm is hard. I want to snack snack snack. Sooooo, what I do is drink some water. If that doesn't work, I drink a bit of rooibos tea with a teaspoon of sugar. It's about 17 calories total. Rooibos tea is an herb tea from South Africa and it's filling. With the sugar in it, it stops any of snacking or sweet cravings. Also, I do everything I can to get busy and do something else. It's torture actually, those afternoons. Then for dinner, I do some pan-grilled vegetables. About 300 calories worth. (A potato, some asparagus, some carrots, etc.) I made some meat for Darren and the kids. I just didn't eat it. They eat what I eat, but just a little more or whatever. I pretty much eat the same thing every down day. It made it easy and I didn't have to do a lot of thinking or decisions. After dinner, it's pretty busy getting the kids ready for bed, but after that if I was incredibly tempted again, rooibos tea or lots of water or one night, I went to bed.
It was hard this week, but when Darren made a carrot cake, it wasn't a big deal. I had my slice the next day. It's soooooo much easier holding off until the next day than to never have it at all or have the tiniest sliver only once per week. I had a regular slice and could of had more if I wanted to, but I didn't at the time. Yesterday was an up day. I had a cheeseburger and some fries. One thing I've noticed about my up days, I'm not going crazy. The guilt and the self-loathing isn't getting to me either.
For my down days I picked Monday's, Wednesday's and Friday's. My up days are Tuesday's, Thursday's and Saturday's. I picked those days as my up days because Saturday, obviously and Thursday is my dad's day off and many times in the past, my parents will want to go out to lunch or whatever -- especially in the summer so I kind of planned ahead for that. Also on Tuesday it's girl's night. It works for me and I plan ahead. Sunday is a half day. I will consume about 200 calories before church, but then after church have my Sunday dinner and I've allowed for a little popcorn. It's like a half and half day. Also, I exercise on Mon., Wed., and Fri. mornings (down days). I have found that my exercise goes well if I've had a really good meal the night before. I need some calories to run the distances I'm starting to run. I don't need calories in the meal right before my run, but rather the day before my run. It's worked well this past week. I'm going to try again for another week and see. I'll do this week by week and see how it works for me and how I feel. I was initially concerned about the low, low calories on the alternate days, but it seems to be OK so far. I'll tell you this......hunger truly makes food taste soooooooo good.
I hope that sort of answers your questions. I get so long-winded I know. Let me know if you want to try it. I need to talk to Diana about it and see how it's going for her.
Cheers!
Al
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