Lost in Seattle

Tomorrow, Amy and I start the South Beach Diet. The SBD is based on the theory that foods with a low glycemic index satisfy your hunger longer and minimize food cravings better than foods with a high GI (such as highly-processed foods, white flour, sugars, etc.). In the interests of maintaining an incentive for sticking to the Diet (especially the ominous 2-week “Phase 1” of the project, which permits no carbs at all, only low-fat dairy, and very, very small portions), I have decided to post a daily update chronicling our journey back to our ideal weights. First entry: Day Zero — the preparation.

First of all, why are we doing this? We’re not obese, but our clothes aren’t fitting and we’re feeling rundown. So Amy came up with this brilliant idea that I decided to sign onto because I couldn’t imagine she’d let me sleep in the same bed if I continued inhaling milkshakes while she was making do with 6 green beans and a glass of vegetable juice.

Plus, I can stand to lose some weight, too. At the Day Zero weigh-in, I clocked in at a frightening 182 pounds with clothes on. This is fully 12 pounds heavier than my driver’s license weight (which I think I lied about anyway), and way off my “fighting weight” when I was trying to emulate the undead back in college and was a gaunt and wafer thin 155.

With clothes off, I was relieved to see a 4-pound drop. One seventy six was my “with clothes” weight from 2002 and 2003 according to my medical records. All in all, not too bad.

However, according to this web site’s weight and body mass calculator, here’s how I compare:

So, I’ve got a little weight to drop, but it’s not too bad.

The main cause of our weight gain over the last two years has been our lack of time to prepare good meals. Amy’s busy with Ray all day, and I don’t much feel like going through extensive food prep when I get back from work, so we’ve often relied on quick-to-make, filling foods, which are usually loaded with carbs.

Nevertheless, overall, we eat pretty well — whole grain breads, regular servings of vegetables, lots of salmon, no pork or red meat. However, on top of all that, we snack like crazy, enjoy desserts far too often, and favor a heavy, malty beer almost every night. For the sake of convenience, we go out to eat or order in a couple times a week, and I have never been good at bringing a healthy lunch to work so I either go without (except for a Snickers bar) or eat junk, like pizza or bad Chinese food.

Today was all about menu planning and food preparation. The SBD book outlines a recommended menu and provides recipes for the 14 day journey into Hell we are about to embark upon. The problem is that most of the recipes involve a high degree of planning and preparation, which is one of the reasons we got into this mess in the first place. It quickly became apparent that the SBD is as much about planning as it is about the food (or lack thereof).

After a trip to the local PCC natural food co-op, I set about trying to develop a meal plan that we could stick with for 2 weeks. We needed dishes that Amy could prepare while she was tending to Ray and stuff that I could tote to work. I have also been eating breakfast at work, so I needed something portable for that meal as well. We deciced that if I could prepare breakfast and lunch meals the night before, Amy would ignore the implications and have dinner ready by the time I got home from work. After all, the hard part is only for 2 weeks and she can suffer even that indignity for that long.

For breakfast, I decided that I can eat the “quiche cups.” According to the guide, I can eat 2 muffin-sized egg, spinach, and low-fat cheese “quiches” each morning, along with 6 oz. of vegetable juice. My first panic attack came when I saw how tiny the resulting quiches were going to be. After a quick calculation, I realized that spreading 3 eggs over 12 muffin cups and then eating 2 of them for a meal meant I was eating 1/2 an egg. I usually eat 2 or 3 eggs for a serving! Maybe the spinach would stretch it out. Plus there was the vegetable juice…. I was momentarily excited when Amy said she remembered seeing three items for breakfast in the book, not just two. I excitedly flipped to the right page hoping to find that I could eat, maybe, a handful of nuts or something. My heart (and stomach) sank when I saw “decaf coffee” listed as the third item.

So, the muffin cups and some admittedly pretty tasty looking pistachio chicken salad (for lunch) is riding with me to work tomorrow. If I have any energy left at the end of the day, I’ll report on my condition after Day 1.