It’s day 12 of 14 for Phase 1 — the no carb, no sugar phase.
I have lost somewhere between 8-10 pounds according to various scale readings at different times of the day. I am finally securely below 170, which was my goal. Phase 2 of the diet, which starts Monday, involves a gradual reintroduction of complex carbs and reportedly can still result in a weekly loss of another pound or two. Phase 3 (which begins whenever I want it to) is more about maintaining weight and overall healthy eating habits.
Click below to read my observations of life on the South Beach Diet so far.
Energy levels are higher. Amy and I both used to be near collapse around 9:00-9:30pm. Now, we have a problem of being wide awake at 10:00pm. That’s fine with me, as I can always find something to do and can make-do on 8 hours sleep. But Amy is just not wired to be happy about waking up between 5am-6am when Ray awakens unless she’s had a solid 9 hours. It has not helped matters for her that Ray’s had a cold for a week now and is sleeping poorly and waking early.
Hunger-related mood swings are down. I used to get really cranky if I didn’t eat after a certain period of time, and usually only a big load of simple carbs would do it for me. Now, even when I’m hungry, my mood is still fairly moderate and less effected by the blood sugar drop — because I don’t have any blood sugar! Or rather, it’s better regulated. For example, this morning, I was side-swiped by an 8:00am meeting I had forgotten about, so I didn’t get to eat until 10:00am, and I was suffering none of my usual feelings (like wanting to kill someone).
I have no cravings. I thought the hardest part of this diet was going to be resisting the temptations to grad my usual afternook Snickers bar or give in to stress and eat a pizza for comfort or have a drink after work. But even though this has been a relatively stressful couple weeks at work, I have really had no urges to cheat after the first couple days. The other day, for example, I had a late afternoon staff meeting. It had been a rough day and I was feeling pretty tense. One of my staff passed around cookies, and I had absolutely no desire to eat one. Now that’s pretty amazing to me.
I look better. Like I previously reported, I tend to gain and lose weight in my face, and I think I look noticably thinner in that area. My waist has shrunk enough, too, that my clothes are fitting loosely. Our neighbor Brit even mentioned the other day that I needed to buy new pants since the ones I was wearing looked so droopy. The thing is, those pants were too tight to comfortably wear 3 weeks ago.
