My dad’s dietician has told him to go on the South Beach Diet. Also told him to stay the heck away from Atkins… which I found highly amusing since my inlaws swear by the Atkins diet even though they aren’t losing a pound and have been on it going on 18 months and claim all cardiologists and dieticians swear by it. Hmm… *SNICKERS*
So my mom decided it is easier to cook once not twice plus she needs to lose weight. OK fine, I could lose ten or fifteen vanity pounds and we won’t get into Sir Megabyte who STILL eats like he’s 21 and in the USMC. So we are apparently all going to start this diet so my mother bought the book and we’ve been pouring over it.
Here’s the problem. My mother? Lactose Intolerant big time. The woman eats cheese on a salad and she’s in the toilet for hours on end. Not good with 6 of us in the house if you want to ignore her digestion entirely. I’m allergic to sugar substitutes and am scared to try Splenda though I’m going to give it a go and pray that it doesn’t send me to the toilet for hours on end like other artificial sweetners. Of course if out and about forget it since most anything sugar substituted is going to have that junk I’m allergic to. Then the fact this diet is STILL high meat. Fine except my mother nor I process meat well. I can do chicken OK and fish is fine. But red meats? Forget it. Same for her. Of course poor mom doesn’t have a gall bladder or only part of one or something like that hence the meat thing. (In fact it was the increase of meat in my diet since DH is so picky that coincided with my weight gain… that and the steroids and c/s with Joram’s pregnancy.)
So here we have two people who can’t really eat red meat. One who can’t do milk products. One who can’t do sugar substitutes. Oh and cooking in oil also sets off our stomaches. And neither of us are real fond of eggs which appears to be about the only breakfast the first two weeks! And I’m sorry I will NOT do canadian bacon in the morning as ew… meat in the morning = wrong. I can’t even do bacon in the evening let alone in the morning! Forget sausage… too greasy so I rarely touch the stuff.
Anyway… this should be fun. Thankfully this diet debunks that crazy Atkins myth that all carbs are bad. All carbs are not bad. There are carbs your body needs. With our low iron that mom and I have we DEFINATELY need them. Otherwise we won’t have a lick of energy. (We both tend to run a 7 on the iron test. You are supposed to be like a 12 if I remember right… haha but we also run temps at like 96. I know my temp regularly is 96.8. And we have low blood pressure. Just something weird with the women of our family… we’re ALL like this! Grandma, Aunts, Cousins, etc)
I’m not sure when we are officially starting this. It should be an interesting thing. Especially with The World’s Pickiest Eater On Earth for a husband who will probably tempt me and buy stuff to alternate for dinner. We have such an eclectic bunch. Dad loves chicken and steak. Mom and I love fish. Sir Megabyte won’t touch chicken and fish. I don’t think any of us are huge fans of pork or turkey.
So instead of playing Clean Sweep today we spent the better part of the day pouring through this book. Hmmm… Crud… maybe I’ll start working towards Clean Sweep now… See what we can get done before Dad gets home.
Lady Ozma's Journey 
dani_ellie said:
The Atkins thing scares me. I would die if I tried that. Seriously. All I eat is like, cereal, pasta, sandwiches…if I tried to cut those out of my diet, there’d be nothing left.
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Lady Ozma said:
I know…
My problem is that since I eat so little meat, that means that I am left with almost nothing but pastas and the like. But I picked up eating meat because of my husband… guess what? Weight gain. I trimmed up a hair when he left and started eating a lot of fish… HAHA… But my general day goes something like… bagel or sandwhich around noon, a snack depending on what’s in the house like salad, carrots, wheat thins, cottage cheese… though sometimes I run out so I raid the kids snacks as long as they aren’t too gross. But then I get dinner which can be pasta or casserole or fish over rice or chicken over rice… that sort of thing.
This will be fascinating. I do like this one because you only cut that stuff for two weeks… then you reintroduce it all because cutting all carbs is WRONG.
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clueliss said:
You know what i’m going to say – right
Weight watchers.
repeat after me weiiiiiiiiiiiight waaaaaaaaaaatccccccchhhhhhhherrrrrrrrrrrs.
Put mom and dad on it – and if they don’t want to go to meetings – (but I recommend meetings) they can do it online. Then you and sirmegabyte follow along off their material 😛 Your mom still only has to cook once. And the rest of you will lose weight by default because she can simply stop buying all the junk food and such that makes everyone fat anyway.
WW works best because you can have anything in your point range. It works for vegetarians. And as i recall the statistic is that it is second only to the American Heart Association Diet in overall rankings. And I read somewhere that on WW your food budget goes DOWN rather than UP with the South Beach/Atkins Diets.
and I still say weeeeeeeeight waaaaaatchers.
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Lady Ozma said:
Re: You know what i’m going to say – right
My dad has the diabetes and the heart thing so they told him to try this SBD thing. I have seen a lot of people do well on WW though. 🙂
I’ve been doing some more research on SBD. There are ways to do it vegetarian because unlike fool Atkins, it lets you eat what you like just ditch the cookies and crap. But unfortunately the recs in the book are NOT the ones that are vegie. *SIGH* Now some of them seemed OK. But seriously I need breakfast that is NOT eggs and canadian bacon.
I think we’d do WW if it wasn’t for Dad’s special needs. And this two week carb starv thing is what irks me. I looked at Phase 2 you start on Day 15. Now that is more doable. You eat normal breakfast. Normal lunch. Not all meat. (The big diff between it and Atkins. Atkins is contant meat which IS unhealthy no matter what anyone says. SBD has real food. But the default menus is heavy meat.)
I’m going to pick my size 2 vegetarian friend’s brain in the morning. 🙂 She’s size 2 and a vegie. So if ANYONE knows how to eat/cook it is her. ANd she’s on a budget… so she’ll give us good options.
And I may say “Forget it mum” and blow that breakfast. I’m sorry but for 2 week’s it is almost daily “egg of various type and canadian bacon” I do NOT cook in the morning. If I do it is to nuke oatmeal or toast a bagel.
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jeckasue said:
Re: You know what i’m going to say – right
OK first, I agree with Liss, WW is the way to go. You can customize it. It’s great.
Second, I have heard that SBD is better than Atkins, but my ex-office manager went on it, did well the first week, then got super sick and quit. She’s doing modified now, I think. Or was the last time I talked to her.
Third, and most important. Go read this article. http://content.health.msn.com/content/article/83/97667 It happened to be on the news popup when I started MSN messenger just now and I pasted it to Liss and she told me about your LJ entry. It says low-carb is bad for kids.
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Lady Ozma said:
Re: You know what i’m going to say – right
We wouldn’t make the kids do it. They will still get their cereal and their snacks and stuff. 🙂 It would really be only for the adults though they’d get the dinners too. Of course while we would have the wacky ricatta cheese deserts they would get ice cream or applesauce or cookies or whatever. 🙂 HAHA.
Caramon has been on some wacky sounding diets in the past due to his weight concerns. He was so small and then of course they needed him to gain weight when he had cancer and etc. So I had to learn all these things about true health which is why i’d never do a no carb diet. It’s wrong. I tried to tell my inlaws but they do not believe me. I’m sorry you do NOT cut out parts of the pyramid, and especially not for kids.
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