Lenas wrote:
What's your daily routine/diet looking like now? Good job on the progress
Well, when I first started out I was doing my damndest to keep under 20 grams of nutritive carbohydrates a day (carbs from Fiber don't count). Right now it's probably between 20g - 40g a day. Maybe 50g - 75g on a bad day, but I'd say the majority of them are good days.
When eating lunch, I'll usually order a burger without the bun and instead of fries I'll order a side salad, usually with ranch dressing (Chik-fil-a's dressing only has like 3g of carbs). If there are carrots in the salad, I take them out.
Atkins allows sugar alcohols, but my Low Carb Bible (as I call it) doesn't allow it, so if something is "Atkins Friendly" I still many times have to pass.
For dinner it's generally very protein and vegetable oriented. One of the best purchases we've made is "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Low Carb Meals." This is a great cookbook with many good and tasty recipes that are easy to make and don't have exotic and expensive ingredients (unlike our Biggest Loser cookbook). For instance last night we made a really nice soup in our crockpot that consisted of beef, onions, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, parsley, cayenne pepper, oregano, cabbage, etc.
Since "snacking" is a tough habit to break and I am very much a snacking person, what I munch on are: String cheeses (mostly pepperjack), fried cheese crisps (grated cheese on parchment (not wax) in the microwave... tastes just like Cheezits), but especially: Blue Diamond almonds. Blue Diamond Almonds, "Smokehouse" flavor especially (but I am also a big fan of the Habanero BBQ). I have the 38 oz container of them from Costco on my desk as I type this. I've been known to snack on microwaved bacon and pepperoni (nuke the latter long enough, and they become like chips too... I just recommend getting "Low soidum" ones).
Since soda was also a big problem for me, the switch to Diet soda went very well. I also enjoy drinking Crystal Light and the Propel Zero (Thanks Nevandal!). Coke Zero, is by far, the most superior diet soda around. I used to be a heavy Coke drinker before I switched to Mountain Dew, but Coke Zero has converted me back. Coke Zero masks the aspartame aftertaste better than any other soda I've come across, and it truly does taste more like the regular stuff. The fact that they have Vanilla Coke Zero and Cherry Coke Zero also fills me with happiness.
The thing I like about this diet is that I don't feel like I'm starving myself (probably because I'm not) and the food that I eat is extremely tasty. The other thing I like is that it hasn't really felt like that big of a lifestyle change, which is probably the biggest keys in terms of ensuring weight loss.
And even on "cheat days" where eat a lot more breads and what not, I still tend to lose. Saturday my brother wanted to go to a pizzeria for his birthday. So my wife and I decided we'll just call it a cheat day. So I had a lot of pizza and garlic bread. I expected the scale to show a +2 lb gain, but it shocked me by showing another -1 lb loss. That's 15 lbs gone so far!
It has been a gradual change that it took me a while to notice it. But the fact that I can wear pants I haven't worn in 7 years, the fact I need to get a new belt soon, and the fact that I looked at my driver's license photo recently and did a double take at how different I look, is finally starting to sink in.
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