...also known as "Sugar Awareness Week".
We are already stoked for shifting our eating plan tomorrow to include more natural sugars and carbs, especially Richard who dearly needs them. My oldest son (a PhD student/candidate in neuroscience at Harvard) reminded me today, too, that the brain can only use glucose for energy, and if it's not there, that could cause a problem. He thought it was crazy to count the sugars in vegetables, that cinched it for me. With full time pharmacy school starting in three days, glucose is back in.
We have a plan, that yes, involves counting total sugar grams (maximum 20 grams), but we are not going to count the sugar or carbs from vegetables (or psyllium!!!) We are going to return to our healthy carb regimen we were on before, and with more awareness of how much we are eating. I am going to be more aware of my serving sizes with the carbs, limiting to some extent, as I am still working to reduce poundage, and Richard will be free to eat what he feels is right for him. We can breathe a sigh of relief. Ahhhhhhhhh.
I developed a check list for each of us, because our dietary goals are different from each other, as are our diets (with my eating (grass-fed, hormone-free and lean) red meat, in fact now prescribed by the acupuncturist/nutritionist and Richard's (pesca)vegetarianism). We can each check off 20 grams of sugar each day, up to 60 grams of fat for me, and 85 grams of fat for Richard, and AT LEAST 80 grams of protein for me, and 100 grams of protein for Richard.
We ARE going to continue with the morning toning exercises for abdominal, upper body and lower body Monday through Friday, because we think that's a good thing to add in, and seems reasonable to put into our morning routine. And we plan to continue walking (and I will do my elliptical), and meditation, and living peacefully.
Today's menu looked like this:
Breakfast: Mediterranean Omelet (as in previous posts), no carbs
Snack:
Lunch: Roasted chili pepper bake (with egg beaters and mozzarella), I had a piece of gluten-free toast with olive oil
Snack: Matcha green tea frapuccino (protein powder with stevia, matcha green tea, unsweetened Almond Breeze) and strawberries with nonfat plain yogurt with stevia.
Dinner: Me: hormone free steak; Him: Fish? tofu? and something to fulfill our remaining carb serving(s) of the week, some arugula salad with shaved Parmesan and homemade dressing (red wine vinegar, olive oil, garlic) . It looks like we will be splitting the remaining Almond Butter Cup (unless I make some more tonight - this was another good thing to come out of this experiment!)
Tomorrow is the official weigh-in for the One-week Challenge, and I'm sure I've lost weight; we will see about the inches.
Showing posts with label carbs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label carbs. Show all posts
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
Day One Update 8-8-11
Update on our plan, and foods discovered:
The day was successful. It is quite eye-opening to discover just how much sugar is in our usual healthy foods. For example, for 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, we had to count 2 Sugars. Rice wine vinegar would have cost none, but I didn't have any on hand for the dressing I was making with the olive oil and garlic. 1/4 cup of brown rice has 38 grams of carbs, which count for 2 of the 6 Carb servings we are allowed each day. It's only a 1/4 of a cup, which is not much, but good to remember when it comes to portions eating out.
I tried the green tea frappuccino recipe in Jorge Cruise's Belly Fat Cure book, he calls it the "Energize Me Green Tea" with only 1 Sugar count and one Carb serving count, and I'm not sure where he's coming up with either. It's meant to be a replacement for Starbucks "Belly Bad" Tazo Green Tea Frappuccino Blended Creme beverage (at 69 whopping grams of sugar for their "lightly sweetened" version.) Yikes! This healthier recipe contains a total of 1/2 cup of heavy cream per serving, which is a LOT more saturated fat than we are accustomed to. It definitely creamed up the drink, and the product was mighty tasty, but Richard and I agree that it was a bit too heavy, and it would probably be just as good with the unsweetened Almond Breeze instead. The recipe calls for Jay Robb Vanilla Whey Protein Powder which would help thicken it up a bit even without the heavy cream. It was a good experiment though. I will definitely feel better about it without the thick cream. Regardless, even with that thick rich drink we managed to stay within our 15 grams of Sugar and 6 Carb servings.
We found a little challenge with getting Sugar counts without Carb serving counts, because everything we'd had in the day until that point had both. We solved that by having berries (strawberries, blueberries and blackberries) with enough goat yogurt to count for Sugar but not Carb servings.
On that note, we were a little dismayed to find out that our stevia-sweetened drinks (like Zero Vitamin Water and Sobe-life water) also contain maltilol, a sugar alcohol, so they each contain 1 Carb serving, even if they don't count in the sugar counts. so, those will have to be incorporated carefully. We were, however, delighted to discover that the Virgil's Diet Root Beer and Diet Cola are sweetened only with stevia, so count for no sugar grams and NO carb servings. Hooray!
Even our psyllium husks count for a Carb serving, if we take the full 2 1/2 tablespoons. So, since I was out of Carb servings, I took only 1 Tablespoon, which kept the total grams of carbs at 4 grams, so zero servings, and I still got some beneficial additional fiber.
We walked our delightful route into and through town and around our local lake. It was a gorgeous day, and I feel very good about our first day of the challenge.
The day was successful. It is quite eye-opening to discover just how much sugar is in our usual healthy foods. For example, for 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar, we had to count 2 Sugars. Rice wine vinegar would have cost none, but I didn't have any on hand for the dressing I was making with the olive oil and garlic. 1/4 cup of brown rice has 38 grams of carbs, which count for 2 of the 6 Carb servings we are allowed each day. It's only a 1/4 of a cup, which is not much, but good to remember when it comes to portions eating out.
I tried the green tea frappuccino recipe in Jorge Cruise's Belly Fat Cure book, he calls it the "Energize Me Green Tea" with only 1 Sugar count and one Carb serving count, and I'm not sure where he's coming up with either. It's meant to be a replacement for Starbucks "Belly Bad" Tazo Green Tea Frappuccino Blended Creme beverage (at 69 whopping grams of sugar for their "lightly sweetened" version.) Yikes! This healthier recipe contains a total of 1/2 cup of heavy cream per serving, which is a LOT more saturated fat than we are accustomed to. It definitely creamed up the drink, and the product was mighty tasty, but Richard and I agree that it was a bit too heavy, and it would probably be just as good with the unsweetened Almond Breeze instead. The recipe calls for Jay Robb Vanilla Whey Protein Powder which would help thicken it up a bit even without the heavy cream. It was a good experiment though. I will definitely feel better about it without the thick cream. Regardless, even with that thick rich drink we managed to stay within our 15 grams of Sugar and 6 Carb servings.
We found a little challenge with getting Sugar counts without Carb serving counts, because everything we'd had in the day until that point had both. We solved that by having berries (strawberries, blueberries and blackberries) with enough goat yogurt to count for Sugar but not Carb servings.
On that note, we were a little dismayed to find out that our stevia-sweetened drinks (like Zero Vitamin Water and Sobe-life water) also contain maltilol, a sugar alcohol, so they each contain 1 Carb serving, even if they don't count in the sugar counts. so, those will have to be incorporated carefully. We were, however, delighted to discover that the Virgil's Diet Root Beer and Diet Cola are sweetened only with stevia, so count for no sugar grams and NO carb servings. Hooray!
Even our psyllium husks count for a Carb serving, if we take the full 2 1/2 tablespoons. So, since I was out of Carb servings, I took only 1 Tablespoon, which kept the total grams of carbs at 4 grams, so zero servings, and I still got some beneficial additional fiber.
We walked our delightful route into and through town and around our local lake. It was a gorgeous day, and I feel very good about our first day of the challenge.
One-week Challenge!
We started Jorge Cruise's One-Week Challenge today. Richard is joining me in this, so he measured his waist (which is, of course within the right circumference for his height). We measured according to Jorge's recommendation, at belly button level, parallel to the ground, and sucking in as much as possible. This is in contrast to the way I've been measuring which is with relaxed belly, and no sucking in, but still at belly button level.
My waist circumference measured this way is 42 inches (my goal circumference is 33.5 inches - which is half my height in inches - the general rule of thumb for women is <35 inches, and for men is <40 inches). I weighed in the morning at 203.4lb (so have lost a lb this past week.)
The One-week Challenge of the Belly Fat Cure is to eat 15 or fewer grams of sugar per day, plus limit our servings of carbohydrates to 6 each day. One serving is 5-20grams, Two is 21-40g, Three is 41-60g.
We started our morning with Jorge's 8 minute belly flattening exercises, which we are adding to the challenge. He prescribes belly toning exercises on Mondays, Wednesday, and Friday, upper body exercises on Tuesdays, and lower body on Thursdays.
Then we ate our delicious breakfast of a Mediterranean omelet (we used Egg Beaters since that's all we had on hand because a couple of the college boys were home for the weekend). I am now used to cooking our eggs in olive oil (I've done this for over a decade) so did not cook them in butter as Jorge suggested. I used kalamata olives, spinach, green onion, and garlic as the veggies (all "free" of countable sugars and carbs), as well as feta cheese (also no counts for sugar or carbs) and a couple fresh basil leaves from my herb garden. One slice of Udi's Whole Grain Gluten-Free toast (1 gram of sugar and 1 carb count), drizzled with a tsp of garlic olive oil accompanied our eggs. Richard makes the best stevia matcha lattes using matcha powder, unsweetened plain Almond Breeze (also "free"), and stevia to sweeten, in our cappuccino maker. It's a good start!
So far, it's not that much different than our usual breakfast, except where we might have had two slices of toast, we agreed we'd have only one, considering the sugar/carb content, even though it's pretty low for that particular bread. Also instead of using red peppers, which do count in the sugar and carb total, I used the "free" veggies: spinach, garlic, green onion.
Snacks that are free of sugar and countable carbs that I am going to implement today: celery stick with natural (no added sugar) almond butter, and a whey protein shake mixed in with unsweetened chocolate Almond Drink. For lunch we plan to have tuna sandwiches on low-carb gluten-free bread, and dinner is going to be tuna steaks with a salad and healthy carbs (brown rice, etc.) as we have any allotted left.
We will likely go on our usual four mile walk into town and around the lake today, and have done a lesson in A Course in Miracles. I am attempting to keep EFT in mind as or if any sugar cravings arise, so I can tap them out and move on happily.
Looking forward to feeling even better and better, and am excited to see how much sugar has been an issue, even with our pretty healthy current diets.
To Great Health and an Energized Day!
My waist circumference measured this way is 42 inches (my goal circumference is 33.5 inches - which is half my height in inches - the general rule of thumb for women is <35 inches, and for men is <40 inches). I weighed in the morning at 203.4lb (so have lost a lb this past week.)
The One-week Challenge of the Belly Fat Cure is to eat 15 or fewer grams of sugar per day, plus limit our servings of carbohydrates to 6 each day. One serving is 5-20grams, Two is 21-40g, Three is 41-60g.
We started our morning with Jorge's 8 minute belly flattening exercises, which we are adding to the challenge. He prescribes belly toning exercises on Mondays, Wednesday, and Friday, upper body exercises on Tuesdays, and lower body on Thursdays.
Then we ate our delicious breakfast of a Mediterranean omelet (we used Egg Beaters since that's all we had on hand because a couple of the college boys were home for the weekend). I am now used to cooking our eggs in olive oil (I've done this for over a decade) so did not cook them in butter as Jorge suggested. I used kalamata olives, spinach, green onion, and garlic as the veggies (all "free" of countable sugars and carbs), as well as feta cheese (also no counts for sugar or carbs) and a couple fresh basil leaves from my herb garden. One slice of Udi's Whole Grain Gluten-Free toast (1 gram of sugar and 1 carb count), drizzled with a tsp of garlic olive oil accompanied our eggs. Richard makes the best stevia matcha lattes using matcha powder, unsweetened plain Almond Breeze (also "free"), and stevia to sweeten, in our cappuccino maker. It's a good start!
So far, it's not that much different than our usual breakfast, except where we might have had two slices of toast, we agreed we'd have only one, considering the sugar/carb content, even though it's pretty low for that particular bread. Also instead of using red peppers, which do count in the sugar and carb total, I used the "free" veggies: spinach, garlic, green onion.
Snacks that are free of sugar and countable carbs that I am going to implement today: celery stick with natural (no added sugar) almond butter, and a whey protein shake mixed in with unsweetened chocolate Almond Drink. For lunch we plan to have tuna sandwiches on low-carb gluten-free bread, and dinner is going to be tuna steaks with a salad and healthy carbs (brown rice, etc.) as we have any allotted left.
We will likely go on our usual four mile walk into town and around the lake today, and have done a lesson in A Course in Miracles. I am attempting to keep EFT in mind as or if any sugar cravings arise, so I can tap them out and move on happily.
Looking forward to feeling even better and better, and am excited to see how much sugar has been an issue, even with our pretty healthy current diets.
To Great Health and an Energized Day!
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