Well, the first week was pretty impressive. In six days, my average daily weight loss was 1.3 pounds per day, for a total of 7.8 pounds at the end of six days. That includes being up on days four and five. I’m guessing that a good part of that loss was “water weight.” Still, that’s pretty good! And I’m still shaking my head in disbelief at how much the stomach fat seems to have diminished.
It’s pretty hard to believe I ate the massive amounts of food I did, and drank tons of water, and lost weight. I ate so much last week that I almost want to cut down on intake this week. But, I’m viewing this as a bigger test week than last, due to my feeling that a lot of last week’s loss was water weight. If I were to keep losing at the same rate, the diet would be done in a month! Furthermore, it makes more sense, probably, to view it in terms of percentage of body weight, not absolute pounds. I have no way of measuring body fat percentage.
My cheat day wasn’t very exciting, in any respect. First of all, I was eating so much during the week, that I never did develop a craving for anything I wasn’t eating. Friday night and Saturday morning (night 6 and morning 7) I quickly skimmed the part of the book (by the way, that reminds me I’ve been misspelling the author’s name, which is Ferriss) about making your day off less “destructive.” I had a high-protein breakfast, and went from there. I didn’t use the PAGG cocktail because it was too last minute to figure that out. I did the grapefruit juice/coffee thing, which isn’t as bad as it sounds. I had a couple of pastries in the morning--a glazed doughnut and a cheese Danish. Normally I crave things like that. I consumed them with a sense of duty, to reset my body, but I could have done without. Perhaps a function of the high-protein breakfast designed to curb the appetite the rest of the day? Mid-afternoon I had a java-chip frappuccino, only because I had a freebie.
Dinner was my huge meal of the day. I decided to have a leisurely meal out...several courses paired with wines...and that’s exactly what I did. Which reminds me, one of the things I didn’t do days 1-6 was consume any wine, even though the diet allows it. Some of my dinner food was diet-allowed, some wasn’t I didn’t go overboard for the sake of going overboard. One of the courses I had featured organic tomatoes, house-made mozzarella, a ton of fresh spinach and mint pesto (a glass of Sancerre, for those who care) and I had smoked and braised short ribs (Cotes du Rhone), with the leftover short ribs going into breakfast this morning. Okay, that’s only two you say. That was the better stuff as far as the diet’s concerned. I had a light cream of smoked corn soup with tomato and basil (not all bad, except for the cream) with a glass of taboo off-dry Italian red wine (I forget the name).
From yesterday morning--just pre-binge--to this morning, I racked up a two-pound weight gain. And I’m back on the diet today. I won’t bore you this week with the details of what I’m eating, since it will be very similar to last week. I’ll be grocery shopping today, and cooking for the week ahead, and I’ll try to make more of an effort to detail costs of everything, just out of curiosity. A calorie count might be interesting, too, even though calorie counting doesn’t enter into the diet.
And just a word on the wine situation vis-à-vis the diet. From a health point of view, according to many studies, wine consumption in moderation can be good for you. I think it’s been found that red wine offers more benefits than white wine. But the author eschews the consumption of all white wine, and I think this is a broad generalization to avoid sugar in wine. Yes, red wines are nearly all fermented dry (i.e. have no sugar remaining), but there are exceptions, like the one I had last night with the corn soup. It was sweeter than the average white wine. Yes, many white wines are not fermented dry, but most are. If you know your wines, you can probably choose a white that will fit the diet. Virtually all sauvignon blancs are dry. Most chardonnays are. Stay away from pinot gris/pinot grigio, riesling and gewürztraminer. These tend to pose the highest risk for sugar in the wine.
Off to the market...
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