South Beach Diet – Phase 1, End of Week 1 Analysis

I stopped doing the day-by-day posts, since it is is way too much work, who was I kidding anyway? I’ve been weighing in daily, and the weight has been coming down slowly but steadily.

First week went by relatively easily. It is definitely not a hard diet to keep up, if you are preparing all your meals. If you are eating out, it is kind of hard to find healthy choices. I started the week with preparing all the meals myself, but towards the end of the first week I got lazy, and had to rely on cafeteria food for lunch and had to go out to restaurants a lot too.

Going out to restaurants is the biggest challenge. Better restaurants would be willing to make substitutions and omissions on your request, like Cafe Harlequin I mentioned earlier. Friday night we went for a movie -( The Day the Earth Stood Still, which sucked by the way) – and afterwards as we were already at the mall, we decided to grab dinner at McCormick and Schmick’s. Since it is a seafood place, I was hoping that I’d have plenty of choices, but really there weren’t that many options when I checked the menu. Most dishes had some berry sauce or honey glaze or rum butter or something sweet. Finally I decided to go with a simple roasted salmon and a small spinach salad with walnuts and goat cheese with lemon vinaigrette. I didn’t even bother asking what was in the vinaigrette, or to hold the sugar since McCormick is a chain, and I am sure it the dressings come from a bottle. When the salad came by, I saw that the walnuts were candied, so I had to pick them all out. Also, the dressing was really sweet I am sure there was sugar in it, but I had it anway! Salmon came with carrots, broccolini and roasted potatoes, since carrots and potatoes are no-no’s in phase1, I kept them aside.

I was really full by the end of the meal! This made me realize how much I used to eat before I went on the diet! Even if I had ordered the exact same dishes, I’d have started with some bread, and definitely would’ve gobbled up all the candied walnuts, and the two roasted potatoes I kept aside. In addition, I’d have had some cocktail or beer. At least this diet is teaching me how much calories I can skip by being a little mindful at every meal!

I also had to go for a holiday party with Siv’s team this weekend. Office parties are normally kind of boring, especially if it is not your own team, and alcohol sure makes it a bit more tolerable. So this was a tough place, but I did stick to it. A sparkling water with lemon got me through it. I did slip a bit at the buffet though. There was some chicken satays which were really bad without the sweet peanut dipping sauce, and a roasted salmon which was too dry and too smoky, so my only meat option was a slice of the tender fatty prime rib. I only had one slice, and had tons of salad with it. No carbs, so it wasn’t that big a slip.

The groceries I got at the beginning of the week lasted me the whole week, I still have some fish left over and some veggies and cheeses as well. I will have to do another grocery run tomorrow, but that was a pretty cheap week as we didn’t eat out as much as we would on a normal week.

Anyway, to sum it up I have lost 5.5lbs in the first week. I also went shopping on Friday, and tried out some jeans just to see what it feels like, and I am glad to note that I fit very comfortably in a size 8 now. 

Target Weight Loss	17.5lb
Days on Diet	7
lbs lost so far	5.5
lbs to go	12

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Category: Phase 1