Hi Team Time & Adherence,
I loved reading everyone's comments this week!!! Congratulations all for another week !!!
* Have to +1 on the like for Carol's comments with "Courageous" -- love it!!!
* I am so with Bambi on being eager for the Farmers Market to open. We are almost in March!!!
* Agree with Elsa on the recommendation to re-watch Jeff's Calorie Density. Maybe I will do this weekend...
For this week, I had 5 days with 100% compliance and 2 days where I missed - one miss each on 5 and 7. I am going to work to continue to improve for upcoming week (and started good yesterday with 100% compliance). Have more comments on progress at the bottom of post.
1 Start each meal with a soup and/or salad and/or fruit.
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2 Follow the 50/50 plate method for your meals, filling half your plate (by visual volume) with non-starchy vegetables and 50% (by visual volume) with minimally processed starches.
Choose fruit for dessert.
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I have had oatmeal with fruit every day for breakfast (again).
I have mainly had Mexi Soup (sometimes over rice or potato) for lunch.
I have had Split Pea Soup for dinner (cannot get sick of this; keep making more).
I have had oranges (Sumo and Cara Cara) or frozen fruit and additional veggies (again).
So, I am pretty boring - all is same as last week.
3 Greatly reduce or eliminate added sugars and added salts. This includes gourmet sugars and salts too. If either is troublesome for you, you can eliminate them.
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4 Eliminate all animal foods (dairy, meat, eggs, fish, seafood).
YES, of course.
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5 Eliminate all higher fat plant foods (i.e., nuts, seeds, avocados, tofu, soy).
![Twisted Evil :twisted:](./images/smilies/icon_twisted.gif)
* I continue to have periodic after dinner mental struggle with the nuts.
* I will work to slightly increase starch at lunch / dinner to head this off. This has helped over the week to keep
![Mr. Green :mrgreen:](./images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif)
* Next time that these tempt me, I will wait 10 minutes to be sure hungry and if so, then will eat salad, fruit, and soup or bean burger.
* I plan to continue to record observations of what may have gone on differently if I consume at all this week to help better develop future action plan.
6 Eliminate any added oil.
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7 Eliminate all higher calorie-dense foods including flour products (i.e., bread, bagels, muffins, crackers, dry cereals, cookies, cakes, puffed cereals, air-popped popcorn and dried fruit.
![Twisted Evil :twisted:](./images/smilies/icon_twisted.gif)
See #5 above. Comments are same including 1 miss - (except pretzels is
![Mr. Green :mrgreen:](./images/smilies/icon_mrgreen.gif)
8 Don’t drink your calories (especially from juices & sugar-sweetened beverages).
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9 Follow these principles, eating whenever you are hungry until you are comfortably full. Don't starve yourself and don't stuff yourself.
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10 Avoid being sedentary and aim for at least 30 minutes or more of moderate exercise daily (i.e., brisk walking).
Yes, met but less than recent time spent exercising.
* Weather has not been conducive to walking outside, so mainly did indoor pacing and exercise routine!!!
![Shocked :shock:](./images/smilies/icon_eek.gif)
* Came close to goal of averaging 8K steps / day over the week. Yearly average steps / day exceeds the 8K - which I would like to increase, but waiting for Spring to do so.
Victories, comments, concerns, questions:
Mark --- THANK you!!! Your question to me last week helped me to identify what all may be going on with my continuing # 5/7 troubles.
"Can you think of any significant-seeming differences between those 4 days and the other 3? Any changes in situation, context, or routine?"
* This made me think that I have focused efforts on tracking food in general (i.e., carrots or cucumbers, potato or rice, apple or banana) --- and NOT enough time tracking what may have caused a non-compliant "episode".
* It is more important for me to get to the root cause of the non-compliance than understand the specifics of the other foods (since they are all compliant / recommended).
* I did not have all of the data points to effectively answer your question for last week (would have been guessing) - so I have started to pay better attention / record these impressions for non-compliance episodes in my daily planner.
* Amazingly enough, I think part of what I hadn't identified before that is a driver with this issue is sometimes not enough starch. For instance, I have been eating soup for lunch and dinner every day (because it is so cold and I love soup). Sometimes, I will have soup over potato or rice - other times just by itself. I think that when I don't eat the soup over something that I may be less than 50/50 starch for that meal. I did find a couple of times when that was at lunch that I am hungrier earlier. I suspect that when I do that at dinner that I leave too much room for to be Pleasure Trapped at the end of the day when my willpower is at its weakest...
* I don't measure anything except for oatmeal that I make bowl by bowl. However, I did a little experiment to consider amount of starch in my soup without the extra rice / potato - which leads me to think that it is low. For instance, roughly 1/4 c. dried split peas and 1 small potato or 2/5 c. cooked beans - based on each of the soups that I am considering all starch (and comparing to veggie / fruit volume).
* Will be making sure to eat a bit more starch with the soup. I don't think I have much risk of gaining weight from this - as I rely on #9 and don't ever like to feel overstuffed.
* This obviously isn't the only issue - I still have to get completely out of the Pleasure Trap!!!
Victory - I lost a lb. this week!!!
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![nod :nod:](./images/smilies/nod.gif)
Wishing everyone a wonderful weekend and upcoming week! Keep going!!
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Best,
Stephanie