I am on day 5 of phase 1. Here is what I ate today:

Breakfast
1 cup lf cottage cheese
1 slice deli ham chopped up
coffee

Lunch
Subway chicken bacon & ranch salad
Diet Coke

Snack
1 hardboiled egg
1 string cheese

Dinner
3 oz white meat
1 cup sauteed cabbage
1 cup sauteed eggplant and mushrooms
1/2 cup kefir (cultured dairy drink -- DH is learning to make it and I humor him )
diet coke

Dessert
mocha ricotta creme
small mug coffee

I also had 6-7 glasses of water in the day

And here is yesterday:
Breakfast
2 egg omelet with diced ham and lf colby cheese
coffee

Lunch
2 turkey pastrami roll-ups with 2% american cheese and mustard
2 stalks celery, 1 laughing cow wedge
1 cup sf jello
water

Snacks
1 oz lf colby cheese
1 hardboiled egg
about 30 nuts (went crazy on the nuts -- had to make myself stop)

Dinner
3 oz white meat
steamed mustard greens with hot peppers and vinegar
large salad with feta and SBD-friendly dressing
water

Dessert
1 cup coffee with 1 cup lf milk

Also had a few glasses of water, did not keep track as well

Hi...
I am no expert but I think that you need to be increasing your intake of vegies, especially during your breakfast and lunch meals. There is a section in the frequently asked questions part about how many vegis to have with each meal. I try for a 1/2 cup at least for breakfast and 1 cup for lunch - I am sure that is what the suggestion is.

Good luck!

Geekchic, your menu looks really good. I would suggest, as Artemis said, to try and up the veggies a bit. Perhaps change one of your snacks from protein to red peppers and hummus or something like the cauliflower popcorn. Maybe you can add some mexican salsa to your omelet for a western one.

The only other thing I noticed is the bacon and ranch dressing on the Subway salad. I know it doesn't seem like a big deal, but those two items add a lot of saturated fat. When you start adding all those little 'extras' (remember the nuts?) it can hamper any loss. Skip the bacon and go for a vinagrette dressing.

Was the ricotta low-fat? remember to check the portion size, too.

You're doing great!

I'm still a newbie too but I'd say it looks to me like you need some more veggies.

More veggies, Misty!!! (don'tcha just hate those things!?)

Is the kefir low enough in fat? The bacon at Subway is way too high in fat. I'm not sure if you are getting a morning snack but that is important too.

I'll echo what everyone said about veggies. They are very important. You need to consider if you are getting enough water. You also might think about whether you are getting too much caffeine. I try to limit my caffeinated drinks to one or two a day. I also try to drink extra water if I am drinking more caffeine than usual. Watch those nuts. It is really easy to eat too many of them.

Yup, more veggies, Misty. Throw some in your eggs at breakfast. Include a veggie with both snacks, morning and afternoon (and make sure you eat both!). Also, eat more food!!! Your lunch on Tuesday was so small and likely to have caused the nut fest later. You need to eat...bulk up on those veggies, girl!

Here's a sample menu from me (not that I'm doing that great....)

Breakfast:
1/2 cup 1% cottage cheese
1 cup grape tomatoes
12 oz skim milk

Morning Snack:
3/4 cup FF plain yogurt
1 Tbsp Creme Caramel SF syrup
2 Tbsp flaxseed

Lunch:
HUGE salad (large serving bowl full) of :
baby spinach
spring mix
grated cabbage
chopped broccoli
1/4 lb lean turkey breast, buffalo style (no sugar...I checked)
1 oz Reduced fat shredded cheddar cheese
toasted soy nuts (about 1/4 cup)
Bleu Cheese dressing (3 Tbsp...oy. )
1 NSA Creamsicle

Afternoon Snack:
1 orange pepper with 2 Tbsp roasted red pepper hummus

Dinner:
Stuffed Chicken (from recipe in forum...has spinach and tomatoes)
1-2 cups steamed broccoli with lemon

Dessert:
Peanut butter cup
Decaf coffee with skim milk and splenda

Thank you for the suggestions. I have been putting onion, mushroom, and bell pepper in my omelet but I ran out of the red pepper. Must buy more this week. The hummus is a good idea too -- I can make my own.

I had only about 1/2 the ranch dressing (I got it on the side).

The kefir has no fat added. We drink our own goat milk. It is "whole" milk, but I don't drink/eat much dairy (except the storebought LF cheese and yogurt and things like that) so I have not bought LF milk. It seems silly when we have milk out the wazoo. So I have decided that since I only drink a cup of milk every other day or so, not to limit it to LF.

Will not get the bacon again. It did not look that fatty because it had no "white" part on it, and it was the precooked kind.

Thanks for your suggestions!

Geekchic, try turkey bacon. It's very low in fat and really does taste much like regular bacon (at least I think so).

Regarding milk--I understand how you feel about buying when you have so much of your own. Can you figure out how to skim the cream from your own milk? The saturated fat in whole milk is terrible for you...even at a cup every other day, that's a lot of fat! If you can skim the cream out, it'll help a lot.

And you do want to be eating or drinking three servings of milk or yogurt each day. It helps you burn belly fat, and that's a very good thing! You want to stick to fat free or 1% milks and yogurts. Cheese does not do the same thing, neither do calcium supplements. They haven't figured out what does it, and they think that calcium is involved, but calcium by itself doesn't work, so there is something else in the milk.

The veggies in the omelet sound great! Maybe you can get some frozen peppers to keep on hand in case you run out again?

Yuck on frozen peppers.

Goat milk is self-homogenized so you can't skim the cream off like you can with cow's milk. DH has a cream separator and he uses it to make his own cream/butter, but the skim milk resulting from that spoils so fast that it's not worth saving.

Interestingly enough, there are 4g of saturated fat in 8 oz of goat milk. 2.2 grams of polyunsaturated and .4 monounsaturated. Almost half the fat in it is the "good" fat that Dr. Agatstan talks about. Cow milk has 7.9g of fat per 8 oz, 4.8 of which is saturated and the rest is "good" fat.

When cow milk is processed, all of the enzymes are boiled off, all the fat is taken out, and fat is added back in based on the % butterfat you are buying (whole milk is 3.5% butterfat). We are drinking raw goat milk, which has a variable actual content of fat based on the breed, type of feed, etc. Also the enzymes are intact and the fat globules are smaller making it supposedly easier to digest.

I really don't like milk and have to make myself drink a glass every couple days. Putting it into perspective, mayonnaise has 11g of fat per tbsp, and that is OK to eat on SBD. So I'm not sure that the milk will put me in a stall.