Quote:
Originally Posted by MelissaV
Grace, it sounds like a good recipe to me! And obviously, it is working for you.
Seems to be!
I mean, I'm no poster child for "how to diet" by ANY stretch of the imagination, but I am continuing on a downward trend without having to totally hijack my "normal life" to do it and that makes me happy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MelissaV
I'm very motivated this week. I ran 5 miles this morning...so, I'm hoping that I have a good week!
I'm so impressed with you, Melissa! You exercise a LOT! Good for you! Hope your weigh-in is awesome this week!! Hope all of ours are!
Quote:
Originally Posted by crenita
The food is great.. so I am trying to figure out how I can afford this food and justify the cost..long term. I have lots to lose so will have to be on it for a while.
Did you say you use the 5 day no snack plan ?? Would you mind explaining how you work it out ?
Sure! I'll do my best. Bear with me.
I started out on the 7-day with snacks plan. I did that for like 15 weeks.
BUT... I never ate everything I was supposed to every week. Probably the very first couple of days, I ate EXACTLY what was on the menu sheet, no exceptions, because I was nervous about "getting it right" and I wanted to have results. So, let's say the first few days I was 100%.
And then I got sick. Really sick. I think I've linked to the post I made called "WHINE" about how sick I got after my first few days on BistroMD. (I think my body was rebelling against all of the good food, after so much Taco Bell and such. LOL)
Because I was living on a diet of chicken broth and NyQuil for a few days straight, I didn't eat SEVERAL DAYS of BistroMD food.
So, by the time Week 2 arrived, I had a back-log of foods.
It took a while for my appetite to rebuild, so let's say during week 2, I was eating two meals plus two snacks, but skipping my cocoa and and breakfast. That lasted a couple of days.
And then when I started feeling better, I wanted to go out for a nice meal with my hubby, so I looked at the day's foods and ate only breakfast, cocoa, and ONE snack, to save all of the rest of my calories for dinner and drinks that night.
By now, I wasn't so worried about "keeping to the daily menu" and I had learned what the calorie count was on everything, as well as where my protein was coming from, vs. good carbs, etc., and I became very good at knowing what I could "swap out" when necessary.
So when I had my first business lunch out at a restaurant, I was very proud of myself because I made choices that fit within the day's allotment and I just didn't eat whatever BistroMD meal would best line up with that meal I had at the restaurant. And if the restaurant meal was WAY over the calories of a standard BistroMD meal, I'd either only eat half of the meal and bring the rest home OR I would skip both a BistroMD meal AND a snack, to even it out, calorie-wise.
Still with me?
Okay, so because I eat out at least once a week--usually twice--I was always "banking" a meal or two more than what I would expect to do on the standard seven-day plan. And because I never wanted to go over my calories for the day, I would sometimes skip snacks too on those days I had a meal out (or especially on days I had cocktails), so I had a back-log of snacks too.
When I switched to the five-day/no-snacks plan in (I think) Week 16, I had a TON of food saved up, so I knew I'd be able to do the five-day plan AND still eat BistroMD food on the other two days, and then just eat out when I eat out, balancing it all out the same way I had been doing while on the seven-day plan (just now I wouldn't have as much back-log in my freezer).
After a couple of weeks on five-days/no-snacks, I started noticing my snack stock getting lower, so I started really paying attention to what was in each snack, how it fit into a bowl, what its nutrition information included, etc., so that when I wanted to sub a snack of my own, I could do so in a way that would still keep me in my calorie range and on the glycemic index at the right level.
So, on days when I was craving beef (I can't have ANY of the beef dishes on BistroMD due to wheat gluten) and cheese (like due to my period or something), I could have a burger with cheese and "do the math" to make sure it wouldn't put me out of range from what the BistroMD foods would've done... plus I could satisfy a craving! And that was/is always very important to me.
After Week 20, I had more food stocked up again due to lots of meals out, so I sold a week of food to my friend who had been wanting to try BistroMD. She paid me a hundred bucks and I gave her 14 frozen meals, like 10 muffins and oatmeals and berries, 25 cocoas, and three or four snacks. Just a "sample pack" of stuff, really. Yeah, she got a great deal, but I needed the space, so it was worth the price break to do a little freezer feng shui.
Anyway, the bottom line is this, with me:
So, all of that adds up to having "overstock" on any given week. It's probably only two days per week that I have TRUE, 100% days of BistroMD, every meal, every snack, every sip.
Because I am doing a very "modified" version of the plan, it's easy to have overstock and use it up on the two days per week I'm NOT receiving food from BistroMD.
Here's a couple of days' menus, for example. See if this helps.
Tuesday:
muffin
high-protein cocoa
mahi mahi in Caribbean sauce
high-protein snack bar
chicken Italiano
(Notice that's one snack "less" than I "should" have had. But if I'm not hungry for it, I'm not going to make myself eat it. But that means I have an extra snack left over for one of the days BistroMD didn't deliver a snack for me, for instance. [Of course, I don't get snacks from BistroMD anymore, but this is an example from before, on how I was able to get overstock so easily.])
Wednesday:
pork in papaya sauce
handful of cashews
yogurt
surf-and-turf at a favorite restaurant, with steamed veggies
three cocktails
So, because I knew I was going out to eat that night, I "banked" my calories to accommodate the dinner and the drinks. I ate "light" during the day but still got in some protein in the morning by having the pork, and my snack choices were within the range of what BistroMD would send anyway. So, that "banks" a breakfast, a cocoa, two snacks, and a frozen meal!!
Does that make sense?
Lemmeknow if you need more examples.
Like I said above, I'm no poster child for weightloss. I'm doing this very slowly and DEFINITELY on my own terms. Some would say that's ridiculous and a waste of money and I should do BistroMD to the letter, 100% every single day in order to get my money's worth.
And to that I say, I could've reached goal weight by now, if I wanted to play by those rules. You're right. And then I would've thrown myself a four-day-long party during which I binged on everything I didn't allow myself to have for the five months I was on the program.
I like this better. I can live with this. I am LEARNING how to live LIKE this. And because I will take my needs for weight management with me into my goal and beyond, it is vitally important to me that I diet using foods I LOVE, being able to eat out with friends, and not cutting out ANYTHING that I might want to have--now that I know how to have it in moderation, in the right portion size, and with balancing out the rest of my day's intake to make sure the overall trend is DOWN on the scale.
Hope this helps! Lemmeknow if you have questions.
(trust me...I wanted to try one of each last nite when they came in). I'm glad I did the order, but just wanted to give everyone the negatives as well, so you can judge for yourself.