Is it for me?
 

I'm pretty interested but have a baby (3 weeks and COLIC!) and it is really difficult to cook anything that can't just be thrown into a bowl right now. I'm fine with eating good healthy food (I'm living off cottage cheese, fruit, whole wheat bred, spinach, etc right now), but really need something that is very quick to plan for the time being.

Dinners are not an issue as my DH is home and can take the baby while I cook us a nice meal. Any advice? I just need to know before I sign up. I do plan on doing it anyways when I get more than 2 hours of sleep per night (who knows when that will be), but is it something I can do -right now-?

Thanks!!

I don't have a great deal to lose and I've always eaten healthy/exercised, it's just the last bit of baby weight I'm concerned with, and a sustainable life plan.

Any moms here find this is a good plan for them?

are you nursing? If so, you should start at phase 2, and slso make sure you get sufficient calories, because low cal can dry up breast milk.

Also, you are only 3 weeks out, and you can lose weight naturally until about 6weeks out. You may find that the extra weight just falls off without having to stick to a formal plan. I found with ds1 that the weight flew off from a combo of a) nursing and b) him being colicky and needy around the clock such that I had zero time to eat!

If you do go on plan, I think it can be fairly easy with low time for prep. Breakfast can be cottage cheese and yogurt or fruit, lunch can be leftovers (or you could make a chili or soup in the crockpot or on the weekend and eat that), or make a biweekly salad, just throw everything in a pasta bowl and garnish with a couple oz's deli turkey.

Supper as you said is less of a problem.
Good luck!

I agree with Natalia- I find this diet very easy to cook for. In the winter I load up on crock pot soups and stews and in the summer I chop up heads of lettuce and chop up my salad sides, then when it comes time to eat I toss my ingrediants together- it's great :)

Thanks very much for the responses. No, not nursing. I was at the mall and quickly browsed the SB book (I had to leave so I didn't get a chance to read much), is that a decent basic one to have, or would you guys recommend just signing up on the site? I'm not a fan of the meal plans from the book (too complicated for right now), can I just pick and chose from other foods?

I've never used the recipes from the books and I usually just google south beach diet recipes.

There are tons of recipes right here:
http://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/sout...h-recipes-114/

I've found that it's pretty easy to adapt recipes I've used for years to make them SB friendly. We eat a LOT of chicken. The SB teriyaki sauce is very good...I sautee chicken in it and then add a bag of stir fry vegetables (the Wal-mart brand sugar snap pea stir fry is my fave). YUMMY!!! And if you look in the recipe section I put a recipe for Spicy Bleu Cheese Burgers...I use the seasonings from that and put it on pork chops last night and everybody LOVED it!!! :)

The meal plan in the books were not for me. Weird unappealing recipes for the most part. I recommend reading any of the books. Some here have gotten used ones or gone to the library and read the book. The food lists were updated May 2008 & are listed here under SB FAQ's. I don't know anyone who has signed up on the SB official website. I've looked at some other SB forums & this is by far the best and most active. I love the recipe section of the SB forums here and have used a lot of great recipes from it. I know Kalyn's Kitchen also has a lot of SB friendly stuff! I second also waiting a while to start trying to lose. Six weeks postpartum is a good time to wait, as your body is dealing with a lot of transitions right now and needs to heal. :)

I would suggest making big dinners. So that you can freeze some and keep some in the fridge for lunches and the nights that you need something super quick. Do a lot of prep work when your hubby is home. For example, I will buy a big bag of nuts (usually bought for baking) and seperate them into little snack baggies, grill up some chicken breasts and cut them into chunks then you can eat them as chunks or throw them into a salad, cut up your fresh veggies and put them into some tupperware.

I have a LO that just turned 1 year and it was so hard for me at the beginning to eat right; I had more of an "eat whatever is quick and easy" resulting in lots of trips to McDonalds or Arbys...ack! Starting in March, we hired a nanny that comes to our house everyday, which has really freed up some of my time (no more carting LO to daycare etc) so I decided that was the time for me to get back on the SB wagon. It has been going great so far. It also helps that LO has become a lot more independent.

You can do this! Good luck!

Also, I've never used one of the recipes from the book. I did find it helpful to read the book. It taught why I shouldn't eat certain things (I'm a "why" person.) It was also very motivating.

You can adapt most of your regular recipes to be SB friendly. For example, we have enchiladas pretty regularly, so I use enchilada sauce, ground turkey, low fat cheddar and whole grain wraps.