Hi... my name is Ami. I stumbled onto this website and I think I'm glad I did.

My husband and I just stared the the South Beach Diet yesterday. had done I did a lot of research on different diets and found the Carbohydrate Addicts diet which is somewhat similar to South Beach. We did well on that last winter with both of us loosing weight easily, but between my school schedule and the level of stress that school has caused for me and our communal lack of organization everything fell by the wayside this past semester.

One of the surgeons that my husband works with started on S.B. after having done Atkins successfully but wanted to add carbs back into his diet and wasn't able to with success. When he was so happy with the diet my husband asked me to look into it... to make a long story short here we are.

I am on summer break for 3 months. Right now I'm doing all of the shopping and cooking. I start a practicum program at the end of this month where I will be working two 12-hour shifts a week, but we will be past the first stage of the diet and I'm hoping that my husband will do a better job of picking up the slack by then.

While some of the meals are labor intensive (I make a lousy housewife) so far I'm managing. The thing that I'm up against is a number of food allergies (nuts, many fruits and veggies, and paprika which turns up in places you'd never expect to find it).

I was looking at joining the south beach pay website, but it is an expense... has anyone tried it?

welcome ADDflower! Glad you chose to join our little community. Check out our recipe section here -- you can substitute veggies for ones you are not allergic to and many do not have paprika!

I don't belong to the website, but I know others do.

Good luck!

Hi there, I'm on Day Four so I am still a newbie definitly. I am also allergic to peanuts, which to those of who who aren't, are found in everything- especially diet foods. I am lucky in that my deli grinds almond butter in a separate grinder so I can get heavy protein spread from that. You can also process your own. As for the spices, every sunday I create a spice bag of my own. Some are Greek, Italian, etc. That alleviates your paprika worry. As for the veggies, there are so many to chose from. I find that once you get the gist of the diet, you aren't bound to use certain menus, just the principles behind them Get creative...the more you hussle around the kitchen inventing new things , the more calories you burn :-). Best of luck!

Welcome, Ami! There is a lot of good information to be found here. And some really great people

Welcome ADDFlower and VTProp!

Great ideas, VTProp, and love the part about the hussling...very true!

Boy, dealing with all those allergies can be hard, I bet, ADD! Wow! Still, I think there is a lot you can do. Check out the SBD Cookbook for some awesome recipes! If you need help on cooking techniques (like: what the heck does saute mean?), please feel free to ask! I am glad to help as much as I can. There are some great recipes in this forum, and I have found it very easy to adapt recipes from Cooking Light. They have a magazine which you can pick up at any newstand, but they also have a great website at: www.cookinglight.com Their food is amazing and full of flavor, but low in fat and, in general, corresponds with the majority of SBD tenets.

Hope this helps!

Wow! It's nice to have such a warm welcome.

I will look at some of the recipes, because I've already got a dilemma... side dish for tonight is made with eggplant which I am allergic to. Actually here's how fun some of my allerigies can be... I can have JAPANESE eggplant, but not the european kind and I don't feel like hunting down the long skinny ones that will cost twice as much at a chain market or involve a major long drive for one item.

I'm allergic to ALL tree nuts AND peanuts... but fortunately I'm not so sensitive (at least as far as I can tell) that I have to avoid things that say "made in a building that has peanuts in it". I acutally didn't know I was allergic to peanuts until I had allergy testing a few years back, and I tested super allergic to it, so... *shrug* I stopped eating peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

The list of things that make me itch just sucks... raw carrots, celery, avocado... if they're marinated in something (like vinegar or lemon/lime juice) or cooked it breaks down whatever enzyme it is that I'm sensitive to but it's hard to spread a triangle of laughing cow on cooked celery... it's just not the same. Today I had a celery stick with the laughing cow... it wasn't enough to make the itching really back and the crunch WAS satisfying... I hate allergies.

The paprkia is a killer, it gives me gnarly migrane headaches and it's in everything from mayonaise and mustard to some hard candies and anything else you can imagine that make you sit back and wonder what on earth they put paprikia in it for. I have to read all labels very very carefully and forget pot lucks.

The hardest thing for me right now is late afternoons... for some reason I get a serious case of the munchies around 2 p.m. I think I'm going to have to stay away from the sugar free jello that the diet recommends because that seems to set it off. It drives me crazy... I don't want to cheat but the craving is unbearable and so today I ate some low fat cheese...

I hate being fat and nursing school has been good for at least an extra 30 pounds. I decided that I didn't want to let mean people ruin my life anymore. I clean my cupboards, gave everything to some friends that are out of work and only have on-plan foods in the house.

Having a support community will be great!

Welcome ADDflower. I had joined the Beach website but I did not find it that great. I have gotten more support and more information here than I ever did here. These are a great bunch of chicks with lots of knowledge to share. Good luck and don't hesitate to ask any question.

HI Barbara, you started South Beach on my 6th wedding anniversary

Thanks for welcoming me...

Welcome, ADD Flower -- we're glad you're here! Remember that you can always swap ingredients -- say, zucchini or summer squash for eggplant. It'll taste about the same.

Welcome to the Beach, ADDflower! I love your avatar!

Hi ADDflower! Welcome to the beach. I can't believe how many things paprika is in. I never really got why people use it anyways, I can't taste anything but people have told me it does have a taste, lol

My mom had a subscription to the website but I didn't find it great. I think the best part on the whole website is the daily dish which you can get for free. The recipes and support you can get here as well, and its much better! I even found that I found more information here on 3FC, than in the book itself but it is good to read none the less.

Welcome to the best forum on the net!

welcome to the beach ADD!!!

Hi, ADD! Your avatar is adorable! We have a nursing school here on campus and I am always so thrilled to hear their stories and their excitement about their upcoming career. It's a good one to be in right now!

What a mess with all the allergies! Good for you for not letting that be the reason to not change your WOE! That took some self control! Just like others have said, you can switch the veggies used in the recipes and the snacks too. I followed the plan in the book very carefully for the first week of Phase 1, but by the second week I was swapping everything around. By Phase 2, I stopped following the book at all and now make my own menus up. The book in Phase 2 has a lot of fruit and starches from the beginning, and I found that did not help me lose the way one fruit and one starch does.

Anyways, try venturing out on your own as soon as you feel safe doing it...and in the meantime, substitute like mad! Can you have bell peppers? You'll find that the yellow, orange, and red have very different flavors and all are very nice and crunchy! They go great with hummus and with cheese. Green is good, too, but a bit bitter/spicy. Also, what about dipping green onion tops (scallions) in hummus or in cheese? And do you like broccoli or cauliflower? I'm not a big fan of them raw, but lots of others in here love them.

I feel your pain about the nuts...I personally love them and can't imagine the diet without them! Have you tried Pine nuts? I wonder if they would cause the same reaction, since they are technically a seed, I think. That might be an option. Also, what about roasted soy nuts? They are actually beans, not nuts, but they have a great flavor and crunch.

Wish you tons of luck, ADD!

Thanks for the comments on the avatar... I forgot where I swiped the image from, but I liked it and had to have it...

I wish I could say that my school was a good as the one that you attend Laurie. Unfortunately it's been the worst experience of my entire life and the only thing that has kept me from quitting is having done the practicum (internship) before and seeing that real nursing is nothing like my schooling. The vast majority of my classmates feel the same way, it's like we're all stuck in an abusive relationship, some of us are holding our breath to graduate, some are rationalizing the treatment we recieve (verbal abuse, instruction that borders on educational malpractice etc...) and making excuses for it. It's one situation that cannot be changed while you're in the middle of it, that's the only thing I know for sure. ...and that's why I liked that little nurse. I've probably said more than I should, you never know who is lurking and I'm always afraid of running into an instructor online without knowing it. :

I think that most "tree nuts" are really seeds, like almonds and walnuts, which are two of the worst nuts for me. I used to really like pine nuts... so maybe I will buy some and see if they make me itch. I know that I can eat pumpkin seeds, I've had soynuts but they're not my favortie. If the pine nuts make me itch hubby or birds can always have them.

Right now the hard part for me is the afternoon munchies. I think I'm going to cut out the jello because it seems to be a trigger for me. And drink much more water. I know that it's easy to confuse thirst with hunger.

I was a *little* bad yesterday because I put extra chocolate chips on my mocha ricotta dessert. My husband is delighted with the diet, but I'm going to force him into a chair and make him read the book again becuase he's making me crazy asking me "how much of *blah* are we allowed to have"... especially since I have the book open in a book holder on the counter.

Thanks you guys for welcoming me... I guess what I need to do now is explore some of the other message areas, to find out more about this area. Based on what you guys have said I'm going to just stay here for now and not subscribe to the SB site.

(having fun with the smilies...)

Ami
My goal weight is about 130, which is about a 100 pound loss... since I don't know for sure exactly what I weigh right now. Gotta buy that scale!

P.S. how many of you weigh daily and then average your weight loss for the week?

I know I shouldn't but I weigh daily. I just don't let it bother me if I haven't gone down as long as I am losing over several days. I don't average mine though. I put them into an Excel spreadsheet and chart the daily numbers which shows the overall trend down.