The Flat Belly Diet Week 1 Review

At the beginning of this week I wasn't feeling too excited about this diet. The reason? Well...it starts with a 4 day Anti-Bloat. That just sounds like a whole lot of fun now, doesn't it? Yeah, it doesn't sound that great. I was looking past the 4 day Anti-Bloat at the list of recipes that include Chocolate, Peanut Butter, Avocado thinking, I'm sure I can get through the next four days!

The Basics:

Start with the 4 Day Anti-Bloat (about 1200 calories a day and drink 2 liters of Sassy Water). I didn't start exercise during the 4 Day Anti-Bloat except for 20 minute walks with my co-workers during the work day.

After the 4 Days you get three meals that are 400 calories a piece, that include a monounsaturated fat (that is where the chocolate, peanut butter, and avocados come in!) You also get one 400 calorie snack that includes a monounsaturated fat. They want you to eat about every four hours.

The Anti-Bloat gives you a meal plan to follow with specific foods (I did substitute the cereal choices since I had a big box of plain cheerios and didn't really have the space to add two more cereal brands in it.) After that you choose from their suggestions (which sound delicious.)

The Budget:

I made the substitution on this when it came to the cereals, but overall I spent about $135.00 for the week. This was for 3 adults to follow the program for the week, so it would have been a little less if it was just myself. (The first week I did the Shred it was for two people and the budget was significantly higher--but I didn't track the costs at that point, so I'll follow it again and add that information.)

4 Day Anti-Bloat:

Sassy Water -

 

2 Liters of Water, 1 sliced cucumber, 1 sliced lemon, 6 mint leaves & 1 TBSP grated Ginger Root

This is refreshing. I always loved the first glass, but was happy for the last glass! 

I think I will incorporate this into my daily plan, but just one glass a day.

It took a little time for preparation, but not the 4 hours on Sunday that it was taking me for the shred. 

My lunch is all packed up and ready for day one below:

Breakfast on the first day. My substitution of cheerios, unsweetened applesauce, sunflower seeds and the Sassy Water!

I like grape tomatoes...but...1 Pint was a lot of them! 4 Ounces of Deli Turkey was also a lot. 

Milk & Blueberry Smoothie and Pumpkin Seeds for the snack.

Dinner for the first day was Tilapia, Green Beans, and Red Potatoes...and of course Sassy Water!

Anti-Bloat Results:

I was down 5.6 pounds when the Anti-Bloat was done. That was definitely worth the kind of boring 4 days of food and the Sassy Water.

Beyond Anti-Bloat:

I don't feel like I'm on a diet with this food. I started out my freedom of choosing meals with one of their breakfast suggestions, 1 Waffle, 1 Cup of Dark Cherries, and 1/4 Cup of Chocolate Chips. (Yum!)

The first day of my meals I was in a seminar during the day. I brought a Luna Bar, with an orange and 2 Tablespoons of Almonds to eat during the day. I got home and made my new favorite meal.

This has Whole Wheat Pasta, Italian Sausage, Shredded Carrots, Halved Grape Tomatoes, and Chopped Celery, topped with Pesto Sauce. I felt like I had to be cheating the whole time!

Later I made my guiltless cookies. They worked great as my last "meal" of the day with a glass of chocolate almond milk. They had the chocolate chips so I had my monounsaturated fat.

Lessons Learned:

Become a Worst Nightmare of Waiters/Waitresses:

Substitute until it becomes a healthy option for you. I went to Red Robins and was looking for something I could eat that wouldn't kill the diet and had a monounsaturated fat. I saw the California Chicken Sandwich, that had a Zesty Guacamole, but it also had Bacon, Mayonnaise, and the bread on the bun.

I asked for the sandwich wrapped in lettuce minus the mayonnaise and bacon.

Here is how it ended up calorie wise:

Yep, 286 calories vs 744 calories. Good option if you ask me and props to Red Robins for having a nutrition customizer.

Diets Don't Mean Deprivation:

I have had such delicious meals. I feel like I'm cheating the whole time and I'm not. I always feel like diets are so restrictive but they don't need to be!

Next week I'll give an update on how this diet is going, plus I have a funny "Flat Belly story" to share, but I've ran out of room to add it today! 

Body Media Fit Review

Last fall I checked myself into Jenny Craig. I'd gone that route before and almost a month on the plan I realized how much money I was dumping into their food plan. I quit going to Jenny Craig, but before I did I made a new friend, Body Media Fit.

I wasn't sure about it at first...I would have to wear the thing around my arm all of the time for it to measure how many calories I burn, how long I sleep, etc. Finally I decided that it would be worth the money and I invested in it.

Each morning I plug the little guy into my computer and it syncs the information to my account manager. It then tells me too much information. Like last night, in case I didn't REALIZE I slept like crap, my handy dandy little Body Media Fit told me that I was only at a 50% Sleep Efficiency. By the way, I'm tired today! This will also sync to other tools, such as Spark People. It's pretty cool.

In the Body Media Account Manager it sets daily goals for me to reach in order to lose how much weight I want to lose per week. The goal for steps is 8000 steps. I unfortunately on a normal day am at about 5000 steps. When I realize how under I am, it helps get me moving the next day. It really does help inspire me.

Speaking of inspiration, it is used by the Biggest Loser coaches. If it works for them, it works for me!

The Shred Revolutionary Diet Review

On January 7th I started the 6 Week "Shred" diet. It promises 2 Dress sizes, 4 inches, and up to 20 pounds in 6 weeks.

The Basic Plan

This plan works based on diet confusion. Each day the calories (which you never count) and food types will change. He also has an exercise program to follow which consists of just cardio for the first cycle. 

What I Like About the Plan

It includes a maintenance plan. After you get to your goal weight, you eat your own way for four weeks and then do any week of his six week cycle. You do this every 4 weeks for six months and then you go to every eight weeks.

What I Don't Like About the Plan

After the first six week cycle it begins feeling repetitive and restrictive. The first six weeks were fine, but if you have more to lose and try it for a second cycle I found it very repetitive feeling (just like my use of the word repetitive!).  I will try this diet again, but only for the six weeks, or once I get to my goal weight follow his maintenance plan.

A Typical Day

With this plan you eat 4 meals and 3 snacks. The meals should be about every 3- 3 1/2 Hours. The snacks are 100 calories or 150 calories and he has a great list of suggested snacks. 

The meals tend to revolve around Protein Shakes, Fruit Smoothies, and Soup. Breakfasts may include oatmeal, but on some days you enjoy pancakes with turkey bacon or a grilled cheese sandwich.

Some days you get a treat with lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs, hamburgers, and pizza. But mainly it will be a lean meat and veggies or Protein Shake, Soup, and quite often Beans. (Yeah, I know...the beans aren't super exciting.)

Lessons Quickly Learned

1. Preparation, Preparation, and PREPARATION!

• Menu Planning- I sat down and made a menu plan for each week, narrowing down his choices to what I would eat. If it's not on the menu, I don't eat it.
• Week Preparation- After Grocery Shopping I would leave everything out and prepare all of the food for the week. (i.e. make soup, cut veggies, snack packs) 
• Nightly Preparation- Grab the items I need the following day and put them in my lunch bag. All I have to do is go out the door WITHOUT forgetting my lunch bag!

    2. Snack Selection

• Not all 100 Calorie or 150 Calorie Snacks are the same. Pick the ones that are going to stick with you the longest (i.e. Hard Boiled Egg vs 100 Calorie Snack Pack of cookies)

Costs 

This started out a little more expensive and ended up lower as weeks went by. With the next diet and the next time I do the Shred I will actually save my receipts and have a budget number here!

Results

The black ribbon was my before waist measurement and the white ribbon was after six weeks. I lost about 6 inches from my waist! I was down about 10 1/2 pounds, but definitely think most of my loss was in inches. I have a few more pictures showing the difference of the two weeks below:

Overall I was thrilled with my results on this diet. I just couldn't follow it consecutively (I made it to week 3 and decided it was time to chase a new diet.) I will go back to this at some point, I'm sure. But for now I'm off to chase down the Flat Belly Diet starting Monday. 

The Guiltless Cookie

Sometimes you just want a cookie. Thanks to Pinterest and bloggers before me (with better pictures) I've found the guiltless cookie. They call it the 2 Ingredient Cookie, but I'm going to call it the Guiltless Cookie!

To start, you need the two main ingredients. That would be:

• 2 Ripe Bananas
• 1 Cup Oatmeal

 

You also get the option of adding more ingredients. For this batch I added Dark Chocolate Chips and a bit of cinnamon. I also made these once adding 2 Tablespoons of Flax Seed, 1 Teaspoon of Dark Chocolate Powder, and I broke up two squares of dark chocolate. Both turned out delicious.

I doubled the recipe using 4 bananas and 2 Cups of Oatmeal. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

The first step is to mash/stir the banana and oatmeal together. 

Once they are fairly mixed, add your extra ingredients. This is where I added the Cinnamon and Chocolate Chips. You can add whatever you like!

Stir it all around, until it's mixed together.

Before you put these on your cookie sheet, make sure it is well greased. The blogs before me mentioned that if you forget this step it gets quite messy. I didn't give it a try, I used lots of cooking spray! I should also note that the cookie sheet was dirty, so I improvised and used a pizza sheet.

Next you cook these babies for 15 minutes. They come out, delicious!

These are best right out of the oven, but they are still delicious once they've cooled down. Give it a try! 

A Trip to Reality

This isn't about science fiction. I know, I know. It looks like you'd enter this pod and end up on Mars or somewhere else you could only imagine in your imagination. The place I ended up was far more scary. Reality. It wasn't too surprising since I look in the mirror occasionally and step on a scales once a week But still...

The test was painful  painless. We were instructed to wear a one piece swim suit, or compression shorts and a shirt or sports bra. Since my swim suit is more of loose fitting swim trunks and top, I went and found compression shorts.

Sitting in the machine I waited for claustrophobia to set in. Luckily, it didn't. I was told to sit still and in 40 seconds they would open the door, then repeat two more times. I sat and waited. There was a bit of a popping noise and then the sound of a panting dog. My ears started to pop a little bit from the air pressure, but that was about it.

I survived the experience. I promise, I didn't even lose my arm; even though it looks like I did in the picture. Don't ask me why I was posing like that!

The results printed and I found out my fat percentage is at an extreme risk. When I lose 24 pounds I will be at a high risk. 55.7 total pounds and I will be down to a potential risk (which is my six month goal for myself.) A total of 76.5 pounds will put me in a neutral zone and 84.10 total pounds will put me in good health.

The trick is to lose the weight in body fat, and not in my lean muscle mass. Which is where the Metabolic testing comes in. This testing was extra, but promised to give us an accurate amount of calories we could eat in a day and be in an optimal range to burn fat and not muscle.

Before the testing I couldn't eat for 4 hours. It was the afternoon at work, and my stomach was growling pretty loudly. I won't lie. After the metabolic testing I'm feeling overwhelmed!

I sat down and was given a nose clip, to plug my nose so I would breathe through my mouth into a tube. Then I was told to close my eyes lean back and relax for 10 Minutes. (That was a little easier said than done.)

In the end my results said my metabolism was 3% over normal. I was told that to get in the Weight Loss Zone I should eat between 1430 calories and 1786 calories. Anything under that and I would be burning muscle mass. This is where I get overwhelmed and freaked out a little bit. According to this, if I eat the right amount of calories, but burn more calories exercising, I would still be burning muscle. This is hard for me to wrap my head around, because exercise should help me and not hurt me.

At this point, I'm not sure if I'm going to let this change my strategy. I am going to start wearing my Body Media Fit band, and work on counting calories (I haven't been counting them while on the Shred, as I've just been eating what he suggests in the book.)

For now I will let this information sink in for a couple of days. I will write more about the Shred later this week, and add a post about a recipe I found on Pinterest. As far as this challenge though, Game On! I'm anxious to see everybody participating in my office come September!

Self Proclaimed Diet Expert & Yo Yo Queen

Hello. My name is Sarah, and I'm a yo yo dieter. Well, I was a yo yo dieter, until I decided that wasn't healthy and just stayed fat for awhile. (With some small up and down changes while I "stayed" the same...which sums up  to I was still a yo yo-er.)

My goal is to lose 105 Pounds total, and I have about 93 pounds left to go. I've realized that I've tried almost every popular diet around...but amazingly there are still more left to try. As I head down to my goal weight I am going to try different six week programs and report to the cyber-world what is working and what isn't working.

You may be wondering what I've tried already. (I'll comment on the diets I've tried as well.) Here is the lovely list of what programs I've been on to give myself the title Diet Expert & Yo Yo Queen.

1. Weight Watchers
2. Jenny Craig
3. Nutrisystem
4. Medifast
5. The New Lifestyle Diet
6. The Cabbage Soup Diet
7. The South Beach Diet
8. The Abs Diet
9. Body By Vi
10. Advocare
11. LA Weight Loss
12. Anti-Candida Diet
13. Detox Diet
14. Slim Fast Diet
15. 3 Day Diet

I've also tried various weight loss supplements, spent more money in gym memberships than I EVER used, and have tried my own eating plans. 

Here is my quick disclaimer...even though this is all about different diets. I don't have a diet mentality. This time I'm approaching it as lifestyle changes and that is what I want to focus on in this blog. Even though I'm trying different diets and reviewing them, my plan is to bring something from all of these that will become a healthy habit. That way when I get down to my goal weight, I can stay at my goal weight!

At work, I have an exciting contest coming up tomorrow. We are starting a Game On & Bod Pod Challenge. Tomorrow afternoon I will go into the Bod Pod and have my fat percentage measured (yikes!!) Tomorrow I'm also trying to lose my bad habit of using "filler" in talking and writing. That means...no more cussing, no more emoticons, and no more lol's. That seems SO much harder to face than losing more weight. I may also try the metabolic testing. I will write about all of that tomorrow. I also am in my second cycle of the 6 week Shred Revolutionary Diet. I will be writing about that (and showing some pictures of results so far.) I'll also be writing my goals, tips, victories, and battles.

I have a lot to write about and I hope you'll join me in this journey!