Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures

      Diets. We’ve all been on one at least once. Well, after having each of my babies, I went on a low carb diet. It’s done really well for me and I’ve been able to get back down below my pre-pregnancy weight both times. Yay me!  My second baby is now almost a year old, and although I’m under my pre-pregnancy weight, I still have more that I want to lose. But that’s easier said than done. I have been doing a low carb diet off and on since the holidays.

 But it's times to get back on the wagon, so my mom and I decided to do a kick start diet together to help us both get strict again. It’s called the Military diet. Military as in how strict the diet is, not as in this is what they actually eat in the military.

     Day 1

          Breakfast – ½ Grapefruit, 1 slice of toast, 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, one cup
                              of coffee (black)

          Lunch – ½ cup of dry tuna, 1 slice of toast, 1 cup of coffee (black)

          Dinner – 3 ounces of any type of meat, 1 cup of green beans, ½ banana, 1 small
                              apple, 1 cup of vanilla ice cream

·        So, I started out really optimistic. Those meal plans didn’t seem too bad, despite the fact that I had to drink my coffee black. And I have two little kids, so skipping coffee was not an option! I’m not gonna lie, I actually thought about mixing the peanut butter in my coffee to sweeten it, but I wasn’t sure how that would turn out. So instead I put the peanut butter on the toast and took a sip of coffee after every bite. By lunch time things were still going well. That was a decent breakfast do I was fine. Lunch was at 11:30 and it was dry tuna on a piece of bread, which was fine at the time. Then I put the kids in the stroller and went for a walk. Still fine. Around 3:30, I started to get hungry, but I decided that it was psychological and I could just convince myself that I wasn’t really hungry. Even though my walk had walked off all of my lunch and I was in fact getting very hungry. That wasn’t working and the diet didn’t say anything about whether or not you can have a meal item at a different time, so I made a judgment call. I ate my apple early. The apple helped me get to dinner time, where I had some left over grilled chicken and my cup of green beans. I knew that I would really crave it later, but you know the whole “after 6 it sticks” rule so I decided to go ahead and have my ice cream and ½ banana about a half hour after dinner. I did get the munchies later that night, but I pushed through them! Successful day one!

 

   Day 2

        Breakfast – 1 egg (cooked any way you want w/o fat), 1 slice of toast, ½ banana,
                             coffee (black)

        Lunch – 1 Cup of cottage cheese, 1 egg, 5 saltine crackers

        Dinner – 2 hot dogs (w/o buns), 1 Cup of broccoli, ½ cup carrots, ½ banana, ½ cup
                            of vanilla ice cream

·        Again, the day started out fine, although that black coffee was just really hard to get down. The trouble came when I decided at 10:30 in the morning that I was going to run some errands. The errands were about forty minutes from my house, and I had several stops to make. So, needless to say, I didn’t make it back for a while and by the time I did, I was starving. So the small lunch that I did get seemed even smaller. The diet also has substitutions for certain items, and you can use one per day. I used mine for the cottage cheese. Whoever thought cottage cheese would be something suitable to eat had to be out of their mind. I am not a picky eater and I can choke down some foods that I really don’t find appetizing, but cottage cheese is not one of them.  It’s like curdled milk. Who eats curdled milk?? Okay, sorry back to my story. So I ate my 5 saltines, 1 egg, and a slice of cheese. That lasted me the afternoon and dinner was pretty decent too. So day 2 was not a bad day! Only one day left and I was feeling great about it.

Day 3

     Breakfast – 5 saltines, 1 slice of cheddar cheese, 1 small apple

     Lunch – 1 egg, 1 slice of toast

     Dinner – 1 cup of tuna, ½ banana, 1 cup of vanilla ice cream

·        Okay, day 3 started out small. Which was fine because I don’t always eat breakfast, but by lunch time I was wanting more than 1 egg and 1 slice of toast. But I ate my 1 egg on my toast and I waited. My egg didn’t hold me over very long and all I and to look forward to was dry tuna. I enjoy tuna with mayo on bread or crackers, but just plain and dry is kind of nasty. Finally, after what seemed like a very long afternoon, I choked down my dry tuna and then waited another hour before I had my banana and ice cream. I’m just gonna be honest. The thought of that ice cream is the only thing that helped me stick to the diet that day. I did make it though. All three days, and I lost 7 pounds too! I was pretty excited and it was definitely a good way to kick off the diet again.

     Low carb doesn’t seem so bad after that diet.

Or does it?? Well, here I go! How do you think you would do on the military diet? Any takers?