General question about starches, fruits etc. in Phase II

[London_Girl]

It's my 4th week on Phase II and I have gradually re-introduced fruits, brown rice, quinoa and other starches so far. However, some days I notice that I eat e.g. 1 apple and oatmeal only on top of Phase I food. Should I 'force' myself to include more other Phase II food every day?

For example my lunch today was chicken with pepper, mushrooms, onions and beansprouts. I could have added brown rice, but I quite liked my lunch as it was. Is that ok or too much Phase I?

I still had my oatmeal, apple and berries (i.e. Phase II) and will have some wine tonight..

Thanks

[Tiny T]

I'm bad about adding the allowed carbs back in for phase 2 myself...I tend to 'save up' (so to say) my carbs for enjoyment on the weekend and in the evenings. If I eat them every meal, I feel I get cravings for more and more...so I'll eat phase 1 bkfst, snacks & lunch during the week while at work...(I feel it helps keep cravings at bay while I sit at my desk)....then I enjoy a nice phase 2 dinner with some whole grain pasta or brown rice...

Have you noticed a change in your weight loss?...or is it too early to tell....your not gaining weight or anything like that are you? I feel it's really up to you and as long as your getting your daily requirements of dairy/veggies etc....you go with what makes you feel good!

[RedRox]

Sounds fine as long as you don't ignore the starches/grains altogether as they do provide valuable nutrition and health benefits. I usually do not have any grains with lunch, although I eat more fruit than that and still have a starch with breakfast and dinner. P2 is mostly about finding what works for you though!

[London_Girl]

Great! Thanks

I'm still losing weight, even if it's REALLY slow, but that's what we are aiming for anyway

I weigh myself every day in the morning, because I noticed that when I initally weighed myself only on Mondays, and I had eaten something the Sunday before which made me feel 'heavier' I was kind of disappointed when the scale has gone up slightly.
I'm being geeky though and input my daily weight into an .xls spreadsheet which is linked to a graph, and as the average direction of the curve goes downwards (I still see quiet a lot of fluctuations), I'm happy

[RedRox]

Originally Posted by London_Girl

I'm being geeky though and input my daily weight into an .xls spreadsheet which is linked to a graph, and as the average direction of the curve goes downwards (I still see quiet a lot of fluctuations), I'm happy

That's very normal really. It's the overall trend line that matters. Really though it's more of an exponential curve than a straight regression line. They typically have a much greater slope at first and level out towards your goal weight the further along the X-axis you go. If you want to get uber-geeky, start plotting a 5-7 day rolling average!

[London_Girl]

Well, maybe I should have mentioned that in the next column my weekly weight loss/gain gets calculated on a Monday vs. previous Monday basis, which then is summed up in another box to show my overall weight loss so far

If that makes any sense...?

Unfortunately it seems like you can't attach .xls files here, so I'll attach a screenshot for anyone who's interested and wants to rebuild it

Sorry, actually the file is too big in order to upload it :Problem:

[RedRox]

here's mine from the first year! I don't think I did anything other than some kind of screen shot, although I do have screen shot capture software on my PC for doing documentation and stuff, so maybe not a straight "PrntScrn" button function. The spike around week 39-40 was Christmas/New Year's at my parents. oops! Currently a smidge under 180 most days, just got tired of keeping data, but you would have seen just a very long plateau and then another 5-7 lbs drop off about 3 months after that graph stopped over a month or so period. Wasn't doing anything differently really, just started up again for no apparent reason! Hence my rule about weight loss being neither linear, predictable, nor comparable!