Daily check in and chat for SBD Vets!!

[Judynyc]

I'd love to chat with other vets to the SB way of life.

Even if we are in phase II, can we chat to each other here and not have to answer newbie questions?

I love to help newbies get on the lan and find success! But I also just want to talk to others who are not newbies and don't need to know what to eat!:Sleepy:

So, here I am holding at about 152-153 on the scale...doing my Pilates a few times a week and recently got back out on the tennis court.

How are you all doing?

[RedRox]

Pretty good as well! Although I suspect our menu plans look quite a bit different! But that's one of the strengths of the program IMO. You have found what works well for you and I have found what works well for me as well.

I'm not sure whether it's stress or just the fall "pre-hibernation" patterns embedded in our gene codes, but I've been falling prey to the late night snack munchies worse than normal lately. And not the good nutritious snacks either! Some are certainly beachy and within guidelines, but the ones that are not are really off the deep end and go against some of my long standing personal "rules". Unfortunately or fortunately I can cover up a fair amount of sins with exercise and short spurts of off-plan eating really has very little effect on my weight anymore. It's more about the things I can't measure daily like fasting BG and LDL levels that I know I'm screwing with. Certainly no danger of falling off for an extended period of time or anything, but still just a bit out of character even for my normally "unusual" SB eating habits!

Enjoy the tennis! Sounds fun! Our younger daughter caught the tennis bug this summer and since it's a no-cut sport at our HS, is thinking of going out for the team since one of her BFFs is a tennis star. Her dad was hoping for a lacrosse gal, but does not appear to be in the cards at this point!

[Judynyc]

Hi Red!

Late night snacks can be our ruination. I know that I do enjoy my late night snacks and have several that I can chose from. I do save 1 fruit for that time of day...and a Wasa w/ PB and a bit of good jam. I also enjoy a small amount of sk 85% chocolate after dinner.

As for our menus being very different? I have no idea what you eat so I dunno! I enjoy yogurt with my morning coffee(dannon carb and sugar control), then my lunch is either tuna/egg salad or chicken salad or chili all with lots of veggies. My POV now is to keep my lean protein to 4-5 ozs per meal and load up on veggies. I still snack as I'm a natural grazer and it works this way for me.

Dinner tonight will be a stir fry with beef tips, onions, mushrooms and red bell pepper...in garlic, crushed red pepper and evoo. Other nights it could be a salmon filet with asst kinds of veggies. Last night after tennis, I had a small asst veggie dish with steamed asparagus, olives, tomato and 1 hb egg with my vnegarette dressing.

On the tennis.....its actually good to learn it as a kid because its a very social sport and you can always come back to it when you are old like me!! Not so for a sport like Lacrosse.

[RedRox]

Well you can play tennis the rest of your life, but team sports in HS where you are actually working together as a team, also provides a lot of good life lessons in working together and conflict management and resolution that you don't get in a sport like tennis, IMO. Tennis I would put more in the category of an individual sport played within team rules as a HS sport. I would compare it more to my HS ski team where we were nominally a team and trained together, but on race days, it was more about individual performances on the race course than having to work together as a coordinated unit like in football or lacrosse. And I actually played lacrosse from junior high all the way through graduate school where it was a club sport, so didn't have any eligibility requirements, and I could have kept playing as an adult as there are adult leagues much like soccer and hockey in certain areas of the country too. It was a pretty social sport too where I came from and poeple who have played it and loved it as perhaps the best team sport to actually play tend to have an affinity for each other and if you see someone with a stick in their hand playing somewhere, it's usually very easy to strike up a conversation with them having that in common.

As to menus, I'm sure I eat more starch and fruit servings and more calorie dense items than you do. I still rely on lots of vegetables too though! Yesterday wasn't a good day to use because I just snacked on fruit and cheese and a great blueberry, walnut bread from Great Harvest with PB and agave in between yoga programs last night. (Practice from 5-6:15 and another workshop from 6:30-10:00 which will be my normal Wed. night until early December.)

But a typical menu goes like this:

B: My current routine is 2 days of oatmeal and 1 day of cold cereal, and then repeat that pattern every three days. It's a cup cooked of either steel cut (1/4 cup uncooked) or thick rolled oats (1/2 cup uncooked) with fruit, walnuts, flax, cinnamon and a squirt of agave nectar for sweetness. Cold cereal is 1/3 cup Uncle Sams, flax, cinnamon, fruit and then 1/3 to 1/2 cup of another cereal. Currently it Nature's Path Heritage Heirloom Whole Grains. The fruit portion is probably actually just a half portion of a full fruit serving, half a banana, a small amount of berries, etc. just to add some natural sweetness as well.

S: If I don't add a 1 egg eggbeater omelette to breakfast, I often have this mid-morning since I'm currently working from home to save gas. It usually includes chopped colored pepper, black beans and a slice of canadian bacon. If I include this in breakfast, then usually just a LF string cheese stick. Morning is not my hungry zone at all.

L: Lunch is almost always a 2 quart salad with grilled chicken strips and a little crumbled feta cheese for protein. Usually a mix of romaine and field greens, chopped mini carrots, cucumber, colored pepper, and snap peas if we have them. Maybe once it all settle in, it's about 6-7 cups total.

S: Another LF string cheese with some dried apricots or a mix of black beans, salsa, tomato and chopped green peppers heated in a micro.

D: Typical veggie, starch, and protein, although for me protein quantities are probably typically in the 6-8 oz range I would guess. We have certain standby's on a weekly menu. We typically do a pasta night with ww pasta, zucchini and onions and either scallops or shrimp for protein. (one of our daughters is a semi-vegetarian and will eat fish, but no land based animals, so a typical meat sauce with ground beef or ground turkey doesn't work for us) A half cup of pasta is very small, so I usually have a full cup, but it's also still a lot of veggies on top too. We have one "fajita" night with sauteed peppers and onions and the grilled chicken strips (from costco) on a ww tortilla. I stick to 1 ww tortilla and have seconds "naked" on a plate. toppings include tomato, salsa, LF shredded mexi cheese and homemade guacamole with a small amount of blue corn chips too. I miss "pizza night" on the night I clean the yoga studio so that works well for everyone as they get their "white carbs" and I don't have to be the bad guy about it. We usually have a fish night once a week with veggies and in the summer some other grilled meat, or turkey sausage or salmon or beef burgers. Our standard starch sides include ww couscous, sweet potato, winter squashes, brown rice or quinoa,

S: My late night snack is usually an apple with PB and a fudge pop with PB. but I'm kind of a night owl, so I'm often up too late and the old bad habits rear up now and again and I still look for something else at times, and it's usually not that healthy! My best bet is usually munching on some dry cereal again or the blue corn chips. (which i don't consider all that bad really) We do have some small squares of dark chocolate after dinner too, esp. on nights with red wine as those go together so very well!

It's the return to the ice cream that is the problematic item for me as it's not good on a regular basis for my LDL or blood sugar and my rule has always been I don't eat ice cream at home, simply because it was such a huge part of the problem in my old lifestyle. If I have it, we go out and find a good quality shop (which usually just means coldstone in colorado), and have a small size with either walnuts or plain dark chocolate to keep it somewhat beachy. Since it's expensive that way and requires a family outing to make it work, it's usually pretty limiting in frequency just for those reasons.

I really don't eat any "fluffy" breads at all though. The 1 or 2 ww tortillas a week (I sometimes make a snack or a weekend lunch with egg, beans, pepper and onion and salsa in a tortilla), and the occasional slice of that ww blueberry walnut bread with PB and agave really constitute my only bread consumption on a even semi regular basis. There's just a lot of other good starches and grains to choose from that have a lot more nutrition and less problem ingredients than breads. I just don't understand the fascination with returning to breads or including them on a daily basis, I guess I'm lucky to just not be much of a sandwich person. And I'm not much of a baked goods person either, although a really good cookie has a certain appeal now and then!

So that's pretty much what I eat! :Hiding:

[Judynyc]

LOL!! no need to duck and hide because of what you are eating.

I could not eat as much starch as you...as you know! Nor do I try! I know my limits and accept them. If I was doing heavy workouts daily and not just walking like I do now...I'd eat more grain. I do eat oatmeal prior to my tennis sessions.

If I do have real ice cream, its not in my home. Once in a while I'll buy the no sugar added Breyers.....yikes!! control flys out the window!

I had a slice of Ezekiel sprouted grain bread to sop up the yummy gravy from the beef stiry fry....OMG, it was so good!! I ended up adding in tomato paste and tomato pesto, lemon juice and white balsamic vinegar...which made it spicy and tangy!! MY fav!!

I ate 1/2 last night and the other half for lunch today.

[RedRox]

Well I knew that would be the greatest area of difference too!

And I just won't do the faux ice cream that seems OK either. I don't want to think it's somewhat OK. We always have the real stuff around for those in the family that don't have issues with it. It really has never been a problem. That's what kind of weird about it now.

We bought some ezekiel hamburg buns once a long time ago before whole wheat buns became more prevalent and it seemed like it took a half hour to eat them! Haven't ventured back into ezekiel territory since then! LOL! Looks like healthy stuff though.

[Judynyc]

:Hiding:What I'm about to write here gives me cause to want to run and hide.

IME...grains are addictive and can alter mood. In reading "Going Against the Grain", it showed me that this is true. Overeating them to me, is feeding my addiction to them. This is one of my reasons to use them strictly and not overeat them. Especially when they are ground into flour...even whole grain flour.

Being as large as I was and also, being a chronic and compulsive overeater, I have to keep strict controls over what I am eating at all times!! Maybe this is an area where you do not have the same experience as me.

SBD in phase II, gives us 2-3 starches a day....3-4 in phase III, which I rarely get to. Of those 2-3 servings.....most people jump at grains, cereals...and bread!! This is where we differ the most! I will try to include starchy veggies as much as grains!

Ezekiel is flourless...uses the sprouted grains and yes, its chewy. They now make several different breads that are kept frozen...which is good for me as it takes me months to go through one loaf. English muffins too...where 1/2 of one is a portion....who can eat 1/2? not me!!

If I throw all caution to the wind, I could easily eat as much if not more grain than you...and my weight would reflect it fast!! I chose to not do that to myself any longer!!

[RedRox]

Well I'm certainly with ya on begin against jumping into breads and flour based grains early in P2 and esp. with those who make it their first thing they add back in. That's never a good idea IMO and as I said, I stay away from what I call "fluffy" breads altogether. Density matters too in terms of GI and how it affects us too IMO. But I can post a number of articles that also support the health and nutritional benefits of truly whole grains, esp. those like oats with more soluble fiber that benefit reducing LDL levels which is something that still affects me.

And I know ezekiel is "flourless" but if you take the wheatberry and let it sprout before you grind it up into "flour" you are still affecting the GI of it to me. I put it in the same category as nut flours, soy flours, seed flours, and so forth. I think it's a bit disingenious in their labeling, although probably technically correct based on food labeling laws. You'd still be better off cooking up a bunch of wheatberries IMO.

And we do like our winter squashes too! Looking forward to cooler weather for baking acorn squashes and cooking butternut squashes too.

I have no idea if I was a chronic or compulsive overeater or not. I guess if I don't know, I probably was not! I just spent too many years as a couch potato getting slowly larger and large until a series of events just kind of converged to "flip the switch" to begin to change how I ate and increase my level of activity. I just had to get myself back to close to what I was at around 18 or so before I went to college and started drinking and letting myself go. I was blessed with good physical genes. I never discount that. I just had stopped living up to my potential in that area. Now I'm probably overcompensating in a mid-life crisis of sorts as I realize that I have more good years behind me than in front of me. And I wasted a lot of those good years! But thankfully, it's never too late to redefine yourself!

[RedRox]

I'm also in week 2 of a rather intensive yoga program until early December and that's helping with being more mindful of the nutrition I need on a daily basis to support my body through it. The 20/30-somethings can likely get away with it just on youthful energy, but at 50-something, things like nutrition and hydration seem to matter more! It's also a lot of hours, so just not around much and at times eating more large snacks than full meals when you only have 30 minutes to shower and eat between practices and classes and you need to keep a fairly empty stomach. The biggest challenge is getting in all the veggies, although my lunch salad takes care of daily minimums easily, it's just not spread out between meals. While the universe may indeed provide, you do need to help it out a bit at times!

[Judynyc]

I'm just swamped with work and stuff this week so no time for posting.......sorry Red!!