Call Me Crazy

We're not calling it a "diet." We're calling it a "menu." We want to get a handle on our sugar/simple-carb addiction, so we are following an adapted version of the South Beach Diet's "phase 1." Simplified, it's a lot of protein and vegetables, no fruit, no grains, no sweets, no potatoes, no corn (is corn a grain? Anyway, none of that). Considering that our family could probably go for days barely eating a vegetable and otherwise consuming ONLY starches, this is a fairly dramatic shift. We started Monday officially, Sunday night a little sorta.

To cheer ourselves up, we have sugar-free, fat-free Jello Instant Pudding (chocolate fudge flavor) with sugar-free Land-o-Lakes heavy whipped cream from a can at night after dinner. And it is, truly, quite cheering. And that worked so well that in the afternoons the girls and I make ourselves iced coffees, using the spray-on whipped cream as both creamer and sweetener. So, a lot of it is required in each coffee. We have not quite used two cans in two days. Of course there are four of us. Husband is at work in the afternoon, so he doesn't participate in the afternoon coffee fest. So, maybe that's more like 3.3 of us. Oh, who's counting?

No one. We're counting nothing. Fat does not count; calories do not count. We just want to get through from Monday to Saturday without eating any grain or sugar. It's now Wednesday and we're doing okay. Actually, Old Daughter is doing pretty well. She started feeling more energetic and perky after just over a day of eating more protein and veggies and less other stuff. Husband just always says fine when he is reporting his status. Make of that what you will. Yesterday Young Daughter looked like she thought she was a character in a Twilight movie -- humorless and self-pitying to an unnatural degree. Much better today already, but she's still pining for the noodles. Me, I am eating ceaselessly.

Here is some of what we've been eating. Add coffee and V-8 and nuts, and this is about the size of it:

Breakfast [I had imagined I would make things, like frittatas and omelets, but so far that has not happened even once. I just throw things into the skillet and scramble em]:

• Egg and something, like smoked salmon or sausage or cheese & chives or canadian bacon
• V-8 (we use the low-sodium kind and add salt. It's still probably lower sodium than the regular)

Snack:

• Slice of turkey sandwich meat in a lettuce leaf w/cilantro mayo
• A cheesestick or two and carrots
• Hummus and cucumber
• Celery and cream cheese

Lunch:

• Caesar salad (with chicken or extra anchovies or something)
• Cobb salad (with bleu cheese and canned crab]
• Gazpacho and a hamburger patty
• Taco salad with no taco, but salsa and cheddar cheese cubes okay

and more V-8

Snack:

Same as morning snack, or...

• Mozzarella and tomatoes
• Hardboiled egg and some crunchy veggie, maybe a bell pepper, or sugar snap peas [sugar! yay!! oops, sorry]

Dinner

Lots of SBD's (no, smarty, in this case it stands for "South Beach Diet") menu suggestions call for chicken or fish. I'm not taking advantage of too many of those good ideas because we just bought a quarter of a grass-fed cow and I am too stubborn to buy any other meat. So we are eating mostly steaks and ground beef. No complaints.

Like,

• Steak and a salad and broiled tomato halves
• Cheeseburgers with romaine leaves in place of buns (very messy, and actually, truly delicious)
• Steak with spinach stuffed mushrooms and salad
• Beef, cabbage salad (thinly sliced cabbage tossed with rice vinegar and a few drops of sesame oil), snow peas
• Beef, asparagus, fennel salad
• Beef, cauliflower mashed not-potatoes, green beans

And I already described our fabulous dessert.

Maybe I should've weighed or measured myself before I started this so I can dazzle you with the results. (I had to resist very hard the urge to put "results" in "quotation marks.") But, regardless of the numbers, if my kids and I can go three days without sugar or dough, and with very little suffering of any kind, I call it three days of WIN. (I guess three is a number. Whatever. I coulda just said "a few" -- still, it's all WIN WIN WIN.)

Meanwhile, tonight, for dinner, cuz we're on, you know, like, a diet, we had tasty, refreshing gazpacho, and this. Except ours had no feet, tails, or head and were DELICIOUS.