BDS day 11 and 13, bad weekend

I am so bad at BDSing over the weekend, so bad. I'm a weird mix of being too busy then wanting to relax whenever I'm not busy. I carried my book with me all day Sunday hoping that I would have a chance to read and take some notes, but I didn't open the book once. This is the perfect example of why I need to make time to diet. My mom had the idea of going over my BDS stuff Friday evenings, which is probably a good idea in most cases. This last Friday I had about five minutes in between coming home from work and going out again, but that isn't the case on most Fridays. And hopefully all weekends won't be so ridiculously busy. If I need to, and I probably do, I will start setting my alarm for an earlier (but still pretty late) time on the weekends so I know I'll have time to work on meal planning and exercising before I need to start weekend activities.

Day 11 is learning to differentiate between hunger, desire and cravings. I'm doing the notes in the book before lunch. It's about 11:30 am and I'm trying to wait until 1pm to eat, but I already wrote up a note about how my stomach is feeling before lunch since I'm already hungry! I felt the need to recognize I was hungry but also reflect on it not being all that bad. I will write up more as lunch gets closer.

Day 13, dealing with cravings, is going to take a few days of focus I think. I'm bad with giving into cravings, but I also might not really get any today if I'm busy or satisfied with what I brought to work to eat. I need to keep this in mind. I think I'll write up a cravings card full of key advantages response things and a few other techniques for dealing with cravings.

Day 12 is skipping lunch. I came down with a cold this weekend so I think I'm going to put this off until Thursday when I'm feeling better and I know I have to walk somewhere during lunch, which will help to distract me.

Weekend food highlights:

Friday night: I drank beer even though I explicitly said I wasn't going to. I got a snack of homemade pita and hummus at a restaurant, fairly healthy but pita was white flour and what not. Late at night I had two slices of a personal pizza with no cheese and olives. Like the hummus, white flour instead of whole wheat like I would have at home. It was all bad stuff, but not the worst and certainly far from total slippage.

Saturday brunch: I went to a non-vegan friendly brunch spot with a friend and got chickpea salad with watercress and homefries. The salad had too much oil on it, but was good. I didn't feel deprived.

Snack: Naked brand green superfood juice. It was really good and it made me feel full. I went to Coney Island with some friends and they all got hotdogs and I didn't get anything. I was very proud.

Dinner: a very mediocre veggie burger at a restaurant with a giant white bun with guac, jalapeños, onion, lettuce and ketchup. It had fries with it but I managed to eat only a few and give the rest away. I was pretty full at the end, probably more than I needed to be.

Sunday brunch: so good. Tofu scramble with tons of veggies and a grilled little corn muffin. Very satisfying and healthy.

Snack: I baked up a batch of blueberry corn muffins with fresh blueberries. I like the recipe I go off of because the muffins come out fairly small. I had one warm for a snack. It was delicious.

Sunday dinner: so great. Homemade veggie burgers made with lentals and wheat gluten on sprouted grain english muffins with homemade ketchup (so good!), avocado, red onion, jalapeños, and mixed greens. On the side there was homemade chipotle sweet potato fries with some of that delicious homemade ketchup and greens with garlic (a little too oily, but okay).

Dessert: another blueberry corn muffin. I probably didn't need this, but it was reasonably healthy.

Food log:

Breakfast today: I was starving this morning before work since I woke up earlier than usual to do some pilates. I had one muffin at home then had another one at work with a cup of green tea.

Planned lunch: a roll-up on a sprouted grain tortilla of homemade basil-roast garlic-lima bean spread with oven roasted eggplant, red and green peppers and mixed greens.

Planned snack: leftover sweet potato fries with yummy homemade ketchup and leftover greens.

Planned dinner: another homemade veggie burger on sprouted grain muffin. Toppings undecided.

I need to make sure I eat fairly light today since I canceled my plans to go spinning later in order to get over my cough. I'll work with the book a lot today to make up for slacking over the weekend and to help me get through lighter eating.

BDS day 10, corn muffins

Day 10 sounds simple, but I'm actually finding it harder than I expected. "Set a realistic goal" The problem here is that I'm already petite, I have probably a total of ten pounds to lose max, but if I'm setting goals within the 3 pound range, that sort of weight loss/gain fluctuates from day to day based on water weight, what I've eaten, etc. I'm going to say I want to lose five pounds because that is at the point where I know I'm really losing the weight I want to be losing, but that is actually about 4% of my body weight and maybe that's unrealistic. I don't know. I need to stew on this to the end of the day.

I have some other stressful things going on in my life right now and it's the first real test of if I can stick to eating healthy while being stressed. The book goes through this extensively, but in the madness of stress it can be easy to forget everything. Being stressed about one thing in my life makes me want to give up on everything else that I'm trying to improve in my life. I need to not do this, obviously, but I also want to try to work on applying BDS techniques to everything else. I need to learn to stick with the things I know I really care about when I'm stressed out.

Food log:

Snack/dinner: baby bok choy sauteed with Braggs, lemon and sriracha hot sauce.

Snack/dinner part 2: Silk Live mango smoothie thing.

Snack/dinner part 3: air-popped popcorn with vegan butter flavored spray with negligible calories and nutritional yeast (lots of b vitamins!) and a homemade corn muffin. Clearly, I made several attempts at dinner last night. I just wasn't hungry and I was busy catching up with a friend over some herbal tea. Suddenly it was 9:15 pm and I haven't really eating much of anything in the way of dinner and I started craving corn muffins. So I decided to have a snacky dinner of fairly healthy cheesey tasting popcorn and I made vegan low-sugar corn muffins from scratch. I used splenda instead of sugar, but there was a fair amount of oil in the batter (1/3 or 1/2 cup of canola oil, I forget which). I need to learn how to do lower-fat baking. I added the zest of one lemon and that made them a little more special. They were also pretty small sized muffins. I ate only one warm with some non-hydrogenated margarine. Very good.

Breakfast today: two little lemon corn muffins, warmed up, no margarine.

Lunch today: pasta with Light Life faux chicken strips and broccoli and seasoned with Braggs, tahini and sriracha. Five dried prunes for dessert.

Snack: cup of coffee black with one french vanilla flavored Splenda packet.

What I have waiting: baby lima beans with roasted garlic, parsley, adobo, pepper and non-hydro margarine and a dinner out. For dinner I get to choose a vegan or vegan-friendly restaurant since I'm going out with some pretty liberal people, one of whom is already vegetarian. My picks all have pretty healthy vegan options so hopefully I won't stray from the healthier choices on the menu.

Tonight I might be going out to a bar with some friends. I want to make sure that I order cocktails with diet soda, as much as I love a good beer, because I just know that is as healthy as I can get while drinking alcohol. It'll be tricky to do and even harder to read the advantages response card in a public place with low-lighting if I feel tempted. Hopefully my will power will be strong enough to survive it.

BDS day 9, more fooding

Day 9 is easy. I had already figured out my exercise goals within the past week as part of an increased overall focus on my health. Pilates three times a week and an intense cardio workout at least three times a week (intense qualifies as a spinning class or another really challenging cardio class and not just doing an elliptical for a half hour). Otherwise, I just want to be more active. I need to walk and bike everywhere on the weekends. Last weekend I walked over the Williamsburg bridge three times and it felt really good. It also doesn't take all that long to walk from my house into the Lower East Side. The weather is warming up and I don't have any more excuses to be lazy indoors on the weekends. I just need to also figure out a way to stay active on rainy days and once the weather gets bad again.

I'm getting to enjoy being hungry, as long as I can distract myself so I don't dwell on it. I'm really focusing on the difference for cravings out of boredom and true hunger, and my food tastes so much better when I'm truly hungry for it. I was a little hungry the hour before going to the gym during lunch hour at work but I didn't eat anything right beforehand. I went to a really good cardio kickbox class and came back to what tasted like the best whole wheat pasta with broccoli, chickpeas, lemon, tahini and pepper. It was worth waiting for.

Food log:

Yesterday lunch: boring napa cabbage salad but a really good crunchy pb and apricot j sprouted grain roll up.

Yesterday snack: chickpea salad that was so good the first day and is getting boring by now.

Yesterday dinner: spinach quesadilla. It was pretty good, nothing great, but satisfying. I added lots of pickled jalapeños and that added a nice kick.

Breakfast: tempeh sandwich, almost perfected, except the pita got soggy in the hours between making and eating. It had the usual suspects: avocado, racaito, tomato, cucumber, a little lettuce and jalapeños.

Snack: a little handful of wasabi peas to clear up my sinuses.

Lunch: whole wheat fusilli with broccoli, chickpeas, tahini, lemon and lots of pepper. This was really satisfying. The flavors went together perfectly. Then I had about a quarter cup of trail mix for something sweeter as a dessert.

Snack: crunchy peanut butter, apricot spread and a little agave nectar wrapped up in a sprouted grain tortilla. Those tortillas are fairly small, so it makes a little pb & j pod and a good size for a snack.

What I have waiting: a mango soy yogurt smoothie bottle and some sauteed lemon chili baby bok choy. If I can manage it, which I think I can, these might be my dinner even though I brought them to work to eat here.

I'm going out to a non-vegan cafe/restaurant tonight to meet a friend. They have a few vegan options, but not many and most involve modifications of the menu item. I'm hoping I have the will power to just order tea since I know they have a great and extensive tea menu.

BDS day 8, vegan exercising

I'm staying on Day 8 today to do some more planning with my time management. Last night I reviewed the first 7 days and made sure I really went through everything. I even scribbled some notes in the book. It's a lot to keep track of, so I think it'll be a good idea to review what I've done so far every week, but I will probably make time to do this on Sundays since that is usually my errands/chores day. Today I'm going to plan my exercise and social activities and errands/chores for the next week and a half as best as I can.

So last night I took my first spinning class in a month and did my first really intense cardio session since beginning to eat vegan. I was worried I would get wiped out easily from changing my eating and eating a little less. I've also had a lot of people ask if I've been feeling tired since I started eating vegan. To my surprise, it went great. I maintained pretty steady energy through the 45 minute class and kept up with my co-worker who I went with and is in great shape. Then I slept better than usual and woke up early this morning to do a short pilates tape. I'm feeling a little more tired now, but I'm still pretty exhilarated at how easy it has been to get back into exercising while eating a very different diet.

Food log:

Yesterday lunch: my cabbage salad, but it was accidentally without a dressing and really disappointing. I went out and bought a bottle of dressing, but store bought dressing sucks and it was higher in oil and calories than a dressing I would make. I was so disappointed that I added a soy yogurt onto my lunch to make me feel better. I know I shouldn't have done any unplanned eating, but it was relatively healthy and did make me feel better.

Snack: chickpea salad with fresh tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, scallions, parsley, tahini and lemon. Really good. It was pretty high in fat from all the tahini, but it was so filling and satisfying. It really kept me going through spinning and not eating dinner until 9 pm.

Dinner: spinach and soy cheese quesadilla on another delicious sprouted grain tortilla with homemade salsa. Simple but really satisfying. I ate it slowly and savored it.

Dessert: none! I realized I didn't need it and I shouldn't eat it just because I told myself that I'm allowed to eat dessert. I went to bed satisfied without it.

Breakfast today: a really good tempeh sandwich. I made my sandwich extra delicious today so I wouldn't be tempted to eat any of the food ordered for the monthly firm-wide breakfast meeting. It had tempeh, avocado, cucumbers, lettuce, salsa, pickled jalapeños and racaito (cilantro seasoning/sauce stuff) on a pita half. I felt confident this was much better than a mediocre bagel and cream cheese. I also had a few pieces of fruit from the fruit salad for the breakfast. It was a nice treat.

What I have waiting: another napa cabbage salad (hopefully more satisfying this time), peanut butter and apricot spread in a little sprout grain tortilla, and chickpea salad. I might have to do another quesadilla for dinner. I'm obsessed with those tortillas.

Website for the company that makes the tortillas and other presumably delicious bread and pasta products: http://www.foodforlife.com/ They sell them at a natural foods store in my neighborhood but I don't know where else. I'll check Whole Foods and Trader Joe's soon.

BDS days 6, 7, maybe 8, more cupcakes

I don't know what happened to the days. I opened up my BDS book this morning to the bookmark and it was at day 8. I don't know how I smushed so many days into one. Perfectly timed, day 8 is about time management. So tonight I'm going to spend some time going back through all the days and writing in the book where I was supposed to and making sure I've made all the response cards I need and see if there is anything I rushed too much and need to make sure to focus on. I might spend an extra day here making sure I've gone through everything I was supposed to and make sure that I can keep on the diet in a timely way.

Yesterday I really savored being hungry. I was starving for dinner, but I knew that meant it would taste that much better. So I really spent time making something healthful and delicious, and it was totally worth it. A total BDS moment.

I made my roommate cupcakes for his birthday that I missed while I was in Egypt. They were banana cake with a peanutbutter buttercream filling topped with chocolate ganache, half a cherry in the center, some walnuts sprinkled around, and a little squiggly piping of peanut butter buttercream frosting around the edge. I didn't eat a single one. Even more amazing is that I didn't stick my finger in the batter, frosting, ganache or taste anything while I was making it. But I am still confident that they were good since my roommate at 2 1/2 of them by the time I woke up this morning.

Food log:

Yesterday breakfast: another tempeh sandwich. It was a little too salty and I have since decided it is probably a good idea to cut back on the salt somewhat. I really like the taste of food and sometimes I feel salt gets in the way.

Lunch: napa cabbage salad with tomatoes, scallions, cukes and a little bit of Annie's goddess dressing; leftover taco filling with tvp, tofu and refried beans; apple slices with peanut butter.

Snack: sauteed baby bok choy with onions.

Dinner: soy cheese and LightLife chicken strip quesadilla on a realllly good sprouted grain tortilla with homemade salsa, avocado and pickled jalapeños cooked inside it with a salad of leftover iceberg from taco night and homemade salsa and soy sour cream. This was a really good meal.

Dessert: a orange chocolate vegan cupcake made last weekend. I ate so well all day that I felt I deserved to treat myself at the end of the day. It was good.

Today breakfast: another tempeh sandwich. This time there was some of that iceberg thrown in for a nice crunch, but it was lacking a little bit. I think tempeh has a perfect breakfast texture, but I need to expand my repertoire of uses for it as a breakfast item.

Waiting for me: Napa cabbage salad with fake chicken strips, cilantro, pickled jalapeños, and leftover homemade salsa for dressing; chickpea salad with fresh tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, scallions, parsley, tahini and lemon; steamed broccoli with lemon; and orange slices.

I think for dinner I'll make something with those tortillas again since they were sooo good. Maybe I'll make something beany so I'm not so soy dependent. There are rumors too much soy is bad. I don't know if I totally believe it or that I'm eating that much, since I probably eat as much as some traditional cultures, but too much of any one type of food isn't good.

This week I will figure out how to get pictures on here and start posting food pics too.

BDS days 4 and 5, vegan cupcakes

I've slowed down this weekend since I was busy and I couldn't devote the time I wanted to towards the BDS. I did day 4 and 5 at the same time over three days. I found giving myself credit for what I do right has been really helpful. I even use it as a reason to choose to right eating behavior. I'll say to myself "I'll be proud of myself and be able to give myself positive credit if I don't eat that." Eating slowly and mindfully is a little harder, so I do that by recognizing I'm eating too fast and giving myself a minute break or so.

This weekend I didn't eat super healthy, but I did eat much better than I usually do on weekend when I'm not eating healthy. For example, late Saturday night a friend and I got an order of french fries from a place near my house and there were still french fries left when we both decided we were done with them. This wouldn't have happened two weeks ago. I would have eaten them until they were gone. I recognized I was full and satisfied and I just stopped eating them. It was bad that I ate them at all, but at the same time I was good about not eating them all.

My major vegan success this weekend was making three dozen delicious vegan cupcakes then inviting people over to enjoy them. I made one dozen banana split cupcakes (banana cake, peanut butter frosting, drizzle of chocolate ganache, walnuts, banana slices and a cherry), orange chocolate cupcakes (orange choco cake, orange cream filling, choco ganache) and chocolate cookies and cream cupcakes (choco cake, cookie buttercream frosting, half of a cookie on top). I took pictures that I will post eventually. Also, I only ate 2 1/2 cupcakes over the entire weekend, even though they were totally delicious. I realized the fewer cupcakes I ate the more I enjoyed the ones I did eat.

Weekend food highlights:

Saturday brunch: vegan huevos rancheros with tofu scramble, black beans, soy cheese, salsa on crispy whole wheat tortilla with a few fries (bad) and fresh squeezed grapefruit juice from the veggie restaurant Kate's Joint.

Saturday dinner: vegan tacos that I only ate two of. I love tacos and I love them just as much when I only eat two rather than my usual four or something. I also made some pretty good homemade salsa for this.

Sunday breakfast and lunch: a multigrain bagel with veggie tofu spread and tomatoes, cukes and red onions. Half for breakfast and half for lunch.

Snack: all fruit smoothie.

Dinner: taco salad on napa cabbage.

I want to try to update this in the afternoons Monday through Friday so I can keep track of what I'm eating. Half blog, half food log. I think it'll be helpful.

BDS day 2 and 3, Vegan night off

I've decided to do day 2 and 3 of the Beck Diet Solution in one day, because it seems doable and so I can catch up with my mom's schedule on the BDS. Day 2 task is picking a diet, which I already had set on healthy veganism. Day 3 is to eat sitting down, which is kind of a freebie since I eat 2 meals and all snacks of the day sitting at my desk. But the real trick here will be to try not to snack while cooking. This was a real struggle this morning making my food for the day, but someone I managed and I was really proud of myself. I put up some post-its above the stove saying "DON'T SNACK WHILE COOKING!!" and "EAT SITTING DOWN!" just to remind myself. I only hope my roommate doesn't get bothered or confused by them and take them down.

I want to work on letting people know that I'm trying to diet and change my eating habit and I need their support as much as my good friends always tell me I shouldn't worry about my weight and eating. I don't know if this is a task part of the BDS yet, but I'm going to start working on it now. I think this will help especially when my friend and I are deciding where to go out to eat.

Food log:

Snack yesterday: I ate the orange I had left for a snack at work and it was surprisingly satisfying.

Dinner yesterday: breaded and baked eggplant slices with brown rice pasta and spicy tomato sauce.

Dessert yesterday: half a Clif Bar. This was also significantly more satisfying than I expected it to be. I also successfully warded off the craving to eat a chocolate biscuit for dessert instead.

Breakfast: another delicious tempeh and veggie sandwich in half of a whole wheat pita pocket.

Snack: curry roasted cauliflower and some trail mix.

I brought for the rest of the day: another meatless bologna sandwich with soy cheese and gherkins in a half of a whole wheat pita, steamed broccoli with lemon, asian inspired cole slaw with green cabbage, scallions, soy sauce, rice vinegar and a bit of olive oil.

Dinner tonight: tonight I'm splurging a bit. I promised my friend we would go out for les moules et frites (mussels and fries) at this restaurant he's been wanting to try before I became vegan. I decided to eat primarily vegan prematurely, but I also decided to stay good on my word. My big goal is to try to stick to really healthy eating before and after my one indulgent meal out. That will be hard with my old friend from home in town this weekend, but I will tell her about my diet and ask her for her support.

Day 1

Today is day 1 of the Beck Diet Solution and my first 24 hours of being vegan.

The Beck Diet Solution is a cognitive therapy based sort of diet/diet book written by my second cousin, Judith Beck, daughter of the founder of cognitive therapy, my great uncle, Aaron Beck. So clearly the family pride has some sway in getting me to try out this diet book. It's all about changing how you think about eating and resisting the cravings to eat food you know you really don't want to be eating. Granted, I don't have a huge amount of weight to lose, but my petite body has not faired well against the ravages of entering adulthood. I've gained 20% of my body weight since I started college 4 1/2 years ago and I want to reverse this trend. The first two weeks of the diet plan aren't on an actual diet, but are spent building the tools to succeed with a diet. For my diet, I've decided to be vegan. In the first two weeks, I'm going to try to eat primarily vegan, and then go strict on May 1st.

My decision to eat vegan came about through the combination of boredom at work and the discovery of some pretty great vegan food blogs. Fat Free Vegan Kitchen (http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/) was my initial and main inspiration. I decided to go vegan for the culinary challenge of cooking delicious and healthy food, on top of the regular ethical reasons that probably most vegan have.

So as part of my first day on the BDS, I made my response card that list the reasons I want to lose weight. All standard, but I think having this written out to read to myself when I'm having cravings or in stressful situations will really help.

And most importantly, for day 1 I ate:

Breakfast: soy sauce and rice vinegar sauteed tempeh sandwich on a half of a whole wheat pita with cucumbers, tomatoes, jalapenos and avocado. So good.

Snack: chopped cabbage with horseradish mustard and cider vinegar marinaded for four hours.

Lunch: veg bologne with melted soy cheese, gherkins and whole grain mustard on the other half of the whole wheat pita.

Snack: one dried tamarind.

So far very good, but I'm already feeling myself getting hungry and I have three hours left of work and at least four hours until dinner. I have an orange left for snacking on and I hope that can hold me over with the help of reading of the response card.