Weigh-In: Week 5

All we can say this week is, "Thank you, Jorge Cruise!" We're not following the Belly Fat Cure to the letter, but we've re-evaluated our sugar intake, making sure what we do take in is mostly of the natural variety. Dee had a remarkable showing this week, and I did better than I have the last couple of weeks. Let's peek at it...

Weigh In Week Five [1/31/2011-2/6/2011]
Jay: 336.0 (-3.5 pounds for the week; -26.0 for 2011)
Dee: 213.5 (-6.0 pounds for the week; -14.5 for 2011)

The funny thing is, we both weighed in Tuesday morning, and hadn't lost a thing for the week. Dee started reducing her sugar intake drastically on Wednesday, and I joined her on Thursday. So these results seem to come from only 3 or 4 days of this new eating plan!

Here's how our carb & sugar intake changed this week:

Mon. 1/31 - didn't count carbs & sugar

Tue. 2/1:
Jay - 247.2 g carbs; 104.6 g sugar
Dee - 236.7 g carbs; 96.5 g sugar

Wed. 2/2: (Dee went full-force onto the new plan)
Jay - 240.7 g carbs; 108.1 g sugar
Day - 132.1 g carbs; 33.2 g sugar

Thu. 2/3: (I made some small adjustments)
Jay - 176 g carbs; 62.1 g sugar
Dee - 106.3 g carbs; 21.8 g sugar

Fri. 2/4: (We went healthy shopping, so I joined full-on)
Jay - 145.5 g carbs; 33.3 g sugar
Dee - 108.3 g carbs; 21.1 g sugar

Sat. 2/5:
Jay - 135.2 g carbs; 27.0 g sugar
Dee - 112.9 g carbs; 22.8 g sugar

Dee had 4 strong days on this new way of thinking, and I had... call it 2 1/2 days. :)

Not bad... not bad a'tall...
--Jay :)

Recovery & New Ideas...

Good news! Dee has returned to nearly 100% of her former pain-free glory, but she's still laying off the exercise for now. We may get in some this weekend, but perhaps a scaled-down version with lots of precautionary stretching and warming up first. :)

I bought some raw honey a week or so ago, and we've been giving that a go in our morning oatmeal. That's been working out really well, except for the fact that I forgot I'm not supposed to have TWO fruit servings AND honey with my breakfast... oops! A slight caloric and sugar overload there...

Speaking of sugar, Dee had a lot of research time during her recovery, and she's come across a program called The Belly Fat Cure by Jorge Cruise. It's all about controlling your sugar intake, and there's some stuff in there that I like. There's also some stuff in there that I don't like, so I think we'll try out a modified version. We've already started a bit... We're looking into Stevia, which seems to be the most natural faux-sweetener... Dee has scrapped her morning yogurt, and we're looking into buying Greek yogurt and using berries and things to liven it up... We've also eliminated the raisins from our mid-morning snack, opting for more almonds... Dee has scrapped her afternoon fruit serving, replacing with almonds or perhaps string cheese... little changes.

The Belly Fat Cure program tries to get you to approximately 120 grams of carbs and no more than about 15 grams of sugar each day. A quick glance at the healthy eating plan we've been on had us hanging somewhere around 250 grams of carbs and 100 grams of sugar! Through some modification, Dee is down to about the right level of carbs, and I think we have her down to about 25 grams of sugar. We plan to hit up some specialty food shopping this weekend to see what other ideas we can come up with.

The only part of the Belly Fat Cure that's a little strange is the whole Adkins-esque "eat cheese, eat bacon, eat sausage" approach, but that seems to be there just for the sake of those folks who can't live without that sort of thing. I'm planning to combine our previous ideas, while cutting down as much as possible on sugar, and especially our "sugar-free" friends who rely on aspartame and the like. Dee intends to go a little more strict, just to see what happens. The testimonials have folks losing massive inches, and the guy's been all over Oprah and Ellen and junk. Could be interesting.

We'll see how this whole thing shakes out...
--Jay :)