Hurry Up Spring and Weight Stalls!

Who out there is ready for Spring?  I know I am.  I love the change of seasons and I even enjoy winter but I'm done with it and ready for warm weather, flowers, and being outside.

Since my last post I have stayed the course with my low carb eating, and reading a lot about weight stalls, because my stall has been a couple months long!   I read that sometimes people stall because of a food sensitivity.  The main foods people are sensitive to are gluten, dairy, eggs, soy, peanuts, corn and sugar. Well, I think we've all already given up sugar and artificial sugars.  I use only stevia, erythitol, and "Just Like Sugar" (which is made from chicory root).   Peanuts - I don't eat a lot of peanuts or peanut butter so that was easy to give up.  Corn - that's been out since I started the BFC.  Gluten - After reading "Wheat Belly" in January I decided that wheat is probably not good for us on a lot of levels that don't even have to do with weight, so I gave that up also (that includes beer).  Soy is a little trickier because it's hidden in a lot of stuff.  I'm not going out and getting soy products but that's about as far as I went with limiting soy.  Well that leaves dairy and eggs.  There is not much left to eat if I give up eggs and dairy, or at least that's what I thought.  I finally decided to try to give up most dairy.  So I started out giving up my beloved heavy cream in my coffee.  I have to have something, so I tried canned coconut milk.

The milk in the can is very creamy.  In fact this brand has a thick layer on top that I mix in with the liquid before I use it.  It's a good fat for your body also.  I have grown to like this in my coffee almost more than my regular cream.   After a couple weeks on this I started to give up cheese for the most part.  Once in awhile I have a bit of Parmesan on stuff or a little grated cheese in my salads, but not very often.  I stopped eating cream cheese and sour cream.  It was hard at first but now I'm finding more to eat without it.  I did not give up eggs.  That was just too hard.  I switched my protein shakes to Jay Robb Egg White Vanilla Protein(because of the whey in the regular kind) and I didn't want to give that up.  Plus I make up some hard boiled eggs every couple days and have them in salads, or deviled eggs (with homemade mayo) and sometimes I eat just a plain hard boiled egg if I'm really hungry before a meal.  They keep you full.  I'm all about eating things that keep me full now.

So that's where I'm at now.  I did all that rather gradually to see if it would have any effect on my weight stall.   Well  today when I weighed myself I am FINALLY down almost two pounds.  I know that doesn't seem like much in all these months but I'm hoping I might have broken through my plateau - at least a little.  I'll keep going like this for awhile and see if it keeps working.

I know a few of you were wondering how my working with Maria Emmerich went.  Well, I only did the minimal health assessment and advice from her.   I have to say that she is great about responding to your emails.  She always wrote right back.  Unfortunately her advice was always to"keep going, your doing great", even when I didn't think I was.  It was her suggestion that I give up dairy right from the beginning, but that was something I couldn't do cold turkey and in fact haven't done 100% even now.   She gives you a lot of handouts about nutritional supplements you should take and there are A LOT.  She also wants you to start with a "only proteins and fats" week to get you burning fat.  Well that was a hard week and I didn't lose any weight.  After that she wants you to start with some sample menus that she sends you.   They are super restrictive.  I added up the first couple days of foods on "My fitness pal" and they were under 1000 calories each day.  That's too little for me.   As written in her "Healthy Metabolism" book she thinks we should play around with our meals each week.  One day a fats and protein only day, one day an overeating day (and that means go up to about 1500 calories), one day an intermittent fast day (skipping all foods after lunch).  She says this fools our body and ups our metabolism.  It probably works, but I just couldn't get that hardcore about my eating and my life in general.  I still think she is great and super helpful and knows her stuff, so I took some of her advice and utilize a lot of her recipes into my diet.  Her Shamrock Protein Shake is delicious and I have it most mornings.  Also LOVE her Chocolate Flaxseed Muffins and keep a bunch of those on hand when a shake is not enough.  After the muffin I drink a ton of water and it seems to expand in my stomach and keep me full a lot longer - at least until the next meal.  

So that's about it right now.  I'll keep you posted on how all my modifications go.  I want to feel good in a bathing suit this year and now that Spring is almost here, summer isn't long away.