5 weeks in, the evolving diet

5 weeks in, the evolving diet 

Tuesday, August 16, 2011 

Historically, I've had a problem with diets. The problem is, they tell me to eat lots of stuff I don't understand, don't like, is a lot of work to prepare, and/or makes recipes to feed 6 or 8 when I'm a single person. 

Certainly most of the recipes I see on SP fit this mold. They typically call for 3 to 6 ingredients that I've never bought and have no use for other than the unlikely chance of my wanting to make that particular recipe, then make enough that I'd better be OK with eating it every day for a week. 

But the SP diet doesn't have to be that way. The SP diet is simply, eat whatever I like as long as I come in within the daily ranges for calories, carbs, fat, and protein. Okay, for the first couple of weeks I only watched the calories; but I feel a lot better since I started watching the macronutrients. I take a multivitamin, so I'm not worried about too little of the micronutrients; and it's a great blessing that I'm not particularly sensitive to sodium. 

Five weeks into SP, I see changes in what I eat. Some of the changes were fairly predictable, like getting rid of the diet soda. Some were a surprise, like the way concentrating on getting enough water significantly reduced my decaf tea consumption. (Yes, I know decaf tea is a reasonable substitute that some people count the same as water. I thought about that, realized that tea is more of an eating trigger for me than water is, and decided to only count water.) 

And some of the changes are really, far-out, unimaginable a month ago. Like, salad. I've never been fond of salad, unless it had lots of stuff like black olives and cheese on it. I've never liked salad dressing. And there's the whole buy fresh produce and go to a lot of work to fix salad for one problem.

Well, my sister showed me pre-made salad from the grocery store. That fixed the prep effort problem. Got through one bag dry, not having lemon juice in the house. For the second bag, I decided to risk buying some light ranch dressing. Serving size is 2 tbsp. I put 1 tbsp on my first salad, and it was more than enough. 

Hmm. Reminds me of chips and dip, only it's a lot better for me. This is a keeper. 

Then there's the protein. Under the prodding of the macronutrient ranges, I bought low fat cottage cheese and chicken breasts. The cottage cheese is no surprise, I've always liked that. But the chicken breast has opened up new culinary experiences for single servings. 

The routine is, buy the smallest package of chicken breasts at Aldi. Bring them home, and bake covered at 375 F for 50 minutes. Let cool enough to chop, and store the chopped chicken breast in plastic containers. Weigh out how much I want or need as I need it. 

What can you do with chopped chicken breast? For starters, wraps. I started with a chicken burrito, which took a couple tries to get right. But a BBQ chicken wrap was pretty easy--chopped chicken breast, a tablespoon or less of Bullseye, and a half to 3/4 ounce of shredded cheese on a tortilla, and microwave to melt the cheese. (As someone on another forum said, use cheese as a flavoring rather than as a main ingredient.) 

Later, on a day when I needed protein but not carbs, I got the idea of just putting some chicken on a plate, adding a half ounce of cheese, and sprinkling with red pepper and chili powder. Microwave just enough to melt the cheese, and it's pretty tasty. Kind of the same idea I used to do with corn chips, only less cheese, less fat, more protein, and more flavor. 

I'm contemplating eventually figuring out how to make chicken soup, with lentils, rice, pasta or some combination of these for the carbs. No, I'm not going to look for a recipe; I'll figure out something that works to make soup for one. 

I'm still not buying a ton of fresh fruits and vegetables, like all the diet gurus tell you to do. But that's okay. I don't need to do that. I can eat my salad, and my baby carrots, and custom design my solo dinner to round out whatever macronutrients I need to fill out the day. 

I can do this. I don't think I could follow a diet that demanded X servings of vegetables and Y servings of fruit each day, but I can follow a diet that gives me a calorie range and ranges of how many grams of carbs, fat, and protein I need. It may not look like a traditional weight loss diet, but so far it's working pretty well for me.