The day we finished our diet!

Let's be honest, who really wanted to hear 2 more weeks of diets and meal plans??  I decided to sum up weeks 3 and 4 in 1 post.

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Before I go any farther, I have to give a shout-out to my workout buddy: Jessica Smith TV! Seriously, I couldn't have done the exercise without her! She has cardio videos, toning videos, and even yoga videos ALL FREE!!

Check out these videos: 

http://www.jessicasmithtv.com/videos/yoga-inspired-workouts/

I LOVE her workouts! I just feel so good after I finish one! She is super encouraging!

And the best part: I can do it at home, no drive to the gym, AND I can workout in my underwear! (You know, if I wanted to...)

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These weeks the meal plan included less cucumber and less salads for lunch (thankfully!) and more leftovers!  I love eating leftovers for lunch.

We changed the meal plan a lot, I feel a bit rebellious.  We changed all the yucky-sounding meals.

Smoked salmon for breakfast?  Nah!  Eggs are ok. 

Or bacon.  Bacon is always good.

[look at all that stuff I changed on the meal plan!]

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Day 1 went well.  Day 2 and my stomach is growling.  We've tried the "Mango Fat Burning Smoothie" instead of the "Oatmeal Fruit Smoothie," which has been awesome!  I get to eat it with my favorite salty snack: Savory Thin Mini Crisps!  They're gluten-free rice chips made by Trader Joe's.  I don't know how those fit in with the whole "no processed foods" thing, but they rock.  Only, I'm hungry already and it's only 9 am. (I ate breakfast around 7).  Maybe the smoothie is actually burning fat...

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Man.  I just had some awesome guacamole!  I feel like some of the food on this diet is better than normal food!  Our desert is fantastic!  Some of the snacks are delicious.  And her chili is awesome!


Look at this breakfast:  Chock full of goodness:  Fruits, Veggies, Hummus, Sprouted-grain toast:

And this lunch:

Guacomole, Hummus, Cucumbers, Red peppers, and Chili!  That's a good day of food!  (and we had more food for dinner!  This doesn't feel like a diet at all!)


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People.  I have a very serious question.  Is it ok to eat spinach with holes??

Will I be ok??

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This past 2 days I've eaten:

Pineapple
Cantaloupe (I don't think I ate more than one of those first two)
Blueberries
Apples 
Pineapples
Strawberries
Mangoes (which can alternatively be spelled mangos)

Which is more fruit in two days than I normally eat in a whole week!  I felt like all the sour and sugar was going to burn a hole in my stomach. 

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My last Wednesday of the diet I was severely tempted to eat a delicious looking chocolate croissant.  I love those equally as much as bagels and cream cheese!  Everything else for breakfast is not nearly as good.

I grabbed one..........to take home and put in my freezer for after the diet.

I mean, they were from Zaguan, a local Latin bakery.  I couldn't pass that up completely when we were so close to the finish line!

Later that day, at lunch I got made fun of by a super-pushy, rude drug representative trying to get me to use her diet pills.  I was eating lettuce wraps (not nearly as good as P.F Chang's, but they were fresh and nome-made, which is a huge plus!) 

She kept trying to get me to eat the food she brought.  She would say, "Why don't you just eat some of my chicken."  But it was covered in cheese.  And then she said, "I brought healthy sides, look at the broccoli."  Which was covered in cheese and mixed with rice.  

No thanks, I'll just eat my own delicious food and avoid your entire meal.

I finished my food and stopped just outside the door to grab some water to refill my waterbottle.  The lady couldn't see me, but she told all the other girls in the lunchroom that I was crazy for not just eating my food with bread or a tortilla like normal people.

Rude.

See if I ever use the drug you represent.  Ever.

[part of my lettuce wraps, I forgot to take a photo first]

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I learned some new skills:  Using ginger, sesame oil, and flax seeds!  For some reason, I thought we needed 8 oz of sesame oil, but we only needed 3.  So we have 5 leftover ounces.  I learned that you can use that in place of tahini when making hummus, so I'll try that out and get back to you.  

Trader Joe's didn't have sesame seeds.  I got flax seeds instead since they looked similar.  Then I got confused with flax seeds and sesame seeds and chia seeds and poppyseads.  I really don't know the difference.  I just know that the both flax seeds and chia seeds are good for you AND flax seeds look more like sesame seeds AND they are less expensive than chia seeds, so I bought those.

Do you grow a chia pet from chia seeds?  Add that to the list of things I don't know.

We used all 3 new ingrediants in 1 recipe: Sesame chicken stir fry.  Good.  But not awesome.  We need to find a modification to the recipe to make it better.  Anyone have a good recipe for healthy, veggie stir-fry?

[ginger]

[flax seeds that could totally pass for sesame seeds, right?]

["sesame chicken"]

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Friends!  Be warned!  You can accidentally pulverize red onion in a food processor and make it like a smoothie.  Its yucky.  Avoid over-cutting the onion at all costs!

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We did it!  We finished the diet!!  

Then we ate fro-yo.

And its funny.  After we ate the frozen yogurt, we both felt kinda terrible.  We wished we hadn't eaten any.  (and I only had a few ounces of it.)  We both wished we had chosen to eat the "brownie balls" made with dates, walnuts, and raw cacoa instead.  

Here's how to make our new favorite (guilt-free, gluten-free, processed sugar-free) and delicious desert!  We slightly adapted this recipe from a pinterest pin who just said "mix 2 c walnuts, 1 c dates, and 4 tbsp of cocoa together in a food processer, then roll into balls).  Great idea, but super non-descriptive.  Here's how we do it:

Get 2 cups walnuts.  We used Trader Joe's brand since we live right next door. 

Then add 1 cup dates.  The original recipe didn't specify which kind, but we found the Medjool dates to be the best.  The flavor and consistancy was better.  Also, we experienced better results from fresher dates. (go figure).

[clearly, they're fancy!]

[take the pits out by cutting them in half!]

Then add 3-4 tbsp of raw cacoa.  Our Trader Joes didn't have this.  (well, I didn't ask because they were so busy, so they might have it hidden somewhere).  I found it at Sprouts.  They also sell it at our favorite spice/flavoring store: Penzies.

Throw it all in the food processor.  Pocess about 25-30 seconds and check out the mix.  I did that about 3 times for a total of about 1.5 minutes.

This is the consistancy you want.

Then pack balls together like snowballs.  It doesn't work like cookie dough to roll it together.  When it is still sticky, roll in raw, unsweetened coconut.

Which I didn't list in the ingrediants because we ended up not using it.

We got the wrong kind of unsweetened coconut.  You want to buy the shavings that are nice and soft that you can put on ice cream or fro-yo.  We bought the "string."  It was hard and it didn't stick to the balls of dough.  If anyone wants some coconut "string" (don't actually picture string, think of it as short choppy, crunchy coconut shavings) it's up for grabs.  Free.  Barely used.  Just let me know and it's yours.

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So now that we're off the diet we're pseudo-sticking to it.  We made our own meal plan with snacks and stuff.  I'm back to eating lunch from drug reps and stuff.  Ryan is trying harder to stick closer to the "maintenence phase" of the diet.  He's hoping to keep losing weight with regular workouts and better portion control (the slow, healthy kind of weight loss.)

He was pretty excited because he lost 15 lbs.  I was pretty excited because I was worried I would lose weight, and I didn't (well, I lost 3 lbs the first 2 weeks, so I cheated with a glass of sangria and now I weigh the same as I did before the diet)

I'm all excited because he fits into his Tanzania jersey I bought for him and he gave me his old shirt to sleep in.  We gave the rest of the stuff to good will.

And there you have it.  The Fast Metabolism Diet completed.