A Weekend of Surprises!

Today I hit Day 13 of Phase 2 in my metabolic balance program!  Yay for me!  Over the past few days, I've stopped obsessing over when I could eat and simply started to enjoy life again.  Sure, there are days when I'm hungry an hour and a half before I'm allowed to eat; however, now I can just move on from the thought and get stuff done. 

I'm enjoying the meals immensely and having fun coming up with my own, unique recipes.  Some are definite fails while others surprisingly work out wonderfully!  The food list has given me the chance and courage to try eating and cooking produce and seafood I would not normally choose.  I'm even finding that I don't necessarily need the bread for every meal the way I felt I did at the beginning of the program when I was ravenous.  That hunger was not fun - I do not want to go back to the time when I felt like I was starving myself.  Now, I feel like I'm getting enough food for most meals while also still enable to live my life.

I was vehemently told that exercise was not allowed during the first two phases of metabolic balance.  Admittedly, I struggled with the idea because I am such an avid gym-goer.  During my first week, I cut back drastically, sticking to walking and a few weights.  However, and this may be purely coincidental, one day last week I decided to try running 1 1/2 miles, half of my usual run distance.  I felt fantastic running again but I worried I would be even more hungry after that. 

Much to my surprise and delight, that was the first day I didn't want to eat everything in sight!  I almost missed lunch because my stomach wasn't painfully complaining about lack of food.  Ever since that first run, the days I get up and do a moderate to high intensity workout (albeit, still only either half the length or distance), I am easily able to survive between meals.

Saturday - Day 11 - I decided to take my picture.  The results over the previous 12 days were very positive, as you can see from the below photos.  In total, from July 11 to July 16, I have lost 9 pounds.  If I can go down 4-5 more, I'll be laughing!

Day 1 - Phase 1

Day 11 - Phase 1

Since I have been repeating recipes and meals lately, I won't go into too much detail on most.  However, Saturday for lunch, I was rather pointedly asked if I was planning to use up the poor, wilting kale in our fridge.  Instead of the planned meal, I decide to try making a Chickpea and Kale Curry soup from a recipe I found online.

The soup was alright - I should have cut up the kale into much smaller pieces - but I didn't find it spicy or flavorful enough. 

 Here is the recipe:

Chickpea Kale Soup

1 portion chickpeas

1 garlic clove

1 portion vegetables (1 tbsp chopped shallot, fresh kale)

1 pint vegetable stock

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp turmeric

½ tsp cinnamon

Lemon juice

1.       Peel garlic and press; braise garlic and onions in a hot, non-stick skillet.  Add vegetable stock and chickpeas; season with paprika, turmeric, cinnamon and lemon juice.

2.       Rinse kale and add to soup and simmer over low heat until soft.

Sunday for lunch I remade the Stuffed Cabbage Rolls from a few days ago but used lettuce leaves instead.  The white bean mixture was still pretty dull, despite adding more marjoram and oregano.  Instead of simply pureeing the beans in the blender, I added the spices to the beans first plus a tablespoon or two of vegetable stock before blending.  The texture of the beans was creamier and worked better to mix with the vegetables.