What Works For Me

There are sooooo many diets on the market today, and bookstores have rows and rows of diet books to choose from -- "The Paleo Diet", "The Sonoma Diet", "Neanderthin", "Protein Power Life Plan", "The Zone Diet", "Good Carbs Bad Carbs" etc., etc.

One common denominator is low carb, low sugar (no artificial sweetners and no high fructose corn syrup) and good quality protein. Basically, 90% of your food groceries should be purchased from the perimeter of the store (I like Trader Joes!).

The hard part is TIME. In the beginning, it took TIME to read labels to figure out what is good and what is bad. I was surprised to find out how many salad dressings are loaded with sugar and/or high fructose corn syrup). I was surprised on the sugar (or artificial sweetner) content on yogurt. What I look for on the label is:

# of Carb grams (I limit my daily intake to about 75-90 grams)
#of Protein grams (I try to eat about 4 oz of protein every 3 hours)
# of Sugar grams (As low as possible - not to exceed 20 grams per day)
Also, I check to see if the product has high fructose corn syrup in it. If it does, forget it!

The first month or two took TIME, but not any more. I know what brand(s) are good, I just grab it off the shelf.

It takes TIME to pack my lunch/dinner, but it has become part of my routine. Again, in the beginning, it took some adjustment, but the benefits have paid off so much, that I truly don't mind. You learn creativity as you go.

For example, this is what's in my breakfast/lunch box right now (I'm working early shift):

Protein Bar (14 gms protein, 10 gms carbs & 5 gms sugar)
Bag of Almonds (9 gms protein, 8gms carbs & 2 gms sugar)
2 Tomatoe & Basil Pizza Burgers (20 gms protein, 14 gms carbs & 4 gms sugar)
1 Cheese Stick (8 gms protein, 1 gm carb & 0 gms sugar)
2 slices of ham (11 gms protein, 3 gms carbs & 3 gms sugar)
5 Oatmeal granola bites (3 gms protein, 16 gms carbs & 8 gms sugar)

I literally threw this stuff into my breakfast/lunch box in less than 5 minutes. I didn't stop to read labels because I know what's good and what's not. I didn't have enough time to pack a salad, so I'll stop at McD's or Wendy's. They have nice side salads for $1.00.

I'll probably have chicken and broccoli for dinner.

This is what works for me in terms of food intake.