No grains no dairy Two-Week Challenge

Hi!  I'm starting today, Thursday, April 26th, 2007!  Anyone want to join, you're welcome!  My plan includes beans, peas, lentils, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, bananas, unsweetened soymilk, and all the fruits and vegetables, so it is not low-carb.  Just no grain, no dairy.  My weight's gone up lately, so I want to try eliminating them for two weeks.  On Fat Flush I lost weight doing the same, but Fat Flush is too restrictive!

Day 1 Stats:  180.5 lbs
34.3 % bodyfat
Measurements L R
arms 13 1/4 13
bust  42
under bust 35
waist 34
abs 39
hips 42
upper thigh 24 1/2  24 3/4
lower thigh  19  19
calf  15 3/4 15 3/4

Plan Breakfast
fruit smoothie with flaxseeds
steamed frozen Italian veggies with lima beans
black coffee
raw broccoli

walk 2 miles

Lunch
McDonald's Southwest salad with added spring mix, iceburg lettuce, and 1/2 avocado, 1/2 dressing:  483 calories
chocolate, 4 pcs:  128 calories

Snack:  chocolate cherry smoothie with walnuts: 288 calories

T-Tapp workout - 15 minutes

Doesn't chocolate contain dairy of some kind?

gypsy, Have you done a detailed nutritional analysis of your menu plan?  You can do so at nutritiondata.com.  Just plug in what you plan to eat for a day, and it will give you the low-down on all of the macronutrients and micronutrients.  It will even tell you if the protein you are getting is whole protein.  Or you can download a free program called Cron-O-Meter.  It's nutritional analysis is also quite detailed. 

If it passes the nutrition analysis muster--then go for it.  God/Nature built a lot of nutritional redundancy into our food sources, so we can have lots of variety and still feed our bodies well and manage our weight properly. 

Hi YachtRacer1977, you're right!  I thought Ritter Sport dark chocolate doesn't contain milk, but the ingredients are:  sugar, chocolate liquor, hazelnuts, cocoa butter, milk fat, lecithin - an emulsifier, purified shellac - a coating agent, vanillin - an artificial flavoring.  There must be a dark chocolate without milk - I'll find it!

Hi Manewell,

Here is my day with analysis so far from Calorie-Count .com:

Breakfast
smoothie 408 306
Walnuts, English 5 33
Italian Vegetables 453 208
Broccoli - Raw 90 31
Lunch
McDonald's Southwest Chicken Salad 328 260
Newman's Own Dressing 22 50
FreshExpress 454 80
Walnut Acres Black beans 106 98
Walnut Acres Black beans 106 98
Avocados 28 45
Salmon, Atlantic, Farmed - Cooked, Dry Heat 58 120
Apples 106 55
Chocolate - Plain with Hazelnuts 22 128
Peanut Butter, Smooth Style - Without Salt 12 71
Cherry Smoothie 424 255
Walnuts, English 5 33
Newman's Own Dressing 22 50
Snacks
FreshExpress 454 80
Total Calories Consumed   2,000

Activity Minutes Calories
Walking - Grass Track 40 273
Normal Calorie Expenditure (?) 1,400 2,030
Total Burned Calories   2,303

  Fat - 28.5% (67 grams)
 Protein - 21.3% (112 grams)
 Carbohydrates - 50.3% (265 grams)
 Alcohol - 0.0% (1 grams)
 Other - 0.0%

Daily Sodium Intake - 2,049 mg
Daily Cholesterol Intake - 147 mg
Daily Fiber Intake - 74 grams
 Nutrition Grade  A

Date Calories Grams Fat Carbs Protein Grade
2007-04-26 2,000 3,104 67 265 112 A  

It's too much for me to enter in Nutritiondata .com right now, but I'll try later!

There's no way there's time to enter the above food and recipes into Nutritiondata.com!  That site does't have the selection in its database that Calorie-Count has!  There's only one type of soymilk, for instance.

So far, it's been a pretty good day.  Even though I ate no grains or dairy, outside the little bit of chocolate, I feel full from all the lettuce and beans!

Maybe I'll try another salad tomorrow as a main meal!  It was filling, without too many calories.

Probably I'll go for another walk this evening, before turning in.

gypsyfan, it will take a little time to do it on nutritiondata.com, but once done, it's well worth it for the peace of mind knowing that your diet is nutritional. 

the problem I have with nutritiondata.com is those foods that I have to enter myself -- the site doesn't have it in its database.  The reason it's a problem is that most foods only list the biggies on the nutrition label -- so some of the micronutrients don't show up.

I'm interested to know why no grains? The no dairy I can understand, but why select grains to cut out?

I could never cut out whole grains, they are the mainstay of my diet.  Nice, slow burning, naturally low fat fuel packed with fiber and nutrition.  I'm not trying to rain on your parade, I'm just also curious why you would cut out this beneficial food.

Me too! I love my oatmeal, whole grain bread, brown rice and muesli! What's the reason?

peanut butter has dairy products in it. (hence butter), but if you're looking for a chocolate with no dairy in it try the uber dark chocolate with cocao percentages of 75% and higher.

Thank you, Manewell, apsara, plaidpooka, and kewa for your interest!  One of these days, I'll enter my soup recipe at Nutritiondata, since it is comprised of whole foods only.

Whole grains are great!  Keep enjoying your whole grains!  Eliminating grains, to me, is a calorie-cutting devise, to replace those calores with frozen peas, corn, carrots, turnips, brussel sprouts, beans and other foods that are much more nutrient rich, increasing the nutritional quality of my diet.  It's what I do now.

Cheese and yogurt are extra calories that I don't process well.  Some of you don't either, eh?  Eggs are okay.  Dairy in moderation is okay.  I'm not knocking dairy, for those who can handle it.

The peanut butter I prefer is ground peanuts from the machine at the store.  If you try fresh ground peanuts, you can't go back, so don't try!  You can never settle for jarred peanut butter!

Whole grains have nutrients, so I really don't follow your logic, especially since corn is usually considered a grain and you're continuing to eat corn. Corn, peas, and beans are all fairly high cal, so if you're just eating those instead of grains as a "calorie-cutting devise," I don't see what you're really gaining here.

Kewa, Peanut butter does not have dairy in it, unless you are using one strange kind of peanut butter.  Even commercial brands do not have dairy in them, though they add sugar, salt, and sometimes oil.  In this instance "butter" is a word used to describe ground nuts, just like almond butter, which also does not have any butter or dairy in it.

Or apple butter.. mmmmmmmm..  I made homemade apple butter last fall, and I can asure you, there's no butter in it : ).  lots of sugar though!!!

It turned out great : )

Since you're cutting out dairy, you need to watch your calcium. But it looks like you are choosing some great nondairy sources - the black beans, the salmon - so you know what you are doing. I just might suggest adding a vitamin C rich fruit every day - the acidity in fruit is supposed to help the body absorb calcium more efficiently.

I can't handle milk at all anymore, but I can handle yogurt and cheese, for some reason. As for whole grains, my body seems happy with no more than 2 servings a day, often just one. I seem to need that one serving to help me sleep at night though.

Good luck!

weird.  i thought dark chocolate was milk-less by definition.  Now I have to wonder...

"Greens not grains," is the diet slogan I learned at Eat to Live.  Vegetarians who subsist primarily on rice may get iron-decifient anemia.  That doesn't happen for the vegetarians who subsist primarily on greens and beans!  Meat eaters, like I am, need to focus on vegetables more, too.  Corn and potatoes aren't the highest in nutrition of the vegetables, but they're still higher in phytonutrients and antioxidants.

So this week I focused on salads, canned salmon, black beans, healthy soups with collards and beans, butternut squash, frozen fruit smoothies/sorbets, and the occasional McDonald's Southwest Chicken Salad, which I love!  Plus chocolate every day.

Talk about chocolate, I bought Ghirardelli 60% semi-sweet chocolate chips, and took them home, and they still contain milk fat!  So I opened them anyway and had a few these last three days.  Still searching on the chocolate . . .

Half-way point numbers

Thursday, April 26th:  180.5 lbs; 34.3% bodyfat
Thursday, May 3rd:  179 lbs; 33.9 % bodyfat

Thanx for all your interest!
Louise :)

Hi!

Two week mark:  180 lbs; 33.4% bodyfat

As bad as that looks - I gained back a lb! - it feels right to cut the grains for the time begin.  I enjoyed salads, beans, butternut sqaush, cooked and raw veggies, and fruit smoothies with peanutbutter, cocoa, flaxseeds, spinach and frozen berries.  I had a high-salt day yesterday, so the scale maybe shows some water weight.

So this next two weeks I'll add the goal of limiting salt, including the McDonald's Southwest Salads I grew accustomed to:  only 400 calories per salad.

Louise

Hi!  Okay, this didn't work out for me, though I stayed away from grains/dairy for three weeks.  My weight is up 1 1/2 lbs from when I began, and bodyfat % is:  34.7, so I better get back to counting calories!

Louise