very first day menu

[bigmike]

it's my first day so my menu wont be perfect, looking for suggestions!

Breakfast:
1.5 oz cheddar cheese (i know its not much, i'm not a breakfast person, would rather sleep than cook, will prepare hardboiled eggs etc tonight)
28 oz water

lunch:
Tunafish + mayo
.75 oz cheddar cheese
20 oz water

dinner:
steak
2 cups mushrooms
20 oz water

snack:
pepperoni sticks
20 oz water


any suggestions would help a ton!

[AtkinsLegit]

You want to make sure you spread out your veggies more evenly throughout the day. Also, don't deprive yourself if you're hungry eat. Good job on the water...and one rule of thumb is drink 64oz + 8oz for every additional 25lbs you want to lose. You want to keep your fats/proteins/carbs in a 65%/30%/5% ratio....so you should go to fitday.com and check to see if your food for the day averages around there. Although it does look like you need some more fat in your diet...which you can easily get from adding some butter/olive oil to your veggies, etc. Hope that helps!

[spirittalker]

Watch out for pepperoni sticks. High in salt and usually fillers and sugars.

[bigmike]

thanks for the info, i guess i'm paranoid about eating too many vegetables and killing the process. how do you go about measuring 1 cup of celery sticks or foods like that anyway so you dont go over?

[not2late]

The first few times you want to really measure the vegetables in a measuring cup. So if you don't have a set of standard cooking measuring cups--go buy some. Buy the liquid and "dry" measuring cups. The liquid measuring cup (looks sort of like a pitcher) you use for liquid things like heavy cream. The dry measures you can use for non-liquid or "solid" ingredients, like pumpkin puree.



Most supermarkets have these measuring cups as does Walmart, K-mart, Target, etc.

[Tara35]

I also purchased a food scale from walmart that has helped me. I wasn't eating enough vegetable because I thought I was eating too much also. However, after purchasing the scale (about $8.00) it made it much more easier for me. I never imagine how much salad is a cup. Brocolli too! It is way more than I was eating that's for sure.

[Isabeau]

I only see two cups of veggies in your menu as well. It's very important that you get in your three cups per days as per the rules of induction. Other then that, I think it's pretty good!

[bigmike]

went out and got the book at lunch today, should help a ton i'd imagine. i'll add another cup of veggies to dinner tonight to make it 3 (brocolli w/ cheese)

so basically in summary i should:
eat 3 cups of vegetables, maybe 1 for lunch, 2 for dinner so they're more spread out, drink as much water as possible, and watch hidden sugars/fillers in meats

thanks for the quick responses!

oh and 1 last question about the food scale, how do you know how much a cup weighs (like how much would a cup of brocolli weigh?)

[Tara35]

A cup of broccoli will be 8oz. Just remember 8oz is a cup. 4 oz half of cup. That's how I figured it. If I'm wrong, someone please let me know. LOL!

[Elizellen]

A 'cup' is 8 US FLUID ounces - not weight ones!! From one chart I have 1 cup of broccoli will weigh about 6 ounces and from another chart they say 88 grams which is about 3 ounces!!!!!
Very confusing !!!!!

So you need to fill a measuring cup (or up to the 8 fluid ounce mark on a measuring jug) with raw broccoli and then weigh that cupful to know how many weight ounces that is if you prefer to weigh your veggies.

Do the same with each different veg you eat and make a note of how many weight ounces that cup held of each of your veggies so you can easily refer to it in the future if you don't want to have to remeasure everything each time.

Beats me why USA cooks use a liquid measuring method to measure solid foods but that is how Dr Atkins wrote it :sadblinky so everyone living outside the USA and on Atkins has to work out for themselves if they want to weigh their food or buy measuring cups!

[Tara35]

Whew! Thank you! I was heading down the wrong path! I was really excited about my scale I bought.

[Tara35]

ok I may be a little slow. But this is what I did. I used my measuring cup and put 1 cup of water in it. Then I poured the cup of water in the bowl on my scale and it still went to 8ozs. Does this not satisfy that if I put 8ozs of brocolli or spinach in the bowl and it goes to 8ozs, will that still be considered 1 cup? Please help! I just want to make sure I'm not taking in to many carbs. My measuring cup is so small I think if I put 3 florets in there it will be up to a cup. LOL!

[Elizellen]

ok I may be a little slow. But this is what I did. I used my measuring cup and put 1 cup of water in it. Then I poured the cup of water in the bowl on my scale and it still went to 8ozs. Does this not satisfy that if I put 8ozs of brocolli or spinach in the bowl and it goes to 8ozs, will that still be considered 1 cup? Please help! I just want to make sure I'm not taking in to many carbs. My measuring cup is so small I think if I put 3 florets in there it will be up to a cup. LOL!

I am afraid not Tara :sadblinky
Only water weighs one weight ounce for one fluid ounce as far as I know.

You really do need to put the broccoli into the measuring cup then weigh it to know how heavy one cup of it would be.

I suppose to be strictly accurate you ought to do like Archimedes did and have a full jug of water set up with a bowl below it then push say 4 ounces in weight of broccoli under the water which will make some water trickle out into the bowl.
Then pour the water that the broccoli forced out of the jug into a measuring cup and see how much volume of water that broccoli displaced.
If it forced out one cup's worth of water then you know that is how much broccoli makes one cupful.
Not that Archimedes ever had a need to measure Broccoli - no DANDR in Ancient Greece although they probably ate a similar diet!!!

It is a bit like that old riddle - 'what weighs heavier - a pound of feathers or a pound of lead?' They both weigh the same but the pound of feathers takes up MUCH more space than the lead would!!!

[bigmike]

I had mushrooms last night so I cut them up and put them into a cup and measured that way (i bet that was so wrong :anger ) i guess i'll go get a food scale

so basically i want to weigh my vegetables and 4oz = 1 cup?

[Moochiecat]

Remember, folks, these are vegetables that you are measuring. Considering the first rung of OWL is more vegetables, if you happen to go over a bit it's not going to be a gigantic disaster.
It's good to be accurate, of course, but if you get in a little extra broccoli or mushrooms it's not going to ruin your progress.