sam and dave: the diet

I'll pass you straight over to Samantha for the latest update on her wedding diet. Here she is:
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So last week I mentioned getting in better shape. Since then I read the South Beach Diet book and Dave and I decided to do it. Phase one started with cutting out bread, pasta, fruits, cookies or alcohol…. my favorite things (alcohol was easy enough…chocolate, not so easy). I went a whole week without those things. I increased my protein consumption (tofu, tofu, tofu) and increased my running mileage (a friend and I are doing a half marathon in April). I did not lose a pound; maybe I ate too many calories of almonds and tofu (I know it sounds crazy but that must be why). My mom and dad are doing this diet too. So now everyone’s serious, they lost a few pounds but are in good health to begin with too.

Friday after feeling discouraged about my failure to lose weight, Dave came home with a new plan called The Best Life Diet. The guy who penned it is Oprah’s health and fitness guru. I’m not a huge Oprah fan but Dave got the book for free from his publishing company, so I’m reading it. It makes far more sense than cutting things out drastically. It’s a gradual approach. I’m already in the second phase of it from my first week on South Beach. I’m not going to go crazy. I’ve decided that instead of being strict and obsessing, I’m going to take the underlying principles of each diet and apply them to my life. So here’s the diet: Try to stick to three meals a day and two small snacks, make sure there’s protein in every meal, skip refined sugars (except on occasions or on the weekend), increase exercise and vary it more than I currently do and most of all watch portion size. I can’t expect to drop weight like sedentary people that eat cheese fries with a side of Pepsi, nor am I looking to yo-yo diet. I see that there are a lot of diets online for brides but I want to do this mostly for my life… not that looking bad on my wedding day is not a motivating factor as well. I’ll let you know how it goes.