Day 1 of 30

Day 1 of my 30 day Atkins Induction phase challenge

March 2, 2013 - Day 1, and weigh in day!

Current Weight: 212.2 lbs

First mini goal: 199 lbs

Final Goal Weight: 135 lbs

Loss this week: Coming Soon

Breakfast was delicious this morning.  It's one of those meals that you'd never think that you were dieting.  That's what I love about Atkins though.  I'm a total meat and veg girl though, so this was ideal.  Even the kid and hubs loved it (added an English muffin for the kid, since he needs the carbs).

I made a delicious sausage scramble for brunch today.  We usually wake up late on the weekends, and enjoy a coffee first thing, so we usually have brunch and and early supper on weekends.  So no lunch entry today.

Sausage Scramble

My sausage scramble consisted of two eggs, two turkey breakfast sausage links, 1/2" red pepper strip chopped, 1 mushroom, and 0.5 oz of pepper jack (add salt and pepper to taste).  Sauteed (fried sounds so bad for you!  LOL!) the sausage, then mushroom and pepper, then stirred in the eggs until cooked.  Topped with pepper jack and kept warm until melted.  It was terribly yummy, and will be a repeat, because you can play with the veggies added, along with the types of sausage.

This delicious plate was 292 calories, and only 2.9 g net carbs.  Not only that, it packed a whopping 25.8 g of protein!  An almost perfect Atkins meal!  We have a veggie loaded supper tonight, so I wasn't too worried about the lack of breakfast veggies.  We'll want a snack at some point too, so we'll get some veggies in then too.  

I love veggies and dip, and cucumber and celery are great during induction, in terms of serving size to carb ratio.  A stalk of celery (sliced into 9ish pieces), half a cup of cucumber, and half a cup of broccoli will net you 3.5 g of carbs, plus another 2 g of carbs in 2T of dip (watch the labels, you'll have to look for dips that provide this ratio - try Wishbone no sugar added ranch), equals a 5.5 g net carb snack, which will leave you full for awhile.  The secret to dips, is to measure out the dip into a container, and once the dip is gone, it's gone.  When you just dip until the veggies are gone, you're bound to go over the serving size.

So, after breakfast, snack, and coffee (I use half and half in my coffee, for an extra 2.6 g of carbs a day), I'm sitting at a whopping 11 g of carbs so far today.  That leaves me 9-14 g for supper, which is totally doable!  Especially with a delicious dinner of tilapia, beet tops, and salad.  Mmmm.  

So, I grilled my tilapia with a yummy garlic-sage butter (mash 1T of butter with a clove of garlic and T of sage), for 1.3 net carbs, steamed some beet tops (about one cup), for 0.2 net carbs, which I sprinkled with a touch of  balsamic vinegar (my 3 g carb splurge), and had a nice side salad (mixed spring greens, 2g net carbs) with my favourite Riverhouse Parmesan herb dressing (3g carbs).  In total, dinner was 389 calories, and 9.5 net carbs.  

Rounded off the day with a hard boiled egg snack, to keep me full through the night, and up the protein and calorie count a bit, since both were a bit on the low side.  

All in all, a good day.  20.5g of carbs, which is perfect for the 20-25 g net carb allowance for Atkins Induction, and the meals were delicious.  It was a bit low on protein for the day, at only 63 of the 75 g goal, but that comes with missing a meal, and having that later breakfast. Total calorie count for the day was 1050 calories, perfect for a controlled, but fast weight loss!