Ahhhhhh…phase three! Finally! Bread, how I’ve missed you! Phase three is probably the trickiest phase out of the whole program. Why? Well, you’re introducing more carbs back into your diet and that means you really need to pay attention to what is going into your body. This is great though because I’m learning more and more about how to read nutrition labels. Before the program, I would never look at the nutrition label. Not only did I not know what all the words and items meant, I never really cared what I put into my body. Why didn’t I care? That’s a good question and something I have been pondering quite a bit about lately and I still don’t have an answer!
Phase three doesn’t only allow me to eat bread, it also opens up the whole world of fruit which I’ve also missed. I didn’t miss fruit as much as bread and I think that’s because Ideal Protein have these really awesome fruit like drink mixes with flavours like peach mango, watermelon, orange, etc. That being said, there’s nothing like biting into a nice banana or sprinkling over some strawberries onto my cereal. Speaking of cereal, I’ve discovered my new favourite cereal because of Ideal Protein.
Your breakfast is supposed to have a whole grain element that does not exceed a certain amount of carbs. You may have heard recently that scientists agree that pizza is healthier for you for breakfast than cereal. I believe it! After looking at the nutrition label on some of the cereals in the cereal aisle, I was surprised to find that even the cereals I previously thought were healthier choices (Oatmeal Crisp, Cheerios, etc.) were really not. Plain Cheerios were okay, but I already knew how they tasted and didn’t really want to buy them. So, I kept looking. Then I found it. Kellogg’s All-Bran Multi Grain Crunch Cereal. I will admit, I was not looking forward to trying this (after all it has All-Bran in its name and isn’t that food for horses?) but it met all the specifications required for Phase Three. Man, was it good! I proceeded to buy two more boxes of it on my next shopping trip!
I didn’t lose any weight this week. In fact, I gained one pound. As my coach (Linda) warned me when I started phase three, it’s completely normal for someone to gain up to five pounds in phase three and in the first couple weeks of phase four (maintenance) as the glycogen stores are restored. Still, I was sad to see I was not the exception to the rule. Next week will be my last blog post as I will be going into maintenance the week after next and y’all don’t want to hear about maintenance! As I’m sure I’ll get more into next week, I’ve really enjoyed writing these posts and I hope they’ve helped someone…somewhere.
