I like your idea! SBD phase I meal plan guide and food lists will be perfect for you to try it out. Have you found them yet? :)

I have switched from 3 weeks of Atkins which made me disgusted and sick ( pork, yuck, fat meet, yuck, processed food ugh) to SBD.
Never used the processed food in there, just not as much fat as Atkins.
I have certainly never had this stuff:
decaf coffee, decaf tea or fat free milk, sugar substitute as the suggest for breakfast. Nothing wrong with growing verveine or mint in a pot and having your weed tea even at work :)
and it worked nicely:) Have been eating wholesome healthy food avoiding all sugar and replacements (why use sweetener?) and loved the veg, fish salad and fruit in SBD.
The trick to do it is not to use the recipes in SDB, most of them contain processed food which IMHO is not healthy at all.
So now a year later even if I have sinned occasionally (avoiding sugar in Malaysia is near on impossible.. tanpa gula sila was the magic phrase but it often did not work ) and in spite of a serious thyroid problem my goal is almost reached, I am feeling well and SBD was a good working hypothesis to start with and get me going.
Still am not eating any bread or standard pasta, keeping clear of genetically modified wheat and grain in the procedure and sticking to a small serve of rice and spuds.. In Malaysia there are no spuds of course and the food was irresistibly good but I did not put on a gram of weight.. because there was no bread and no grain but rice.
So my jeans are 34 instead of 36 now and I am getting towards 33 :) I am happy!

Welcome and Congrats! :wave: :thup:

Annette, I so agree with you on "cleaning up" SBD. It's a good basic plan, just a few weird food substitutions. I always thought there was a disconnect between the written information, presumably by Dr Agatson, and the recipes, presumably by a dietician or nutritionist. I did find some good recipes on their web site, but if they suggest egg beaters, I substitute Real Eggs; that fake half and half is replaced with the real thing. Not so hard to do.

Good luck!

what worked for me was making a crustless quiche with 8 eggs, a little milk, some cheddar inside and on top, and some diced peppers and onion and meat (bacon or sausage) inside. You cook at 350 for 20-30 minutes until it's cooked through then just nuke a slice for breakfast.

In my opinion the South beach diet Quick and Easy cookbook is the best, the others are ok too.

in phase 1 I think the trick is to eat consistently even if you aren't hungry, eat breakfast daily and remember the snacks. The first few days are hardest then you just stop feeling hungry. If you stop losing weight in phase 2 just drop back to phase 1 for a week or two.

Annette, you mentioned "a good working hypothesis" and I got that from a plan that most people here won't have seen - "India & Neris's Idiot Proof Diet". They cherry picked from all kinds of LC plans and between them lost 140 lbs. over a year or so, then wrote all about it. I think the book is available lots of places, but originally published in the UK.

I got all the right ideas from that book and have only reads articles people bring to our attention. In the meantime, I do eat consistently, don't count anything but keep the carbs down (20-30 a day), eat lots of fat and protein and reach for meat if I'm hungry. It's working - I'm not hungry usually and I feel well but I am losing slowly. I'm older and not as active as I was. I've been hovering just before ONEderland for the last couple of weeks!

lcp1, thanks for the quiche idea, nice to have a quick bfast!

Caroxx