Hormone Diet Update

I kept wanting to post updates all last week about how things were going with The Hormone Diet, but just didn’t have time. As the week wore on, I also came to the conclusion that I need to go back and re-read that chapters on diet. I thought I would do ok with the lists in the book, and the tracker that you can print from the site, but I found myself feeling confused.

According to the list & tracker, I can only have one serving of whole grains or sweet potato per day. I can have one serving of dairy (i.e. plain yogurt). I am supposed to have protein with every meal & snack. I can have one serving of beans per day.

May sound fairly straight forward but, since I prefer to have most of my protein come from vegetarian sources, I like to have beans/legumes and a whole grain for lunch. That means that I can’t have sweet potato or another serving of whole grain for supper? Or since I’m counting that as my protein (beans+whole grain = complete protein) is that ok?

She is also big on protein smoothies, made with whey isolate protein and berries for breakfast. I’m not big on smoothies and I don’t really want to go out and buy a protein powder at this point (not saying I never will, but I think it should be entirely possible to eat a healthy diet without protein powder). If I can have a smoothie with whey protein and berries for breakfast, why could I not have yogurt & berries for breakfast?

Possibly I am over-thinking.

So I’m feeling the need to go back and review, to make sure I’m understanding correctly and also to hopefully understand the reasoning behind these rules.

As for sticking to the rules, I definitely wasn’t 100% last week, but I knew I wouldn’t be. I am on a ‘use up what we have in the kitchen’ kick, which means some foods that are not on plan. I tried to stay on plan for breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack and didn’t worry about it too much for dinner. I did add up my calories the first couple of days and I was coming in around 12—0 1300 calories.

By Wednesday I really wanted a cookie. On Thursday I had one.

This week….Well, it’s only Tuesday and already it is one of those weeks where nothing is going according to plan. Actually, I guess that started on the weekend. Just lots going on. Hoping things will slow down and get back to normal tomorrow.

For now, gotta run!

The Hormone Diet

I hear the ground hog saw his shadow, but we’re still seeing an awful lot of winter in these parts.

We’re trying to put on a brave face, but dude; there’s a lot of snow out there.

When the sun shines, it looks pretty.

But somehow the living room looks more inviting.

 

Okay, now that’s out of the way…The Hormone Diet.

This is going to be short because it’s been a busy weekend and it’s getting late and Dr. Turner (author of The Hormone Diet) says I should go to bed at 11:00.

Dr. Turner covers almost everything – diet, exercise, stress management, sleep, skin care and sex (she says you should have it). The idea being that if your hormones are out of whack, getting them back in balance will help you to lose weight, not to mention potentially improving other health issues you may have.

In theory, I like this whole mind-body-life approach. It makes sense – you want your body to be performing optimally so that it can do all the things it needs to do, including burning fat and building muscle.

That said, the diet is pretty strict. I’ll be honest, I looked at it and thought: This is not a diet I could be happy following.  But. I’m going to give it a try.

Husband’s parents visited us last summer on their way to and from Ottawa. Mother-In-Law talked about this diet quite a bit, and this was the first I’d heard of it. She and Father-In-Law had been following it for a while and having great success. To paraphrase, MIL had tried many other ways to lose weight and this was the first one that worked for her; she was not having cravings, she felt satisfied with what she was eating and the pounds were coming off.

A pretty good recommendation as far as I’m concerned. Also? MIL is a nurse.

However, I still held off because it sounded way too complicated and strict. But it stayed there in the back of my mind. Husband has been saying more and more that he needs to do something to lose weight. To look at them, Husband and MIL have very similar body types. I thought that maybe we should give this a go.

So I bought the book.

I still think it looks complicated and hard to follow.

But I feel like I should give it a shot.

I really should be starting off with a two week detox, but I don’t feel quite ready for that. Also, based on the quizzes in the book, I don’t test positive for any of the hormone imbalances. Dr. Turner says you should have 2 clear weeks to do the detox, and we’ve had lots of social stuff going on lately. Fun but not so great for detoxing. So, I’m going to do my best to try and stick to the diet – I imaging it will feel like a bit of detox anyway – and see what happens.

Wish me luck!