What we’re eating: Phase II

A couple weeks ago, we began the six-week-long Phase II. Back in the highly restrictive Phase I, many of us couldn’t wait to let certain food back into our lives. Now we can have fruit again, string cheese, avocados, pistachios, tortillas, brown rice, pork and several others.

How exciting for us!

My initial reaction was to celebrate by eating all the food I’d missed. But no sooner had I cracked a full egg (yolk included!) did I realize I couldn’t go back to the way I ate before the diet. Yes, we could let food back in, but not without the caveats and limitations meant to train away our impulsive eating behaviors.

For example, there’s a new category of foods called “rebuild carbs” that includes string cheese, ricotta cheese, berries, apples, Ezekial bread, whole wheat pita bread and a few others.

But we may not eat these all at one time and rarely in combination with each other (unless you do half servings of two). We also must eat them in small, measured portions, and we can only have a total of no more than three reignite and rebuild carbs per day. So while we have more food choices, in many ways it seems like we have fewer, because we have to practice frugality more than ever before.

For example, if I want one string cheese stick, that means I can only have two more non-veggie carbs the rest of the day. So if I want my small, non-fat latte with skim milk, and a Phase I muffin, then I’m out of non-veggie carb options the rest of the day, meaning no berries, bread or rice. It doesn’t seem that hard until you realize you’ve gone through all your carbs on breakfast food and coffee.

No matter how hard this is, the justification for the rules is obvious.  Beyond the science of fat burning, eating this way keeps impulsive behavior at bay; it teaches us to acknowledge what our mind wants to do but overriding it with what our body wants to do. 

Usually, on highly restricted diets, impulses go crazy when we have freedom again to eat whatever we choose. (Some scientists believe your body releases a hormone when you lose fat that falsely signals that you are starving, thereby slowing your metabolism and encouraging eating.) Before long, we’ve gained the weight back and learned almost nothing.

Many people who have dieted experience this – they learn to live in a world of extremes. Either you eat nothing or you inhale everything and your body reacts in a primal, I’m-just-trying-to-survive way. In this world of extremes, you are unchanged on a deep level.

What I love about this diet is how changed I already feel – physically, yes, but more importantly, mentally and behaviorally.

For those who are curious, here is the complete list of new food allowed in Phase II:

• Shellfish
• Buffalo, ostrich and venison
• Pork (tenderloin and Canadian bacon)
• Whole eggs
• Ezekial bread, whole grain pita or tortilla
• Barley
• Brown rice, wild rice and rice cakes
• Quinoa
• Beans
• Sweet potato or winter squash
• Fat-free and low-fat cheese (reduced fat string cheese and part-skim ricotta)
• Select fruits (apple, grapefruit, blueberries, strawberries or raspberries)
• Avocado
• Olives
• Pistachios