I hate to have to admit this, but I fell off the meal plan, not because I was hungry, but just because I wasn’t thinking.

The Always Hungry? plan cautions you to be strict about following in the first fourteen days. Well, that is serious advice that should be heeded. I tried–really I did, but being away from home at a meeting in Alexandria, VA,  lead to a couple of deviations in the balance. Frist was a snack of cheese and crackers during a break in our meeting. The second was a glass of wine with dinner; the third was eating a small quantity of pasta with the entree I ordered, and finally that sandwich I had when I stopped to eat on my drive home.

The cheese was not the problem–it was the crackers as they are carbohydrates in a form not allowed on this plan. The second big problem was the pasta. This plan is doable in a restaurant, with just a bit of though. My problem was that I wasn’t thinking. I was enjoying good conversation with colleagues and good food.

After out meeting we had a delicious meal at Vaso’s Mediterranean Bistro. The entrée that I ordered had clams, mussels, shrimp, calamari, and scallops in a tomato sauce. There is nothing there that would “undo” the Always Hungry? meal plan–except for the pasta that was buried under all that lovely seafood. Just because it was there, didn’t mean I had to eat it–with the cup of avgolemono and the side salad, the seafood would have been a generous serving. But, I was just enjoying the meal and the company and ate some of the pasta! That alone was probably not a huge issue, except in conjunction with the crackers that I’d eaten with the cheese (St. Andre and Cambazola) earlier, and the added “insult” of the sandwich–yes, with white bread.

The result of these infractions? Well, I had not realized how good I felt for past week until I woke today. Until this morning, I had posted 7 pounds off my weight–now back up to 5 pounds off the weight. That wasn’t the real problem, though–I’m sure most of that was fluid and will go away quickly. It was how I felt–it’s hard to describe, but that week of no starchy things, except for legumes, made a huge difference in energy and well-being. It will be interesting to see how long it will take to recover from this lapse. This interlude has certainly impressed me with the effect of what I eat with how I feel–and not just hunger (or not), or satiety.

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