I love “challenging” myself and putting myself in situations that are outside of my comfort zone. Unfortunately, I didn’t do quite so well with this latest challenge! I told myself I was going to try the Abs Diet for 2 weeks… I barely made a week! How sad I know! I lasted longer eating vegetarian which I tried doing a few years back. Despite the shortlived amount of time I managed to stay on this diet, I feel like I went away with a few really good habits that I will continue doing now even well after. Which is really good! First off, some people don’t really know what the Abs Diet is all about so I’ll outline the main points here:

1. Eat six meals a day – This actually means 3 meals with 3 snacks. Avoid those big meals where you’re so stuffed you can’t move afterwards. I really have a bad habit of doing this. One good thing about this is it prevents you from snacking on unhealthy things because if you have your meals all planned out and eat them accordingly, you’ll never be hungry enough to want to eat anything else! You’ll want to eat 2 snacks 2 hours before lunch and dinner and 1 snack 2 hours after dinner.

2. Try to combine as much of these 12 Abs Diet Power foods as you can at each meal:

Almonds and other nuts
Beans and legumes
Spinach and other green vegetables
Dairy (fat-free or low-fat milk, yogurt, cheese)
Instant oatmeal (unsweetened, unflavored)
Eggs
Turkey and other lean meats
Peanut butter
Olive oil
Whole-grain breads and cereals
Extra-protein (whey) powder
Raspberries and other berries

3. Cut out the soda – and all of the other sugary drinks. Abs diet recommends that you should only drink water, green tea, and lowfat/non-fat milk.

That’s basically the gist. Most of the diet consists of foods rich in fiber and protein that are supposed to make you feel full. The diet also lets you have one “cheat meal” a week. This is where I got in trouble. Once I was allowed to eat “bad”, I kept wanting to cheat!! Some people might need the cheat meal but I think it just gave me an excuse to keep cheating haha.

I can’t really tell you if it works but I did lose “1 lb”. I put that around quotes because during the weeks leading up to the diet I was weighing myself everyday at the same time and my weight would range between 4 lbs but at the end of the first week on the diet I saw 1 lb lower than I ever saw the previous week. Therefore, I think it’s fair to say I lost at least a pound haha. :P

Well, I think the best part of the diet was that I have developed a habit of eating breakfast each morning. I eat Trader Joe’s Cranberry Whole Grain Oatmeal. Which is quite tasty for something so healthy. I also realized that I don’t really mind subbing a lot of the foods I eat with the healthier/whole grain version including brown rice or wheat bread instead of their white counterparts.

One complaint I had about the diet were the meal plans they had in the book ended up being very expensive. Instead of following the guidelines exactly, I mixed and matched a lot of the different recipes to get one that reused more of the same ingredients so I didn’t have a fridge full of food where half of it went spoiled because I didn’t eat it. I will share some of my favorite recipes and meal plans in Part 2!