Well, I have now finished the first week of My Weight Loss Plan. How did I do?

Quite well, actually, thanks for asking.

I started the week at 198 pounds, and today I weighed in at 194.5 pounds, for a loss of 3.5 pounds on the week. I of course realize that some of that loss is water weight, but I’m happy; I wanted to lose weight, and that’s what I did.

How did I do it?

First, I gave up carbs for breakfast. Every morning I ate eggs (you can read my egg post for more details). For lunch and dinner I ate a lot of vegetables and chicken and salads. There are lots of things you can do with those foods, so it wasn’t boring at all.

Second, I did a moderate amount of exercise. During the week I went for one 30 minute walk, I did one cardio session (30 minutes of walking and jogging on my Precor 9.33 treadmill). I also did two twenty minute weight training sessions.

Why only 20 minutes each? Because I knew, since I’m just getting back into it, my muscles would be tired and would need time to recover, so I didn’t want to over do it.

Also, one problem with exercise is that it makes you hungry, so I wanted to exercise enough to get the benefit of exercise, but not so much I just had to eat more to satisfy my hunger. (I’m using the Turbulence Training concepts discussed here earlier).

Week one was a success, let’s see how we do in Week #2.

To lose weight, I want to keep my carbohydrate intake low, and focus only on good carbs. Therefore, during the week, I’m going to skip having cereal for breakfast, which is high in carbs and sugar, and replace cereal with eggs, which are high in protein.

Today for breakfast I took one whole egg, and three egg whites. (I buy the egg whites separately; it’s easy, and I’m not wasting the egg yolks. I like one whole egg for flavor, and the egg whites for volume with fewer calories.) Today I chopped up some fresh spinach, some feta cheese, and some black olives.

I mixed the egg and egg whites, poured them into a frying pan coated with olive oil, and made an omelette. Once cooked enough to allow for flipping, I flip in over and dump on the spinach, cheese and black olives. I fold it over, and put the pan to the side of the stove for one minute (I don’t want the eggs to cook so much they get rubbery, but I want the spinach limp and the cheese somewhat melted).

Then it’s put it on a plate and eat.

How hard is this? It’s easy, because I do most of the preparation the night before. I chop the spinach, feta cheese, and black olives and put them in a Ziploc container, so in the morning all I need to do is dump them on.

One word of caution: I find that with this diet I need to nd drink lots of water to counter balance the salt in the olives and the cheese, and to keep me regular.

Tomorrow, some thoughts on exercise.

Vegetables have fiber, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and lots of other nutrients, and I don’t think there is any sane person on the planet who doesn’t believe that vegetables are an important part of every healthy diet.

The amazing thing is that by combing both proteins and vegetables at every meal, your body will be even healthier.

It’s important to have balanced pH levels in our bodies. pH (what the scientists call ‘potential of hydrogen”) is the balance between positively charged (acid-forming) ions and negatively charged (alkalinizing) ions.

Our bodies want to maintain a pH balance of around 7.4, so it deposits or withdraws alkalinizing minerals and other products from our body tissues as needed. This may result in decreased muscle mass

If you eat a lot of acidic foods (like proteins) without balancing them with more alkaline foods (like vegetables), you will slow down your metabolism.

By eating veggies with proteins, you boost your metabolism, neutralize acid, strengthen your bones, and encourage muscle growth.

We’ve talked about proteins and vegetables; in my next weight loss blog entry I will discuss carbohydrates.