The Parisian Diet - The Last Few Days of the Cafe Phase; Days 8, 9 & 10 and then some.

12:32 PM AirplaneFoodCritic 2 Comments

I have been both avoiding blogging these last few days and extending the days 8, 9 & 10 to 11 and 12 because the weekend was in there somewhere and I, in true Airplane Food Critic fashion, went WAY off the diet due to what I call "distractions". I am like my dog when he is trying to go for a walk. He can't go five steps without stopping to smell the cement. He gets distracted by cement! I am not too different. I am a food maniac and when I am hungry I have these grand ideas of what I shall eat. I tell myself that it is ok "just this once". Of course, on the weekends three meals a day for two days is what I end up considering "once".

So what I did was mess up days 9 and 10 with pizza and chips and loaded tostadas BUT I went back on the Cafe Phase for an extra two days and that turned out to make up for it. See, I gained a pound in the middle of it all. gasp! But I managed to lose it again so after 12 total days I weighed the same as I did after 9. I am ok with that because I got to nosh on a gooey, warm, wonderful cheesy cheese and black olive pizza in the middle there.

Day 8
Breakfast: I had a trusty keifer for breakfast

Lunch: I had leftover chicken from the Indian place

Dinner: I had leftover cabbage soup (see last post for more)

Day 9
Breakfast: Boy, one thing I can tell you I am good at is sticking to the breakfast part of this diet. How easy is it to grab a keifer if I am too lazy to make a smoothie? And the smoothie is terribly easy to do anyways. Today I had a smoothie, I have mentioned this earlier that I like my smoothie/shakes to be very cold. I took two kiwi, peeled and sliced and I put them in the freezer for the length of a morning dog walk. When I came home I blended the kiwi with some greek non-fat yogurt and a little 1% milk. I like it a little runny, not too thick hence the milk. I also added almost a tablespoon of honey because I feared the kiwi would be too plain. This is actually the recipe in the book, only slightly modified with milk. Turns out, this is the first recipe in the book I didn't like. The citrus of the kiwi did not blend well with the tartness of the yogurt. I still drank it but I won't be making that one again.

Lunch: I skipped lunch because I was having a rough pain day and spent way too many hours at the hospital fighting, as usual, for help from my team of doctors. I may have mentioned in my previous Parisian Diet posts that I have several chronic illnesses that leave me in some incredible pain. I am working daily on getting better but I don't like to be on the 28 pills I am prescribed daily so I suffer a lot. I am also on disability so it makes the diet a little easier for me to stick to since I am home to prepare whatever recipe I am in the mood for for that meal. So, I guess, I am sad to say, that I had pain killers for lunch this day.

Dinner: As a result of skipping lunch, accidentally, I may add, I was starving and weak. I didn't feel like making the Italian Vegetable Soup that I planned on making and the bf came home starving too so we went out to eat. I am finding that there are a lot of choices in certain restaurants that can help keep one on this diet, even in the Cafe Phase. I mentioned that I had ordered Tandoori Chicken before. That was basically following the guidelines of 3oz meat and a cup of veggies which I have noticed the diet has you eating for lunch. I did something along these lines at a Thai restaurant. I ordered "Barbecue Chicken". It was two, small, flat chicken breasts, grilled with some marinade. It came with a salad. In the end I sort of had lunch for dinner. I ate way more than 3oz of the meat though because I was starving by that point. I do not recommend ever skipping meals. If you are like me, you read about diets a lot and I know that ALL of them say never starve yourself because in the end it makes you gain weight. Your body goes into starvation mode, stores fat from the next meal you actually do eat. It also takes it's energy from muscle rather than fat so you are making yourself weaker by doing that all around.

Day 10
Breakfast: I had peeked into the next phase of this diet and saw that I would be eating a lot of yogurt for this one. I went to the store to see what kinds are out there. The diet wants me to eat plain, fat-free yogurts but the diet has one thing that I am missing. French Yogurt. I have no access to French yogurt. I have traveled to France and I have had their yogurt. It is delicious. Even the plain one is wonderful. I can not find anything like that here so I bought some flavored yogurts to try out. I have not eaten that much in my past so it is new to me. I bought some vanillas and a cherry vanilla. It is the latter that I ate for breakfast today.

Lunch: It was a wonderfully warm day out and some friends and us spent the day in the park. I sat at a picnic table and planned my European trip that is next week, and they played frisbee. By the time they came back to the table, they were immensely hot and tired. We went to the frozen yogurt place. I did my usual, sneaky thing and tasted all eight of the flavors without buying anything. This was my lunch. Did I not tell you that I really failed these last few days of this phase?

Dinner: The boys came back to the house after a big shopping trip and made everyone a huge Mexican feast. They presented me with a massive tortilla bowl filled with the most amazing homemade taco salad. It was incredible. I could only eat half of it but I think it wasn't the worst thing to eat. It had good things like lettuce, cabbage, black beans, grilled chicken and guacamole. It had bad things like refried beans, queso fresco, sour cream and the tortilla. I did skip eating the wonderful, crispy, greasy tortilla shell at least.

Day 11:
I actually didn't gain weight from any of this but I felt that I needed to extend the diet because I really went so far from it that you really couldn't call it The Parisian Diet anymore. This day I had more Keifer for breakfast

Lunch: For lunch I had a wonderful sandwich of turkey breast, lots of mayonaise, cranberry chutney, havarti cheese and sprouts. Yum. Totally not Parisian. But yum.

Dinner: Oh, it gets worse: I was hungry, for some crazy reason because that sandwich was huge. It was late at night. I was with the boys and they were starving which, I swear, made me more hungry too. We passed a grocery store and the boys, who were stoned I should add, had to make a stop for potato chips. We have been sampling the Lay's new flavors that they have sent in by regular people. They have three finalist flavors. We have tried the Sriracha and the Garlic Cheese Bread. We were looking for the Chicken and Waffles but they were still out and we got more Garlic Cheese Bread. In the same shopping center there is a pizza place. I gave in...or maybe it was my idea?...and we went there to order a pizza. We all wanted to be semi healthy so we got only a medium for the three of us which is two slices each. While we waited we ate a bag of chips. Oh, did I mention that I bought a pint of ice cream at the store too? I am terrible, I know.

Dessert: I guess the cosmos were in my favor that day because I opened the pint of chocolate ice cream with peanut butter swirl and it wasn't chocolate ice cream with peanut butter swirl. It was chocolate ice cream with chocolate chunks. Weird, right? I will have to write the company about that. So, in the end I gave the ice cream to the stoner guys at my house and saved myself 200+ calories.

Day 12:
See, I had to put in a day 12 to make up for the Day 11 that really should never have existed!!!! I woke up and found that I had gained a pound since day 9. Oops. Breakfast was a vanilla yogurt. It was good but not as good as that cherry vanilla.

Lunch: I had 3oz of grilled fish left over from the taco salad the other night along with some left over lettuce. I finally am back on The Parisian Diet as I should be.

Dinner: It is still the weekend and I still was pretty lazy so I didn't have time or energy to make the Italian Veggie Soup. I pieced together a dinner that looked a little like a Parisian Diet lunch. I had 3/4 cup of non-fat cottage cheese and a cup or so of grilled leeks. I cleaned them then cut them into 1/2 inch  slices, drizzled them with a little olive oil and lemon, crushed pepper on top then broiled them until they were soft.

I woke up this morning and I found I lost that pound I gained. In the end I lost 10 pounds. I lost 10 pounds in 10 days but then gained a pound but then lost it. Follow me? In the very end I lost 10 pounds in 12 days but got to eat pizza and potato chips haha.

Today I am going to have to make that veggie soup because I have the ingredients but then I will follow the Bistro Phase which is next. I will keep a log of how that goes and post you the results of what I am eating. On The Parisian Diet website they have some Diet Secrets and I think I do pretty well at following the guidelines. By extending my Cafe Phase two more days I heeded the rule #8 on their list: React Quickly. I ate pizza and chips, but I quickly made up for it and as a result lost that gained pound in one day.

Summary: The Cafe Phase of The Parisian Diet is 10 days long. I lost 10 pounds.