I just ate whatever I wanted and drank lots of beer.  I love beer cake and
pizza.  Mmmmm.  Now I am low carb, but I will return to my old ways except I
will cut the portions in half and try to make sure I go to bed hungry so I
don't gain.

Curt

Ooo, fun.  

Pre-LC:

Breakfast - Usually nothing, sometimes a bagel with cream cheese & lox
(smoked salmon) or scrambled eggs with cheese and a bagel, or a fast-food
breakfast sandwich

Lunch - Ginormous bowl of noodles with veggies, or an ENTIRE BOX of Kraft
mac & cheese, or TWO packages of chicken flavored ramen noodles with cheese
added

Dinner - Same as lunch, or if my dad cooked (about once a week) I'd have
steak or chicken, salad, and a starchy side like rice or potatoes (usually
way more than a serving of the starchy side)

Snacks - Potato chips, chocolate bars, ice cream, (at least one of these
EVERY day) or if I was in a "healthy" mood, some fruit

Late night snack - chicken nuggets dipped in ranch dressing (way more than
a "serving," probably 3 or 4 servings worth)

Lots of water, lots of coffee with high-carb flavored "creamers"

No exercise

NOW:

Breakfast - Usually nothing, sometimes scrambled eggs with cheese and ham
or turkey sausage, or lox and cream cheese rolls

Lunch - Big salad with dark greens and chunks of ham, chicken, or shrimp.
Or celery sticks and ham & cheese rollups.  Or stir-fry veggies with meat.

Dinner - Meat (big variety here, chicken, steak, burger, fish or other
seafood, or pork chops) side salad, side low-carb veggie like brocolli or
spinach

Snacks - cheese cubes, string cheese, celery sticks with cream cheese, or
smaller portions of leftover lunch or dinner foods

Late-night snack (rare, maybe once a month) low-carb chicken nuggets (made
with pork rinds for breading) dipped in ranch dressing (I can NOT eat more
than 5 or 6 of these)

Lots of water, lots of coffee with half & half and sweet 'n' low

Workout at Curves 3x a week.

I won't say, and nobody can make me. Although my husband and have decided that
it's absoutley astonishing that we didn't get twice the size we were when we
started!

LCing since 12/01/03-
Me- 265/236/140
& hubby- 310/264/180

GREAT progress dawn!

Before:

Breakfast: Frosted Lucky Charms with 2% Milk or Quaker Instant Oatmeal,
sometimes toast, weekends were always bacon or sausage, eggs, hashbrowns,
and pancakes or toast.

Lunch: soup or sandwich or salad with Thousand Island dressing or mac and
cheese(Kraft Dinner for the Canadians).  If I went out, it was usually a
burger or sandwich and fries or chips.

Snack: whatever I could get my hands on.. I sure liked to snack on
marshmallow cream alot.

Dinner: We ate pasta at least twice a week.. and huge portions too. Chinese
or Japanese every Friday night. Burgers and hotdogs with buns and chips.
Steaks, baked potatoes, corn or macaroni and cheese. Sometimes chicken and
rice. But we always, always had either potatoes, pasta, rice, or bread as
our side dish.

I always drank diet drinks and plenty of water and juice always for
breakfast.

Now:
Breakfast: Usually leftovers from the night before. Sometimes I just eat
meat and cheese rollups. If I'm in a hurry, I grab a LC EAS shake. On the
weekend, we have sausage or bacon and eggs usually with cheese.

Lunch: Salad with bacon bits or chicken with blue cheese dressing or
leftovers. Today I tried Shirataki noodles.. YUMMMMM!

snack: homemade beef jerky, Slim Jims, nuts, sometimes cheese, or Hood's LC
chocolate milk.

Dinner: chicken, steak, porkchops, hamburger, etc, with a side of veggies
most of the time with various homemade sauces.

Dessert: rarely I make creme brulee or cheesecake. Sometimes we have Jello
with whipped cream. Sometimes I make chai for dessert.

I drink plenty of water and the very occasional Diet Rite or Hansen's diet
soda, and some mornings I have herbal tea.

-Meagan

Wow... it's been so long, I may have forgotten, but I'll try.

Breakfast:  Toast or bagel with cream cheese, or cheese, or PB&J or
cereal (usually Bran Flakes, or raisin bran)

Lunch:  Macaroni & Cheese, or a sandwich, or leftovers

Supper:  Meat, veg and side dish -- either noodles & sauce, potatoes in
various forms or white rice.

My problem was more the portions, than the actual foods, and it was also
the snacking.  I love chocolate and ice cream and everything sweet, but
I wouldn't shy away from a good bag of chips, or especially cheezees.  I
also was a big user of Chinese buffets... and especially the sweet foods
and desserts.  My motto was "supper is what comes before dessert."

Here's what I did before LC.  It was frightening:

Breakfast:  The Clown, a saussage egg and cheese value meal with a
large coke

(Coke ounce count so far: 32)

Another coke before lunch and an enevitable krispy kreme or three that
someone brings in to work.

(Coke ounce count: 32 + 12 = 44)

Chili's for lunch, chicken crispers with corn and cinnimon apples,
three cokes

(Coke ounce count: 44 + 16 x 3 = 92)

Two more cokes after lunch plus a candy bar

(Coke ounce count: 92 + 12 x 2 = 116)

Dinner if at home is something like a whole 5 pound chicken with some
bread or 4 chicken thighs in cream of chicken soup sauce poured over
2-4 cups of white rice.  If eating out, dinner is a 16 ounce steak,
baked potato, soup, bread, and 2-5 cokes.  Let's say I had 1 coke and
3 refills, so 4.

(Coke ounce count: 116 + 16 x 4 = 180)

Either a piece of pie or peach cobbler (a la mode of course) at the
restaurant for desert or half a dozen pican sandies at home before
bed.

180 ounces of coke is about 15 cans... in one day.  I think at the
beginning, I did some math with 13 cans a day as the average.  13 cans
of coke is the same as 196 sugar packets or about 2000 calories, just
in coke.  I'd say I had maybe a 5000 calorie a day diet.  Also, I
drank no water, only coke and beer.  I haven't had a single can of
coke since last july.  I'm now around 2300 calories a day.  It's
amazing I didn't weigh more.

brian
290/231/210
July 8, 2003

Before LC, my biggest problems were binging on chocolate and portion
size. Eat and cooking alone, it is easy to make too much. I eat very
different when working vs. home. Home I can munch and usually when I
munch it is on snacks. It often is enough that I skip meals. I've had
a lot of one-meal(dinner) days the past year at home. Snacking quieted
hunger during the day. For fast food KFC is my worst one- bbg wings...
have binged on them too often. Have always been a fan of chocolate,
not salty snacks. Oreos, chocolate covered donuts, brownies, chocolate
chip cookies, chocolate cake and kisses are the standards.

I had two bags of Lindt's Truffles (2-3 lbs) leftover from Christmas
(use them when I go to an office or house for parties). Gave them to a
friend to bring to their job and get rid of. Just got girl scout
cookies I ordered months ago. Passed those onto my family to eat. I
still have some chocolate and other bad things in the house but those
would waste sitting in the house before I could eat have one as a
snack so better they go somewhere else.

Breakfast
- I don't eat. If I had a long day (sometimes went to work at 4 am) I
would grab a bacon-egg-cheese on a roll & orange juice, milk, or
coffee. If I did do the brunch at a diner thing, it would be corned
beef hash w/2 eggs sunny side up, home fries, dry rye toast & Orange
juice and coffee.  Starbucks has a white chocolate mocha that has to
be bad for you. Cost alone made me not have this more than once every
week or two. I have only had it twice in the last year. Cosi also had
a cold mocha expresso drink that I liked to have in summertime instead
of coffe. that was once a week too. Again not once in the last year.

Lunch
- was *very* varied. I don't like MickeyD's, burger king. I'll eat
gorditas & chalupa at taco bell, chicken wrap at KFC w/cole slaw or
fries, but I LOVE their honey BBQ wings. I would get a side of 6 of
those. Wendy's Mandarin chicken salad is good. Other salad fav's are
cobb & chef, but I like a variety not iceberg salads. One site I
worked at had a great salad bar and I at their 3x a week. No meats,
just veggies & greens. Favorite Chinese dish in General Tso's but also
like dumplings & dimsum. Japanese is usually a rolls assortment,
shumai, negimaki, and occasionally sushi or bento boxes. Indian is
usually chicken korma, lamb pasanda, roganjosh, or any of the vindaloo
dishes. Also Keema samosas, nan & paratha with mango chutney. Pizza
isn't common for me unless with others, I did like and occasionaly
have 2 slices of pizzas w/ham, onion, cheddar & tons of jalapenos at
one place. Burgers, sloppy joes, chili, buffalo chicken, chicken
cordon bleu, meatloaf, pulled pork and other bbq are recurring dishes.
Their was a good Korean deli(hot/cold/salad buffet with 60-70
different diverse offerings) near us, so I would have an assortment of
salad & hot food there, but it was usually 1.5-1.75 pounds of
food--but I could usually less common items into my diet like shrimp,
salmon and veggies like olives & avocados in. At a better restaurant
I'll eat fresh fish dinners from the specials. I also developed a
taste for crab cakes (the soft kind not the dense breading/potato
kind. I usually don't have dessert with lunch and I'm not a big hit
the snack machine person when at work.

Dinner
- was more of the same as lunch. Often lunch was the bigger meal. I
would eat lunch between 12-2 and dinner between 7:30-10. I worked late
many tired nights. This also forced me to grab what I could, which
sometimes ended up being a mcdonalds-bleah.

DiGiTAL_ViNYL (no email)

Eat.. Eat and EAT
and never feel full or satisfied.
Cravings that drove me crazy
Wild Swings of Dieting followed by self loathing because I couldnt
stick to plan .
It sucked.

Now...
Satisfied, happy, and proud of myself.
Feeling energetic and Exercising  :)
Gotta like LC>

~Karen~

~Karen~
225/184/140ish
start Jan17/03
Started at the gym September/03

nonfat plain yoghurt with oranges, strawberries & bananas with
grape-nuts for breakfast, a veggie pasta frozen dinner with spinach
salad & oranges for lunch, meat & potato with a pat of butter &
veggies with lemon juice.  That most of the time, and hamburgers &
french fries & real coke occasionally.  As long as I worked out, I
maintained a reasonable weight on this regimen.

Until I turned 43 -- then all of a sudden, without changing anything,
I gained 20 pounds.  Metabolism changed, I guess, and then I couldn't
handle all those carbs anymore.  I'd decided just to be fat, since
further restricting that diet and working out more weren't doing
anything, then I let DH talk me into reading the Atkins book, and the
20 pounds came right off again in about 4 months.  (DH is 45 pounds
down in not quite a year).

I always think it's funny how my "healthy breakfast" -- shredded
wheat, raisins & skim milk and my "splurge breakfast" -- Dunkin Donuts
apple fritter & coffee -- from the old pre-LC days equal out to about
the same amount of carbs.