From the few pages that my mom has printed out from the book I will say that there are basic similarities between this and South Beach but for the most part they are pretty different.  The only real similarity is the phases.  A strict phase for the first two weeks that is meant to help jump start your weight loss, then a easier phase for the bulk of your journey but instead of doing this phase all the way to your weight loss goal and then ending with the maintenance phase, the Pink Method has a Shred Phase which I'm excited about.  When you are about 5 lbs away from your goal you are supposed to switch to the third phase that they call the 7 day shred.  It is designed to trick your body into letting go of those last pesky pounds and then once you have reached your goal you switch to the maintenance phase.  Mind you, I do no have the entire book but from the little that I do have I feel like the P.I.N.K. method is kind of confusing.  I think once the book arrives and I actually read it through everything will most likely be explained. 

Some of the differences between this and the S.B. are that instead of 6 meals you are essentially just eating 3 seemingly small ones to start.  In one area it says you will be eating 3 meals but then another mentions that you can snack on veggies in between and another place mentions a dessert (hence my confusion).  Also, where S.B. doesn't require but encourages excercise.  The P.M. does not allow you to work out during the initial Reset Phase and after looking at the eating plan I can see why.  There is no way that I will have enough energy with the food I'm consuming to work out safely.  Another big difference is that S.B. encourages you to eat until you are comfortablly full and to NEVER starve yourself but the P.M. is big on portion control and I am a bit worried about that.  I am afraid that if I'm starving that I will be likely to cheat so I am going to take advantage of their unlimited raw veggie rule and hope for the best.  I'd like to say here that once the book arrives and I have read the entire thing, I will lay out the basics of the diet beggining to end for everyone but in the meantime this is what I have to work with.  Lastly the P.M. incorporates healthy shakes for breakfast much like the ones that I drank while on my detox diet so I am already used to that and am hoping it helps with my allergies (side benefit!). 

Last night my mom and I went to the local health food store and picked up the whey protein, rice and hemp milk (I'm allergic to almonds so no almond milk for me and I hate coconuts so that's out too) and liquid aminos that we needed and then headed to Walmart for the rest of the groceries.  We had to buy a blender for the shakes since hers was broken so that was an extra $50 expense.  Total we spent $90 in groceries at Walmart, $30 at the health food store and $50 on the blender.  We probably could have spent less but my mom likes a lot of variety while dieting and is not a bargain shopper.  She also tends to buy the easiest to prepare version of something and not the cheapest version.  Since I have a limited budget if I was doing this alone I would have spent less but I also would have been eating the bare bones of this diet and that would suck, so thanks to my mom for all of the delicious options! We then ate Chinese and drank a bottle of wine as out last hurrah and went to bed.

This morning when I woke up I came downstairs and made my first shake.  It consisted of  1 cup of Vanilla Hemp milk (the book says in one area just hemp/rice milk but in the recipe it says unsweetened hemp/rice milk.  I wish they would be more consistent, there seems to be a lot of little discrepancies like this so far.)  We already bought the regular hemp/rice milk so we are going to use that until it's gone which should be pretty quick, the container is more then half empty after just 2 shakes.  So 1 cup vanilla hemp milk, 1 scoop vanilla whey protein, 1 cup frozen unsweetened strawberries and then I added 3 ice cubes to make it more filling for me.  The flavor is okay to bland and it only fills you up for a short period of time.  My mom called me during her lunch and told me that she thought it was delicious so maybe it's all personal preference.

After finishing my shake, I walked to the fridge out of habit and opened it up, I immediately said "oh crap" as the reality of dieting settled in.  I went ahead and started throwing things out that we are not supposed to eat so that I won't be tempted to cheat.  I'm pretty frickin hungry right now though so while I wait for lunchtime I'm going to go weigh in.  Unfortunately, my nice digital scale is packed in storage so I'm forced to use my mom's crappy rotary scale.  She thinks it's the greatest thing ever but let me tell you, it's not.  It's notoriously inaccurate, you constantly have to adjust it back to zero, it's very hard to read and it jumps all over the place so with that being said.  I weighed in between 153-155 lbs on the rotary scale.  I've decided to round up to 155 and start my weight loss journey there.  That leaves me with a 30 lb even weight loss goal.  Up until this past year I had never weighed more then 140 lbs so this is a very shameful thing for me to admit out loud.  I'm hoping since it hasn't been here that long, it will leave fast (wishful thinking right).  I should also add that I weigh in naked, I always have, I don't want to see anything but my lowest possible weight.  Screw weighing in with clothes on!!  Strangely enough the P.M. suggest that you weigh in naked in the mornings before you eat (something I already do) and to weigh in often.  Wait, WHAT!  I have never heard somebody reccomend that you weigh in frequently, in fact I have been told to do the exact opposite.  While I tend to go against what I'm told and weigh in anyways I don't condone anybody doing this.  I'm very curious as to why the P.M would advise you to weigh in that much.

Lunch Time!!  For lunch today I am having: 1 hardboiled egg mashed with 1 tbsp. low fat mayo and 1 tbsp mustard on top of cucumber slices.  The recipe says to eat 1/2 large cucumber but they also say elsewhere that you can eat unlimited raw veggies so why the portion?  Once again, confusing.  I am assuming that it is just the suggested amount and if you need more cucumber eat more.  I however just ate the half and it was very good.  My issue with this meal is that it is not very much, this would be a snack in between meals on the S.B. yet another thing that is fueling my concerns with the P.M.  It also said I could eat raw cauliflower with this so I munched on a little but honestly there is only so much raw veggies one person can eat while only being able to drink water.  Let me fill you in on what you are allowed to drink.  You can have coffee, green or herbal teas and you are encoraged to drink 8-10 glasses of water a day.  I am currently working on glass 1, I am not a water drinker.  In a weeks time I will have drunk 0 glasses of water, in a month 1 glass of water.  No joke.  I actually get really bad acid reflux from drinking a lot of water, I assume because my body is so used to the non-stop influx of Diet Pepsi.  My caffiene addiction runs deep but I'm going to try my best and will be drinking tea in it's place.

Let me start by saying that food is my addiction, I self medicate with food on a daily basis but when I set my mind to it I have in the past been able to successfully live a healthy life.  Unfortunately that only lasts about a month or two (my record is 3).  I lose the weight, I feel great and then I fall right back into old habits or as I like to call it falling off the food wagon.  The longer I stayed on the diet aka healthy eating the longer the results last but I eventually always give in to lady temptation.  Now for a little back story.

3 years ago I was nearing 140 lbs and felt fatter then I ever had in my life.  I had never weighed so much and was very unhappy and uncomfortable.  While for some people this is a healthy weight, I am 5'3 and my frame is fairly petite.  140 for me is an overweight BMI, doctors recommend that I weigh at most 125 (some even say 117 but I would be a size 0/2 at that weight!!).  I feel my absolute best in both the way I look and feel at 125, I am a size 4/6 at this weight and I look slim but healthy.  I personally feel that nothing looks worse then a woman who is too thin and I don't give myself unrealistic weight loss goals.  At the time my future mother in law was looking to lose weight and had asked me if I would do the South Beach Diet with her.  I had never tried a diet before, only exercise in the past and was very hesitant at first.  She bought me the books and after reading everything I felt really good about the method and decided to give it a try.  It was very hard at first but within the first week I lost 5 lbs (8 lbs in the first 2 weeks) and it gradually became easier.  I kept a diary throughout the process and I felt like this really helped me keep on track.  I wanted to quit so many times but I just couldn't let my FMIL down.  She needed to lose the weight and get healthy very badly and I just couldn't let her down by quitting.  After 3 months of being on the South Beach, I reached my goal weight of 125.  I had lost about 18 lbs and I looked and felt amazing.  My mother in law stayed on the diet for a year and lost nearly 80 lbs.  She is still on it today but her weight loss has stopped and she is maintaining now.  At the time that I reached my goal weight I felt invincible like I would never gain the weight back again.  I know understand this is a common feeling with dieters and without properly maintaining a healthy lifestyle you will eventually gain back every pound plus some which is what happened to me.  I would occasionally jump back on the south beach lose 10 lbs and then go back to my unhealthy ways but I never reached my goal weight again.  Now for how I got to my current weight.

I have been suffering from severe skin allergies for 10 years, no doctor (not even the Cleveland Clinic) was able to figure out was wrong with me.  I haven't had health insurance for many years so I had been unable to get any help.  A day in my life did not go by without being covered with hives and rashes.  Being itchy was just my life and I hid my skin as best as I could.  A year ago though it began to escalate, my lips began to swell like balloons, my ears would swell, my hands, my feet.  The hives were so large on my body they were like giant plateaus.  Benadryl did NOTHING to help me, all it did was knock me out for hours at a time.  I would basically just sleep through my allergic reactions.  One day after eating some pasta my throat swelled up and I had trouble swallowing.  We went to a pharmacist at our grocery store and asked if there was anything I could take to help and all they said I could take was Benadryl, when I told them that it didn't work they just told me to take more Benadryl.  I was at my wits end and becoming scared for my life so my Fiance and I decided to go to a place called Progressive Medical Center in Dunwoody Georgia.  It is a mix of Natural and Conventional Medicine, they treat you from every possible angle.  It was very expensive but we sat down with the owner and he negotiated a lower price with us that we felt we could afford.  My fiance chipped in half and off we went.  Many many tests were done and to summarize it we found out that I have a sluggish thyroid, my adrenal glands were not functioning, I was not producing enough progesterone and most importantly I have severe and extensive food allergies.  They put me on a detoxifying diet to completely rid my system of all of the poisons that were plaguing me and therefore giving me a clean slate to start over with.  Now my Fiance had done a version of this diet the year before me and had lost a ton of weight.  It was really hard though back then finding gluten free, dairy free, casein free, egg free etc products which left his choices very limited.  In the year though between the time he did the diet and I did the diet there was an explosion on the market for products in this category so I had absolutely no problem finding things to eat and the whole process was fairly easy.  Unfortunately with the advent of allergy free food products there was an army of options in the junk food category so where he had lost weight when he did it I actually gained a substantial amount of weight.  Everything that I was eating was basically made of rice and potatoes.  I will say though that by the end of the detox my allergies were 100% GONE.  Another side bonus was my face had completely cleared up along with the skin on the rest of my body.  Internally I felt really good but externally I was fatter then I had ever been in my entire life.  It was also relieving to learn through this process that while I tend to eat terribly I also am fighting a losing battle with my thyroid so it's not entirely my fault (it just mostly is).  With all that being said, I have had a hard time going back on the south beach now that I am aware of all of my food allergies.  Many of the vegetables and things that I lived on during my weight loss I now knew that I was very allergic to them. Not only was I allergic to a lot of fruits and vegetables but due to my thyroid I have to avoid soy.  Soy is very bad for your thyroid but unfortunately it is in a ton of delicious diet food options. I had a very hard time adjusting the diet to work around my allergies.  It felt very limited and therefore made it a lot harder for me to be successful so I have not made a solid attempt for nearly a year to lose any weight.  I am now a weight I only thought I would ever reach if I was pregnant!!  I am a size 10 and it's not even comfortable.  Now that you're up to date with my history and all of my problems I'll tell how I got to this moment.

I had just come back home to my mom's house after visiting my fiance in Georgia when she announced that we are going on a diet.  Not just any diet a new diet that was on the Dr. Phil show a week ago.  She had already ordered the book and had some photo copied pages from a friend to get started in the meantime.  Now please let me say that my mother is THIN.  She is a size 4 but she is for whatever reason convinced that she is the fattest cow on earth and talks about it all the time.  It does not exactly make me feel good to listen to a woman who's legs don't even touch in the middle moan about how fat she is when I am a solid 30 lbs over weight.  I also want to say that A. I am not comfortable with trying a fad diet (South Beach is not a a fad diet, it is a tool to teach you how to eat healthy and live a healthy lifestyle).  B. I am not comfortable starting a diet when I have not read the book and know nothing about it.  C. My mother has a tendency to buy every fad diet on TV and then not follow through with it but she is paying for all of the food and I don't have any other real options right now so I am willing to give it a try.  I decided to blog about because of my success with my diet diary in the past and also because there are zero reviews on this diet on the Internet (I am assuming because it is brand spanking new).  I thought that this would be helpful to both myself, women out there thinking about trying this diet and also to anyone out there that suffers from food allergies like I do.  Now time to get started!