Wow!!! It's been a while since we last posted, but that's because we've been busy bees and have had a lot going on. We won't go into all the details but will tell you the Big News Flash: we've decided to throw in the towel on the slow carb diet. Yep that's right, we are waving the white flag. Sorry if we are letting anybody down, but after four months of trying Tim Ferriss's slow carb diet (based on his book, The 4-Hour Body) the sista wives have decided to switch gears. We met in the kitchen one morning (as we were embarking on our fifth month of eating this way) and just decided that if we had to eat any more meat we were going to throw up. Literally. We just couldn't do it anymore. This is coming from two girls who were previously vegetarians for ten & twenty years before slowly starting to add meat back into their diet. We still weren't huge meat eaters, just occasionally. So why we decided to embark upon the slow carb diet is beyond us. It sounded like a great idea at the time. Oh yes, now we remember, it was the two glasses of red wine a night that hooked us. The eating healthy thing was just an added bonus. We hardly ever ate red meat on the diet, mostly turkey (which Jenn hates) and chicken but it just got old for us. However, we are very proud of ourselves for what we accomplished while on the diet. We learned how to eat healthier and do without a lot of bad foods. We also learned that we have major will power. Wonder Mavens Activate!!! Form of... what else? a nice box of vino of course - Ha Ha.
We absolutely had our moments when we fell off the wagon, but we have to say for three out of four months we were very strict and really motivated. It was one of the hardest things we have ever done. So for that we are really proud of ourselves because we now know once we put our minds to something we can accomplish a goal. We never weighed ourselves, but did see results such as inches and could feel a difference in our clothes. It isn't much considering how hard we worked at eating right, BUT... our downfall was, we hardly ever worked out which we know is very important if you expect to really get the results you want. We did walk our dogs two to three times a day and did yoga every now and then, but it's hard to find the time when you work twelve hour days. We need to try and change that so we can get more exercise. So on Sunday we decided to give up the Slow Carb Diet and on Monday we were on a brand new path, so are you ready for this? We decided to join Weight Watchers (WW). Everyone at Richelle's office is on it and they told her that after the will power we demonstrated on our previous way of eating, that this would be a piece of cake for us. Cake? Hmmmm and guess what? We can have it and not just on cheat day, but any day. So we made up our minds at 10:00pm to join online. As we were inputting our information of course it asks the dreaded question of our weight and height which in turn determines how many points we will get for the day. Well, we have no idea what we weigh, so Jenn runs down the street to borrow a scale. Once she returns, she sets it down on the floor and we both just stared at it like, what is this strange contraption? It was some alien from another planet that we were both intrigued by, yet terrified of at the same time (can you hear the sci-fi music playing in the back ground?).
Richelle began to have a mini nervous breakdown, so Jenn decided to be the first test subject and stepped right on the scary scale praying it wouldn't electrocute her or explode. When Jenn opened her eyes, she was so relieved she was still in one piece that the number didn't even matter - Whew!!! Now it's Richelle's turn; after hugging the wall, a few tears and a not so quick pep-talk, Jenn was able to convince her that it wasn't the end of the world and they would get through this just like everything else...together. Once the trauma was over, we could continue to register on line and determine how much we needed/wanted to lose. Here's how it works: All fruits & vegetables are FREE! You get a certain amount of points to use each day and are not really supposed to go over. But, in the event you do go over by a few or a lot, they give you an extra forty-nine points to use however you wish throughout the week. You can also earn extra points by doing activities - for example, walking the dog for thirty minutes equals two activity points. The extra forty-nine points can be used daily, weekly or all at one time which is how we want to use them. The reason we decided to use them all up in one day is so we can continue our "Cheat Day" tradition making Mondays (our weigh in day). The amount of points you get is determined by your height and weight. What ever we decide to eat comes out of our daily points allowance, so we just have to decide if we really want the cake or something else like cheese and crackers or lasagna. It will force us to really think about the food choices we make for the day. Richelle is allowed twenty-six points a day and Jenn twenty-eight - so it's time for us to get down to business... tomorrow, because it's late at night. You would think that after a good night's sleep we'd be raring to go, but that was not the case for Miss Jennifer. Richelle had already left for work by the time she woke up so she was left alone to figure out her new eating habits all by herself. Let's just say it wasn't pretty because after all, we were going from one extreme to another. The Slow Carb Diet was like being in the military, very strict and having to learn to do without a lot of things - only the bare minimum. Weight Watchers seems much easier because we can have whatever we want as long as it's within our allotted points, but it's all about portion control. Well, since we decided on a whim to switch from one way of eating to another overnight, we hadn't done any shopping. There wasn't even one piece of fruit in the house because we couldn't have it on the previous diet but now we can, so Jenn gets agitated because she's not sure what she can eat. To top it all off, she doesn't know how to use the damn food calculator and the fucking scanner app isn't working either and... she's starving!! It's the ugly starve too where a girl can turn into a raving bitch.
Slow Carb Diet:
What you can have: Eggs, Vegetables, Beans and Protein (as much as you want), two glasses of red wine a night. And one cheat day a week to have whatever you want for twenty-four hours.
What you can't have: Sugar, Dairy, Carbs, anything white: Potatoes, Pasta, Bread
Weight Watchers:
What you can have: Anything you want in moderation as long as it comes out of your allotted weekly points (twenty-six) plus an extra forty-nine points to use however you wish (spread out daily, weekly or all in one day)
What you can't have: Nothing - Hooray! but portion control is the key and wine is not free! What? Seriously?
The real downer here is no more "free" wine. It's gonna cost us four points a glass! And you all know how much we love our wine. So do we want to eat or do we want to drink? Well, hello!!!! Are we not the Black Box Wine Mavens? That should be a no brainer right? After all, we've built our reputation around wine. But we want to eat too. Hmmmm. Maybe we should re-think this WW thing. There's no reason to be hasty. Why should we jump from one diet to another so soon? That's kind of like jumping from one relationship right into another and never spending any time being single. You need that time you need to get to know yourself and see if you can function as a single unit instead of being co-dependent on someone else. So maybe we need to take a break before we jump right back into another life changing way of eating. You are probably asking yourself why? Why would we give up so soon when we actually lost weight in the first week? We should be so happy and motivated to keep going. This is true, but we don't want to get burned out like we did with the slow carb diet. We feel like we need to take some time to breathe and reassess so we can get our heads back in the game. We know WW works and when we decide to resume it, we want to give it our all - we don't want to go in half-assed. There could be pros and cons to our decision: the pros of course are that we can eat and drink anything we want (but we need to try and be conscientious of what we are putting into our bodies). The cons are that we could spiral out of control and turn into "Mavens Gone Wild!!!" - having gained back all the weight and inches we have lost up to this point.
It could be sink or swim for the mavens, but we think we'll be fine. We will determine when/if it's time to resume WW again, but for now we are going to enjoy our lives however we choose (on our own terms) while still continuing to blog about our zany adventures. Stay tuned...
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