Do you ever set a goal for yourself, get yourself revved up about it even, and then somehow take forever to get out of the starting gate? That's how I'm beginning to feel about my fitness plan.
I've not chucked it, but I am definitely taking longer to get going than I anticipated. I probably should have known better to start around the holidays, but what can I say. I was optimistic.
So, baby steps it is. If you'll recall, in my last post I bought the Flat Belly Diet
The pocket guide contains a 28-day meal plan with shopping lists and short recipes for the meals. Honestly, nothing seems overly complicated here, and most of it actually looks pretty decent. (Maybe it's just the four day intro plan that is so meager in options.) The pocket guide also has restaurant and product recommendations, similar to the full-sized diet book.
Daily calorie totals appear to average around 1600, which includes breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack. I don't find anywhere in the book where it adjusts the caloric intake for men, but it's possible I haven't read far enough yet.
Both diet books include brand and product recommendations for persons who require gluten free, dairy free, soy free or vegan options.
My favorite feature is definitely the shopping lists for each of the first four weeks, as it makes it easy to clear out the cabinets and buy solely what you need to stay on course. The brand and restaurant recommendations are also pretty nice. The restaurant recommendations include options at both dine-in restaurants and fast food chains:
- Au Bon Pain
- Burger King
- Chili's
- Chipotle
- Culver's
- Dunkin Donuts
- El Pollo Loco
- Hooters
- Jamba Juice
- McDonald's
- Mimi's Cafe
- Old Spaghetti Factory
- Panda Express
- Panera Bread
- Qdoba Mexican Grill
- Red Lobster
- Sbarro
- Sizzler
- Smoothie King
- Starbucks
- Subway
- Taco Bell
- TCBY
- Wendy's
I'm not fond of all the restaurants included, but there are enough of the ones I frequent that the list is useful.
I'm shopping tomorrow for the four day anti-bloat jumpstart and week one menus. I should note that the menus are suggestions, but you can interchange the meals and to a certain extent, the ingredients. However, the authors don't suggest that you create your own meals during the first four week period, as they want you to become accustomed to the portion sizes, types of ingredients and basic meal makeup.
So is anybody in this with me? Has anyone already started?
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