These plate percentage diagrams represent how I see the Scarsdale Medical Diet, in my head. The keep trim plate chart I have posted today is how I am eating now. This is how I am keeping the weight off.
I lead a pretty sedentary life. My dogs remind me to walk a mile a day, but that is all the exercise I get. If you get more exercise, then you can eat more fruit, fat, and grains.
5% Fat
Any kind of non-skim milk product is mostly fat: cheese, butter, cream in your coffee, sour cream, ice cream, cheesecake... Non-skim yogurt and cottage cheese are mostly fat. Make mine a skinny latte!
Oil is also a fat, like in Italian salad dressing. Most creamy salad dressings, such as ranch dressing, are all fat. If they aren't, then they are sugar, which counts against the fruit allowance.
Of course, any fat you leave on your meat counts toward the 5% fat allowance as well.
10% Grains
Grains are cereal, bread, tortillas, pancakes, crepes,
injera, rice, cakes, cookies, and noodles or pastas like spaghetti, macaroni, and lasagna. Whole grains have more fiber, vitamins, and minerals, but they still need to be limited to 10% of your daily intake, if you want to keep trim and you're a couch potato like me.
10% Fruit / Sugar / Starch
Fresh fruit is best, with fiber and vitamins. The canned stuff is full of sodium* and sugar.
You can indulge in dessert so long as it is no more than 10% of your meal. I love Costco's cherry-almond-dark-chocolate clusters... Whatever sugar you eat counts toward this 10% fruit allowance. Fat-free salad dressings are full of sugar, as are most sauces: BBQ sauce, ketchup, honey mustard...
Starch is found in potatoes, corn, peas, and non-whole grains. We allowed for the starch in grains in the 10% grain allowance, but
keep in mind that corn, potatoes, and peas count toward the fruit / starch / sugar allowance, not as vegetables.
25% Protein
Protein can be beef, pork, chicken, fish, eggs, beans, nuts, tofu... Beans and nuts have lots of fat in them, though. Watch out for processed meats such as sausage and lunch meat. They are full of sodium*. So are frozen dinners, canned food, and fast food meals, full of sodium*.
Non-fat milk products, also called skim milk products, count as protein, too: cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese. Be aware that many yogurts have lots of sugar in them, though.
50% Vegetables or Salad
Vegetables are plants: lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cucumbers... I like raw baby carrots as finger foods with lunch, and steamed broccoli, cauliflower, or Brussels sprouts with my dinner.
Starchy vegetables count toward sugar instead: potatoes, corn, peas.
*Limit Sodium / Salt
Salt, or sodium as it is listed on food labels, makes your body need more water, so you gain water weight. If you have not been limiting your sodium, then you can lose an easy twenty pounds in two weeks by just not eating any salt / sodium and letting go of all that water. Try it if you don't believe me.
Tomorrow I will post
the plate chart of how I eat on actual Scarsdale Diet days.
Want more help? Copy days when I:
I
walked my mile yesterday, which may matter even more than what I ate.
Here is what I ate yesterday, though, and still managed to lose a pound:
Breakfast: Small bowl of Special K, diced strawberries and organic soy milk with black unsweetened coffee
Lunch: 6 ounces of Kirkland beef lasagna (from the frozen food section at Costco), 1 cup microwaved broccoli, 1 can of Diet Coke
Dinner: 1 bean-and-cheese burrito with 3 tablespoons of chunky salsa, 20 ounces of Wal-mart Sparkling Strawberry Lemonade
I lost a pound yesterday while eating a somewhat normal
diet. I did watch my portions. I have noticed that I tend to eat twice
as much as a normal portion of any food that I really like. I have
started to pay attention to the portion amounts on the packages.
Thank you for asking if I drink enough water and if I am taking in too much caffeine. I do take a break from the caffeine. I don't have any after 2pm, or I can't sleep that night. I do drink water between meals. There is a water fountain in the park where we take our walks. Come winter they turn it off or it would freeze, so in winter we do carry a water bottle on our walks.
