Cool Tip: Fast Metabolism Diet Diary ~ Week 1

Time For a Change! Week 1 of the Fast Metabolism Diet

Week 1

Here's our Week 1 Meal Map.

Monday (Phase 1): 

Not so bad. First change was eating within half an hour of getting up. I usually wander around, exercise, and think about eating a couple of hours later...so this took more thought. But we'd planned out our week off menus, so it was pretty easy. We started the day with Cinnamon Ginger Peaches on Sprouted Grain Toast. Easy and very tasty. Made much easier by using the Big Mouth Chopper to dice the frozen diced peaches and the Ginger Tool to grate the ginger. Even though we use no refined sugar or regular wheat, this was a sweet, really satisfying way to start the day.

Every breakfast includes a large cup - can't call it a "coffee cup"!-] - of hot water and fresh-squeezed lemon juice ... we like Meyer Lemons ....

Then we had to consciously drink a lot of water. The trick we found was to carry or own water bottle around with us. We got used to having the water pretty quickly.

Mid-morning snack was fresh pineapple.

Lunch was an open-faced tuna salad sandwich made without mayo, surprisingly better than we thought it would be, on a slice of the sprouted grain toast and some fruit (a Fuji Apple cut up with an Apple Cutter), it was actually a good lunch.

The afternoon snack was cherries eaten out of a baggy in the car on the way to a meeting. Highly portable.

Dinner is a recipe I'd serve to company: a pork tenderloin covered with cumin and chili powder, and then marinated in the basics: garlic, green onions, jalapeno and cilantro in lime juice and orange zest and then cooked sous vide, before being finished on the grill, with a side of wild rice mixed with sliced asparagus cooked in the Lékué Grain&Rice Cooker (yes, they really don’t put spaces in there.).

Lessons Learned:

►It's easier to drink a lot of water if you carry around a water bottle with a pop up or pop out straw.

Tuesday (Phase 1):

Dropped 2 pounds; that's weight fluctuation margin of error...let's see if it continues.

Breakfast was the tapioca challenge. Neither of us had ever made tapioca and our eating of it was limited. We tried 2 methods: stovetop and microwave. The microwave was by far the better and easier method, and the secret is soaking: soak the tapioca pearls in a small amount of water overnight. This seems to preserve the pearls, but let's them get large and soft. This was served with egg whites (great source of protein), xylitol, vanilla and apricots. Update: we made this again and didn't like the gooey texture. If you make it, cook it on higher power to cut down the goo.

Mid-morning snack was more pineapple: love it!

Lunch was a pork taco: last night's leftover pork tenderloin crisped in a nonstick skillet and dressed with a ‘salsa’ built on the usual - garlic, onion, jalapeno, cilantro, and cherry tomatoes - but using broth to deglaze the pan and lime juice for flavor. All of this is served on a sprouted grain tortilla … quite delicious! Note: it can be served over lettuce (as shown in the photo) in Phase 2.

More cherries in the afternoon.

Dinner was the production of an easy version of the classic favorite: Vietnamese Beef Pho, using coconut aminos instead of fish sauce, tamari instead of soy sauce, and brown rice pasta instead of rice noodles. Otherwise the recipe - and the end-product dish - are essentially identical to our recipe for the real thing! Again, another delicious dinner, in accordance with the diet plan.

Lessons Learned:

►When you actually start looking seriously, there are healthy alternatives to a lot of common, but not so healthy, foods.

Wednesday (Phase 2):

Phase 2 is the phase most people have said they don’t like. Having done the Dukan diet, this was pretty easy for us. It’s all about protein and vegetables.

Breakfast was Diced Jicama with Turkey Bacon and Lime. I’ve always liked jicama… it has that crispy sweet juicy thing going on; and we were able to get a beautiful perfect dice using a combination of the V-Blade Mandoline and the Big Mouth Chopper. And this was our first experience with turkey bacon. We cooked it in a the microwave at a minute per slice, and it came out crispy and delicious, and did a lot to satisfy our bacon cravings. (If you try this, don’t be put off by the sort of baloney smell until it gets crisp and smells like bacon.) This combination, while unusual, was really tasty… good enough to eat after the diet!

Mid-morning (and mid-afternoon) snack was Zingy Ginger Lemon Gummy Squares. These were sort of fun to make. It’s like really stiff jello, and a cross between a gummy bear and pate de fruit. The recipe needs a little work, so we aren’t posting yet, but we will soon.

Lunch was the pork taco preparation, but this time over fresh spinach. It’s a pretty versatile way to use leftover pork.

Dinner was the pork tenderloin again, this time with asparagus that we cooked in the Steam Case (which is on sale now) in the microwave for 1 minute--you can’t get any easier than that, and the asparagus was deliciously sweet.

Lessons Learned:

►Turkey bacon is a revelation! It's crispy and delicious, especially when made in the microwave.

Thursday (Phase 2):

OK, half way through Phase 2… and not so bad. Breakfast was Spinach Mushroom Scramble with turkey bacon (we just bought a second package--it’s now a staple). This was really good, without a speck of egg or fat… who knew?

Morning snack was Smoked Salmon, Cucumbers and Lime. We actually felt like we were at a cocktail party (minus the cocktails). This is actually a nice combination of both textures and flavors.

We got a little lazy at lunch (we were a little tired of cooking our fannies off… or at least we hope that’s the result!) So we wrapped some Kobe roast beef slices (from Costco!) around some Claussen dill pickle slices (protein and vegetable made easy!) The only requirement from the diet was no nitrates...check.

Our afternoon snack was the last of the gummy squares (getting a little tired of those).

Dinner was a treat: London Broil with LIme Garlic Ginger Marinade over fresh arugula from the garden (yes, it’s growing now in Northern California). We dressed the arugula with just a little lemon juice and salt (no oil in this phase), and the juice dripping from the sliced steak. This is another dish we would serve anytime, not just on this diet. As a matter of fact there were so many good things we ate today, that we’re having trouble picking just one photo for Facebook.

Lessons Learned:

►Planning is essential for this diet; we couldn't have gotten this far without the meal map.

Friday (Phase 3):

OK, we’re now in our favorite phase...healthy fats and massage! It almost feels like you’re not on a diet (except for the “no wine!” and “no cheese!” restrictions!).

This is the first day of the diet when we can have whole eggs, so we celebrated with a breakfast of a poached egg on sprouted grain toast, with turkey bacon and sauteed mushrooms, followed by a bowl of cherries (because...Life is just a… never mind.). It was a tasty way to start the day. BTW how do you poach eggs?

Mid-morning snack was microwaved Sweet Potato Chips (you can make them without oil for phase 1 and 2, but for phase 3 we sprayed on some olive oil).These were good, and it still blows me away that you can make crispy sweet potato chips in the microwave, with or without oil. We made some extra so that we could have them with lunch, too.

For lunch we had a Spicy Turkey Burger with the Sweet Potato Chips and some avocado slices, with small grape tomatoes as our fruit. All of this was very tasty and satisfying. We formed all 4 burgers at once and put the 2 extra between sheets of wax paper.

One thing we’ve noticed on this diet is that we are cooking a lot. Eating 5 times a day with specific categories is a little challenging. We’re going to have to find some things that we can make in batches so that we can eat it at several “meals”. We’ll keep you posted on what we come up with.

That being said, we went very simple for our afternoon snack, and just had celery stuffed with almond butter. One thing that makes celery a lot better: peel it before you use it - the Asparagus Peeler, with its curved blade and gripper, is actually great for this. This gets rid of the annoying strings on the outside of the celery.

Dinner was great: Bacon Meatballs with a spicy tomato sauce and Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pecans. The meatballs were virtually our first attempt at meatballs, and they came out so well because it was a great mix of flavors, but also because we were testing a new Cool Tool Candidate that makes cooking meatballs so easy… no turning, and browned on all sides. Stay tuned. The tomato sauce was really simple: we took a can of Muir Glen Diced Tomatoes with Chipotle, sauted some garlic, added some small tomatoes, and then cooked it down to a lovely thick sauce. An easy shortcut that yielded great results.

We’re eating well on this diet and feeling pretty good. The weigh-in will be at the end of the week.

Lessons Learned (a bunch from today):

►Sliced sauteed mushrooms in the morning are not only a delicious way to get a vegetable for breakfast, but remind us of being in Europe, where this is more common.
►Sweet potato chips make a great healthy snack
►Raw celery is waaaaaay better if you peel it
►We love meatballs!
►A good can of diced tomatoes (we really like Muir Glen with a variety of chilis) cooks down to make a great sauce

Saturday (Phase 3):

Saturday morning I got inspired by the fact that we could have fat! So I got up early and made pecan butter. I’d never done this before, but it was so simple and sooo good. I was so pleased with that that I also made walnut butter with orange zest and cumin. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for the sweet potato hash browns--that’s still a work in progress.

Our mid-morning snack was ½ an avocado each. A friend told us that she has started eating half an avocado a day, and when she went to her doctor, he asked her what she had changed. She sheepishly told him about her avocado habit. He told her to keep doing what she was doing: he had never seen her bloodwork look so good! So this is now a delightful part of our regime...at least on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

At lunch we had the other 2 turkey burgers we had prepared yesterday. Turkey Burger note: The wax paper didn’t work so well: the burgers stuck when we went to cook them, so I think we’ll try parchment next time.

But the star of lunch was our first course. During the week, we had used egg whites, and I hate wasting egg yolks, but they really don’t keep very well. So I remembered seeing a recipe for a perfect egg yolk: you cook the egg yolks in oil in a hot water bath at 144°F for an hour. The Sous Vide Supreme water bath had been out to cook the pork tenderloin, so I tried it and then stashed them in the fridge in the oil to save for Phase 3. We reheated them in the water bath, put them over zucchini noodles and… we were literally blown away! See the recipe for Zucchini Noodles with a Perfect Egg Yolk.

Our mid-afternoon snack was Guacamole with cut up microwaved turkey bacon as our chips. Hey, if ½ avocado is good, think what a whole avocado can do!

We went out to dinner with friends. This was our first real challenge. Not only do they always bring great wine (which we couldn’t drink), but we had not yet test-driven the diet in public. As it turns out, it wasn’t that bad. I guess many restaurants are prepared to deal with a variety of dietary restrictions...and this was a Saturday (Phase 3, the most liberal phase, is cleverly set on the weekend if you begin your diet on a Monday).

So we told our waitress that we couldn’t have dairy, wheat, corn, soy or sugar (those were the ingredients most likely to be in our food). We ended up sharing (as listed on the menu)

• Brussels Sprouts gremolata, parmigiano-reggiano, napa valley olive oil (without the cheese),

• Roasted Beets heirloom carrots, mandarin orange, marcona almonds, ricotta, aged balsamic (without the cheese and orange),

• Linguini laughing bird shrimp, calabrian chili, garlic, basil, bottarga (with gluten-free quinoa pasta, instead of the linguini), and

• Rabbit Cacciatore braised a&a farms rabbit, soft polenta, sofrito, currants, pine nuts (with vegetables instead of the polenta).

Really a pretty liberal and delicious meal. So if you go on this diet, don’t fear going out, at least not on the weekends!

Lessons Learned:

►It's dead easy to make your own nut butter, and it tastes great, too (try pecan butter; you’ll thank us!).
►Half an avocado for a snack is a wonderful and healthy thing to do everyday (although only on phase 3 of this diet).
►Turkey burgers stick to wax paper very badly, so try parchment paper.
►Leftover egg yolks can be made into an absolutely elegant first course: cook them in oil for an hour at 144°F and serve over julienned zucchini or asparagus ribbons.
►You can dine out on this diet!

Sunday (Phase 3):

We liked the nut butter so much yesterday, we had it again today, again with sweet potato hashbrowns (still not there) and sliced strawberries. This is definitely our favorite phase!

Half an avocado again for the mid-morning snack (if it was healthy yesterday, got to be healthy today.

Lunch was a very tasty Cumin Beef Kebab that we had marinated overnight. Despite the fact that we had trouble getting the mushrooms to stay on the skewer, this was delicious. (We used the Cookina BBQ Sheet to make sure that anything that fell off the skewer wouldn’t fall through the grill grate!)

We turned into movie junkies in the afternoon and saw two movies at our wonderful local one-plex the Cameo Cinema (“Big Eyes” with a Q&A after the movie with Margaret Keane and her daughter, the original “Big Eyes”! and “American Sniper”), so our afternoon snack was a baggy of raw almonds and pecans.

Dinner was out again; same spiel to the waitress, and here’s what we ended up sharing (as listed on the menu, with our substitutions):

• Pepper-crusted Filet Medallions, truffle shoestring fries, garlic chips, grilled endive and aged balsamic (sauteed spinach instead of truffle fries… that hurt!)

• Lobster Rolls Wrapped in Rice Paper with Papaya, Avocado, Asparagus and a Basil-Mint Sauce. We had this as is; the rice wrapper and papaya probably weren’t totally phase-appropriate, but they were delicious!

• Market Burger: 1/2 lb. Niman Ranch beef, Fiscalini cheddar and grilled sweet onions with fries (no bun, no cheese, no fries, with some asparagus as a partial substitute.

End of week one. We missed some of the things we gave up: wine, cheese, coffee (for Kennedy), but it was tolerable and the food was actually very good. Weigh-in tomorrow morning!

Lessons Learned:

►Eating 5 times a day seems like eating too much.
►With some exceptions, this is not a difficult diet.
►Hot water with fresh lemon juice - especially Meyer Lemons - is a delicious start to every day!
►If you’re a coffee “addict” like me (Kennedy), then you may experience caffeine withdrawal - headaches, grumpiness, etc. Some say ground cinnamon in your hot water can help, but it didn’t help me. But it will pass.

See Week 2