Inflammation Diet, Phase 3: We're Done!

Aaaaaaah, finally-- we finished the last phase of this plan!  These have been a hard three weeks.  But happily, we were able to introduce more types of food back into our diets during this past week, so that helped greatly with variety.  However, I'm very much looking forward to our cheat day today!  It's been three weeks since I've seen the inside of a restaurant, and I'm going to really enjoy it.

Cheesy tostadas--these were good!  I'll post the recipe soon.

Before I go on, a huge thank you needs to go out to my husband for all of the help he offered in
making dinner, doing dishes, and prepping for upcoming meals and snacks during this.  There wasn't enough time in the day to do it all on my own, and I'm extremely grateful to him for all of his assistance, assurance, and encouragement.

Since this is the end of the actual plan, here is my summary of pros and cons that I've found:

What I liked about this diet:

• Relatively short-term (although it didn't feel like it)
• Results were easily seen and measured
• It did help with the inflammation and irritation (especially after I quit eating/drinking all of the dairy in the plan)
• Some revelation about possible causes/triggers of inflammation
• Some recipes were tasty, with some simple alterations (that fell within the guidelines of the plan)

What I didn't like about this diet:

• Not an easy change
• So much dairy!
• Did not relieve all of my inflammation symptoms (still experienced symptoms, but they were decreased some in intensity)
• Hard to adjust to not using any sort of seasonings other than salt and pepper, which led to
• Bland recipes
• Recipes that weren't quite right in terms of quantities of ingredients or total number of servings
• A LOT of work in the kitchen!
• Searching for some of the ingredients in the recipes got a little frustrating
• I wouldn't consider this a sustainable way of eating long-term

Our total weight loss was 11 pounds for me and 3" off of my waist, and 12 pounds for my husband (he never did any measurements).  My goal was to lose 15 pounds during this diet, but even I realize that's quite a bit of weight to lose in three weeks.  Plus, I wasn't incorporating the exercises and treadmill workouts during the diet plan, because I just did not have time.  Also, the third week/phase is called "maintenance", which indicates that the meal plans during this time are not meant for rapid weight loss.  We plan to continue our healthier eating and weight loss in the weeks to come, and will be able to incorporate exercise from here on out.  I do have a target weight goal that I would like to reach by summer, and it will be nice to have a little more flexibility in our diets now.  Overall, I would recommend this plan for anyone wanting to lose weight, or, like us, wanting kick-start their weight loss and be encouraged.  I wouldn't say that this is a long-term lifestyle change plan, although for the right person, I suppose it could be.  Apparently, I am not that person!

I should probably mention that I wasn't doing this diet as an endorsement for the book or as a promotion for anyone or any company.  We just decided to do it on our own, and thought that our experience with it might help others who are considering this diet plan.