Avocado is not an acceptable substitute for cheese

Like most Americans, I re-started The Diet again yesterday.  The Diet is capitalized because at this point it deserves to be a proper name.  I have been on and off this diet several times a year since 2011.  It isn't rocket science; it is counting calories.  Pure and simple.  It works really well if you stick to it.  Unfortunately, it's just like the old adage that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink.  You can tell a woman how to diet and lose weight but you can't make it happen unless she is ready.  This year, I am ready. 

I haven't been nearly as psycho with calories as I have been in the past and I am hoping that it is going to help me stick to it.  In past rounds of the diet, I have eaten no more than 1,100 calories per day and that isn't anything that I can stick to.  With all my other rounds of this diet, I have been meticulous with weighing my food and ensuring proper portion sizes.  Luckily, since we did this in the past, I know what a proper portion size is for certain foods and I am able to judge approximate calories based on certain items.  I have a lot of confidence that this is going to be something that I can stick to this time. 

With that being said, I did awesome on my diet yesterday and today so far.  Today I was back at work and it is usually easier for me to stay true to a diet while I am at work because I don't carry cash for the vending machines and there are only a select number of things that I bring from home. 

For breakfast, I packed a chocolate Belvita.  I LOVE these crackers.  I am not sure how long they have been around but we found them during our last diet round and they are awesome.  A pack of four of them are less than 250 calories, I think.  For a snack I packed baby carrots.  I like them because they have a mild flavor, don't need to be refrigerated, and satisfy that 'crunchy' craving that I feel like I have sometimes.  For lunch, I packed a salad with Romaine lettuce, baby spinach, pieces of cucumber, 2 hard boiled eggs and an avocado.  Normally, I smash up half of a small avocado in my salad and add an ounce of cheese.  This time I figured I would just use the entire avocado and not have cheese.  I thought that it would still provide the creaminess that I would have found in the cheese.  Big mistake.  It just turned into a weird squishy salad with too much avocado flavor.  Lesson learned. 

We also made our homemade healthy Ranch dressing.  This stuff is awesome.  Now, if you go straight from regular, full fat Ranch dressing to this, of course it isn't going to taste awesome, but it is an amazing substitute. 

The plan is to update on how this diet is going once every two weeks or so. 

Are you dieting this January?