The Harcombe Diet update

I did a post last week about the Harcombe Diet and how Dave and I were going to try to follow it, well I thought I’d bring you an update.

We started the Harcombe Diet last Monday and during the 5 days of Phase I we didn’t have it easy. The hardest thing is not being able to have certain foods or drinks that you do like. Dave struggled without his coffee, but we both kind of quite liked drinking decaff tea without any milk. You also feel quite ill, weak and tired, I suppose its as your body gets used to the new diet and the Candida dies off. I think the main problem with the first 5 days is that the food is quite boring and after the mid way point I ended up having to force lunch down knowing that I had to eat it or else I would be really hungry later. I treated the first 5 days more of a detox than a diet, drinking plenty of water and trying to cleanse my insides (if that is actually possible).

For breakfasts we were having bacon and scrambled eggs which I love, but for lunch it would be “real” meat and salad. I really missed the ability to have a dressing or even coleslaw with the salad to give it some juiciness. Evening meals were fine with meat and veg in a variety of ways.

So how did we do … I lost 4lbs and Dave lost 8lb’s over the course of the 5 days .. and then on Friday night, at the end of Day 5 we were so sick of the diet that we had takeaway pizzas and alcohol! The weekend then rolled on and we ended up going out for an Italian on Saturday night too, followed by some more wine. (This is not part of the Harcomber diet!)

This week is going to be a steady, healthy, eating week with lots of fruit and vegetables and “real” food rather than anything processed. So we will still be sticking to the principles of the Harcombe diet, but haven’t quite moved onto Phase II yet where you have to seperate out fats and carbs. We’ll start on that when we return from Centreparcs after the weekend and try to maintain a steady diet.