An Indian vegetarian 'South Beach Diet'

For the past year, my son and daughter-in-law (Hari & Kirthi) have been following the 'South Beach Diet'. Hari is primarily a meat lover - he didn't have any problem. However, Kirthi leans more towards vegetarian food and she has been modifying the diet to suit her taste also. Hari brought down his cholesterol significantly. Recently, my daughter Devi & her husband Dheeraj started following this diet. My husband started taking medication for cholesterol not too long ago even though he is dead against taking any medication. Since that time, he has been saying that he wants to go on south beach diet and try to bring down his cholestero like Hari did. Because of our schedule/journeys, this kept getting postponed. Finally two weeks ago, we had visited the kids and since they were on the sbd, we didn't eat our 'regular' rice & curries at their places. Instead we ate what they ate. Coming back home after a few days, we decided to start our own diets too. Non vegetarians should be more comfortable with this diet. The main 'cut outs' are carbs.

Well... now it has been about 10 days - both of us have lost a little over 3 lbs each. I am a 'pakka' vegetarian (I do not eat eggs even in any form) and breakfast has been hard on me. No cereal - no oats (one of these two was my 'regular' breakfast item) no bread - what do I eat? No idlis, dosas etc because NO RICE, no grains the first 2 weeks. So, I made a batter by soaking 1/2 cup each chana dal, moong dal, urid dal, and some black eye peas (I think that was a mistake). The batter was almost brown - it did not ferment properly. But, worse thing was that it tasted a little bitter and it did not have any body! But........ I have been having small 'pancake' shaped dosas (2 in number) in the morning for the past 10 days. I make eggs 2-3 times a week for my hubby. The other days, he eats 'bitter' dosas with me. I added onion, ginger, curry leaves to the batter - its ok, but I won't choose it for a 'good meal'. Next time I will try the batter without the black eye peas. This batter lasted me 10 days - For lunch, I make really 'watery' sambar with lots of veggies. We can't have beets, potatoes, carrots the first two weeks. So, I use other veggies. I make .payar puzhukk' like a soup. Instead of adding ethakkai (raw banana) or tapioca, I add chopped spinach. I can see some eyebrows going up! Basically, I can make any of our curry as a 'soup' and have that for lunch with a vegetable made like 'mezhukkupuratti' or 'thoran'. (God bless the SBD people - we can have coconut) I do not make 'thoran' often. For dinner, Devi had made lasagna using tofu instead of pasta and it was pretty good. So, I make something like that with mushrooms, spinach, etc. We have been eating a lot of 'eggplant' - (its a no gunam veggie) - no taste - not many calories either. Since, breading is not possible, we have gotten 'almond meal' (powdered almonds basically) and adding some red pepper, masala, salt to the meal and dipping eggplant slices in water and coating this meal, I pan fry the eggplants (of course spraying pam and just dripping some oil on top) and believe me or not - its PRETTY GOOD. (I pretend I am eating veggie cutlets from India coffee house) Anyway, this was better than my 'bitter dosa' attempt. Eggplants are one of the items for my 'sambar soup'. For my next batter batch, I will not use black eye peas. Let me see if that would be better.

Good thing is that we are not hungry - and no loss of energy. We can have nuts. I have made 'spiced nuts' with soya bean and adding a little mixed nuts & peanuts - that is a good snack. Beware - no more than 1/3 cup. One thing we have not done is changing to decaf. We just didn't want headaches in the morning. But, we are not BIG coffee drinkers - (I mean we do not drink 6-7 cups daily) but just 2 (or 3 at the max). Instead of sugar - its splenda. Just half a package (1/2 tsp) for a cup of coffee.

This has gone pretty well for the past 10 days. I am at a point where I do not crave food anymore. My husband has always been a controlled eater (he does not 'crave' food like I do), but he is a real rice lover. I guess he 'longs' for some rice. Lets see how the diet goes on its 'second' phase. It should be easier since we can add 'carb' back slowly. We have been eating 'brown rice' even before we started this diet. May be we can 'go back' to it. I may skip rice altogether. I am a diabetic and my sugar levels are better now.

I'll come back and fill you in on how the 'diet' is going (or not!)