Okay I have quit following South Beach. I do think it’s a good plan - it’s basically eat less carbs? Alright what do I know, I don’t care about carbs or fats or startches or anything like that. I eat well, I only eat one portion, I drink lots of water every day, and I am going to have real butter! I’m just not going to eat the entire stick of real butter.

Friday I felt like hhmm, an orange would taste good - so I had one. Diets all seem to say different things - with LA Weight Loss I read that eating citrus was encouraged by one center because citrus helped you burn fat faster. But with South Beach they say no fruit for the first two weeks so you can stop having cravings.

I’m going to stick with eating good. I did stumble Sunday night and had Doritos and french onion dip (sure it sounds odd but it tastes good - I blame my brother for that just like I blame my friend Julie for introducing me to ranch dressing and pizza). Considering how much I am working out I know I will still lose weight.

I did lose four pounds (yay!) and of course I can’t tell if that is from working out or from South Beach. I don’t have any cravings, but I don’t like being restricted. I know what to eat or not to eat so I think I can do okay on my own. Plus I am working out five days a week and that is doing something.

Of course I will have to stop making banana bread every other week! It is just so good it is hard to stay away from. Yesterday we were gone all afternoon but rather then eating out (which was very tempting) we came home and had soup. My treat was a small slice of the banana bread, but I don’t want to do that every day.

I spent all of Sunday morning cooking and making desserts. I wanted to make a carrot cake, a cherry cheesecake and Dad requested a strawberry pie. First up is the carrot cake - I used the one most recently featured on the Pioneer Woman Cooks blog (love her writing and pictures!). Here are my ingredients - I did use wheat flour and organic sugar, as well as olive oil, and none of those seemed to alter the taste or cooking time.  Don’t mind the phone and computer - I had to look up the recipe and call my Grandma.

It was very easy to make and the only hold up was Dad having to run out and buy a cake pan. Yep, he had no cake pan! The mix ended up sitting in the bowl for a little while because of that. I didn’t mind that I had to wait to cook it because I forgot to get the butter out for the frosting. I haven’t made homemade frosting in a long time and wow, the frosting tasted delicious.

I had all of that left after frosting the cake. I used a regular cake pan and maybe I was supposed to use a bigger size?

Few people ate though we had ton of food and I ended up sending a large chunk of the cake home with one of my brothers and then had a piece. It was awesome. I love carrot cake!

We still have a lot left over and I’m not sure what we are doing with it. I may send it to work with my brothers, but other then that no ideas.