Hey, I lost about 15 pounds last summer, and I wasn't working out too seriously then. I ate more healthily than I ever had in my life, and felt better...and, most importantly, was never hungry. My skin also cleared up and my digestion got way better. I thought, (since I've already e-mailed the tips to people before and it's easy to copy and paste it) I'd post it here, so people could use whatever might be useful...

Of course, I wasn't cycling when I did this diet, so I don't know if you'd have to modify it to get more carbs when doing heavier work-outs. That may be...I found these things called "Organic Food Bars" which seems to have just good stuff in it, though.

Sorry, it's kind of long...

"So, what I did is basically the Zone, so you can look it up or buy a book and talk to your doctor about it. It's basically a really balanced diet, so you don't eat carbs unless you balance it with a protein (and the carbs are from more healthy sources), but you don't count them completely out of your diet.

I also did a kind of modified version that my friend coached me through, designed to really reduce intake of sugar and starches (a yeast reduction diet), and since I was the kind of person to want to eat the whole basket of bread at a restaurant, it made sense for me. I avoided mushrooms and vinegar, which harbor yeast, but you don't have to pay any attention to that, necessarily.

These are the foods I didn't eat at all: anything with "sugar" in the ingredients, bread, (except for this one kind that I'll tell you about), pasta, white rice, corn products (corn is not so bad in tiny amounts), cheese (including cottage cheese), milk, dried fruit...I think that's it.

The thing is, though, don't focus on what you're not allowed to eat. There's so much you can eat. Make sure you always have something handy, so you're never hungry. This is what I ate:

Breakfast:

Low Fat Plain Yogurt with blueberries and strawberries and slivered almonds on it (this tastes like a fabulous dessert, and I wanted to eat it all the time. The trick is stevia, which is a natural sweetener. You put a tiny bit into the yogurt with a little vanilla extract and it's amazing. Research Stevia online, though, because there's some controversy about it's healthfulness. I decided it was ok for me, though. Since I can't get good berries now I make a shake with blueberries, yogurt, a little no sugar soy milk, vanilla and stevia. It tastes like ice cream, which is nice.

You can also have an egg and a piece of toast (with this special bread called Ezekial bread, which only uses sprouted grains, so it's a high protein bread...and essentially doesn't have flour in it...this bread is what saves your life, too, because it's just too sad to never be able to have a sandwich or toast). You can also occasionally have a sausage if you're out to breakfast...or any kind of omelette that doesn't have cheese in it. Mix it up so you don't feel too deprived. I use yogurt on anything I would normally want to eat with sour cream.

For awhile, when I had more time, I'd make an omelette with spinach (from frozen), sauteed in onions and garlic, with yogurt on top. It's really good, and really healthy. You can have it for dinner, too.

Or if you're only having the shake and it's not keeping you full long enough, have some almonds, too.

Lunch:

Having lunch meat at hand is really helpful. You can make a sandwich with the Ezekial bread if you want, but you don't want to have too many pieces of bread per day. Ideally, make a sandwich with hummus, because legumes are better to eat than mayonnaise. Or, you can have a salad with chicken, almonds, sunflower seeds, and other vegetables in it...It makes you feel like you're eating a lot. I'm usually running around in the middle of the day, so I get one of those tossed salads. Just no cheese. You can have an almond butter sandwich (the almond butter is really fine to eat, though it is higher in fat, so don't have too much too often). Or a green apple with some almond butter and cold cuts is good. You can have a lot of different things...just think higher protein, selective carbs...Chili and brown rice is actually a really great, filling thing to eat. I'd put a little yogurt on it instead of sour cream. When I had no time to prepare something, I'd grab some lunch meat (you can eat a lot of roast turkey if you want), some brown rice crackers, an apple, and some almonds.

Dinner:

Again, low fat protein, vegetables, brown rice.

An easy thing I'd do is buy low fat ground turkey and make turkey burgers, have some brown rice, and vegetables. Or you can get those packaged, chicken sausages and cook them up...that's a quick, no fuss source of protein. You can also occasionally make a guacamole with avocado and yogurt as a treat (you don't want the avocado too often, or too much of it, because it's higher fat, but it's important to have treats).

Or again, there's chili and brown rice...very filling, and good in cold weather, when you need comfort food.

Or there's also brown rice pasta and low carb pasta sauce (you can buy it at Trader Joe's) for the occasional pasta craving, which I get (I bought some soy parmasan cheese). Put some chicken and vegetables in it, and it's a perfect meal.

Or any number of other things that you can do if you want to cook more than I did then...

For snacks:

At Trader Joe's there are some dried salted peas, which aren't amazing, but when you want to mindlessly shove food in (which I sometimes do), they're handy to have around.

Brown rice crackers are great (they're the small crackers, not rice cakes...those are fine, too, but they don't taste as good). They come in different flavors. Make sure you don't buy a kind that has cheese in it, and it should be brown rice. I'd just be careful about portion control, and would separate some into a little ziplock bag (that helps with almonds, too, since I can't stop eating them sometimes). You can have some other nuts, too. Some are higher fat than others...I think macadamia nuts are the worst, if I remember correctly.

Flavored sparkling water (the unsweetened Poland Springs or Perrier kind) with a little stevia mimics soda and makes you feel really full. It's handy to have around. If you drink one of those, you often don't want to eat anything afterwards.

Popcorn (check ingredients...there are some that have a lot of bad crap...whole foods should have a good kind) is a good snack. I like putting garlic powder, salt and pepper in it, so it turns into a real treat.

A little bowl of yogurt with stevia and vanilla in it is a really good dessert. (If you want to go hard core, you can get nonfat yogurt, but I didn't and I swear it worked anyway...the texture is a little better). Even a little soy milk with stevia and vanilla is a good sweet treat. Apples and pears...

Unsweetened carob covered almonds are good to have around in case you really need a chocolate fix. Very occasionally you can also have these carob covered rice cakes. I've also recently discovered Rice Dream "Ice Cream", that has no dairy or sugar in it and is really yummy.

I think the idea is to keep your blood sugar stable. To eat a really balanced diet, so you're not eating too many simple carbs that cause your blood sugar to spike and then drop. Lots of vegetables and low fat meat (fish is great, just too expensive for me). I was told that some fruits are higher in sugar than others, and that as a rule of thumb try to eat fruits from colder climates rather than things like bananas and mangoes. No juice (it's full of sugar). Berries are really good for you, frozen or otherwise. You should never be hungry, and you get into the habit of making sure you always have food with you that is good for you to eat, so you never feel deprived, and your body feels good."