Hazzah! Day Seven of the Cabbage Soup Diet! Do you know what that means? It means tomorrow I get coffee!

First the bad news. I gained back a pound and a half from my dinner-with-friends-cheat so now my net weight loss is 5 pounds. I know that’s still really good for six days, but I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t bummed. However, I believe in living life to the fullest, and I’ll take a pound and a half hit in exchange for a fun evening with good friends any day. I just know that today I have to be really careful.

And I will also confess that I’m a bit scared – today is brown rice and vegetables. The dreaded carbs! I’ve done this Cabbage Soup Diet before and gained back weight from Day Seven. But I think that perhaps I was a little lax on Day Seven in the past and also probably dipped a little too much into the rice. Cabbage Soup Diet Tip #7: Don’t stick your face into that bowl of rice. Try to eat more vegetables than rice. Also, ignore Diet Tip #3 – stop being lazy!

Yes, if you haven’t started working out again, today is a great day to start. Today I took my dog on a two mile walk first thing in the morning, came home and had some brown rice, butternut squash and spinach for breakfast, went to the gym and worked out on the treadmill for 40 minutes, came home and had lunch (the same thing I had for breakfast) and then before dinner I took my dog for another walk. (Only a little over a mile this time.) That may be a little extreme, but I wanted to be sure to walk off that cheat dinner and make sure the brown rice didn’t stick.

For dinner I made Mandarin Orange Chicken from Trader Joe’s (a staple in our household) with broccoli and brown rice. Of course I didn’t eat the chicken. I also realized that I hadn’t had any soup today and ate the last of the soup. (Thank god!)

Today I felt really great. Working out made me hungry, but not famished. I had all of my energy back – which admittedly at my age is marginal at best. But I was able to tidy up the house, clean both bathrooms and do three loads of laundry and I didn’t need a nap. (You are jealous of my rock star life aren’t you?)

Be sure to check in tomorrow when I give a Cabbage Soup Diet recap and let you know my total weight loss. (And thanks so much for reading about my crazy crash diet ride!)