I hope you both have a great holiday! Get some good rest and relaxation, and some nice food too.
I know how you feel about getting cranky when you are hungry, I have suffered a lot after I made the switch to Montignac and having 3 meals a day (I used to skip breakfast). I find that a handy supply of things like nuts, some fresh fruit, celery / carrots, or some 70% + cocoa solid chocolate to snack on if I feel the crankyness approach helps a lot.
I can now see where your friend is coming from, as she is an anti diet campaigner. However, in Montignac's 1st book, he is very much an anti diet campaigner too. He strongly disagrees with yo yo dieting, as you always end up worse than you started eventually. This sounds like what your friend is saying too. In my humble opinion, Montignac is not a diet. It is a change in eating habits for good. I like to think I will always be following the Montiganc plan to some extent. This sounds like what you are planning too.
I know you feel annoyed or sad that you are at a plateau. I've just been looking at my stats, and I've been at a plateau for what I realize is about 2 months at least.
I put this down to 3 main things:-
1) I'm getting very close to my goal weight - based on my body mass index. It is always those last 5 - 10 lbs that are the goign to be the hardest to get rid of.
2) I've kicked up my yoga practise to at least 2 sessions a week, which is really helping to tone / build my muscles. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to become body builder size at all - but I have very poor arm strength, and pretty flabby abs too
So I see some of the plateau as muscle gain weighing more than fat loss.
3) I've been slipping into Phase 2 of the Montignac, possibly out of boredom with Phase 1. When I started Montiganc, I was very good at only drinking water throughout the day, with some green tea occassionally - and my morning coffee. But i've moved over to drinking more and more fruit juices - which probably cantain WAY too much sugars...
Looking at your stats - youa re very close to your goal weight already. You may be suffering from my 1st point too. It just takes a little more time for those last few bits to go!
Its so good to hear you've weened yourself off sweetner in your coffee. That took me a while to do as well, and it does make a world of difference in the taste. Actually, I've found that many of the foods and drinks I used to consume frequently are now unbearably sweet and tasteless now.
Your final point about the skim milk vs whole milk. I've not read Montgnac's book adapted for women, but one of my main complaints about the Montignac book is that it does tend to be slightly contradictory.
Personally, I drink a lot of milk (in fact, I have a lot of any dairy products - I like to try and get my calcium for other health reasons). I always go for skim milk (fat free) to drink or put on muesli, and semi skim (2%) in my coffee. In America, we have whole milk, 2% milk (semi - skim) and fat free (skim). This is more for personal preference rather than interpretation of the Montignac recommendations. Although I do avoid whole milk to try and cut down a little on the saturated fats.
I had a quick look at the GI list on the mendoza site.
Full fat milk has a GI of 24 and a G load of 3 (an average of 5 readings)
Skim milk has a GI of about 30, and a G load of 4.
So both of them are technically "ok".
Sorry to be vague on that one. I think it would be ok to follow preference on this one.
I'm getting a new book soon, it's not Montignac, but one that was recommended by the mendoza site (
http://www.mendosa.com/gidigest.htm). When that arrives, I'll see if it helps to clarify which milk is best.
Sorry for the long post!
Spang