Weekly Update Report 3: Diet > Revenge of the Sith

            This title could have been a lot more pessimistic or disappointed; thankfully I managed to stick to spirits on my night out on Saturday and the walk home balanced me up quite nicely. Friday was a bit of a binge but again walking too and from work – and it was a leaving meal for one of my colleagues so if I’d gone over a little I wouldn’t have been too upset about it.

Monday: 232 calories [Gym]

Tuesday: 12 calories

Wednesday: -11 calories [Gym]

Thursday: 14 calories

Friday: 136 calories

Saturday: 71 calories

Sunday: 221 calories [Airsoft]

Weekly Total: 675 calories

Weight: 248lbs.

            As ever positive numbers are calories left over to remain within diet and negative numbers are calories over the diet. So a brilliant week! Despite concerns I might have had during it. I am especially pleased with Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday but Saturday is also pretty damn good.

A number of people have told me that I don’t need to balance my calorie numbers so closely to 0 and having a couple of hundred calories left over each day would only help rather than hinder the diet. I had tried to explain why I was trying to run at a 0-point balance

1)    This would be true if I wasn’t already on a pretty restrictive diet (for my weight). If I eat too little then the diet will fail (or crash). I am on a advised dietary limit of 1670 calories a day (before exercise) and if I go below 1200 calories too frequently my body will ‘crash’, going into a fat-retaining starvation mode. The metabolic rate slows down, fat burning is decreased and losing weight becomes very difficult – also any calorie increase leads to near-immediate weight gain, which is why diets often fail; literally because people don’t eat enough, get depressed and binge so end up putting on weight. Ergo, I need to eat a certain amount of calories for the diet to work.

2)    Exercise costs calories. If I want to exercise – which I do, as it helps lose extra weight – I need to put it enough energy to fuel my body for it. If I eat 1600 calories in a day, for example, and do 500 calories worth of exercise those calories are spent, gone as dust upon the wind. This would drop me to 1100 calories for my daily in take, below my minimum intake. The energy for that exercise has to come from somewhere, and my limit of 1670 was set for me to lose 2 pounds a day without any exercise. If I exercise as well, great – I’ll be able to start using calories for muscle fuel and growth and eventually become a chiselled and perfect image of manliness. While I’m working my way there I need to avoid driving myself to exhaustion by not properly fuelling those efforts; exercise is good but requires energy and fuel, not just motivation and effort.

3)    Part of the point behind this diet is that it’s my diet and why it’s easy for me to keep to it – IT’S MINE! For me, by me. Sure, a 1 pound a week goal would be less intense and might mean I don’t have to exercise so often. Yeah, it is statistically proven that people who take on harsh diets give up on them more. I like exercise, having started to do it regularly, and I failed every statistics class I ever took so I feel breaking a statistical rule is in my nature. I’m actually enjoying this, even though it can be difficult – perhaps because it is difficult – and it is succeeding. I’m not telling anyone else to take up dieting in the same way, and nor am I saying this is the categorical best to diet and/or lose weight. This is working for me the way I’m doing and that is probably the most important part of any diet – that it works for the person using it.

So I’m dieting harshly and balancing strictly to set a norm or habit, to re-condition my body in such a way that I don’t carry extra weight equivalent of nearly 50% of my ‘ideal’ body weight. No, it won’t be easy – obviously 7 stone is a lot to get rid of – but I have tried gentle or gradual dieting in the past and it doesn’t work. People who have seen how I approach problems would probably use words like ‘direct’, ‘drastic’, ‘dictator-like’; I’ve found for me to maintain focus and motivation with a project I can’t slowly whittle away at the project the whole time and instead have to hew great sections out of it.

There’s probably a message about my psychological disposition in there some where, but I’m okay with that. This approach also gets the job done faster in this case, and I’d rather put more effort in now and benefit earlier than take it easy and have slower results. I’m not going to lose my motivation for this because I carry the remaining six and a bit stone – approx. 84-88lbs – of it with me wherever I go. I’m not going to give up because it’s difficult, I’m not going lie to myself when I let myself down and I’m going to keep going even if I get temporarily demotivated. My attitude is I can do this. I’ve done it for three weeks and, in the fashion of people who make horribly naïve yet sweeping generalizations everywhere, I am going to say I will be able to keep doing it.

And now I’ve said that quite publicly I’m going to have or admit to being an embarrassing failure. Even more motivation.

Also for those of you wondering what on earth Airsofting is, it’s like paintball without the paint; I regularly go to places with friends that allow – nay, encourage – us to run around and shoot at other human beings with replica weapons. If you think it sounds redneck, google. You’ll be gratified to discover you’re correct, it is quite a redneck sport. Worse is that some times you get people who take it too seriously and forget it’s a game, or take it too seriously and have serious insecurity issues. This should make a sport that’s dependant on the honesty of its players pretty terrible but it seems to work out okay most times.

When we played this time there was only a very minimal element of unsporting behaviour so it went rather well. I found I was much better able to run around for longer periods and at what I suspect were faster speeds than I used to and in one game I almost managed to run around the entire bunker without pausing for breath, somewhere between 200-300 metres which may not sound like much but when you’re carrying a gun and something about the size of a cardboard box and about 5-10 kilos it adds up – especially when you know there’s a dozen people behind trying to gun you down. That kind of stress can really wear your nerves down. It worked out, after some deliberation with my friends about the quality of the exercise, as 1000 calories worth for 4 hours of play but I think I may have underestimated somewhat based of research after the event. Either way, thoroughly enjoyable and definitely a good day all around.

However, explaining to people at work why it looks like I got attacked by a swarm of bees of participate in some sort of Fight Club is less than ideal. Especially when my arms are cramping up something awful and when I hear someone behind me I panic and think they’re about to shoot me.

Week 2 Progress Report

            I appreciate this is, in fact, Tuesday and not Monday but Monday turned out to be a lot busier than I expected. I also appreciate I haven’t updated this in a week, but last week turned out to be a lot busier than I expected as well. However, since I’ve finally found some time I thought I’d get this done so –TAADAA! This is the Week 2 Progress Report!

Monday: -210 Calories

Tuesday: +456 Calories [Gym]

Wednesday: +98 Calories [Gym]

Thursday: +208 Calories

Friday: +238 Calories

Saturday: -774 Calories

Sunday: +101 Calories [Gym]

Total Balance: +117 Calories.

Weight: 251lbs

            Woo! A nearly balanced week! Definitely what I was going for by eating an entire stuffed-crust pizza on Saturday. No other reason at all…

            In truth, I was really disappointed about my Saturday eating, even if in retrospect it was necessary to balance my week up. Partly, I was very hungry and needed something substantial to eat. Mostly it was because I had to wait an hour and a half for a pizza after the self-confessed drunk driver couldn’t find my friends’ flat and I worked myself into a fuming state as the time wore on, imaging various ways of attacking my local Domino’s outlet for maximum strategic efficiency, one of which involved my car. Fortunately, the driver who did turn up was not the man who had called me earlier and my pizza was hot and, quite probably, a whole new pizza after the drunk delivery driver had made a break for Scotland with his stolen supply of other people’s pizza.

            After devouring the whole thing in about twenty minutes I wasn’t satisfied at all and just felt like I’d clogged my veins with the semi-solid food equivalent of pure disappointment. As of that fateful day, I swore myself off Domino’s forever pending emergencies. In future I will just make something of my own or go for Chinese. No, not any healthier but in the event that I need to recover some calories for the week or want take out, that is going to be my cuisine of choice.

            I am very happy with Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday, as well as Monday because I’ve cut down on my day-to-day variance a lot. Despite this, I do save up a lot of calories over the course of the week which isn’t good – I’m basing my diet on a lower limit so if I go below that technically I’m crash dieting which is apparently a bad idea according to science. I’m not sure if a Saturday binge is the correct solution to saving 400-800 calories during the week but it means I can still enjoy myself on a night out without panicking about my diet.

            I’ve also lost a lot of weight, which is good, and I’m starting to feel it – I’ve got a lot more energy and occasionally break out into a jog or run spontaneously, for example while I was waiting at Gatwick to pick my dad up I started jogging around the McDonalds car park to help fight the urge to go in a gorge myself. It worked, and I gained an insight into how animals at zoos feel because a number of the patrons stared in outright shock, disbelief and astonishment at me while I did circuits.

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Hitting 5 a Day

            I just hit my five-a-day. To a lot of people this might not be that much of an achievement but I’ve been lucky to hit two a day for the last six months of so and today while moaning about how Morrisons didn’t have my preferred sandwich (Ham & Mustard, 291 calories, £1.40 – all round winner) I slouched into M&S after checking Boots didn’t have anything and sulkily picked out a chicken salad and some sort of berry juice drink which looked like it might contain something resembling vitamins. On the way out, my co-worker Will reminded me that carrots were rich in vitamin A, which I’d been hunting down since I started this, so I reluctantly grabbed a pack of raw carrots with hummus (the hummus was not touched).

            The berry drink was just about okay, a little too sweet and full of what I can only imagine is referred to as ‘zest’, but the carrots were too much. Despite my cunning plan to mix them with the (surprisingly good) chicken salad I couldn’t finish them all – I really don’t like raw carrots. Disappointed in myself, I threw the four remaining carrot slices away and slumped back into my chair to contemplate finishing the berry juice.

            And that was when I noticed it was two of my mythical five a day. With some fruitandvegebra (in which apples, bananas and carrots all = 1) I realised I had, after years of indifference and apathy, hit my five portions of fruit and/or vegetables a day, completely by accident and before midday. A fantastic success! I am no longer upset about not finishing the carrots – which also provided 300% of my daily vitamin A so if I had eaten healthily until now I could probably get away with a half portion. As it is, I need to play a little of catch up so 300% is most likely about what I need.

            I don’t think I’ll have the berry drink every day, but I have been eating a full portion of sweet corn with my dinner most nights so I can replace it with some kind of orange juice drink which will keep me at the five-a-day mark. From now on I will be including a score out of five for each day in my weekly progress reports so I can track how successful I am at keeping this up. Hopefully, very. On a slightly separate note, my lunch was very filling and only 707 calories so while I feel like I have shards of carrot stabbing into my gut I can console myself with the knowledge it was nutritiously worth it.

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Week One Progress Report

            So the first week of my drastic new dietary plan is over and I’m still alive. This disproves my long-held suspicion that exercise would kill me, which was a pleasant surprise. Below are the stats for last week; ‘+’ numbers are calories saved and ‘-‘ are how many calories over I went that day:

Monday: +772 [Gym]

Tueday: -569

Wednesday: +336 [Gym]

Thursday: +537 [Gym]

Friday: +181

Saturday: -337 [Gym]

Sunday: -371

Week Total: +549 calories.

Weight as of 11.03.2013 AM: 255lbs [-5]

That’s right – the week is a success! Despite a large amount of rum on Saturday night and a stuffed crust Meatilicous Pizza from Dominos I have managed to balance my weekly calories intake, more or less. While I appreciate it’s not a total success in that I did go over on three of the seven days in all fairness this was due to birthday celebrations and since I only get one of those a year it is very unlikely I will have a second – for one thing, I won’t be drinking for 7 hours straight every Saturday night in the future. Equally, I will be avoiding Dominos pizza in the future when possible.

I managed to hit the gym four out of seven days, which is good – to clarify my original statement about going to the gym I aim to be going to the gym every day by the end of three months. I know I didn’t make that clear at all before so I thought I should do so now as it seemed appropriate. I lazed out on Sunday but judging by how sore I was on Sunday I think it might have been a good idea not to go. I am recovered and after some rearrangement to my evening I will be going to the gym tonight, making a good start to the week.

Finally, while I appear to have lost 5lbs in a week I’m putting some of this down to day-to-day variance rather than an extremely efficient weight-loss plan. I’m also aware – and I am oft reminded – if I lose too much weight too fast my body will go into weight retention mode and it will become very difficult to lose weight which is why I’m not overly upset about not meeting my daily calorie intake exactly – ideally, I want the above numbers to be in double digits rather than triple so my diet meets the calorie allowance more closely and constantly rather than having a massive variance day-to-day.

Again, thank you to everyone for being as supportive as they are of my endeavour and thank you to anyone who sent me birthday messages! I had a great first week and I’m actually looking forward to future weeks working to meet my goals more closely.

JC

Dieting is Personal

            Four whole days in and I’m still eating what I want [except Wetherspoons’ Share Platters]. It helps that I don’t eat dinner until after the gym and I’m strangely not as hungry as I thought after an hour or so of cardio. I had a rather eclectic dinner of olives, pasta, beef jerky and a banana when I got back in an attempt to cover my calorie need for the day, and my hunger. Having had another terrific gym work out (terrific by my standards at least) I consulted Myfitnessacquaintance (we’re still not ‘pals’) to check my progress. A couple of informative by thought provoking things came to light.

1)    I underestimated my starting weight slightly – by five pounds, to be precise – so I was slightly annoyed but not overly much.

2)    My diet is pretty atrocious, or was. No, still is. I need a lot more potassium, Vit A, Calcium and Iron.

If anyone has tips on which foods I can find those things in I’d greatly appreciate a list. I’m vaguely aware carrots might be involved and that spinach and milk can help too but I don’t particularly like milk and it is very calorific. I might be able to mix spinach into my lunch sandwich and I can get carrots on lunch as well, even though I’m not a massive fan of them. I will try to institute a quarter or half pint of milk at the end of the day if I’ve got the calories spare but I’m not making that a diet policy.

Now, some people might argue that I should make room in my diet for the milk by giving up some of the less healthy things in it – like olives or beef jerky. However, his goes against the principle I entered into this with, which was small steps and I could eat what I liked within the calorie limit. Hitting my vitamins is definitely a goal, but I’m not going to start eating foods I don’t like for it as it will make me less likely to stick to the diet.

Again, people might cite this as being a willpower problem and I have to concede that sure, maybe it is. However, the main reason people don’t eat foods they don’t like or enjoy eating because they don’t like or enjoy eating them. You wouldn’t watch a film you didn’t like if you had the choice, would you? Or play a sport you didn’t enjoy. Ergo, just because I am dieting does not mean I will change everything I eat immediately and completely. I mean, I had a diet before I started this – it just wasn’t very healthy. So the phrase ‘I’m on a diet’ just means you’re eating things. ‘I’ve changed my diet’ is more appropriate. If I gave up the foods I like I’d say, ‘I’m pretending to be someone else and so dedicated to this deception am I that I’ve taken up their diet’.

So while I will be hunting for ways to obtain these mythical vitamins I will be looking for them in foods I will enjoy eating, so I can enjoy my new diet and not get depressed and give up. I would advise anyone else looking at dieting or changing health regime to not give up the things they like, just find ways to cut down or fit them in – I’ve always said you can eat what you want as long as you exercise to compensate. I’m just living that way now and while it’s tough, it’s certainly do able.

Thanks and Gratitude

Since I started dieting on Monday – or publicly announced my aim to start dieting, as I’d done a bit before then – I’ve had four of my friends be inspired to start focusing more on their eating habits, exercise structures or general health. They might not exactly have said it [Only one has outright come out and say it] but I like to think I provided the catalyst which ignited their background plans to do something about it and galvanised them into action. It’s also really, really encouraging and helps me motivate myself to stay focused which after two days sounds like I’m about as reluctant to change my ways as a planet is to leave its orbit.

            What I’m really driving at here is that it is much easier to do this as a group – it makes me feel less like I’m alone in my endeavour. Weight is a massive first-world problem and I know there are support groups and clubs and organizations out there all geared towards ‘solving the weight issue’ but as a result of my natural cynicism I refuse to accept these groups truly care about the individuals past making money and advertisement. Even if I had a personal trainer I’d find it hard to really trust they were there for me and not just for the job. However, when I go to the gym with friends and talk to them about it, I trust their sincerity and value their advice even though it may well be less professionally informed than someone who gets paid to do it as a living. It becomes a group thing, something we work together for, and that really helps us all stay motivated.

            Myfitnesspal has also been pardoned (slightly). It has allowed me to turn my regime into a sort of game, earning points which I can spend on food. It might seem childish or, perhaps, desperate, but it helps me and being honest that’s what this is all about; me. I’m not losing weight for anyone else, to impress anyone or to conform. I’m losing weight – or at least shape – for me, for my health and my generally well being; because I want to be even more awesome than I already am.

            So, thank you Jason, Lizzie, Paul, Brad, Richard, Hannah (and Tom), my brothers Marcus and Matthew, Jen, James Davies, April and everyone who has sent encouragement and motivation in any form at all, and thank you for the continued support you’ve promised. I very much look forward to reaping the first obvious benefits of your fantastic friendship in about 6-8 weeks. Which means you have to keep being nice to me for at least that long :p

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Day 3:

            So you’re aware, I can physically feel what I believe is my stomach preying upon the weaker, less predatory organs inside me right now. If it growls, that’s only because it’s about to start hunting – and I fear it knows I only need one kidney to live.

Food Rage

         I had a bit of a breakdown in Boots yesterday. It was about crisps and how their makers are slowly choking the life out of the populace.

            To explain; I downloaded the myfitnesspal app for my phone under recommendation from my cousin. We started out okay – I was overjoyed to discover that the ham salad sandwiches I make at home are about 30% less calorific than those sold in most sandwich sections at retailers. However, we quickly had a falling out; I was informed I could only have 1670 calories a day. This, I’m sure, was in part due to my slightly critical description of my lifestyle [‘mostly sedentary’] and the rather ambitious goal I set myself of losing two pounds a week – weight, not money. Two of my sandwiches come to 464 calories, over a quarter of my daily intake. I consoled myself in the knowledge that one was breakfast and the other most of lunch and I could still afford a comfortable dinner.

            And then I went to Boots. Normally, I get a packet of crisps and a drink with a sandwich – possible two sandwiches previously but I stopped that from the get go of this program. It can’t be a fizzy drink/soda either, as stated before, so I had moved on to some sort of Lucozade product. Here’s a tip; a 500ml bottle of Lucozade has more calories than Chad’s Ham Salad Wonder Sandwich. A lot more. Coke doesn’t, but as I’m sworn off that I grumpily grabbed a Ribena something – which is only 16 calories light than the Wonder Sandwich – and moved to the crisp section. This is where it all went wrong.

            A 50g packet of Walkers Deep Ridged Flame Grilled Steak crisps have a calories-to-weight ratio of approximately 7kcal:1g [328 calories/pack]. I couldn’t believe it – the flavouring dust on them must be pretty much stodge! The Sensations were close to as terrifyingly deadly to a mostly sedentary office worker and after tearing down the display and threatening the manager with one of the crisp racks I was arrested for harassment, violent behaviour and attempted GBH.

            That didn’t happen. Instead I sulked about it and finally found a pack of bacon flavoured Shapers Wafers which held only 99 calories and got a wrap out of depression as well.

            I didn’t eat the wrap, instead lunching slowly enough to try and trick my stomach into thinking it was full – going on the basis that it apparently takes 20 minutes for your stomach to tell your brain that it’s started getting full, which is pretty slow for an electrical signal but I guess with all the crap in my system it might have to circumnavigate a couple of unexpected/barely conductive obstacles.

            And then myfitnesspal put some effort into making it up to me for starving me to death and causing near hysterics in Boots. After fiddling around with the other half of the diary system – the ‘exercise’ bit – I’ve found it is ridiculously easy to exercise. For example, my leisurely walk home from work burns 286 calories while the tiny jog I hoped to institute as a daily measure burns another 154 calories and that’s before any gym work! So I’m slightly more cheerful about the dieting/exercise idea as it appears I can break into slowly and still get some gains out of it. I can just about fit one packet of crisps into my daily menu if I wanted to, but I think I’ll skip it; if I get used to not having them hopefully I’ll never crave their calorie-injected, deep-fried and humanity destroying snackiness again.

First Steps and Thin Aspirations

            I am fat. For two years I was in denial, and then for a third I ignored it, as if it would go away. For the last year, the fourth, it has slowly ground me down into a depression. I’m not morbidly obese – except according to my Wii Fit – and I don’t have any issues getting up in the morning or breathing or anything that serious, but every now and then I’ll find I can’t move the way I wanted to because my gut gets in the way, or I have to move the car because I’ve parked too close to another without realizing I wouldn’t be able to get out. Frustrating, depressing and basically undesirable.

            Until I was twenty-one I was in pretty good condition – almost a black belt and working out three or four times a week. Then I had a year abroad in America, I did less walking to places, I ate less healthily and generally got a bit lazy. Then I got a lot lazy when I came back home, and never really kicked the habit.

            So today this changes. I am embarking upon a campaign to get back in shape. I have in the past promised myself this but let myself down and, quite frankly, failed. Why is this time different? Well, I have a plan:

            Monday-Friday is going to be an intense change of lifestyle. Gym every night, walking everywhere as much as possible and those all important dietary changes – fizzy drinks? No. Snacks? No. Dessert? Right out. Any form of batter is also being removed from the list of acceptable foods – and that’s going to be something I miss. Chips and fries are going to be avoided whenever possible as enemies of health, and fast food or takeout is strictly limited to special occasions.

            Weekends are going to be slightly more lax so that I can enjoy myself a bit and not go completely cold turkey. However, I’m maintaining the ban on batter and the avoidance of chips and fries as this is a good way to for me to cut calorie intake. I’ll avoid snacks and fizzy drinks away from meals/nights out and stick to beer, cider or shots where possible to avoid mixers.

            Motivation is the difficult part, really. Making plans and even doing them is a very minimal effort compared with keeping focus on doing so and not getting distracted or procrastinating. And that is I am starting this blog; a once a week record of my progress. Hopefully it will keep me focused and I can kick bad habits while picking up good ones. And maybe learn to enjoy salads.