Fighting the Food Fight

                 It was my friend’s stag do this weekend – or bachelor party, if you’re American. It was a lot of fun, but far more relevant to this blog is the disastrous effect it had on my diet. I’m going to try and explain the culinary folly we committed, but I don’t actually remember all of it as I decided not to keep count of what I ate and drank. From memory:

10+ pints of Doom Bar ale (because it was prepaid).

8+ pints of Magner’s Cider.

6 shots of Disarrono.

6 shots of assorted rum.

1 (or more) shots of vodka.

Some Peach Schnapps.

Lots of pizza.

As many breaded chicken bite things as I could find.

More alcohol (various)

More pizza.

1 BK Double Bacon XXL.

1 BK Chicken Royale with cheese.

1 medium portion on chips.

8 BK onion rings (not worth it).

1 Whole Chicken bathed in rum.

                So a totally healthy and balanced diet, if you forget most of the food groups exist. I put on five pounds! That brought me to a total weight of 13st and 11lbs on Monday morning, which was pretty depressing. I’m sure I’ll lose it again quick enough but it was not what I wanted when I was exhausted, probably still hung over and having to go back to work after an epic weekend. I tried going for a run after work yesterday and that only made things worse – I now feel like my right thigh is made of wood and my lower back won’t bend without grumbling. 

This is another example of a ‘diet holiday’ wherein I can abandon the diet for a short time so I enjoy myself without any mitigation and then get back on the diet afterwards. As I’ve said before (I seem to take a lot of diet holidays) this is completely fine as long as you return to the diet. Like fighting any addiction a moment (or weekend) of weakness is excusable in the face of weeks of abstinence. I do appreciate the problem with an addiction is the classic ‘once you pop you can’t stop’ issue, and I’m not saying it doesn’t take willpower – I sincerely appreciate it does. I drink, I smoke very occasionally, I’ve over indulged in a plethora of things before but I don’t let them control me.

                Which is what it’s all about; control (what a roundabout way to arrive at my post subject…). I’ve got friends who smoke and say I don’t understand the addiction just because I’m not addicted. I had a friend at university who was an out-and-out alcoholic  - we’re talking beer for breakfast here, not just a couple before and after dinner – who said I didn’t know what it was like. I’ve known people who do hard drugs, adrenaline junkies and a whole host of other people with a varying array of addictions. Food is no different, it’s just less harmful (in the short term) and more socially acceptable; you can definitely be addicted to eating.

                People won’t notice it so much – we have to eat to live, after all, and usually it doesn’t alter your behaviour majorly. But you can notice some things; withdrawal definitely occurs. It’s usually confused/wrapped up in with being hungry but mood swings, aggressive behaviour and a lack of patience or rationality can all be seen in a food addict, just as with any other addict. I’m sure it’s related to the vitamins and various other things in food so should be supported by science. However, because eating food is necessary to live people tend not to notice if someone is addicted to it, or indulges unnecessarily. Sure, it won’t necessarily kill you like heroine might but it’s still a problem.

                I understand addiction. I am a food addict, and may have been a borderline alcoholic at one point. I feel that almost-overwhelming urge, the cry of need your mind lets out whenever it sees the item of your addiction. It’s like you’re being pulled towards it, drawn by a force as strong as gravity and you simply have to have it and you actually have no real choice in the matter. It is a terrifyingly powerful need and can feel impossible to fight – I have found it impossible to fight on many occasions. I had twenty-five years of finding it impossible to fight, basically living under the control of an addiction that fed itself and only became stronger with every day I gave into it which made it harder to fight on the next one. 

                It feels overpowering, overwhelming and overbearing; it is not actually any of those things unless you let it be. I’m not saying it’s easy, but it is simple. I’ve cut down on everything I over-indulged in – food, smoking, drinking, the lot of it – and none of it came easily (except smoking, as I never really made that habitual or a ritual). I didn’t give up completely – I still do each of those things and giving up food completely is pretty dumb – I just cut down on what I had. Alcohol and smoking were much easier; don’t buy them. They’re not necessary so they don’t have to go in your shopping basket. I never bought cigarettes anyway so that was easy for me. Alcohol was tougher, but I used the same tactic; I didn’t buy any. I shocked myself into doing it, I’ll be honest; after finding out a pint had as many calories in it as two slices of bread I steered clear. Losing weight was more important to me, and I made a good decision. Which is the important point here – I made a decision.

                I recently read a scientific study concerning out ‘decision’ making process. Apparently our instinctive mind is far more in control of our actions than our logical, conscious mind. Sit down because if this theory is correct (and for shock factor, imagine it is in this example) your logical mind is so slow and meticulous that it can only process one thought or action at a time – and this is the part of your mind that deals with movement. You know sometimes you have to stop walking to think about something properly, or in a complicated manner? Yeah, your logic-mind can’t do that and walk at the same time. So when you’re walking along and chatting to a mate you have very little control of what you’re saying – all those complicated opinions and thoughts you think you come up with and have in-depth discussions about are about as thought through as your decision about which hand you use to scratch your head. Think about it – that’s why I suggested you should sit down.

                So whenever you pick something on the menu, or see something that tempts you, that’s your instinctive brain, the feral little animal in your head you think you keep on a leash, willing you towards it. Every you give in to something that’s an addiction, you’re giving in to something that has enslaved your instincts through its use or abuse. This is why it is so difficult to fight it, to turn it down, to resist – because you very instincts are telling you to go and take it.

                And I’m sure some addicts will argue that it is not their fault. They couldn’t help it – if they’re instinctive drives control the majority of what they do, how can they themselves be held responsible? Firstly, your instinctive drives are dumb; it’s the part of your brain that tells you to look down the barrel of a gun to check what’s blocking it, or to test a knife edge with your finger if you’re having trouble cutting things. It’s simple, quick, and usually efficient but makes a lot of errors – Freudian Slips, attacks of Dyslexia, and saying the wrong name at inappropriate times are all the fault of this ball of instinctive demands. Ever wish you hadn’t said the first thing that came into your head? Or you’d thought more about which route to pick? You probably should have stopped for a couple of seconds and wrenched control of your decision making process out of the hands of the monkey within and into the smooth but slow system that is your higher logic function. 

                Secondly you can fight them. I do every day, apparently – although not always successfully, as today my desk mate had the most delicious looking cake and I caved after about ten minutes of her chanting “Get jealous” to me. It’s not easy – but it is the same part of the brain that makes people give in to all types of addiction, and it can be trained (apparently) like any animal. If you can find some way to reward it for saying no, you’ll find it learns pretty quick to ignore its previous addiction but you are likely just displacing it’s loyalty/affection/addiction to that other thing – which is fine, but you should be aware that’s how it works. You heard about rebounds, right? Yeah, that’s displacement. 

                The other way to train is with negative reinforcement. This is scientifically proven, across the animal kingdom, to be significantly less efficient at retraining instinctive responses but is usually easier. It does work; punishing yourself for eating too much does encourage you to eat less eventually. You have to stick with it, use that under-nourished part of your mind that functions on logic and not glandular stimulus, and continually berate yourself into doing it. If you read this blog around August-October time last year you will actually witness me doing this – I punished myself for eating too much by going to the gym afterwards or rewarded myself by eating a little more after a workout. I was training my instinctive mind to eat less and/or exercise more using this basic technique and I didn’t even know.

                My instincts were training themselves. I was just along for the ride – it’s like in the new Robocop film (not a spoiler) when they explain near the beginning why he functions so well in combat; he’s not actually making decisions, he’s just watching them being made. That’s what happened to me – and happens to a lot of people on a daily basis. We’re barely even living our lives, if this is true; we’re just experiencing them for the most part. The only time you make a real decision is if you sit down and spend time thinking it through – even then, apparently you can’t be sure.

                Or you can choose to look at it as you having two very powerful and unique decision making processes, on which your mind is used to using for quick, snap decisions and the other when you’re less under pressure. Being able to make decisions with both – or choosing which to use to make a specific decision – is where you get to take control of everything you do. And food, like any addiction, can be fought using either or both of these processes. One might start out as a weakness and the other as a little difficult to engage but eventually the first will be as strong a defence as it once was traitor and the second will be a smooth, slick mechanized machination matrix that will allow to create perfect decisions when you engage it. 

                I know it’s tough, I know it seems insurmountable, but you can say no. It might help to remember that what you’re really doing is saying ‘yes’ to something else – losing weight, being in better shape, having an excuse to buy new clothes, and much, much more! You don’t need the extra food unless you’re using it – and it’s a lot of work to shift a slice of chocolate fudge cake, trust me. So next time you feel inexorably drawn towards a dish or feel your sweet tooth tugging, remember you’ll have to run a couple of miles at least to work it off. Who knows; maybe not having to do the run will be enough of a carrot for you to avoid that extra snack.

Are You Having Fun Yet?

                  This was originally written on Thursday. It is testament to my amazing powers of organization that it took me this long to get it posted. Be impressed, readers.

                  I played another game of squash last night, and I really enjoyed it. In fact, I play four games with a friend of mine – thankfully, as I lost the first two dismally but managed a comeback taking the next two. While my friend was basically exhausted afterwards I’m pretty sure he must have enjoyed it to some extent. I’m pretty sure he agreed to go again as well. I didn’t burn as many calories as doing solid cardio for an equivalent time but I certainly got more satisfaction out of it.

                So what about this experience warrants a second blog post this week? It caused a bit of a revelation for me that I wanted to share. This was that I didn’t consider it a chore at all – not that it wasn’t tiring or required no effort, but I thoroughly enjoyed it all the way through so while it wasn’t quite as effective for calorie burn I felt I had spent my time a lot more enjoyably even thorough I was still exercising. Some people might find this a fairly obvious realization – that sports were, you know, intended to be fun – but I had previously not found any which I personally enjoyed. This meant that I was happier doing the exercise and got a better feeling afterwards as well – and I really needed the exercise, having just discovered my successful dieting had brought my calorie limit down to 1290 if I still want to lose 2lbs a week.

                I’ll be honest; I’m not limiting my intake enough to lose 2lbs a week any more. Evidence of this was the sticky chocolate pudding I had yesterday, lightly bathed in custard (hence the emergency trip to the squash court). I need to fit in more physical activity if I’m going to hit my increased goal of being 13 stone when I turn 26, and this discovery about exercise possibly being fun as well as beneficial is going to go a long way to helping that. If I can seriously manage to go to the squash courts four times a week, jogging there and walking back, I’ll be burning about 500 calories in a hour of activity which I enjoy.

                Now, numerically that is far inferior an amount than if I run for an hour – which burns about 900. And if I was truly set on this whole exercise thing, getting in shape and becoming semi-Olympian in appearance in the near future I would do that. However, I’m not; the diet and the exercise are still, as they have always been, for me and at a level I can manage, sustain and enjoy. If one of those three factors is lacking, for anyone, in their exercise regime it becomes unmanageable, unsustainable or unenjoyable (see how well that works?) and any of those negative additions to an activity or task make it much, much harder to finish or go through with – and exercise is no different.

                So that is my new mission statement for exercise – less intense, more regularly, more enjoyable. There were more ‘more’s’ in that statement so it must be an improvement. I would recommend anyone trying to lose weight or get fit (or both) try the same. Obviously you’ll have guess this already if you’re more experienced in the wonderful world of exercise, and you will need a greater intensity to get the same kind of benefit and if you’re looking to build muscle you’ll have to be pretty picky about which sport you choose if you want to get the same benefit as just pumping iron. 

So this anecdotal advice is not for you – it’s for people who are looking to improve general fitness or lose a bit of weight without feeling like the elephant in the room when they walk in the gym. I know that’s how I felt for the first couple of months I went, and I’m not saying everyone feels that way either; I’m just letting people know I appreciate it can be scary. One of my friends at work has said the gym is boring and terrifying because everyone is staring at you. I know a lot of my other friends share her opinion and this can be a very intimidating feeling – I would like to point out it is wholly not true. I people watch a lot as a hobby (because I am clearly the coolest thing since refrigeration) and very few people at the gym watch other people there, let alone out right stare or glare. Sure, there’s a couple of not-quite-casual glances but it’s nothing like the playground bullying people expect or assume to happen. Even if it did, you’re there for you – the fact that others might make comments or jibes just demonstrates an insecurity in themselves.

Yeah, I know that’s not a wholly convincing statement, or even if you do believe it you can argue that it doesn’t stop people having their own insecurities which is the crux of that matter. Doing a sport with friends is another good way around that insecurity – safety in numbers and all that. It’s also fun and distracts you from other worries that, quite frankly, are less important. A good sense of competitive camaraderie is healthy in any group of friends and indulging and/or encouraging that in any is great for getting you to do things you wouldn’t normally. So get out there, try something new and find out if you can enjoy some form of exercise!

Getting Close to Clawing Distance

                 13st 7lbs after breakfast, Monday started well! Then I forgot my work pass, wallet and hadn’t got much sleep so when these three realizations hit me in the work car park I wanted to crawl into the back seat of my car and sleep the day away. Fortunately I managed to get myself together enough to make into the office and once I’d got there I wasn’t getting away from it. So I’ve ploughed through today and just about made it.

                In diet news I have now tried my week without exercise. I felt lazy and fat for not going and didn’t really spend my time much more productively. Thus I have reasoned the gym and exercise are still worthwhile as part of my weekly schedule. I snuck in a quick visit on Sunday playing squash with a friend which was pretty fun, and also spawned the conversation I’m going to write about today.

                We were basically discussing ‘being thin’ versus ‘being fit’. My objective for the last year has been the former, but she’s quite far ahead of me on that and so her objective has been the latter. Having shunned weights for the majority of my workout practice I was reticent to agree initially but that was because I was looking at it from my point of view – I still need to lose weight and building muscle doesn’t do that for me. From her point of view, however, cardio is next to useless for building upper body strength and so is far less important to her as part of a workout. So we kind of went round and round in our discussion without really getting anywhere. 

                I didn’t have the above revelation until yesterday evening, so was at least half to blame for our conversation becoming a little circular. I blame the fact that I was tired from the workout and was recovering from being beaten by a girl at squash, which are terrible excuses but it’s the best I can manage. I did accept that my upper body strength was not what I wanted it to be, however, and also that I would be changing my workout system to build on this come the turning of my twenty-sixth year. That being in the very near future, however, I wondered if it was worth waiting.

                My quandary comes from the fact that I originally started my diet, and this record of it, in the pursuit of becoming thin and set out to achieve that goal within a year. I am reluctant to start doing weight work at the gym, most likely only because I haven’t done any of it before and don’t really know what I would do, because that year is not quite up yet. However after the above conversation with my friend I’ve realised my goal was flawed from the outset – or perhaps ‘restricted’ is a better word. While weight loss was my primary goal, secondary to that was being in shape. This appears to have been an unconscious aim, so much so that it took me a year to realise and/or accept it. 

Perhaps it was also related to what I like to think of realistic achievement setting; when I started my diet I was 18st and 9lbs – 261lbs – and at that stage being fit and in shape was an unrealistic goal in the conceivable future. However, now I’m in a much better place to achieve that goal so I could – and probably will – change my targets for my fitness regime to include a little more muscle and weight work. My arms are looking a bit spindly and I don’t think that’s just down to a skewed perspective from having been fat. I’m still pretty terrible at pull ups so that’s something I definitely want to work on. 

What I am trying to drive at is that each person’s diet and exercise decisions are their own, and there is only one way a plan is going to work for that person – if they like it or not. Humans are incredibly capable when it comes to finding ways not to do things that they don’t want to – so good in fact that they sometimes find themselves struggling against their own instinctive need to avoid them – this is probably a socio-culturally influenced conclusion so isn’t a hard-and-fast scientific rule, for those of you about to reject my theory. So if someone tells you this is what you must do and you disagree then you will find ways to avoid doing it, or to disprove their statement. If you don’t want to do something your instinctive response – somewhat obviously – will be to not do it. It is ingrained at some primal level. This is why habits are so hard to break, and why we look for patterns in everything. 

The trick is not to break habits, but change them. Craft your responses and behaviours like an artisan creates a sculpture; little by little and adapting older parts as new ideas form. You can become a work of art, but that does require effort. Make the effort, make yourself want to make the effort, and you’ll find yourself achieving a lot more. No, it’s not easy, but do it bit by awkward bit and you will end up with a whole you have reformed in an image you wanted. If you change your mind, you can change that form even as you go. 

So, Katie, I’m sorry I was stuck in my point of view too much we could have a proper discussion about fitness and working out. I’ll have a more open mind next time and you can show me around the weight room more. I will change my goals and my methods so that they come closer to the design I want to achieve. I will also beat you at squash, but that’s a goal for the middle future I think – especially considering how much time I spent running into walls.

Closing In

                In four weeks’ time, I will be twenty-six years old. I am 13st and 7lbs (189lbs) and only 7 stone off my target. This is entirely achievable, although I think I have to bring my daily calorie amount down a little to manage it safely. This means that in a year I will have lost 5st and 8lbs – 78lbs – without significantly impacting my lifestyle. Sure, I eat less and work out more but that hasn’t taken away from what I do as hobbies or general interests – if anything it has added to it. But, inarguably, there has been change and that is what I am posting about today.

                Biggest change? Eating habits. This is probably obvious but that doesn’t make it any less important to discuss. I do eat less – and less often. I now nibble at nibbles, rather than devour them en masse, and I snack on fruit over crisps or fast food. Deserts I avoided anyway but I’ve started having these now as a good way to compliment an otherwise-healthy meal when I’m low on calories so I don’t have to stuff my face with spinach leaves or other salad in a confused binge eating session. I very rarely have crisps at all now, and only drink sugar-free drinks (for the most part. Recent Red Bull moments have basically banned that from my list of acceptable drinks altogether), both of which have been a massive influence in both my weight loss and general eating habits. I still have these things occasionally, but nowhere near as often or in as large amounts.

                Second biggest change is the amount of physical exercise. Again, this is pretty obvious if you talk to me or read this blog but it is, again, still important. I am walking places more, running places more, randomly doing press-ups or sit-ups occasionally when I’m bored or waiting on something. I find myself more able – and more willing – to exert myself physically and do physical labour or activity. It’s a pretty awesome feeling, and very liberating. Sure, actually doing actually requires effort but it seems I’ve got a lot more of that to give now.

                Next a little bit of a negative; I’ve become more judgemental of my appearance. Conversely one could argue (as I’m sure one of my brothers would) that caring more about you appearance isn’t a bad thing and I can’t disagree with that statement. It just becomes a bit of an issue when I find myself judging how I look compared to how I want to look, rather than how I did in the past. I think it’s not necessarily fair on myself and might make me appear vain. I also worry about how my hair looks, which isn’t a thought that’s really gone through my head before now. This concern does, however, provide a constant source of motivation. I just hope it hasn’t made me overly-critical.

                Apart from those changes I’ve noticed my conversations have become a lot more focused, or at least I have had a lot more focused conversations. This happens to anyone who gains a lot of knowledge very quickly on a specific subject, I think, and since my friends know I’ve been finding out a lot about the subject so they have been asking me questions about this specifically – which is a compliment – so I don’t think I’ve lost my ability to have diverse conversations. However, I do take interest in a lot of conversations and articles that I previously would have ignored and my twitter account is plagued by any number of fitness/diet related tweets from myself or people I have followed purely for that reason.

                I have a lot less free time. This is probably a good thing – I used to spend my time on a whole host of time consumer and fairly unproductive tasks and time-spends. I now feel I achieve a lot more on each and every day, which is immensely satisfying, and I really appreciate it when I spend an evening relaxing or by myself. I’ve recently reaffirmed to myself that I am cripplingly introverted, and part of my apparently perpetual exhaustion is propagated by my plentiful public activities on top of work and personal life. I wouldn’t say I don’t enjoy it, but I am very busy now. I get very little time to myself – yes, this is totally my choice but if I want to enjoy my life I have to do things I enjoy, right? Seeing friends, doing things, actually indulging in my plethora of hobbies, they all take time. Really it’s a bit of a timetabling miracle that I find time to get my blog entries done some weeks.

                I’ve also become more grateful to people – for a lot of things. Support, encouragement, little phrases I used to consider just lip service have all started to mean more to me (probably because I think I’ve earned it) and each and every time someone says something along those lines to me it makes me feel like I have achieved something. So I am grateful, for that and also for everyone who comes to the gym with me, even if it’s not every week, or talks to me about food and dieting or shows their support in other ways, great or small. It has shown me exactly how good my friends are and I can only be grateful to them for it. I hope I show it enough, and regularly.

                Lastly I have become a lot more judgemental and damning of people who are selfish or ungrateful. I am guilty of behaving in this manner – hopefully a lot less often now than previously – but this has been something I’ve tried to actively remove from my behaviour. I find as detestable in myself as I do in others, and I’ve found it a good judge of someone’s character to see how they react when I tell them they’re being ungrateful. People who throw it back in my face and say they have nothing to be grateful for, or that they deserve better anyway, are the kind of people I’m trying not to associate with.

                It’s mainly due to a fear I’ll start replicating this behaviour, which would be horrible. I tried to explain it to someone as them spreading negative energy and attitude, and that it would infect my spiritual balance. I was only being semi-serious – I do believe that a person’s outward expression of energy and emotion can strongly influence another’s, but I was trying to see how far I could push the argument before they called bullshit. It was about the time I started talking about their negative energy creating evil spirits which then escaped from them and tried to possess others she started getting suspicious.

The point behind this tangent is that I’m trying to avoid this behaviour in a very proactive manner; I’ve come to understand that if you focus too much on what you think you deserve other people will start thinking you deserve lesser and lesser amounts. I forgot that for a short time recently and my general life satisfaction really did take a hit as a result. Yes, you absolutely have to live for yourself BUT you also have to live with other people, and they will be far more willing to offer you things if you offer something to them. Unless they’re a complete ingrate, at which point you should let them know and/or leave them to it. Alone.

So that is how my diet and weight loss has affected me, from my point of view. I would love to hear any feedback or opinions friends and/or readers have had from either seeing me in person or from a change in tone, style and attitude in my writing so please let me know – yes, this partly an attention seeking, ego-feeding request (to which I can unashamedly admit :D ) but it would also be very interesting to know what people thought. So let me know, and let me know as well if you’re dieting or have changed your eating or exercise habits recently how you think it has affected you. Comparing stories is always good – we could have a camp fire with smores, if we found a low-calorie smores substitute.

Another Week Down, Another Week Biting Dust

               I do not know how much I weigh, at time of writing. The gym scales say 13st 8lbs, which would be awesome, but since I haven’t used them in some time it’s not a fair comparison. Also, after a weekend of slightly controlled excess, I would have expected to weigh a little more than normally but I guess I didn’t eat much on Sunday as I spent most of my time on various trains. I feel great though, slightly less tired than normal and I’ve felt my cravings a lot less than in previous weeks.

                So what have I done to change my eating habits this last week? One of my work mates told me that humans were not designed to eat three big meals a day – we are in fact intended, biological, to have five or six smaller meals. This is tied into the hunter-gatherer history humanity has whereby we would travel around looking for food, eating a little, and moving on before being found by predators or hostile humans. So I thought I would give it a go.

                I delay my breakfast until I get into work, eating at around 0850 rather than 0800. This is constituted of an egg and ham on toast, an egg and ham sandwich or a mixture of various sliced meats with an egg on toast for a calorie total of approx. 200-350, topped up with a small glass of milk before I leave for another 50. I could have a larger glass but I hate milk so limit it to this for my own contentment, but still have some because it is disgustingly healthy.

This keeps me satisfied until lunch time – and sometimes a little longer depending on whether or not I had a larger breakfast due to gym commitments in the evening. I usually work through my lunch now, allowing me to leave work at 1700 rather than 1800, and it also means I have less idle time for my stomach to get in touch with my brain about its insecurities (“Did that sandwich make me look empty? I feel empty…”). Lunch is a tomato-wrap with various filling fillings but is nearly always chicken in salad cream, three slices of salami, and a mixture of onions, rocket and cucumber. Yes, the tomato-wrap is being chosen under the probable misconception that it is healthier than a plain one. I total this as approximately six hundred calories but don’t have it all at once. For one thing, half a wrap is filling enough and for another I don’t have time to get to the deli at work, order the food, get back to my desk and eat it all. I save half of it until my afternoon break, around 1500 and then top myself up then. This keeps me full all afternoon.

I usually hit the gym around 1800, traffic allowing, and stay there for an hour to an hour and a half. I am not hungry during this time and keep a bottle of water with me at all times when possible. The physical activity keeps my mind off food and I’m not hungry for about half an hour afterwards – just long enough to get home, showered, and started on cooking something just as I start feeling some small hunger pangs.

Perfect, right? Well, not quite. Part of this evolutionist theory is that we’re constantly moving around. I work in an office; there’s only so many times I can go get water and even that is probably not representative of trekking across countryside or savannah in search of food. The other problem is that my evening meal is usually fairly substantial to compensate for the work I do at the gym. Why don’t I eat less? Because I eat little enough already. I am cutting down a little bit but I’m still wary of lowering my calorie intake too far, especially as I’m burning 800-1200 at the gym on average. 

How can I remedy these problems? As regards the supposed-to-be constant movement there is very little I can do. I’m still doing a little bit of exercise in down-time – finish a chapter, do twenty press-ups, finish writing a page, do ten, for example – but it’s difficult to fit incremental exercises into my daily regime simply because I have a sedentary job. I do what I can – use the stairs rather than the lift, walk the long way back to my car (why don’t I run to work? Three miles in the morning might only take me half an hour but I’d have to bring my suit in a bag and that would be a hideous thing to do. Same goes for cycling), make sure I walk through every aisle in supermarkets (ignoring the strange looks I get from staff members). But aside from getting a new job, which is difficult and there’s no guarantee I’ll have much more freedom of movement if I do, there’s little else I can manage.

As for combating the unbalanced meal size of my dinner I could just increase the size of each of my portion-meals over the course of the day. This would bring them up to a minimum of four hundred calories which is actually quite a lot of food for me – take into account my limit before exercise is only 1420. The upshot of me repeating that information for the millionth time is that if I don’t go to the gym – which does happen – then I may not be able to eat dinner. The reason I have the unbalanced meal is that I don’t want to over eat earlier in the day and then have to skip the gym for whatever reason (usually a toss-up between emergencies, social invites or laziness when it does happen).

So that is my new diet plan with the reasoning behind it, the supposed advantages and the obstacles I’m aware of. If anyone else has thoughts on this, or experiences, please let me know. If it is a terrible idea I’d quite like to know. It’s getting close to being simply overcast rather than cloud-haunted in England and I might need to consider buying yet more new clothes with the season change. I’d rather my weight didn’t make a surprise return unexpectedly because this idea is as flawed a tactic as Custer’s Charge. 

It also conveniently allows me to excuse eating half a wheel of blue cheese and a lot of pasta over the course of Saturday. Definitely a coincidence :D