Wot no Friday Weigh In?

Well, since I don't seem to be able to get to a scales to weigh myself this week, there's no Friday WI. I think I've probably put on a few lbs, but I've also probably saved over 100 points over what I'd have eaten if I wasn't trying to be good.

That's all for this week; normal services will be resumed on Sunday.

Drinking Coke?

This post is a scary read on what happens when you drink a glass of coke (via).

"Have you ever wondered why Coke comes with a smile? It’s because it gets you high. They took the cocaine out almost a hundred years ago. You know why? It was redundant."

Between that and the number of points (5 points, 350 calories) in the non-diet version, it's enough to stop drinking it all together. Not that I bother very much, since I've started this getting thinner lark it's mineral water for me, largely because I don't like the taste of artificial sweetner very much - certainly not in the quantities needed to make coke palatable.

I've been experimenting with artifical sweetner in my coffee this week, since I'm in the US and it's as easily available as sugar here. It still doesn't taste quite right, but aspartame is much less nasty tasting than saccharine. Both are probably worse for you than the sugar, though, in the long run. Even though I've cut the sugar in half, I'm still using 3-4 points a day on sugar in my coffee (yeah, I know, far too much, but I'm changing enough habits in one go here right now!).

Even with that help, I still topped out at 43.5 points yesterday, and I thought that was a pretty good day for me. Salad and zero fat dressing for lunch today. And I can't find a scales here!

Andy

Don't move the scales

18st 1? What? 10lbs lighter than yesterday? 18st 7, 18st 5, 18st 10.

We'd unavoidably moved the scales yesterday, and when I weight myself this morning I had about 10 different readings. They eventually settled around 18st 6, which is what I've taken as today's weight. I'm still a little suspicious that it's a artifically low result, especially since SWMBO showed a 3lb drop since yesterday as well. This means it's a New Lowest Weight, and 15lbs (over a stone) lost since I started.

So, the moral of the story is Don't Move The Scales!

I'll be weighing on a different scales for the next week as well, which is going to throw the figures off. But as long as I can keep an eye on things, I'll be happy.

Friday Weigh In

Another Friday rolls around, and I've lost 2½ pounds since last week. Excuse my while I polish my halo.

That puts me on 18st 10¼ with a new lowest-ever weight this week of 18st 8. If I wasn't going to be spending the next week in a hotel and eating out, I'd be confident of acheiving my first stne lost by next week, but I'm not sure how easy it will be to be good.

Let's see how it goes.

Dinner Tonight

Since SWMBO is off gallivanting, I thought I'd do myself a decent dinner this evening.

• 400g potato (that's huge), cut into wedges. Coat with fry-lite, cumin seeds, paprika and cook at 200 degrees for 40 minutes turning every 10 mins. 4 points.
• Throw two frozen cod fillets in the oven, wrapped in foil. 2 points.
  
• Chop a pepper and onion. Sweat with some garlic, throw in a tin of chopped tomato and some herbs. Simmer until the rest is cooked.
  
• Saute a finely sliced leek, in some more fry-lite.
  

A huge great plateful for 6 points. And a 200g potato and a single cod filet would have been a more "normal" meal size for 4 points.

I was inspired to continue my efforts by hitting a new low this morning. A new lowest weight, that is, of 18st 8lbs. 13 lbs lost. 1 lb to go to shift the first stone. It's easy to see how the inspiration can turn to desperation if things aren't working. So let's hope this keeps working!

Self-Motivation

Yesterday's post was a bit tongue in cheek, about the self delusional diet. But the last 24 hours have been a lesson in self-motivation, which is absolutely vital to losing weight.

On Friday, my official weigh-in day, I'd not lost any weight since the previous week. Saturday was something of a blow-out dinner, and by Sunday evening I was in a frame of mind of "I just as well have another beer, it's not going to make any difference". I actually hit my points target for the day, but could easily have been a good few points under to claw back some of Saturday's excesses.

I'd definitely got into a bit of a mental slump. It's easily done - and if you're one of the many people who are pretty sensitive about your weight and appearance, I'm sure it's very disheartening. I've said before, it's easier for us guys!

So I pulled out my spreadsheet, and took a good look. The trend is still going down. The graph hasn't visibly levelled off. This is still working! It really is. I declined a second beer, and had a nice long glass of halo polish instead (Tesco's Lime and Mandarin flavoured fizzy water, zero points). It doesn't taste anything like beer, but serves as an admirable stand in for something to sip at in the evening.

SWMBO has a veggie chili for dinner tonight, so if I can find a good option for lunch today I should be able to pull a nice low points day today. I'd really like to see 18st 7 on the scales before I head off to the US. That's 2lbs below my lowest weight so far and 3lbs below my current weight. Possible, though I'm not setting my hopes too high.

The Self-Delusion Diet

A post over at scienceblogs talks about The Self-Delusion Diet, based on a study where those who told their lifestyle was healthier lost weight. It's suggested that "feeling generally better about themselves, also made small changes to their eating habits, like eating slightly smaller portions, without really thinking about it. That could account for a weight loss of .5 lb per week."

I'm not sure it would work for me, since I'm basically lazy.

After a huge pig-out on Saturday, I see to be going up and down around about 18st 11 this last week. No bad thing, the trendline is still going down so far.

Friday Weigh In

A disappointing result this week, since I stayed the same. I think there were a couple of contributing factors:

• more than a couple of drinks and lots of nibbles at a neighbour's last weekend.
• Points average for the week came in at 40 - almost two points higher than the previous week.
• The last two weeks I've had one sub-30 point day, this week I didn't.

The other thing is that I think I've been more in a frame of mind of "what can I get away with eating" rather than "do I really want/need this?". That certainly hasn't helped. I do still have the consolation from my daily weighing that I did reach a new lowest weight during the week, so it's not all bad. I need to watch it for another couple of days and see if the changes so far are going to be sufficient to keep losing it.

I've got another week before my trip to the US, so I need to try and have a good week this week.

Takes deep breath, hardens resolve....

Worst 10 things to eat

Viruz has a post on the 10 worst things to eat. I've copied the list here to add WW points where I can. These are American items, so I've given both US and UK points.

1 Pepperidge Farm Original Flaky Crust Roasted Chicken Pot Pie (1,000 calories and 18 grams of sat fat). UK=19 points, US=21.5
2 McDonald’s Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips (1,550 mg of sodium)
3 The Cheesecake Factory’s 6 Carb Cheesecake (29 grams of saturated fat, 1½ days’ supply.)
4 Dove Ice Cream (300 calories and 8 to 13 grams of saturated fat, half cup). That's less than 100mls, and up to 7.5points.
5 Mrs. Fields Milk Chocolate & Walnuts cookie (300 calories and as much saturated fat as a 12-ounce sirloin steak)
6 Starbucks Venti (20 oz.) Caffè Mocha (Think of it as a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in a cup.)
7 Burger King Quad Stacker (4 hamburger patties, 4 slices of cheese, 8 strips of bacon)
8 Campbell’s Chunky, Select, and red-and-white-label condensed soups (Half a can averages more than half of a person’s daily quota of salt)
9 Chipotle Chicken Burrito (1,180 calories and 19 grams of saturated fat) (UK=21.5, US=25).
10 Mint Chip Dazzler (1,270 calories and 38 grams of saturated fat) (UK=27.5 points, US=28.5).

Ouch. That last one, washed down with a couple of beers is an entire days points for me, and I'm on a pretty large allowance of 33 points. But it all tastes sooooo nice to so many people.

On daily weighing

One of the common bits of advice to people losing weight that I see over and over again is to only weigh once a week. And I'm starting to see why. This is looking to be the third week in a row that I've put on weight on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday mornings (so, from what I've eaten the day before).

Should I

a) give up the diet because I'm obviously destined to stay fat and ugly if I put on weight on the weekend
b) stop enjoying weekends because they're slowing my weight loss and I'd be happier if I was losing weight faster or
c) try to tame the weekends a little just to make sure the losses continue.

Let me see.....

What to eat to make you sleep

Yahoo! Food has a post on what to eat to help you sleep. Now, not sleeping isn't something I suffer from, but it's worth posting a mention here.

Most of these are no more than a few points as well, so can be a worth bearing in mind as a snack if you have a few points left at the end of the day.

[via]

The scales went up a little this morning; I guess Saturday's excesses caught up with me, and that any drop yesterday was down to dehydration this morning. Back on the wagon today.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

These seven words sum up everything you need to know about healthy eating. They're the tag line in this New York Times article by Michael Pollan that takes an in-depth look at food and nutrition.

There's some hidden depth to those words - after all, the article runs to several thousand words. Mine will be rather shorter, but one of the points he makes is that there are so many contradictory studies out there on what does and doesn't cause cancer in rats, that it's almost impossible to apply that advice to everyday eating.

In a nutshell, though, I can dissect that advice into something I mostly agree with. Eat food. Not vitamin supplements, or omega-3 tables, or whatever the fad du jour is. Not processed stuff. Not artifical flavourings and chemicals.

Not too much. Yeah, right. There's a few odd-ball results out there that suggest that eating an extremely restricted diet will lead to a longer life. But overeating is definitely bad for you - and more importantly, if you follow the advice and eat healthy food, eating too much becomes rather difficult.

Mostly plants. When I first read this, my first reaction was to object: "but I like meat". Yet when I look at my diet so far today, it has been mostly plants. In fact, with the exception of an ounce of ham in a lunch time sandwich, it's been plants all the way, and dinner looks to be fairly low in meat content too. Yesterday was similar - 200g of meat all day.

So, all in all, it seems like good advice to me.

Lifehacker on diets

One of my favourite websites, www.lifehacker.com has an excellent diet post from Kyle Pott with some "unconventional" tips.

I'm not sure how unconventional they really are, though.

First off, Kyle recommends getting a digital scales. Makes sense to me: more accurate than a mechanical one, and ours has a feature where the weight stays on display for a few seconds after you step off. Perfect if you're tall, short sighted and bleary eyed in the morning!

He also recommend daily weighing, which most diet plans don't. You need a very positive attitude for this to work, but I'm in favour of it as well. In fact, his only tip that I don't already follow to some extent is to drink lots of water and exercise.

I hate exercise. I always have. I don't get this endorphin thing, I just get out of breath. I don't mind a walk if the weather is nice, I don't mind snorkeling since I don't have to work too hard. I can't think of anything more boring than pushing some machine around for an hour!

And as far as the water is concerned, I think the important thing is to drink lots of liquid. It doesn't have to be pure water. I drink mostly coffee, fizzy flavoured water, and beer. None of these will cause you to lose more liquid (from their dieuretic effects) than they provide, so I'm not out to change those habits.

I seem to be on a bit of a roll at the moment. Staying under 40 points (thats 2800 calories or so) seems to be the way to go for me. 18st 11¼ this morning. Certainly hitting 18st 7 before the end of Feb is looking easy at this point, even with a week in the States coming up. And that allows me to put on a few lbs on holiday!

End of month report

Back at the end of December, I decided that rather than trying to Do A Proper Diet, I was going to try and make some habit changes.So, it's almost the end of January - how's it going so far?

Change No 1: Reduce sugar in coffee by ½. Instant coffee is fine with the reduced sugar. I'm still getting used to proper filter coffee with less sugar in it, but its getting to me more acceptable. In some ways I'm finding it's taking longer to adjust to the taste than I expected, but it's also not proving too difficult. Score: 10/10

Change No 2: Limit alcohol intake. With the exception of the last week, this is working pretty well. Again, I haven't tried to cut things out completely, so I'm not feeling I'm missing things. I'm usually grabbing some fizzy water to drink instead in the evenings, since it's zero points, and coffee isn't really a help. The last week has been a bit of a challenge - very stressful long days at work, so I've bent the rules a little, but still kept points totals down to an acceptable level. Score: 7/10.

Change No 3: Healthier snacks. Sell your shared in Cadburys, ladies and gentlemen. I haven't bought a bar of chcolate all year. I finished up the Christmas goodies, and have been eating WW toffee bars, special K bars, and Jordans' cereal bars instead. Score: 10/10

Change No 4: Limit pub lunches and takeaways. I think the guys at work are also trying to be good, since there's less of a "oh, let's go down the pub" mentality, which is helping. With one exception I've had stuff with rice instead of chips. I also made the discovery that I can have two King Prawn Chown Meins for the same points as a tuna baguette! Score: 10/10.

I've been pretty generous with the scores, because I've been keeping track of my intake using the WW points system. This is easy for me since my wife has been doing the diet for a while, and both of us can look at a plate of food -- especially the stuff we eat a lot -- and tell you pretty much how many points are in it.

The official WW diet says I should have been on 33 points a day. You're not supposed to go more than 4 points under that on a given day, or to go too much over. I've been tracking the AVERAGE points over a week: 44½, 43, 39½, 40. More than WW says.

So the real question, then, is "is this working?" Am I losing weight?

YES!!!!

I started out saying I'd be happy if that was enought that I lost 1lb a week. In fact, I've lost 8lbs so far. And a little bit of maths suggests that as long as I stay below 46points a week, I should keep losing weight. Not cutting right down to the minimum points has meant that I'm not encouraging my body to slow it's metabolism right down.

There are a few rocks ahead in the road: a week in the US on business next month, and a holiday at the end of the month. But as long as I steer away from too many sticky desserts and watch the alcohol a little, I don't forsee too much of a setback.

One of the things that a I see a lot of people struggling with on the WW message boards is that they've been good all week, but have still put on a pound - or haven't been good and still lost 2lbs. Well, I've been weighing every day, and I've put a graph together of the results.


The blue line is my actual weight each morning. Almost the same time, after a cup of coffee, and any (ahem) natural needs have been taken care of. Look at the variation, though. The big drop early in Jan that recovered the next day was a hangover: I awoke feeling very dehydrated and thirsty, and felt much better after a couple of pints of liquid. The spike at the end was a couple of higher point days (40, 51 and 40) over the weekend. But I can't explain most of the ups and downs - just variation in water intake, probably.

Weighing every day is WW heresy. You have to be very careful about not attaching too much importance to any one day. That's where the purple line comes in. It's a logarithmic average of the last 10 days weight. You don't need to understand the maths degree, drop me a line and I'll send a spreadsheet that'll work it out. And this is the line I've been looking at. When it's started to level out, I've tried a bit harder to find low point options for the next few days. When it's been dropping steadily I've been quietly congratulating myself and keeping at it. At NO TIME have I used this as an excuse to go on an eating binge. The two options are "carry on" or "try harder".

Another important difference between my approach and "Pure WW" is shown up by the reactions when I dropped below 19st. My wife asked "aren't you excited?" No, I wasn't. Now that I've seen a few consecutive days below 19st, I'm more excited about it, and I fully expect to sneak back over 19st before the middle of next week.

As I said, February will be more of a challenge. Let's see if I can continue to be this optimistic with a few challenges ahead.

Hello UK LadyLuck

UKLadyLuck, another regular on the WW Message boards has a useful website, which also has some more information on the Wendie Plan.

Today has been the first day I've been actually feeling hungry for any length of time. I've had a couple of very low days, so I'm letting up a bit today and not letting it get to me. Tomorrow is the official weekly weigh-in day, so it might not look as good on the weekly figures, but hey, I don't really care. It's all going down hill, in the best possible way.

My pal in New York....

Viruz in NY is complaining about the media diet plans. I agree. This plan is crap. Too much time, too much effort. I posted a comment there that's the basis for this blog entry.

I think the secret to success at losing weight is to think about your lifestyle. Then think about the fattening bits. Yesterday, for me, was a good example.

I had a coffee in bed (thank you, dear wife). 1 sugar, no milk. Half the sugar I used to have.

Physio appointment, still in work by 9:45 am. Hungry but decided to wait until I got to work instead of scoffing empty calories of chocolate on the way.

Get to work. Bowl of cereal, 2 mugs of coffee. Sorted until 1pm. Saved another 2 points on the sugar.

Hmmm... What's for lunch. It's cold out there... Chinese takeaway anyone? ... mmm.....

Chicken curry and chips? No, too bad. I know, chow mein is good. Seafood is healthy and tasty. "I'll have a prawn chow mein please".

Work until 9pm. OK, a couple of cereal bars for sustenance, but I avoid the vending machine.

On the way home, I stop for another takeaway. Chicken kebab - grilled chicken, salad, pitta. Tasty, delicious. Low calories.

Even with a couple of beers, I ended up eating the least calories I've eaten during a day all year.

Why? Simple. Try to place yourself where you have good choices, and pick the best you can.

That's it.

I'm using the (UK) Weight Watchers system to track my eating, but I'm not strictly following The WW Plan.

So, yesterday I ate 27 points. If I'd taken the same amount of time, with bad choices. Hmmm... lets see.....

Breakfast: danish pastry - extra 4 points
Snacks: 2 bars of chocolate instead of WW snacks. +8 points.
Lunch: chicken curry and fries. Extra 10 points.
Dinner. Lamb instead of chicken. Add friess. Extra 7 points.
Drinks: 2 sugars per mug instead of 1. +5 points.

That's an extra 35 points. 2450 calories. Just from making the right choices. I more than halved my calorie intake by stopping to think for a few seconds.

That's all it takes. You can always trade a few second thinking, time to cook instead of eat out, or time to exercise instead of watch TV. Don't obsess about targets. Just stop for a second, and think about how you can be in the right place to make a good choice, and how you can make a good choice from the available ones.

I've lost 8lbs in 3 weeks doing nothing more.