Tuesday 14 January 2014

Missing a Toad

Well week one went well all things considered with a loss of 9lb. Yay! 55lb to go. Still a long way but wowee what a start. I am thrilled beyond belief and totally buzzed for the coming weeks. You all know I love a challenge so the plan is to keep my goals quite small. The first one is a stone off (preferably two!) by my birthday in April. That said I've had two nights out since I weighed on Friday so maybe a stay the same would be quite the victory this week.  ;-)

Of course the main thing with this diet is that I am only technically dieting 2 or maybe 3 days a week. Those days are pretty hard going but actually each one I do gets easier and I have picked up some tips for coping on 500 calories. First, drink buckets of water to keep you full. Second, avoid sugar or sweeteners where possible because it makes you hungrier. Third, plan carefully. I usually wait until lunchtime and then graze on some pickles or maybe a bowl of soup. I certainly don't consume more than 100 cals before my dinner and then I am left with 400 glorious calories to spend on dinner.

Tonight we had "Onion in the hole" - yep, you guessed it, Toad in the Hole with no toad. We have Save with Jamie to thank for this recipe, which I must say surprised me. For 273 calories I got roasted sweet red onions,  crispy fluffy Yorkshire pud and sweet sticky red onion gravy! For an extra 60 ish I added fine green beans, boiled for 6 minutes until just tender and then tossed in a drizzle of garlic oil, salt and pepper. I must admit that Richy would have liked some creamy mash but I didn't and I didn't miss the usual sausages either. Dare I say I preferred this? All I know is that I am full and warm on this cold winter day and for less than 350 cals. I'm looking forward to a good feed tomorrow though.

Hopefully I can make it to the weekend relatively unscathed. Fast day anyone?

Thursday 9 January 2014

Times they are a changin'

The funny thing about a weight loss blog is that there has to be some weight loss to write about. If there's no weight loss you have no blog, and there's only so many times you can say "oh well, still struggling". Nobody wants to read that. However, I am back now with something to say.

The start of 2014 saw something major happen. I broke up with Slimming World.

It's been on the cards for a while but I've been so frightened of piling it all back on that I've been too scared to leave and too scared to try something else. This somewhat backfired in a sense because I have put some (thankfully not masses) back on, but once December and Christmas was over I knew it would be time to do something else to ring the changes. Don't get me wrong, Slimming World is a great plan and I would recommend it to anyone, but latterly the problem has been that I know it too well, and honestly I got lazy.

A chance conversation with a medical friend before Christmas on the subject of My Weight Loss ended up with a suggestion of trying the 5:2 diet. Basically you eat normally for 5 days of the week and "fast" for the other 2. Fast doesn't mean eat nothing, but it's a very low calorie day at around 500 cals. I had a quick go before Christmas and decided to give it a go but initially wanted to run with Slimming World at the same time - I would have loved to be a Target member! I thought I could fast on 2 days and follow plan on the other 5. Very quickly it became apparent that this wasn't going to work as there were non fast days (or feast days) where my syns would have been through the roof but I was way under my calories (1720 according to My Fitness Pal). By the time Christmas was over my jeans were tight, nothing was comfortable and frankly I was totally repulsed by myself - how I felt physically and mentally, and how I looked.

My first weigh in is tomorrow and I've almost completed my third fast (it's been a funny week). The 500 calorie thing isn't massively difficult but you do need to be clever to get the most out of your calories. I admit sitting here a bit peckish, but knowing that I have enough calories left for a wee nibble before bed and tomorrow I can eat as normal means I feel ok. This actually feels liberating. I had cake, wine and pastry yesterday and was still under my calories. I have Slimming World to thank for that - my 3 meals were healthy and naturally fairly low calorie.

I'm so ready for this - motivated, inspired, enthusiastic. So, I've got 63lb to go - hopefully 2014 is my year.