I am 104kg this morning. Only 3kg less that when I started this how many weeks ago? I feel discouraged. Last week was a bit of an all over the place week. I did not stick very closely to the diet I will admit – but I am down from104.6 kg this time last week. And I was up to 105.5 kg on Wednesday!

Tuesday I went out for dinner & movie with my husband. This does not happen all that often so I was not all that concerned about thinking about sticking to the diet. I just enjoyed myself. Dinner was short and long Chinese soup, and we had fried prawn fritters for starters. We went to “Happy’s” in Civic – great little restaurant tucked away downstairs. The food was great. Ok – I did stick to the diet in that I gave most of the noodles to my husband. I did eat all of the plentiful wantons though!

Movies was different. Popcorn and coke. This time though we shared a large – not like we would have in the past with an box of enormous popcorn between us and a coke each. So while I was not strictly sticking to the letter of the law my behaviour was different this time than last time we went out to the movies together (probably about 6 months ago).

All of this though means that weight loss has slowed down. I was feeling concerned about this – but then I remembered that my clothes feel a little less tight so I went and measured myself on Saturday. Virtually no change! Oh No! But something MUST be happening!

So yesterday I did the whole analysis with my fancy new scales. OMG. Something is definitely happening. My fat % was down from 46.2 % when I started this (a number that was fairly close to what the DEXA scan had my percentage as) down to 41.6%!!! That is a loss of 5% body fat! So the fat is being turned into muscle – which weighs more than the fat – thus the slow weight loss. The lack of reduction in inches I can’t really explain except to think that the reduction is happening in areas that I am not measuring. I am definitely thinking that my clothes fit better. So I will be reshaping my figure at the moment rather than reducing it.

All of which is good. And gives me incentive to keep going!

Susy

What is going on it seems as if my body is saying NO you are not allowed to lose weight!

Well maybe I need to start at the beginning! 12 months ago I was actually 110kg and I thought that maybe I could lose 40 kg by the time I was 40 which was in 10 months!  A little unrealistic when I look back but points for aiming high, I didn’t make it.  I managed to lose 12 kg by my birthday which was in September but I lost most of it by May and then I seemed to get stuck.  I knew by then my goal was unrealistic so I kind of lost interest.  Fast forward to this and when I got on the scales I was as you know 101.5 kg and that scared me to realize that I struggled to get the weight off and in a flash it could all be back on!

When I go look back and all the times I have weighed myself in the last 10 years I haven’t been under 98 kg since 2008!   It is almost like this is my set point!  So to be less than 98kg is BIG!

What every weight lost doctor (well everyone I’ve seen) will tell you if you have a lot of weight to lose that the first bit comes off the easiest so for me that first 10kg but because my body has been on a low calorie diet for a yrs I think it has decided that it needs to hang on to every last bit of fat that it can!

When I think about things though I am at 98.4 kg today and that means a total weight loss of 3.1kg in 25 days less than a month and if I was to lose 3 kg a month that is pretty good going so maybe I should be so hard on myself.  I think the weigh yourself every day is a little mind game everyday….For example last night I just had to have some chips and it was late like 10pm and I ate 160gms of this vegi chip things so not totally unhealthy but not good then today I am 500gms lighter go figure.

I think the key is even when I feel like it tough and I have something I shouldn’t is to stop and get back on track because this is for life for me I never want to be over 100kg again but I don’t even want to be anywhere in the 80’s or 90’s so a lot of work to go but I will get there and when I do I am going to do my hardest to stay there this time!

Jo

How is it that I can be 99 kg again!  So early last week was good and on Friday I was 98 kg and I was thinking that finally my body had decided that it was ok to lose weight.  Then Saturday was my cheat day and yes I cheated but I didn’t think too much.  I had normal breakfast of eggs then lunch I had a ham and cheese sandwich in nice bread which I couldn’t even eat as the bread stuck in my mouth.  Then I had beer and pizza at dinner with chocolate ice cream for dessert and boy did it all taste so good!

Sunday weigh in 99 kg!!! Even worse this morning after being back on the diet 99.2kg!  Totally unfair…..

What else have I been doing well the kettle bells every morning I have been using the 12 kg and doing 70 swings each morning before breakfast.  I think this week I am going to change things up a bit?  What I am not sure yet but something!

I might have to do some extra walking for the week or even add in the 2 other exercises that Tim suggests that you do in the morning.

I need something to shift as this is week 4 and I am stuck at99kg which would be 2.5 kg for the month! Not quite the 9 kg in 6 weeks that Tim suggests you can lose. It is like my body is hanging on to every bit of fat it can!

The good points so far are that I can tell a difference in my arms they are defiantly changing shape and I will have to go and measure myself to hopefully make me feel better for the day!

This is not a good start to Monday!

Jo

I was so excited last week. I went from 105.9 kg at my last post to 105.4, to 104.9 to 104.6! Wow. Things were finally happening! Weight was coming off at the rate of 500gm a day!

I think I got a bit too excited because I then thought: “Things are working so well I don’t have to be so diligent”. Believe me these are bad thoughts to think while on a diet. I stopped losing weight. I have been 104.6 kg for the past three days.

Ok there are reasons for this – I won’t call them excuses because that makes it seem like I had no control over them. I had cheese and cookie dough when I was making gingerbread for the kids. Not a lot but I was picking. I also went to two Christmas parties on the Thursday evening and had champagne (supposably something you should not drink on this diet). I did ration the finger food I chose to the skewers of meat and vegetables. It was hard but I was feeling that what I was doing was working so I was motivated to try to stick to “ok” food even if I didn’t stick to the drinks regime.

I have also been sort of doing kettle bells. Yes I know I said I was not going to but I stumbled across (literally) the two little 4kg ones that I use for doorstops and thought that I could use them. I have been doing twenty swings up and down between my legs with one of these kettle bells in each hand. Then 20 back and forth arms (front to back swings), and 20 twisting swinging side to side once again with a bell in each hand. But I did not do that Friday and Saturday – and the weight loss stopped.

So perhaps that is the weight loss secret. I will start again tomorrow. It has been taking only about 5 min each morning. I walk the kids to school (20 min round trip) then come back inside to swing the bells before taking myself off to work. I should also mention that I deliberately park 10-15 min walk away from work so that I have to walk each morning and afternoon, and I walk up the four floors to the office. I also have 5 kg of weights in my back pack. These are in the form of a small barbell and some flexible leg weights.

So it is not as if the kettle bell swings have been the only exercise I have been doing. I mentioned in an earlier post that I also do one session of weights at the gym each week along with a spin class and a step class. This coming week might be the test to see if this is the magic weight loss bullet.

Today is cheat day. Lamingtons, cheese, yogurt, fruit, English muffins and we will have pumpkin lasagne for dinner. Oh and chocolate. Not much but a little. I have not had an excessive amount to eat today but it has definitely been different types of food than that which I have been eating all week. We shall see what the results have been tomorrow.

Susy

That is the question I ask myself each morning! I am struggling with different things to have at dinner that don’t include pasta, when I think about what we usually ate 3-4 meals a week included pasta and usually mixed up all together.  Tonight I have gotten the slow cooker out again and added red lentils and hopefully I can just have rice with it for the kids and just by itself for me and hubby.

Yes that’s right news flash my hubby has started the diet on Monday and he forgot to weigh himself on Monday but so far so good on the other days.  He loves beans and he hasn’t really missed all the bread he use to eat because he has been so surprised at how full he has been after a can of baked beans.  It is always better when you have someone doing it with you and although this is Susy and my journey to have hubby on as well is even better.

The kettle bells have arrived! Fantastic so this morning hubby and I got up at 6.00am (This was really hard for me I am NOT a morning person) and we did our kettle bell lifts.  Tim says to do 20 and if you can do 30 then your weight is not heavy enough.  So I started with the 12 kg and hubby the 16kg, we also did 3 sets of five as Tim suggests to learn how to do the kettle bell swing.  I was really surprised at how elevated my heart rate got and how hard it actually was.  There are 2 other exercises that I need to add but all in all it should only take 20 min.  I wonder how my arms and legs will feel tomorrow….. I am almost temped to do it every day…..we shall see!

As for my weight this week what a joke I am back up at 99kg! it is so disappointing to be seemly stuck on a weight!  What am I doing wrong well I know too many peanuts and to late at night!  The snaking the we do after the kids are in bed I am sure is my downfall but I have been hungry….well I think I am….tonight I am going drink a heap of water instead of having peanuts and hopefully hubby can refrain as well!….Ha we shall see…..

Monday after the cheat day I was back up to 106.3kg – ouch! I have to remember that even though it is a day where you are allowed to eat what you want you still eat these things. Thus the calories still go in and you still have to deal with them at some stage.

But this morning I was back down to 105.9kg. Go figure.

I have been finding myself hungry when I get home from work after picking the kids up from school. So about 3:30ish. In think from memory this is supposed to be because I have not had enough protein. Probably true. Adding protein without lots of calories has been hard. When I need a pick me up I tend to reach for the almonds and that is probably why I have not lost much at all. I try to do hard boiled eggs but our eggs are very fresh (we have chickens) and they don’t tend to peel properly when hard boiled. They need to have been left for a few weeks to get a bigger air pocket. They do make yummy scrambled eggs in the morning though.

I was thinking about this not losing weight. Tim talks about his dad who only added the 30gm of protein with the first half hour after getting up and this caused him to lose weight. I have been having 2 eggs for breakfast as soon as possible after getting up. Ok it has not always been able to be within half and hour. Perhaps that is part of the problem. I did a little research and discovered that my two eggs may also be part of this problem. An average egg only contains 6 grams of protein. So two eggs is only 12 grams! Not even half of what Tim recommends.

So I have decided to change things about a bit. I will have 15 grams of protein powder made up with water (and vanilla and cinnamon other wise it is yucky) to drink first thing. As in pretty much as soon as I have gotten out of bed, but after I have weighed myself. Then after I’ve had my shower & gotten ready and so on I will have the two eggs – making up the 30 grams. If I get things ready the night before and leave in the fridge it will be nice and cold come morning. It is much easier to drink cold.

I wonder how many other finer points of this whole process I have missed or misinterpreted? I need to go back and read the book again. I spoke to Jo tonight and she said her kettle bells have arrived. I was not going to go down that path. Instead I was going to keep up my current gym and exercise routine that I described in an earlier post, and trying to stay cold. Not that easy when the forecast is in the low 30’s! Ice packs on the back of the neck sound a bit too extreme so I have compromised with a cold wet towel. I will also have to see about this whole cold shower thing…

Susy

It is now the second “cheat day” and I am the same weight I have been for the past week. I had thought that I was doing so well. Or was I? Was I just kidding myself that I was being “good”? If I am to be true to myself I will have to admit that I have not been sticking to the diet rigorously.

I can say that “it was not my fault”. I had this conference and what I was eating was not always under my control. But really that is a cop out. I am always in charge of what I put in my mouth. I was at an awards dinner last night for InnovationACT. Yes I was given a set diner meal. But what parts of it and how much of it was totally under my control. I had chicken something or other that had mashed potato associated with it. I found myself putting the potato in my mouth without thinking. I didn’t have to eat the dessert – but they were the cutest lemon meringue pies with cone tops. Perhaps the norms of this diet are not ingrained deeply enough into my behaviour yet.

Tim Ferris talks about you eating the foods you shouldn’t on this diet if they are present in the house. I was reminded of this today. I know it was a cheat day but that does not mean that I should eat lots of chocolate. Yes I could eat fruit. I could eat a bunch of other stuff but I wish to eat chocolate.

Sigh.

I need a better why. Why?

Why do I need a better why, or what is a better why? A better why is: why am I doing this? And I need a better one because the one I have is not working. Obviously I have not sold the reason to loose weight well enough to myself. When we get down to it we only do things because we believe in them. I know that if I go to the gym I will get fitter. I have “proved” this to myself by now being able to run around after my kids much better than I was able to do a year ago.

Yes I go to the gym. Weights on Saturdays. Spin class on Tuesdays and step class on Thursdays, and I try to go for an hour walk on the other days if I can. You would think that this would be “enough” to have me lose weight. I am getting fitter yes. But I am not getting slimmer. I need a better why. Why do I want to get slimmer?

I need to believe that I can do it. Believe that my life will be better when I am slim.

Don’t wish me luck. Find your why and join me.

Susy

I know I know it’s only been 2 weeks

Well what a good couple of days it has been I final dropped to 98.8 on Friday and then to 98.1 on Saturday my cheat day and I was a little scared to eat a whole lot because it seemed like it had taken forever to get past the 99 kg mark.

I did eat crap through because I remembered Tim’s advice of saying the body needs to have a junk day so it doesn’t stay in starvation mode.  I think that has been the thing on other diets that I have tried is I must have put my body in starvation mode always and so as soon as I eat some fat it goes straight on again.

Let’s see what I ate was my normal breakfast of 2 poached eats and then I had chips at lunch and beer and lasagna for dinner I had a lollie or too throughout the day just because I could and then I topped it off with a heap of chocolate ice cream at the end of the night.  I felt so sick when I went to bed that I thought oh no how much have I put on!

This morning when I weighted myself I was 98.3! Yay I couldn’t believe with all I had eaten on Saturday that I only put on 200 gms!  It is funny how weighing yourself everyday makes you feel.  For me I like to know that I am on track but it is also depressing when you put weight on and then I am elated when I lose weight!

Now I am excited as tomorrow the kettlebells should be arriving! That means that on Tuesday I am going to start and see how many lifts I can do.  Apparently you are supposed to start with a weight that you can do 20 comfortable reps with. I have bought 12kg, 16kg and 20kg in a pack from Gym and Fitness and the guy gave me a really good deal I think so let’s hope that the weights are heavy enough and not too light!  Ha what am I thinking let’s hope I can use the 12 kg at least…..

Bring on those Michelle Obama arms!

Jo

I can’t believe it for the last 2 days I have weighed 99.9kg!  What is going on…….I know that I haven’t been absolutely fantastic with my diet by that I mean that I have had the occasional handful of peanuts but besides that I think I haven’t really eaten much at all!  (I swear)

I know what you are thinking yeah right!  But it is true I know that I have gone well over the eat every 4 hours because I just haven’t been hungry….maybe that’s it….. then I want peanuts!

I am excited though I went out and bought the kettlebells and they should be arriving on Monday!  This means that I should be able to start that part of the program on Tuesday next week.  According to Tim by perfecting the kettlebell swing you can lose amazing fat by only doing approximately 20 min 3 times a week.  If this is true bring on the kettlebells!

I’ll make sure I share my results with you I am also going to get hubby to have a go as for the diet part well he is yet to start……

What part do you think STRESS plays with weight lose/gain I have been thinking a lot about that lately.  We arew going through some tough times with Hubby and his job and finance really and I wonder if this plays a factor in not being able to lose weight.  I also think that if at the moment my body is in starvation mode and that’s why it is important to have a cheat day!  This week it is going to be on Saturday for me oh boy only 2 days away……the things I am going to eat!

Let me see ice-cream, bread, chocolate, beer……..

Oh I can’t bear to think about it anymore I must go fill up my wine glass!

Jo

Sigh.  I should have expected it. I have gone the whole 3-4 days away and not lost anything.  I was 106 kg again this morning. My husband told me that packing my scales to take with me was a bit of overkill.

These past few days have been hard. Breakfast was relatively easy – though when I think back on it I probably ate too much – even if it was of the right types of food.  But without the ability to replace the “white” carbohydrates with beans I ended up not eating much carbohydrate at all, and I suffered for it. By the middle of Tuesday I was definitely flagging.

Tuesday was the day I went and got my DEXA scan – more on that later. On the way back to the hotel I felt I had no energy at all so I splurged and bought a 300ml of milk. Ok it was choc and berry as they didn’t have any plain milk. My whole body and energy levels perked up after that so my thinking that I had really low blood sugar was probably correct. Tim Ferris talks somewhere in the book about trying to avoid spikes, and lows, in blood sugar. Well I was obviously failing at that.

Then there was the conference dinner. Yes I could have skipped it but I was at a table with people from the UK that I had been trying to talk to ever since I noticed they were speaking. I took the chance for the conversation and simply ate what was set in front of me. Ok I could have declined the dessert but I felt I had been so good for the rest of the conference.  Why is it that people think that you want sticky sugary tarts and things every 2 hours at dos like these? It was only on the last day that they put out fruit as well. Not that that helped me but others were grateful.

I also didn’t exercise for the time away. I had all these great intentions. Took my bathers because the hotel had a pool but I felt tired and lethargic for much of the time and so I didn’t. I know better. I know that those are the times that exercise is the best thing you can do, but along with my energy my brains seemed to have wandered off as well.

So back to the DEXA scan. I might leave that until later when I can scan in the picture and explain what the doctor said it all means.

Susy