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

I know I know it is not a gain but how many days can I be the same weight! It has only been 2 days but I would like to see progress!

The one thing that I have noticed and I don’t know if it’s because I was sick but I just have not been that hungry the last 2 days in fact yesterday I felt like I forced myself to eat after 4 hours because that’s what you are suppose to do.  Today I haven’t eaten every 4 hours in fact I didn’t even feel like dinner so I just had 2 hard boiled eats and a bit of turkey.  Maybe that’s wrong but for the first time in a very long time I am beginning to understand when I am hungry and when I am not.

I thought that it would be harder to resist food but this afternoon we had a little make up birthday party for my son and we had little party pies and sausage rolls but I didn’t want them.  We did also have chips which I thought about but I had made sure there were carrots and celery so I had something to eat.

I am sure glad that Susy and I decided to do this diet diary (blog) because I feel like it is keeping me in check and the whole big wide web is watching (ha ha not!) but you get what I mean.  There is something about having to check in and I suppose that is why Weight Watches (WW) does well because you check in each week and then stay for a support meeting.  I do think WW is right for some people I certainly manage to lose 23 kg about 10 yrs ago with WW but it did take me 3 yrs to lose that weight!  I tell you it is not going to take that long this time I hope even if I do have more to lose.

So some more facts I am 173 cm tall so my goal weight I have decided is 70 kg a nice round number.  That is a total of 31.5 kg to loose and 29 kg to go! See 29 even sounds better already.  Time frame of doing it well that I am not so sure about but I would like to think I can do it in a year!  That should be achievable especially if I lose 9 kg in the first 4 weeks which is what Tim says is possible!  I do need to get those kettlebells!

Jo

This was harder that I thought it would be. I mentioned in my last post that I was actually up a bit on weight (106kg) than I had been the day before so perhaps this was a subconscious influence on what I did or didn’t eat yesterday.  But I found it really hard to eat the sorts of high fat, high sugar, high “white” foods that Tim Ferris talks about eating on his cheat days.

It was interesting. I found myself naturally making the sorts of food choices that I have been making this past week. Jo will laugh but I had to consciously tell myself NOT to have beans for lunch. I did have fruit though. I think for me not having fruit has been the hardest thing over the past week. I would normally have had 2 -3 servings of fruit a day. Before I started this diet I would have had to say that I, and my family, normally eat what is considered a fairly conventionally healthy diet. We eat a lot of fruit and vegetables. I don’t feed them a lot of highly processed food. All bread in the house, which I never really ate anyway because I don’t really like bread, is brown, whole grain or “yucky nutty bread”, as my 13 year old step daughter calls it. Apart from the rare times that we have sushi all rice is brown.

But we do do dessert. I will also admit that I have been known to have very unhealthy chocolate laden snacks when I am feeling peckish. So for “cheat” foods we had pancakes for breakfast – made with corn, buckwheat, sorghum, spelt and wholemeal flours – with maple syrup. I had 2 minute noodles for lunch. I ate the really very yummy little cheese and bush flavours snacks that they fed us on the Qantas plane, and I splurged and had creamy gnocchi from room service for dinner. I did only have an entre serving of that and I wished that I had ordered a mains size because it was yummy.

All that is gone again for this coming week.

Breakfast at the hotel was not too bad as it was buffet and I was able to get poached eggs with spinach, and bacon (oh dear – yum). I was tempted by the little shot glasses of apple carrot and ginger juice. They just sounded, and looked, yummy.

I am up in my hotel room for the end of the lunch break as we have receptions this evening. Lunch was harder. So I took some of the wraps and rolls and just ate the filling. Added crumbed bacon and then the beef and mushroom something that they had. It looked like there was more of the gnocchi I had for dinner last night (sigh) as well as something else that was creamy and smelt yum. And cheese. I had to be strong about the cheese.

I also didn’t even look at the dessert table. My table mates returned with little glasses of some creamy chocolaty thing that looked like solid B52’s (the cocktail) but I was good.

Sigh

Susy

Well I’ve made it one week!

So what an interesting few days it had been!  I was so looking forward to my cheat day and what happens!  Well all Saturday night I was up chucking my guts up!   I was so sick I couldn’t believe it….I didn’t want to get out of bed Sunday let along eat.  Pretty much the whole day all I had to eat was a banana till after 8 pm!  So I weighted myself in the morning and I was 98.3 but I am sure that was because I had nothing in my system.  We even cancelled my son’s birthday party I was so bad…..by 8 that night I forced myself to eat some of the party food that we had 2 little party pies and some chips.  I finally felt a little better and I had some ice cream not because I really wanted it but because I thought I can’t have this again for another week.

Today when I weighted myself I was 99 kg so that is a 2.5 kg loss for the week I am happy with that.  Tomorrow will be test as my system gets back to normal. Today I just haven’t felt like eating legumes and Tim say you need to have them at almost every meal.  I think when you are not sure to eating a certain food then trying to eat it all the time seems difficult.

I am looking forward to getting the kettlebell for the training part of the diet.  Tim does say that you only need to follow the diet and do about 20 min exercise 2-3 times a week but using the kettlebell.  So hopefully I can get one in the next couple of days.

For me the second week is always hard although I have had good results so far let’s hope it all goes according to plan!

I know I know things are not supposed to happen that fast but that does not stop me wanting them to!

So where are we up to?

I was 107kg exactly to start with on Wednesday the day after I bought the scales.

Thursday 105.6kg. Yea! Things are happening.

Hmmm 105.6kg.Nothing

Saturday 105.4kg.  Ok. Little by little.

Then Sunday – 106kg! What happened? Yesterday was not even a cheat day.

What a roller coaster. I thought things were going so well. Perhaps I should take my own advice from my last post. My body will naturally retain water as I go through my natural cycle so such fluctuations are normal. Tim Ferris and others tell you not to weigh yourself everyday. Now I know why. It is hard on the psyche!

Tim does talk about a weight loss system where you weigh yourself each day, plot the results, and all you have to do is stay within the daily range. You don’t follow any eating regime. By simply being aware of your weight you tend to make food choices that will slowly lead to weight loss. In a later post I will discuss this further. First some more important things

Today (Sunday) is my cheat day. This is a good thing as I leave this afternoon to go to a work conference for three days and it starts with a reception this evening. That will be interesting. It will be hard sticking to the diet with hotel /conference food. Hopefully the breakfast is buffet.

But first things first – my first cheat day. What shall I have for breakfast?

Susy

Day 6 for me today and I weighed myself this morning and I am still 99.5kg!  So my elation of losing 2 kg early in the week has gone a bit flat!

The thing that surprises me is that I have been able to cope through the hunger parts of which I have had a few….. especially last night around 4.30 pm normally we would have dinner about 5.30 but hubby and I were going to friends for dinner so I knew that we would eat till about 8 so I had to have something but what!  I haven’t got the snack thing under control yet so I had 3 handfuls of peanuts!  I couldn’t help myself admittedly I would have before had about 6 so I suppose that is better

Ok some facts from me I also have one of those fancy scales and my body fat was 40.9% which is massively high and makes me cringe to write it down!  But that is all part of it I have to know where I have started in order to know where I end up!

I haven’t been as successful in finding a place to do the DEXA scan so not sure what I will do.  Amazing how we have such a high obesity rate in Australia yet it is so hard to measure your fat!

Tomorrow is my first cheat day and I know it is important to have it as you don’t want your body to go into starvation mode but I am a little worried as I usually just have to look at food and it goes on.  I am excited though as it is my sons 3^rd birthday and it will be nice not having to worry about what I eat. I am looking forward to the cake.

I have been telling my hubby a bit about the diet and he thinks he might start on Monday! We shall see as he is a massive bread eater and I think he will find that hard.  I am very happy though that he is willing to give it a go I know as he gets results then he will get into it.  Luckily he loves beans……

As we get started on any journey of change it is important to establish a starting point. How else do you know how far you have come? Thus measurements are a must.

I got on my fancy new scales on the morning of day 2 of this diet. 107.0kg. So what is Jo complaining about? Actually I am a few centimetres taller than Jo, so weight does not tell they whole story. Remember that muscle weighs more than fat, so gain in muscle and loss in girth may not translate into loss of weight.

My fancy new scales also gave me a bunch of other measurements that I noted down – now I just have to work out what they all mean. I think the scales said that I had a body fat percentage of 41.6%, but I have not read the scales instructuons yet so I’m not sure. I also have to remember to take my weight at roughly the same time each morning – and wearing the same (or lack of) clothing. This is the only way that you can account for the variations during the day due to time, meals, water intake and so on. I also have to remember that my weight will be affected by where I am in my own natural cycle. All women retain water at certain times in their cycle so the changes inside may not be totally reflected in the measurements.

Tim Ferris talks about the only true way to know your body composition is to get a DEXA scan taken. While they do do these scans in Canberra, unless you are an elite athlete at the AIS, they are only for assessing the risk of osteoporosis.

Other Australian cities are more aware of using these scans for athletes and those members of the general public who are interested. As I have to be in Melbourne next week for work I have decide to take the opportunity to get one done while I am there. I found these guys: www.bodyscan.com.au who had an available appointment slot. So watch this space to see the results.

Susy