Cold Hands, Warm nothing actually!

Christ-on-a-bike it's cold this week, and I'm really feeling it.  Previous winters haven't been a problem when you have a whole bunch of carbs and calories to keep you warm.  Also, a thick layer of fat helps!

Anyway, having been in ketosis for a few weeks now, I'm well used to my extremities feeling cold, but bugger me does it hit you when you go out!  I'm in the office, in a jumper, with the heating on and my hands are still freezing, to the point where my typing has gone to the dogs and I'm having to correct typos constantly. Very annoying.

Other than that, the Cambridge Diet (sorry - Weight Plan) is going well for me.  I'm having no trouble in sticking to it.  Over the weekend, I've made use of the bars and pre-mixed cartons when we've been out, which is dead handy.  You have to plan ahead though when making your order with your CDC otherwise you run the risk of missing your foodpacks which is a bad plan.

I did jump on the scales at work rather sneakily, and I know I shouldn't do this, but I just like to double-check.  They say I'm down to 16st6 which is 3lbs off since last Thursday. I've taken into account that these scales over-read by 4lb.  I hope that these scales constantly over-read by a consistent 4lbs (as opposed to the scales being more accurate on lighter weights) otherwise I'll not be able to compensate for their inaccuracy to get a roughly true reading.  I'm not sure I made any sense there oh well.

So it looks like I'm heading for a 6lb loss roughly this week.  This would get me down to 16st3.  Only 2.5lb heavier than my lightest ever weight as an adult.  The following week should hopefully see me into the 15's!

I'd be ecstatic to be in the 15's.  Of course, my body may well rebel on me and not give me this goal so quickly.  Weight loss isn't a fixed thing with no guarantees per week.  The trick is to not get despondent about a slow week.

I'm wearing my smaller jeans still, I have two pairs so that'll do me for the time being. My moobs are shrinking and pretty much all my clothes in my wardrobe of any size now fit, some better than others!

With regard to my biggest clothes, some look stupid on me, others shrink down in the tumble dryer so they still fit.  That's a bonus.

My Wife is looking really good.  She's lost over 3 stone now and is starting to get back into her more fashionable clothes.  I can see the boost in her confidence and it's great! I'm so proud of her.

hmmm... 5lbs. is it a problem really?

So, last night I whacked up a blog post about being disappointed with regard to a 5lb loss at my weigh in.

Just thinking about it some more, apart from a few teaspoons of baby food, the only other thing I'd changed was the fact that I'd added one CD bar per day instead of a shake.

The reason I'm saying this is because the bars contain more carbs than the shakes which is why you're not allowed them for the first two weeks.

This week, I've dropped all but two bars for the weekend (because they're convenient), so we'll see what difference they make.

I shouldn't be disappointed in losing 5lbs in a week. That's still a hefty amount to lose. 5lbs of fat looks like this:

This is just a random photo from a google image search for "5lbs of body fat". However, it goes to show that what I've lost this week is actually a fair volume of lard. I'm pretty bloody pleased to be rid of that!

Oh and my greatest loss on weight watchers/slimming world has been approx 3lb. So yeah, I'm happy. :-)

Day 21 weigh-in - not sure really!

Ok so this week, I've lost 5lbs.

Stupidly, I'd set my hopes on a seven pound loss so found myself rather grumpy about the whole thing. Still, carry on regardless.

I know what did it. It was taste testing the new batches of baby food which are mostly vegetables that did it. Vegetables make you retain water, but also contain carbs. I'm still in ketosis so I'm not worried about the carbs.

I'm hopeful that it's just a little water weight I'm retaining, I guess I'll find out if that's the case next week. It's either that or I'm going to be losing less per week than I have been.

We'll wait and see!

A little milestone

So today has been a result for me!

I'm wearing my 38" jeans. I managed to fit in them for a total of about two weeks when I bought them a couple of years ago.

So, in less than three weeks, I've gone from 42" jeans down to these. I'm well happy!

Day err.. 18. Nothing to report.

Ok, so this is a pointless blog entry, but important for two reasons.

1) If I stop blogging, I'll stop forever and it's far too early to do that.
2) People at work have started noticing my weight loss.

Regarding point two, I actually feel lighter than last week. It's very odd. I wonder if that'll translate into lb's lost on the scales this thursday. I'm really hoping for another 7lbs off this week, but I know that's nigh-on impossible to expect.

I just like it because half a stone per week is something tangible, we all know that half a stone is a lump of weight. when you measure it in pounds it just sounds "less". make sense? pah.

As I'm sure I said in an earlier post, the lightest I've been as an adult is 16st 0.5lb. Just over a week ago, I turned 32 so realistically, I've been an adult for quite a while and really should have lost weight a long time ago.

So, If I get half a stone off per week, it would mean that on thursday week, I'd be at my lightest weight as an adult again, which is some sort of milestone for me.

It's funny though, there's not much you can do to increase your weightloss rate. On Weight Watchers, you could excercise or cut out food a bit. On CD, you can't. You don't have the extra energy to excercise and you are under strict instructions not to miss any foodpacks, so literally, you're playing the waiting game.

Thank goodness you don't have to wait long because the weight does fall off!

Just a thought about photos

I did put up a photo of how I used to look for reference, it's only fair that I keep you updated with a progress shot. I don't think I'll do it monthly, but how about every two stone? Does that sound reasonable? I figure that two stone is enough to show a difference...

Day 14: Weigh-in results!

Well, that went better than I expected! What a relief!

I lost 7lbs in 7 days. So I guess that my calculations in the previous post work out about right then.

I'm really pleased with this result, that's 1st 2lbs in two weeks.

This means that I started out in the 18 stone bracket, and have just flown through the 17 stone area and tomorrow morning will be heading firmly into the sixteens. This is somewhere I didn't think I'd get to. The lowest weight I've been as an adult us 16st 1lb. With any luck I'll be able to demolish this and cruise into the 15's in less than 3 weeks.

When I hit 16 stone, I know there's going to be a mental wall. This is the point where I failed before. I hope I hit 16st in the middle of the week and by the time my Thursday night weigh-in comes round, I'll have sailed right past and won't have to worry about it.

Day 14: Second Weigh-in tonight!

Right, so it's been a few days since my last blog. I've been mega-busy with work so having the foodpacks hasn't been a problem whilst I'm sat at my desk.

I've found tiredness to be an issue, not during the day, but come around 9pm I'm shattered. Having said that, I guess it's fair enough as I veg out until 10pm and go to bed.

This week has been hard on the water front. I've not had a chance to drink nearly enough of the stuff. I wonder if that will have hampered my weight loss at all. I'll find out at 8pm tonight and will report back!

I know there's no chance of repeating last week's 9lb off because a lot of that will have been water leaving the body. This week I should be burning pure fat.

Now, 1lb fat has 3500 calories roughly. Now, in order to calculate how many I burn off daily, here's the rough formula:

1. take my weight in lbs * 10.
2. take this number and multiply it by 1.2 (ie adding 20% for sedentiary lifestyle, add up to 50% for very active lifestyle)
3. take this number and multiply by 1.1 (ie adding 10% to allow for calories burnt in digestion).

This figure comes in at approx 3465 calories per day. So, in theory, I should be burning just under 1lb a day on the cambridge diet.

Therefore, I'm hoping for say, a 6lb loss. I'll let you know.

PS: My brother is now doing the CD so hopefully it'll go well for him too!

Day 10, hit the wall!

OK, so something weird has happened...

Although we've not cheated on our diets, both the wife and I seem to be self-sabotaging our diets.

We've been obsessing over Papa Johns pizza and chinese food etc and frankly, it's doing our heads in.

It's like we're settings ouselves up to fail. We've been chatting about it, and the best we can come up with is this:

We've had the first weigh-in and now we know the diet works, and works well. WE've both been overweight for so long we have no concept of what being a normal weight will look/feel like, hence we're scared of change.

Still, heads down, and power on through.

Day 7, and 1st Weigh-In

So the first week has flown by with no drama and it all seemed to be quite easy.

At my weigh-in, It turns out I've lost 9lb!

in a week!

yay!

I was obviously very pleased with that, and although it's probably mostly water weight, it's still a nicely large number of pounds.

Day 5: Nothing Interesting to Report

So, on the lighterlife diet we gave up after 5 days as we found the wife was pregnant, which meant that day 5 on the Cambridge diet was a bit of a mental block.

Well, it turned out to be no worries. Both of us were ok, no major problems today.

Just a little tired now at 9:22pm so bed around 10:30pm as usual that'll do me.

You do feel the lack of calories, because anything physical really is tiring, but it's not so bad.

I'm well used to the shakes and soups now. I've not found a flavour I don't like apart from the butterscotch shake so all in all, that's quite a result.

Day 4 - Changes are afoot.

The Wife and I woke up feeling particularly alert this morning.  That makes a change.  We are both showing signs of weight loss, which is frankly startling.

My belly is moving inward, with T-shirts getting looser, and the wife is losing it from her bum, tummy and legs.

This is really positive as I think it's important to see losses early on as it spurs you onwards. Especially during the first week when you're still adjusting to the new diet.

Also, my 42" waist jeans are now beginning to look stupid on me. I'm sticking with them until i've completed at least two weeks on the diet, then hopefully I'll fit into some of the many clothes I've still got from when I was smaller.

Thank god that men's fashion never really changes eh? :-)

The Dreaded Day 3

I was quite worried about Day 3.  Our CDC (Cambridge Diet Counsellor) said that Day 3 is when you really feel like crap as your body has used up all the blood sugar and glycogen stores and makes the switch-over to burining fat and apparently this makes you feel terrible.

I also remembered that Day 3 on LighterLife was like this and that I had a headache for 3 days whilst my body adjusted to the lack of calories/carbs.

As it turns out, it wasn't a problem.  Day three was absolutely fine. I had my usual 4 foodpacks, 3 shakes and a soup for lunch, and although I ran out of steam for an hour in the afternoon, a cup of coffee sorted that out and I was fine again, right up until bedtime.

So, Day 3, not so bad!  I do understand why my CDC said to cut down the carbs in the week before we started the diet, it's to make the transition easier on yourself.

Day 1 - headache and stuff and day 2 stuff.

So, For lunch I tried the spicy tomato soup. My CDC told me that it wasn't that nice, personally I enjoyed it. Let's be honest, it was never going to be heinz was it? It did taste good though, like a cuppa soup with Worcester sauce. At 4pm I had a butter scotch shake, to be honest it was a bit shit. I'll probably not order them again. By 5pm my head was thumping. I think I caused a Massive blood sugar crash because the night before, I had a papa johns pizza blowout to mark the start of my diet. Anyway, a couple of ibuprofens did the trick. It may have been that I was dehydrated, so I'm upping my water intake now. This is day 2 btw, I've not been hungry so that's cool. I've had a chocolate shake at 11:30am for breakfast, soup for lunch, shakes for afternoon and dinner.  No probs.

Cheers, Rich

Day 1: Unexpectedly Nervous, and a pleasant surprise!

So, as the title says really.  I've been bricking it a bit.  I know it's not manly to admit this, but fuck it. I've been worried, not even sure about what really, but now i'm bollocks-deep in foodpacks for the week, I have to dive in and crack on.

This is Day 1. Traditionally, an easy day where you're lulled into a false sense of security.  Anyone can go one day without eating.  It's day 3 that's the killer.

Days 1,2 and 3 involve using up your blood sugar and Glycogen stores in your liver. Once these are depleted, then your body wil go into Ketosis (fat burning mode).

On the CD, a man can have 4 foodpacks a day, women only 3.  I feel for the wife, but it's because us fella's burn more calories.

I've never really bothered with eating breakfast, so I didn't have a foodpack until around 12pm.  I chose the Chocolate Shake.  I'm a massive fan of Milkshakes anyway, with Chocolate being my favourite.

They're easy to make, just add approx 8oz/227ml of water and mix it up. Drink within 20 minutes.

Guess what?  CD choccie milk is bloody delicious!  Unlike the lighterlife one which is just "ok" and tastes a bit chemical.  This CD one is ace, shame there's not more of it, but I wouldn't want to water it down as right now, it's lovely and thick.

If all the foodpacks are this nice, then that's half the battle won. Incidentally, the foodpacks look as though they're roughly 140 calories each, so that's a total daily calorific intake of 560 calories. That's not a lot is it? Still, it'll be ok.

Next up, I've got Spicy Tomato Soup for lunch. and then I'll do a Butterscotch Shake around 4pm.

This week, i've just ordered a mix of most of the flavours of shakes and soups, but have stayed a little safe by getting plenty of chocolate shakes just in case.  Having said that, it doesn't matter if I don't like any as Jo, my CD "mentor" has said we can swap any that we don't like.

oh and here's a picture of my fat with some Lemurs for you to see the extent of my gut:

Cheers!

A Little Bit of History...

So, I've always been fat.  I'm not going to mince my words such as "overweight", "plump", or "cuddly".  I'm F-A-T.

At 6'2, I thought I could carry it off with my height.  Well, up to a point, I could.  I'm currently 18st 2lb according to my starting weigh-in last night.  I've been bigger. I've hit 19st7lb before.

I tried Lighterlife last year, but only managed a week because we found my wife was pregnant, and obviously a Very Low Calorie Diet (VLCD) is a massive no-no when pregnant.  I wasn't going to stick it alone as we couldn't afford that and to buy food.  Lighterlife was approx £70 per week each, so a hefty investment.

Now we've got the baby, and the wife isn't breastfeeding anymore, we can go on the attack again.  This time round however, we're going to the Cambridge Diet.

There's two main reasons for this:
1) It's significantly cheaper.  it's approx £45 per person per week.
2) You don't need to sit through the boring meetings talking about why you're fat every week.  Important because I have a baby at home to look after so can't waste my time with that thank you very much. Also, I'm fat because I love food. simple.

One thing you won't know, that I was told last night by my Cambridge Diet err "mentor"(?) is that the Cambridge Diet's factory actually produces the lighterlife food packs anyway so it makes no odds which you go for.  That and the CD foodpacks actually taste better because they keep the good stuff for themselves.

Anyway, that'll do for now.