Zero After Seven: Week 3.

After the end of the second week I appeared to have plateaued and stayed at 112/113 for just under a week before I started back down again. This morning I hit 111.5 kgs and have settled in to the new routine for no eating after 7 pm.

I still have a lower than usual sugar intake (for me) and cannot stomach very sweet things, or if I do in small amounts only. It's good that the desire for that sweetness can be fixed with a small amount, not eating loads. I square of chocolate will suffice and then any desire is gone.

It's taken a bit longer to get used to no snacking in the evening, with the urge (but not hunger) to snack only really disappearing in the last couple of days. My craving for sweet things took less than a week to disappear, whereas the desire to snack later in the evening about 3 weeks.

Not sold on the idea as a dietary control mechanism, it seems that it helps form good habits, but in conjunction with the low, low sugar diet it helps manage intake. If it were just used on it's own, I'm not sure how effective it would be.

Hard one to get used to, unlike the sugar free.

Takeaway from this will be no snacking in the evening, when dinner and dessert (if we have one) are done then I am done for the evening.

One more week then no carbs after lunch for a month.

Am also reading the Omnivores Dilemma by the excellent author Michael Pollan which may provide some insight into dietary habits.

Zero After Seven Week Two

End of Week Two and I have been still losing weight - which is a good sign.

I have kept my sugar intake low and have cut all intake after 7 pm.

On occasion this becomes a problem when working late or out at other peoples places for dinner. The weight fluctuations are interesting as I have been plotting myself throughout the day and night regarding weight changes. Lowest weight is in the morning (after bowel and bladder evacuations) and it goes up and down by a range of a kilo and a half over the day. So where I was 113.6 last night I was 112.3 the next morning. Then as I eat and move about the weight comes back on and raises during the day and starts to subside again at night, with the most significant loss being overnight.

I suspect that going forward what I'll do - much like reducing the sugar intake - is cut out all evening snacking instead of having a hard and fast time limit.

So regardless of when dinner is - keep dinner and desert as the last thing I eat and no more snacks in the evening or night.

Meanwhile clothes getting looser, weight receding towards 100 kilos and self esteem rising.

Current lowest weight recorded 112.3 Kgs

Zero After Seven: Week One

Week One: Diet Number Two - Zero After Seven

The Rule: Zero Caloric intake after 7 pm each night. All food and drink (except water) to be consumed before 7 pm at night.

The Theory: Is that your body processes a lot of weight loss in REM sleep and you always wake up lighter than when you go to sleep etc... so if you eat in the evening what you are doing is queuing up food and energy to be burned off and depending on your snacking habits (mine were significant) you can loose weight more efficiently this way by burning off the days food rather than the excess you put in at night.

Week one is not proving to be hard, but it does require some vigilance to combat habit rather than desire. I'm not hungry in the evening but I have urges to go and get a snack because I am in the habit of doing so. Watching movies, TV or working on the computer are often accompanied by snacks and breaking that pattern is the hard part - it's not hunger driving that.

Interestingly I am still very, very low on sugar consumption so that is helping keep the weight loss going anyway, so I'm not really sure how effective this is but it seems to me to be a good habit to get into - getting rid of ill timed caloric intake.

There is a fascinating book on the subject of your body's daily rhythms I read a year or three ago that looks at this (and other) rhythm patterns and how to manage them to your advantage (science not belief - it looks at the chemical patterns of activity and consumption and peak efficiency times for the body).


Sex, Sleep, Eat, Drink, Dream
By Jennifer Ackerman

On the subject of low sugar intake - yesterday I was shouted a hot chocolate from Hard Luck Cafe downstairs at the office, and it was rich, creamy and thick and absolutely fantastic.

However

I felt sick for 2 hours or so afterwards. After 5 or more weeks without a heavy sugar diet the first real overdose of sugar was an awful experience I cannot see myself repeating. I had set my target at less than 80 grams a day, I'm less than 30 most days - I cannot stand the results of putting that much sugar back in my system.

Still loosing weight - 115.9 last time I weighed myself a couple of days ago.

Sugar Free Week 4

End of Week 4 and I finally bought some scales in the weekend. The last time I weighed myself (which was several months ago) I was over 126 kilos, and now (as shown above) I am 116.7

Sugar Free certainly seems to be having a positive effect. I have one more day off the sugar and then on Thursday I'll be starting a new month and a new diet.

The next effort will be twofold, well from here on in I will be watching my sugar intake regardless and keeping it under the RDI for sugar every day.

From Thursday onwards I'll be having zero calories after 7 pm each night and seeing what the effect of that is.

I'll do a final weigh in on Thursday morning and set that as the bench mark for the next diet effect.

Feeling good right now and that's motivation to keep going, I don't feel the need to count down to when I have sugar-rich foods again. I'd like to think that my first brush with sugar will be random and not planned, but it is top of mind right now.

Sugar Free: Week 3

Sugar Free End of Week 3 - 7 more days to go to make it one month (10th to the 10th).

Still no idea what I have lost in kilos or percentages, still have not bought a set of bathroom scales. People have been mentioning that I look smaller and svelter, but I take that with a grain of salt as most people are aware of what I am doing. Likewise I discount my own perception of being lighter and feeling better as no one is as prone to confirmation bias as the interested party.

However I am passing the belt test - see above. The bottom red line is where I am wearing it right now and the top rather worn looking notch is where I was a few weeks ago.

I have had a couple of times when I was tempted kind of... once when I was handling my daughters ice cream, no cravings until I got some on my fingers and automatically licked it off, that was a hefty reaction. The second was when breaking off a bit of chocolate for Max having a cup of tea, and a sliver fell to the bench and I would normally have just picked that up and popped it in my mouth, and though I knew I was not going to I could feel an almost autonomic action of doing so, like my hands wanted to do it. It ended in the bin though, not in me.

Am disturbed by the lack of sugar free products and even when this is over I know I cannot really go easily back to the pre-diet levels where I had no idea what I was consuming.

Next week when I move to the next diet and have zero food or calories after 7 pm I will add to that not exceeding the Recommended Daily Intake for Sugar. According to consumer.org in order to maintain a weight of 120 kilos I need to not exceed 130g per day - or just over 3 cans of coke. If I wanted to maintain a weight of 90 kilos, it would be 107g.

I think I'll try and keep it under 80. Considering I have been around zero (from refined sugar) then it seems like a good thing, but I will also count natural sugars which will make it harder as they will eat up a fair amount of that. 12 grams per orange and up to 15 grams per apple. If fruit and juice play a daily part then I think it should be easy to maintain on top of whatever diet I am on next.

Will definitely buy some scales in the weekend.