The New Plan - Day Eight

Countdown to the end of dieting day eight, nine to go.

Well I seem to have stalled, plateaued or whatever you want to call it - even though am steadily exercising and eating pretty well. It happens on a regular basis come the weekend - seemingly no matter what.

However over all am still in the 84 kilo range and have between 1 and 2 kilos to get to 82 and the upper end of my BMI range (depending on who you believe) which in itself is a bit arbitrary. According to the NHS site I should be 79.9 to be "within a healthy weight" and while I could make it there it seems too much to loose that much in 9 days. I could probably do that if I tried ADF (alternate day fasting) but that seems extreme and punishing, which I would not do. There's pushing yourself and then theres being obsessive about the goal. According to another site 82.6 was the upper range of healthy and BMI. Originally when I checked a few weeks ago on an app I downloaded it also said 75 kgs to 82 kgs is healthy for a man my height and age.

I'm not convinced of the scientific nature of any of these figures. I can see that BMI is calculated mathematically and that stats support the health benefits if you are in that range, but the link to that figure is associative not causative in what I have seen so far. And frankly if you are overweight then of course your health suffers.

Anyway - obviously the plateau has a psychological effect even for a few days - hence my obsession with the detail and reasoning now.

Stay the course and commit to the small change you can make now. It's worked for me so far and I'll be happy to get to my goal stated eight days ago.

82 something here I come.

Fasting day tomorrow and again on thursday so I know at least that my plateau will disappear shortly, but this time from a lower starting point.

The New Plan - Day Seven

10 days to go on the last of my diets - the "a bit of everything that worked" ...

Yesterday only 400 calories burned and 1400 consumed, however still dropping slowly towards the BMI range.

Went out to dinner but consumed nothing as my eight hour rule meant I had to finish eating before 6:30 rolled around.

Not too hard to do despite the fantastic smell of meat cooking on the BBQ - as with a Raw dinner I would not have been eating that anyway. The other advantage in going to someone's place, particularly someone not seen in a while - the overwhelmingly positive reception to the "new"  you is very positively reinforcing. The idea that you are not just "on a diet"  but have physically transformed yourself is ever present and people often answer their questions of "do you want...." with "oh, no thats right" and the job is done for you.

Efficient.

Middle of Easter and no chocolate consumed. Appropriate as I started this the first day after Easter last year and sealed the deal with a Cadbury Creme Egg which at the time I thought was way too sweet and  sickening anyway. I feel no desire for one now.

I could go some plain chocolate, but the desire is not huge, probably more driven by the occasional scent of the kids who seem bathed in it.

I did find some sugar-free chocolate milk mix, surprisingly tasty and very lo-cal. There's more calories in the Skim Milk I put it in. It's from Avalanche Coffee and I recommend it if you feel like a fix.

10 days to go. 84.4 Kilos - still on track.

The New Plan - Day Six

The Countdown to the end, Day Six 11 to go.

Day after a fasting day weight creeps up again, the trick is to not overeat. For the day I consumed about three quarters of the calories required by me on a daily basis and stuck as much as possible to the diet conglomeration. At 84.5 Kgs still on tack for the big picture of continual reduction towards BMI weight some 1.5 kilos to go in just under two weeks.

The thing that has surprised me, when it really should not, is how much sugar is in everything. I went though this a year ago and was shocked and amazed by the amount of food that has sugar in it. Today I was in the supermarket and checked the label of the food i had been eating and discovered I had not been as sugar free as I want to be. Working from memory on food I thought was ok was obviously a mistake.

It seemed like even the diet drinks were being hidden from me today and I searched high and low for food labels on everything.

Yesterday I had an omelettte for lunch with vegetables and chorizo in it. Fine except the chorizo had sugar in it. Tomorrow I'm making Pizza's for a family lunch and I could not find deli meats that did not have sugar in them. I had to go to a butcher and get the made on premises stuff and a verbal guarantee that there was only meat and spices (not one of which was sugar) in them.

I know it's only a small amount, but all those small amounts add up and dammit if I make a rule I am going to stick to it. It annoys me greatly to have to revise and replan because I have things in my diet that should not be there.

Salad for dinner is working well for me and having a decent protein based lunch, am not running out of energy or getting too hungry. Waiting until 10 or 11 for breakfast is a little harder especially with the 6:30 a.m. bike ride. However on 11 days to go and I feel like it's in reach to get to BMI or even lower.

The New Plan - Day Five

The New Plan Day Five, 12 days to go.

Second of 5 fasting days between the start of the new plan and the end of my year of dieting.

As always the day of fasting produces results but the issue is usually one of not overcompensating the next day. And not taking the inevitable weight gain in one day as indicative of a trend.

Yesterday my weight rose slightly because of the previous fast, today it dropped to a new low of 83.9.

Technically I am now one kilo off of my goal weight, but in reality it's more like 1.5 kilos as I will be eating a proper amount of food today. Albeit in sugar-free, low carb and other disciplines applied.

Keep up the double exercise and the diet disciplines is still relatively easy but does require some effort. It was certainly harder on the second fasting day compared to the first and compared to the month of it I did earlier.

I have been reading Michael Mosely's the Fast Diet for tips and some background science and theory on this diet and am finding it interesting.

As I plan to write a diet book myself it is good to see what else is out there. It is common to see a diet book filled with suggested dinner plans or recipes, not sure if this is just filler, expected or a good element to add for people who need help deciding what to eat. I also added a description and some keywords to my blog and made it so it can be found. Feels a bit weird to refer to myself as "as seen on TV" but hey there it is.

Anyway, yesterday burned 900 odd calories and consumed 600 or so.
Ate 2x Plums and an orange for breakfast.
2x pieces of Terakihi and a salad for lunch
2x Plums for dinner.

I like plums, they are filling.

The New Plan - Day Four

The New Plan Day Four - Thirteen Days to go.

Weight yo-yos on a regular basis - this is something I have learned even as I was shedding kilos and kilos at a time - on a day to day basis it does fluctuate.

It CAN be very disheartening and depressing - even if you are expecting it and understand that it is a part of dieting and your body adjusting. 

This is where daily weighing can cause problems - if it does then I guess it's best to focus on the week to week drops.

I am only 300 grams off yesterdays total at 85.1 and I am still just around 2 kilos from goal weight. Because Tuesday was a fasting day the balancing and body compensation from the day after fasting still have to be factored in. However - if you look at the drop from Monday to Wednesday it is still on the decline.

Today is the second fasting so am expecting another drop tomorrow and a resettling on the weekend.

Less than 2 weeks to go and weekends can be the hardest to get through as you face the temptation of a fridge and cupboards and food on demand with little distractio.

However I have a plan, bought a new games console (Wii U) and will be prepping the house for painting over the next 10 days so that will not only keep me busy and active, it will distract me with work to do.

Yesterday burned 900 cals and consumed around 900 cals. Sticking to the Raw Dinner, zero snacks and the 8 hour rule as well as completely sugar free. There's probably a few crossovers with other diets but still feeling on track.

Weight = 85.1 Kgs.

The New Plan - Day Three

Day Three of the Uber Diet

Another 14 days to go and my first day of Intermittent fasting in the mix - as such the largest daily drop I have seen for a while, but such is to be expected. The Issue is what to do/eat on the off days. As I am tryng to combine all the good parts of the diets into one effective and targeted plan it will be interesting to see if I can avoid the usual bounce back today.

Yesterday Consumed 573 Calories, Burned 928
Breakfast was fresh fruit.
Lunch was an Apple and Walnut Salad that compromised about 50% of my daily intake,
Rounded the day out with fruit and dried fruit for dinner.

Started yesterday at 86.2 started today at a new low of 84.8 in other words less than 2 kilos to go to BMI goal of 82.9 or less.

Because the time frame is really quite tight and the regime is strict I feel like I am actually making a real effort here, though without compromising health or food standards to get there.

Getting back to Fasting was harder than I remember it but it certainly helps when combined with the other disciplines.

The New Plan - Day Two

1 day down, 15 to go.

So switching up my diet on the last 2 weeks has energised me and given me a new goal to work towards.

I am a long way from where I started - not just in kilograms but also attitude and intention.

When I started I was not trying to diet, just prove a point/answer a question. Then it became a diet, but without a goal weight and with a anti-boredom theme. Then it started to really work and I kept lowering the bar on what would be an ideal weight to get to. Then came exercise, again so far from where I had started.

Now I am at 86.2 again, down from yesterday and heading towards my goal of 82.9 or better.

Yesterday I burned 928 cals in exercise, and consumed 1138 calories in food, across 8 hours with zero in between snacks with a Raw/Carb-Less dinner.

Today is day one of Intermittent Fasting. Same amount of exercise, already done 45 minutes this morning, and 600 calories allowed for the day.

3.3 Kilos to go in 15 days.

I'm certainly giving it a shot.

New Plan - Day One

The 16 Day Countdown Day One

So I have 16 days left in my year of dieting and I feel like it's cruising to the end and what I'd quite like to do is go out on an all time low/high not on a plateau as the 8 hour curtails my weight gain but does not really drop it by much unless combined with other regimes.

So for the next 16 days I am going to do a little bit of the things that worked and make an Uber Version of my year compressed into just over two weeks.

So for the next 16 days including today I will be combining

Sugar Free
No Carbs After Lunch
Raw Food (Raw dinners)
No Snacks
Zero After 7
Intermittent Fasting (Tuesdays and Thursdays)
Caloric Restrictions (Daily monitoring of calories, exercise and logging all food)
The 8 hour rule (well I'll finish the month within the 8-hour rule)

I was 86.5 this morning. I keep going up from 85 and settling there - so I dip back again and then bounce back,  so it's time to take control of that process a little more.

By the morning of 10th April 2013 I want to be less than 83 kilos which puts me in the upper end of my BMI.

I never thought that this was achievable - but it seems so close and that means a minimum of 3.6 kilos in just over two weeks - which all of a sudden seems like a do-able thing.

So if I push myself a little bit (and I don't really feel like I have worked that hard up until now to a bit of effort seems appropriate) than I can do it.

I will do it.

Without starving myself or doing anything silly, it all must be a reasonable diet not a stupid one.

See you in 16 days.

The 8 Hour Rule: Week Two

The 8 Hour Rule: Week Two

Ok so it's been an odd week, I have been on the 8 hour rule for two weeks now though it feels like a lifetime ago since I was on Raw Food.

As a diet I think it CAN be effective, the issue is really related to what you do with the other 8 hours. In the last two weeks I have gone from 85.6 to 88 to 85.7 to 87.2 and a few in between.

I'm pretty sure that the idea is sound, that if you eat early and finish early then you'll avoid the habits that can lead to bad intake and weight gain. I have found in earlier diets that time of day is key, but it really is balanced by the quality and quantity of what you put in to the machine (your body) in the hours you are eating.

So in combination with a content related diet you can use the 8 hour rule to good effect. If you just use it on it's own it'll likely give you a stasis where you can maintain your weight. If you really want to lose the excess you have to concentrate on the type and content of your diet alongside the the timing benefits of fasting of containing intake.

I'd quite like to finish the year as close to my BMI as possible.

That means 2-4 kilos in the next 2-3 weeks.

This is certainly achievable if I maintain the the 8-hour rule with a largely Raw/Vegan type regime.

I am not going to go the whole hog on Raw/Vegan, but maybe 75% of my diet can be focused on eating unprocessed fresh foods and then have a little fish or chicken to supplement my week.

Then in a few weeks we'll see.

The other thing that happened this week is the TV appearance, so if you're reading this then you'll know all about this already. So many people have asked me when/if I was going to write a diet book based on my diet(s)/experiences. I never really considered this as a serious proposition until the TV show came knocking and it turns out loads of people are interested.

And now I am too. Maybe there is something to this experience. I haven't taken this that seriously - or at least not in my own view, everyone else seems to think it's a triumph of will power and determination, I think I am the only who sees it the other way. It's not a big achievement to me, it's 12 little ones.

Giving something up for 30 days is not that big a deal to me, but when you add 12 consecutive smaller achievements together you get something greater than the sum of it's parts.

So my next blog I had been planning to do anyway - set myself a do-able goal that would focus on creative output rather than big goals (like write a book, write a series of books, learn a language etc...) my next goal will be an easy one (for me anyway) write 1,000 words a day for a year.

I did the Nanowrimo challenge in November and in 30 days managed a single 72,000 word manuscript and it did not seem hard when broken down to the word total per day. So thats my next thing, a minimum daily output of 1,000 words a day.

Starting with a book about the last year of my life and losing a third of my weight.

The Today Show

So I was on TV today in Australia.

Odd but true - and it was fun too.
 

Click here to see it.

The 8-Hour Rule: Week One

The 8-Hour Rule: Week One.

So as expected I put on a couple fo KGs at the end of the Raw food month. I did not exactly go crazy and I did feel sick the first few days as my bowels adjusted to the regular diet again. However after a couple of days I settled down and the extra weight started coming off again. I went as high as 88 KGs (still well lower than when I started the Raw Diet) and as at today am back to 86 KGs - less than a kilo up from the lowest low of the high 85's. This is good as I am back to the 40 KG weight loss, and I felt like I need to be on the under side of that mark for a while. It'd be a waste if I did all this work and then only dipped under it for a few weeks.

The photo above is me in a pair of jeans I was wearing a year ago and were tight around the waist, they were the biggest pair I still have left. I did have some FAT clothes that I wore to my sister in laws wedding on February last year, including a shirt I had to buy as none of my existing ones fit me without making me lok like a sausage. I suspect if I find that I will look like I am wearing a Kaftan or a small Tent.

On the other news front I am going into TVNZ next week to film a segment on my diet plan for the Today Show on Channel 9 in Australia. A good friend of mine pitched the story of my novel approach to dieting - i.e. a different diet every month and they were interested. So I spoke to them on the phone and they asked me pretty much what everyone asks; Where did the idea come from, which diet is the most effective, what was the hardest to do?

So at 9:45 on Tuesday morning I take me and my fat pants to the studio where I assume they will ask me those questions and we'll see how it goes.

It does put me in mind to do what a bunch of people have suggested and write a book about my experiences, not a diet book per se but a book about a someone setting small goals and adding them up to a big one. It's have to be humorous - can't imagine anything too earnest or serious - I would never read that, but I would read a funny one.

3 more weeks until the end of my year of dieting.

After all this I won't be putting it all back on again, my tastes and my outlook have changed and I will watch what I eat and how I exercise from here on out.

I will never buy a size up again.

I'd rather die(t).

No Diet Day (The inbetween post)

The No Diet Day: Inbetween Diets 11 and 12

So today only I am not on a diet, though I did take a break for a few days once before a few months back.

I did 27 days on Raw Food and lost approximately 6 kilos so I have earned it by all means. You can see above the progression I have made in the last 4 weeks. The spike at the start was the night out where I had a large 3 course meal to book end the last night before Raw started. So while the next morning I did gain 1.5 kilos that would not have stayed with me for that long anyway.

In the last 27 days I have eaten loads and never gone hungry, but the desire for hot drinks, processed food and hot meals were very strong at times. Apart from a wee bout of the flu where I had a hamburger (grilled chicken actually) and chips and then two days later a homemade pie (both for much needed energy boosts while sick) I stuck to this diet pretty well considering the effort it takes mentally.

Again the credit goes to my wife for researching and making me exciting Raw Foods (mostly salads of great variety) - without that preparation and effort this would have been a much harder month and a much longer one.

I will note that the first hot food I had after this Raw Food ended made me ill. The burger I had a couple of weeks back did not, but I was already feeling very unwell so it may well have been masked.

As much as I wanted hot food, the nausea and dizziness when switching back to a normal-ish diet was fascinating.

Tomorrow I start my final diet.

The 8-hour rule. Whenever I starting eating for the day then I have the next 8 hours to eat whatever I want and then when 8 hours are up thats me for the day. This will mean most likely a month of skipping breakfast, a decent lunch and early dinner and no snacks morning or evening. So it's kind of like the no food after 7 diet, combined with the no snacking one and the intermittent fasting (as you can also call it the daily 16 hour fast).

One more month to go.

Raw Food: Week Four

Raw Food: Week Four.

Raw Food continues to be an effective weight loss tool with around 4-5 kgs lost so far this diet. You can see progression as above. I have a silly grin on my face because of what Max was saying to me - though having seen the amount I have lost (40 kilos total now) I have earned a smile or three...

A little earlier this week I hit 86.7 - an all time low, and while I have risen slightly from that (yo yo -ing weight during the week is expected) I am trending down still and heading towards seeing 86 regularly or even lower by the end of this diet. Considering I was over 126 kilos to start with (see above) I am amazed how fast and well this process has worked.

This diet ends a week from now and I will be very glad to see the end of it. Not because it makes me hungry, but more for the psychological effects of not having any hot food. I'm not craving any one thing more than anything else but I would like to have any of the following (in no particular order); Hot Chips, Rare Steak w/ Blue Cheese Sauce, a Nandos Extra Hot Burger or a Cup of Tea and Biscuits. I doubt I could eat all of these in one sitting though a year ago I could well have done.

This time next week I will be on my final diet, the 8-hour rule. Once I start eating for the day I have an 8-hour window within which I can eat and then after that I stop until the next day. AKA the 16 hour fast, 2/3rds of the day fasting, the other 3/rd eating. (Hopefully not too much).