Raw Food: Week Three

Raw Food: Week Three

Well the start of week three anyway. I have broken this diet twice this week - though the usual aim is to be 90% Raw according to most sensible sites (excluding the the ones that rant about Raw bringing you closer to God). Only because I have the flu from my kids who had it last week and I have been way too run down on minimal energy.

However I have kept up the exercise as that helps with my breathing, I used to get Asthma when I was heavier - now I do not - but the breathing is labored and difficult with a chest infection, and the rhythm of cycling really helps with that. So one hot lunch on Wednesday and one hot dinner on Friday were my two exceptions. This may have slowed my weight loss this week but has not stopped it at all and I am now at 87.8 Kilos for the last couple of days.

1 Kilo more and I will have lost 40 kilos since Easter last year.

Raw food is not hard when you have an excellent and supportive partner in the diet (she is not on the diet but takes pride in finding very nice stuff for me to eat that is not dull or tasteless).

I would not be doing nearly as well without Max's help, nor would I be eating such great Raw Food recipes.

2 more weeks or 16 days of Raw Food and I hope to have cracked the 40 kilo loss by the end - based on the progress so far (3-4 kilos in 2 weeks) then  thats looking likely (but not guaranteed).

Raw Food Week Two

Raw Food: Week Two

This is definitely one of the harder diets to do but it only takes a few days to get used to it - the problem being that those days seem to take forever and by the time it doesn't seem so bad it feels like it's been like two weeks but in reality it's only 3 days.

I have been having untoasted muesli for breakfast and my main meals at both dinner and lunch have been salads. And loads of fruit.

I have cheese and dairy in my Raw Food diet and am avoiding heavily processed foods that may well be technically Raw. I have not had anything hot for almost a week now and nor have I had a coke or any other diet drink other than juice or water. Flavoured milk also out as massively processed.

Finished my previous diet at 89.8 approx and then put myself up to 91 kgs on the day inbetween as I went out and had a 3 course meal at a restaurant that was very filling and rich and splurged on some foods I knew I would not be eating for a while.

Day 6 of Raw Food = 88.5 Kgs.

Raw Food: Week One

Raw Food Week One

Or more rightly Day One.

So the plan is raw foods only, exceptions (which are common in Raw Food Diets most being only 75% actually Raw) being Milk and Cheese (as pasteurization is just good sense) and some lightly processed foods like hummus (which is sometimes cooked and sometimes soaked).

Last night I had dinner out at www.sundaypainters.co.nz and filled up on a decent 3-course meal before this latest diet started.

At the end of the calorie counting month I had lost approx 2 kilos but the tendency is to fill up your quota and exercise to make up for any excess rather than focussing on proper eating and weight loss regimes.

4 weeks for Raw Food starting today.

Already unsure other than fresh fruit, nuts and salad what this actually means.

Guess I'll find out.

10K a Day - Week 4

10k A Day Week 4

The paying attention to the calories thing does work but it's psychologically difficult to work with compared to something very restrictive like denying a food group or groups.

I will either compensate or eat up to my limit regularly and then over compensate by dropping the limit on some days with no real effect.

Still think it's effective for weight management but it needs to be coupled with other dietary regimes to be effective as a weightloss tool.

In a week I'll start the Raw Food diet which will be VERY restrictive, but I'll also keep a track of the progress in calories and food content via the netdiary tool to see how big a change in diet this represents.

Still at the 90 Kilo mark on a daily basis, lowest recorded weight was 88.6 a few weeks ago but it settled back to 90 fairly quickly.

10k A Day- Week 3

Week 3 - 10 K a day.

Well this is certainly habit forming and while I can maintain the weight on this regime I find to harder to lose weight well. I find that because I have room left in the day after eating well I tend to snack more at night and skimp on meals to create "breathing room" which I then fill.

The lessons learned prior to this about sugar, carbs and timing all have a part to play as well if I want to make it to my BMI weight which is still about 10 ks away. So I need to break the habits that this diary effect has on filling the gaps left by watching and maintaining a calorie balance.

Less than two weeks to go and then I'll be on Raw Food only. So while this can be a good way to control your dietary intake and output (exercise) and the logging is a good habit to have, it's really only effective if you do it conjunction with the other rules of effective dieting around type of food and time of day.

10k A Day - Week 2

10k A Day - Week 2.

This whole app/calorie counter thing is quite cool as it is analyzing my intake and results and then making suggestions beyond my stated weight goals. So Fat, Trans Fats, Sodium, Carbs etc all get logged if I fill in my food correctly and then I get advice accordingly, like add more fibre to breakfast (or even eat some breakfast) etc...

Steadily losing weight on a daily basis but gradually over the week. As Max is still on the intermittent fasting regime then two days a week I am joining her and so that helps with the weight loss too. The good thing is that when coupled with calorie watching the tendency to overeat after a fast is gone as you monitor and measure your intake effectively by paying attention to it.

Current weight and lowest recorded so far 89.6 kilos.

Breakfast still does not get much of a look in and lunch can often be heavy and then I am free to eat whatever I want for dinner but most of the time I eat lightly and go nowhere near my limit as I am in the zone of not needing as much.

I would like to see how much of a stretch it is to reach the upper end of my BMI at 79 kilos, and thats a mere 10 kilos away.

10k A Day - Week One

10K A Day - Week One

Even though I thought when I started this I was going to avoid this diet it seems like a natural progression to try it this late in the year (diet 10 I think?) since this is the real secret to losing weight, controlling your caloric or kilojoule intake on a regular basis.

With help from some apps in the I Store I have determined that my "maintain" kilojoule intake is around 13,000 a day with moderate exercise (minimum 30 minutes a day - I do 43 minutes) and if I want to reach my goal BMI weight it should be around 10,900 per day.

So calorie counting at each meal and snack does a double duty in that you have a goal but you think twice about everything you put in when you count each meal and snack with a ceiling in mind. The first day of calorie counting was also my last fasting day so I was well under the 10,900 limit clocking in around 650 kilojoules. The second day (yesterday) I came in at 6800 kilojoules and that was without exercise. I was not hungry or feeling like I was denying myself but I was very conscious of everything that goes in my body for the day, even tea and coffee.