Another kilogram down

I have been thinking that now with 14kg to lose, I should try to mentally lose each kilogram by itself, and not think too much about how long it is going to take to complete this thing. So, I'll post here each time I lose a kilogram, hopefully that will help me and stop me from thinking it's too much.

So: kilogram 14 - I put this kilogram on between the 10th and 23rd of June, which is a short period indeed. Faster than usual, actually. If I recall correctly, I was under the stress of exams.

So my goal for this kilogram is to lose it in between 7 and 11 days, without any weight gain, however minute. Hopefully this isn't too hard. Wish me luck. Roll on kilogram 13!

Recovered from wedding gain - but was it worth it?

I have finally recovered from the gain that happened when I indulged in the two days of my girlfriends friends wedding. 9 days later. That's a lot, more than I expected it to take. Was it worth it? Probably not. I really need to a) make sure that I don't eat too much during these 'off' periods and b) I need to make sure that when I am over the event, I need to really focus on losing weight and probably counting kilojoules.

Interesting research

I happened to come across research online about the effect on body weight by the US holiday Thanksgiving. Titled The effect of the Thanksgiving Holiday on weight gain by Hull, Radley etc, in the online magazine Nutrition Journal, the address is here. As expected, people put on weight. What I didn't expect was that some people didn't put on weight. The graph above, taken from the paper, shows that the bigger a person is, the more weight that they put on. It also shows that some people actually lost weight over the 1-2 weeks between weighings.

The question is: is this relevant to me? I posted a list of 'off' days recently, where I was allowed to eat what I wanted. Based on the recent time-off period where I went to a wedding, the increase in weight effect I am still trying to get rid of, it seems to be that maybe if I ate normally in these times, I'd finish my weight loss maybe a month earlier. That is definitely worth considering.

I suppose it is hard for me to get away from the old mindset of eating lots of yummy food on my birthday and Christmas day. Ok, that's alright but there are other days there as well.

Going without flour

I'm still waiting for my weight to settle back to pre-wedding, but I'm thinking maybe I should do something to speed it up. Going off flour is that thing. At 6pm today I'll finish the last of my pasta that I've got at home, and I want to have a trial one week period without flour. Wish me luck.

2 days off

On Saturday I went to a wedding. So, I had to make a decision about whether I'd stay on my diet or relax a bit. Since I don't go to weddings very often, I chose to relax a bit. There was a barbeque the next day (with the newly married couple), and I chose to relax that day too. I enjoyed sugar, bread and fried food. That means that I've started to gain weight, but it's only temporary. No real problems.

So what days are 'off' days? I've made a list:

Social group end of year event
Christmas day
New Years eve from 9pm
New Years day until 4pm
Valentines day
My birthday
Girlfriends birthday

These are the days that I'm allowed to eat treats and otherwise banned foods.

Oh by the way, that meant that I broke the 24 day long period without bread, sugar and fried food. I'm pretty proud of that achievement.

Plateau broken

I am pleased to say that the plateau that I recently had has been broken. I don't know why it happened, obviously eating more was a factor, but I don't think that I was eating significantly more, but who knows? It's gone now, and I need to keep track of my weight more, plus my eating values. I suppose I was feeling invincible having such a good weight loss and then it suddenly stopped.

So I'm counting kilojoules. Here are my recent values:

Sunday 12th November 19957
Salada biscuit 625
Cheese slice 271
Apples 436
Rice biscuits 500
Pams Stir Fry Vege Mix 1720
Lettuce 140
Apples 4578
Carrot 1547
Colby cheese slices 2322
Mandarins 1683
Yams 3159
Whey powder 992

Monday 13th November 992
Whey powder 992

Tuesday 14th November 1488
Whey powder 1488

Wednesday 15th November 3000
Coffee and muffin 3000 est

Remember, these are the foods that I bought, not I ate. Average so far is 6359kj, a bit high but ok. I'm aiming for 6000kj.

So my weight is 80.3kj and the lowest weight in 21 weeks.

Plateau approaching

16 days without sugar, bread and fried food, so that's going well. However, my weight loss seems to be levelling off somewhat, in the last 2 or 3 days the loss has reduced to a fraction of what it used to be. Time to start counting kilojoules as before I think. That means counting when I buy it, rather than when I eat it (see a month back for details) because it makes it much, much easier and therefore much more likely that I will continue counting. I'm aiming for 6,000 kj, but I'm prepared to go lower if I can.

3 months to go

I know that I'm risking having egg all over my face when I say this, but I do really believe that I just might be only 3 months away from finishing this diet. With about 14kg to go, and losing weight at more than 150g a day, it looks pretty certain (at this moment) that I'm only 3 months away from success. The last time I was 3 months away was about 3 years ago. Of course, I was still having sugar, and eventually I put on weight again.

The whole 3 month period is important because in my opinion, 3 months is sufficiently short that someone can tolerate a diet for that long. So it's always been some sort of 'holy grail' for me, something that I can start counting down the days to the finish of this thing. My appetite has improved back to where it was before I recently got a stomach bug, and I'm still losing weight.

So yes, my weight loss is continuing well, as the graph above shows. As you can see in the graph, I started putting on weight in early September, which is when my course starting getting intensive and requiring a lot of attention.

Current weight: 80.6kg, lowest weight in 20 weeks.

11 days without sugar, fried food or bread

First, apologies to those few who read this blog. Owing to various faults, some mine, some not, I have had no internet access for the last week. So I have done very well at losing weight, I've lost about 2kg in the last 11 days by not having any sugar, fried food or bread. Also I had some sort of stomach bug that emptied my system and then suppressed my appetite, that helped as well. Anyway, the weight loss is going exceptionally well. I've had to try to eat more because I'm losing more than my maximum desired loss of 150g/day. It's all going swimmingly as they say. Estimated date (yes, this isn't that wise at this point) is 7th Feb next year.

The whey powder has helped a lot. Before I got the bug I was having 4 units a day (about 80g protein) which can be expensive, but I've been on this diet trip for so long, who cares anymore? There is so much more to lose though, about 15kg so it'll be a while yet. Also, my brother seems motivated about his weight loss, well sort of, he paid me $50 because he put on more weight than expected after his overseas trip.

Todays weight: 80.6kg, lowest weight in about 64 days.