100g day

Today it's been pretty easy to consume only 100g of carbohydrate. That's not surprising, since it is quite a lot, I'd actually run out of food here, so I had to eat what I could, so I didn't eat totally properly. Thankfully, I've gone to the supermarket and have bought up on veges and fruit.

Tommorrow I'll try to consume about 80g of carbohydrate - until the evening when I'm allowed to indulge a bit as it's Becky's sisters birthday party. I'll not over do it though, she's paying for it so I'll probably have a few sandwiches and maybe a beer or two.

Good news, Becky and I have made a $150 bet on whether I can stay within 2kg of my goal weight for a year after I reach it! This is good for me for two reasons, first it's motivation to keep me on track, secondly it's more money towards the other camera I want to buy, 3-4 years from now. More on that later.

Carbohydrate experiment

The woman who runs my depression support group yesterday talked about sugar/carbohydrates, which got me thinking about performing a little experiment about seeing what it's like to control the amount of carbohydrates that I eat. Surprisingly, I've never done this, so I'm curious what it's going to be like. I'll start at 100g a day and head down from there, starting today (Friday).

Holding steady

One of the problems with this get-a-new-camera diet is that when I don't have the money to put into my jar, I decide to stop losing weight. Such is the case at the moment: money is a bit tight and it will be so for a few weeks, so I am not trying to lose weight at the moment. It does make sense though, my motivation for the camera is greater than the motivation for the weight loss, so I'd rather just hold steady than try to force weight loss and then feel some negativity towards the whole thing and put on a lot of weight.

So that's it, really. Holding steady.

Oh, by the way, the appetite reduction lasted a whole one day. It was rather disappointing, but reading the blog that the books author wrote, he showed graphs on weight loss, people with little weight to lose didn't really lose much on the Shangri-Lah diet. They certainly lost it though if they were heavier though. I'd still recommend it to others to see if it works for them.

Appetite, what appetite?

As it happened, I didn't start off well with the Shang-ri Lah diet, but the last 2 nights I've been having two tablespoons of extra light Olive oil in the middle of the night, when I have my 'gap', which I've been having for years now (caused by depression). It doesn't taste bad, it's quite easy to drink. I wasn't sure whether taking it in the middle of the night was the right thing to do, but it was easy in terms of needing to be at least 1 hour away from the consumption of other food.

So today, I get up and don't bother with breakfast, as I wasn't hungry. By about 2pm I decide that it was probably a good idea to eat something, so I had some whey powder and a few other things. Not much, though. Later on in the day I decided that again, it was a good idea that I should eat some food, lest I become faint due to lack of eating.

I may be corrected later on, but it looks like the Shang-ri Lah dieting is working! I only consumed about 20g of protein today, which is a lot less than usual, but I have to honestly say that today

I HAVE NOT BEEN HUNGRY TODAY AT ALL!

I suppose that I have this fear that the appetite suppressant will lose its effectiveness, after all, things can't be this good, can they? I was surprised that 2 days was all it needed to work. I will slowly get rid of the fear 10, 20, 30 days from now when my appetite still is low and I know that it's not going to come back.

So that's good, I don't know how to take it all in, I'll just wait and see I suppose.

On another good note, the price of the camera that I want to buy when I finish my weight loss has dropped by $100! That means that I won't have to wait too long in order to get it, the day I save up all my money is the day that I finish my weight loss, the two go together. It's a special price, so that means it may go up again, I doubt it'll increase to what it was before.

Yesterday Becky and I were talking about my weight loss. I suppose she's sick of it just as much as I am, so we came to an arrangement. When I finish my weight loss, she'll pay me $100 rather than $5 per kg, and we are going to make a bet about afterwards. We've bet $150 about whether I can maintain my weight after I finish this weight loss, and not gain. I have to stay within 2kg for a year. I think that I can manage that pretty easily, it's a good incentive although she obviously has doubts so it is my job to prove her wrong.

Lollies galore!

(For those not living in Australasia, lollies mean confectionary).

I don't know if I have said this before on this blog, but I should say something about my girlfriend Becky. She eats a lot of junk food. Sweets, chocolate, chips, fatty fried food, you name it, she eats it. Since she spends most of her time at my place now, that means that I am surrounded by tasty treats that are very tempting, and sometimes they are too tempting, and I end up sampling her latest bagful of lollies. As you can imagine, this is not good for my weight loss (yes, her health as well, but let's not go there...) as once I have a few nibbles of what she's just bought I often just can't stop myself (sugar addiction?) and grab a handful of what there is, only to come back a minute later for another handful.

Anyway, this happened quite a bit yesterday, I realised that I had been going well on the old weight loss thing, and Becky's treats came calling, I just couldn't resist. I'd broken the old no sugar a few days earlier (I'd gone 6 days which wasn't too bad), was trying to get back into it, then this happened. I don't blame her, of course, but the situation isn't ideal.

To top it off, I had one of those weird, all sorts of concepts dreams, where you dream about this and that, whatever is on your mind. Anyway, in the dream I opened a box at my parents place, and what did I see? A lollie. Immediately, I scoffed it down in less than a few seconds.

It does show that I am a fast eater. I wish I wasn't, I suppose I've trained myself to be this way, but the fact that I'd dreamt about it made a clear that I was that way.

I was reminded of the television show The Biggest Loser where they had jars and jars of their favourite lollies to tempt them. Were they tempted? No. I wished that I was like that.

So I decided to do something about it, I got some money and headed out to the local supermarket to buy some sweets, enough to fill a 2 litre water container. I glued the lid down, and the container of lollies is now sitting proudly right next to the container of money. As time progresses, the container of money will fill up next to the container of sweets.

The basic idea is to remind myself that

1) I am trying to lose weight
2) I need self control in this department
3) I can eat this when I've finished the weight loss

So that is something new. I'm hoping that it will be useful and remind me that I'm meant to be in a journey of learning self control and how to lose weight easily.

So what happens if I break open the container (unlikely, but you never know)? I promise to donate $20 to the ACT, a right wing political party here in New Zealand that I despise.

I'm hoping that these reminders (the money container and the sweets container) will remind me that I should be losing weight, avoiding fatty, sugary food and looking after myself.

New diet

Yesterday I found out about a new diet, the Shangri-lah diet. The idea is roughly that you trick your brain into thinking that you live in a place with abundant food, by having food with high energy and low taste. This is meant to suppress your appetite. Yes, it does work for some people (and doesn't work for others, of course). The thing about it is that it is simple - I only have to take some olive oil at a specific time of the day.

I've decided to make a commitment to try it for 2 months and see what happens. Yes, I'll carry on with the no sugar, flour, fried food since that is going well.

Finances are as follows:

Wednesday $1 daily save bringing $154 in total so far.

Weight 80.4kg, lowest weight in about 50 days.

5 days and counting

It's been 5 days since I've had sugar, flour and fried food. It's going well, just like it went well about 4 months ago. The biggest issue will be when I have to go to social occasions, there is a certainty that I won't be able to keep to my diet, that's sad, but there won't be fruit or veges or other things. I want to keep my diet private from the people who invite me, I've been on a diet for so long a while ago I decided that I don't want to get a reputation as being a 'permanent dieter' so any weight loss will be done in the privacy of my own home. Sounds kinky, doesn't it?

I look back and wonder why I didn't keep on with the no sugar etc after the wedding I went to in November. It just is so much easier without it, I don't have the cravings and urges and conflicts that I recall having. Because of this, I've decided to see if I can jump back on the diet when I have to go off because of a social occasion. By that I mean within about 24 hours of going off it, I'm back on it. So a goal for the future is to see whether I can do the 24 hour thing, I hope so but that sugar urge is very strong, as I have come to see clearly now.

It does feel strange that my finances have become such an issue in deciding when the diet finishes. The good thing about being on the sugar/f/ff free diet is that I do spend less on food, yes veges are expensive and I try to have 500g of them a day, but one trip to Muffin Break will buy the equivalent of almost 4 days of veges, so I am definitely saving there.

Speaking of finances, here is the current breakdown on my savings for the camera:

Christmas and birthday gifts = $140

Sunday $1 daily save + $6 food tax = $7
Monday $1 daily save + $2 food tax = $3
Tuesday $1 daily save + $2 food tax = $3
so in total I have $153 towards an estimated $700 for the camera.
(food tax is a fee I charge myself of $2 when I by any food)

Weight: 80.6kg, lowest weight in about 13 days.

Starting over again with the camera money

I have decided that now that I'm losing weight again, I'm going to start over again with the finances for the camera. The reason is that I'm just too far behind, and it's pointless trying to catch up, it'll take too long (months) and be a distraction from the proper saving. It looks like the actual saving is really important for my weight loss.

So I've got money from Christmas and my birthday, and I'm from today putting in money using the same rules as before - currently a dollar a day. I've been putting on weight as the graph shows, I'm back to where I was about a month ago. That's a shame, but those trying to lose weight will know that you've got to let these problems go because there are so many of them over a space of time.

The going without sugar, flour, fried food is going really well. It's only been 2 days (actually about 45 hours) but I haven't been missing it too much. I'll be going shopping today, this is probably the hardest part as walking through the supermarket aisles and seeing all of the food you can't eat can be a bit depressing and frustrating.

No sugar, flour and fried food again

Although it shouldn't be, my weight just seems to be going up, up and up. Slowly, but it's definitely in the wrong direction. I was reading another blog where the author said how they couldn't go more than a few days without sugar, and then they had a big 'blowout', so I decided to do the no sugar, flour, fried food again. For as many days as possible, although if I go on a trip to see where the ashes of an ex-partner are buried, then I'll stop when I do that.

Last time I did it, I lasted a whole 24 days! Actually, that's just going without sugar, but I lost 2.5kg, which isn't bad. I'm hoping that I'll get under 80kg with this one, who knows when that happens.

I've realised that the money container for my camera and my weight loss are very tightly linked. If I don't hear the jingle jangle of coins falling into the container every day, I just won't lose weight. So my giving it an IOU recently because I'm really short of money had an effect on my weight loss. It's unexpected and disappointing but that's the way it is.

Back to the no sugar, flour, fried food. I Started this yesterday (Friday) and will continue as long as possible, unless I go travelling.