Day 11: steadily losing

Ok, so things are slowly working, but I'm still not doing things the way I should. I still aren't fully onto the modified Zone diet, and that's where I should be. Must try harder. Still on track for mid December for completion. Lowest weight in 9 weeks.

Day 4: Sudden weight gain

So I was losing weight quite happily, and all of a sudden I start gaining weight, as the graph shows. What's the cause? The amount of water in my body. I thought that if a person drank a lot of water, then they would urinate it within a few hours or so, and they would then weigh the same as before. Well, this is not the case. I wasn't drinking much, then suddenly I drank a bit of fluids, suddenly my weight started increasing. That's not a problem really, so long as I know about it, then I can allow for it, in fact the easiest thing to do is to ensure that I drink a certain level of liquids each day, and hopefully weight fluctuations won't occur.

Apart from that, things are going ok. As from tomorrow, I'll be hopefully eating what I should be eating, in terms of nutrients and protein, as I've been a bit naughty so far, and not having all the things that I need.

Lowest weight in 33 days.

Day 3

As expected, the weight loss is going well. Of course, that's because my body is emptying itself of all of the food inside me, I probably haven't lost much fat. But I should include it as actual weight loss, because when I finish this diet, my weight will suddenly gain as my body fills up with food again.

I'm not sure how often to post weights, but today I am 81.25kg averaged, which means that I am the lowest weight in 7 days. I like thinking in terms of "lowest weight in ... days/weeks/months/years" because there is nice feeling when I lose weight so instead of being lowest weight in say, 12 months, the next day I am lowest weight in 18 months. Of course that's because 12 months earlier I started putting on weight.

I have decided to modify the Zone diet: because of various concerns, I have decided on various minimums and maximums:

at least 500g of vegetables (usually frozen)
maximum of 70g of protein
if I am losing weight too quickly, eat a quantity of nuts

I will probably modify that as time goes on and I get the 'feel' for this weight loss.

Day 2: if only...

if only losing weight was this easy. Yes, I have lost weight since yesterday, but that is likely to be the fact that my body is emptying its quantity of food, since I am now eating small amounts. That loss will probably stop in a few days. Yesterday I completed my intake by eating a whole tin (400g) of salmon, which stopped any hunger that would likely to appear overnight.

Because my recent weight graph (to be displayed here in a few days) shows that I am well below what I am supposed to be, I am allowed a coffee and slice. Yes, I had that yesterday, but today I have to have 500g of veges, as well as fruit.

One thing that concerns me is emotional eating. Because I have depression, I am more likely to get myself into a situation where I am upset - and there is nothing that reduces that 'noise' in the brain like 2 litres of ice cream or a Big Mac combo or a large 140g bag of chips.

When this happens (and it will, no doubt) I will have to make a judgement about how much extra to eat. I'm not saying I will and I'm not saying I won't. Usually, it is some external cause that gets me depressed. I may disclose the reason to people here, I'm not sure about it all.

Anyway, that's all for now. Will post tomorrow about what I have to eat for the rest of the day.

Day 1

Today has been what I would call a "high energy, low nutrient" day. That means that I had some cake and a bit of coke, plus a few other things, but little of nutritional value. That's not good, but it's just for today of course. Also some sardines for protein. Not sure how much fish I'll be having, I'm writing this in the evening, and I'll probably have some more food before going to bed. Tomorrow will be different, it'll be veges and fruit, plus the inevitable fish for protein.

Oh by the way, today I am the heaviest I'm been in 18 months. That's disappointing of course, but that's life I guess, you gain weight, you lose it, repeat as required. I've got a plan to stop the repeating, my brother and I have set up an arrangement so the first person to put on 2kg (he is the ultimate yoyo dieter) gives the other person money, and if they want to cancel the arrangement, pays the other person money as well. Although that means I get lots of money, I really just want a stable weight.

Now about actual weight values. In this blog in the last month, I've been writing what I weigh naked (which is how I almost always weigh myself). However, my whole spreadsheet of data is dressed weight (about 2.5kg higher), plus I haven't allowed for the fact that the scales have an error of about 700 grams. Adding those together means that I have suddenly 'jumped' 3kg, which is not the case. I have fiddled with the postings and added 3kg, but if there happens to be anyone out there in cyberspace who tracks peoples weights (unlikely but you never know...), this explains the sudden gain.

That's about it for me today. I do believe that I have lost weight today, no doubt we'll all find out tomorrow.

I've been doing some thinking

Last night, I thought about this whole losing weight thing and how it's not working. So, I have decided to go onto the Zone diet, which I've done in the past. I found it relatively easy. So today onwards, I'm making changes to things. Posting here almost daily, controlling how and what I eat, that sort of thing. I'll do this for about 16 weeks, as I want to lose about 16kg in that amount of time. The important thing is control. Many things will be under strict control. Anyway, that's all for me today. Will post tomorrow.

Things don't seem to be working

I weigh myself regularly, but the old scales show that I'm putting on weight still. I think that I really need to increase the amount of protein that I have. That will happen in a few weeks, but not yet, for various reasons related to money... Anyway, that's the update for the moment. Today I weighed 82.0 kg, highest in a while I think. I'm thinking about having my metabolism measured, by counting the energy of everything that goes into my mouth, but it's such a pain to do.

Finally getting into it

Well, as it turned out, my girlfriend's sister is doing better than expected in the old losing weight thing. That's good for her, and good for me. So I'm finally settled into the eating more protein (she's on Atkins, I'm not) and less high fat/sugar food. Sorry about the lack of contact but... well you get the idea.

Sunday 81.5

Monday 81.3

Time to be honest with myself

Well, last night I went looking at blogs. Weight loss blogs. So I actually found someone who had finished their weight loss. This is a rare find since only about 3% percent of people actually get to lose weight and keep it off. The woman has lost 29.5kg, about 27% of her body weight. How's that for motivation? You can read about Skinny Latte Girl here. I've decided to read the 9 months of writing that she's done as motivation.

Speaking of motivation, mine sucks. It's time to be honest with myself, having treats so often (nearly every day sometimes) is no way to lose weight. So it's time to be more motivated. Unfortunately, with depression, it's easier to put things off than deal with them as needed.

So my goal for today: listen to my Paul McKenna audio, breakfast, 3 units of protein, no treats. That's just for today, I'm not thinking about anything else.

Will post tomorrow saying how I went.

Haven't really started yet

Ok, so I'm back a week later, I have yet to get into the losing weight thing again. I have sort of teamed up with my girlfriend's sister, who needs to lose weight to fit into a bridesmaid dress later on in the year. But this woman can be a bit unreliable, so who knows whether she will still want to lose weight with me? Anyway, I'm waiting for her to go to Weight Watchers, so I'll start then.

The last week I haven't been totally reliable in terms of weighing myself, but here are some that I've recorded:

Friday 81.1

Tuesday 80.45

Wednesday 80.00

Thursday 81.5

That's a general downward track, although in reality it may just been the variability of scales being shown.

I'm back

Well, I'm feeling that I'm ready to lose weight again. A few reasons, first for health, self-image, that sort of thing. Secondly, because if I don't lose the weight, I'm not getting married. Seriously. My girlfriend of 2 years, Becky has never seen me thin. Ok, she's seen me 7kg off my goal weight, but never at the weight that I want to be, except on an old video and in photos.

So the question is, is she going to be attracted to me at 66kg? I hope so, but I want to be sure before I propose. I'm not 100% sure that she will be, so I have to make sure first. That means get down to the weight that I want to be and hopefully stick to it.

So, as I've told her, I'm starting losing weight. A few comments about the last 2 months. Well, about 9 weeks ago I got burgled. They took lots of things, including my laptop, which I have now got a replacement for (finally!). Because I stay over at my girlfriends place regularly, not having a laptop was a pain. It just made things more difficult to get motivated. You know the story.

Anyway, I intend to write daily about my progress and post weekly.

Sunday 81.10kg
Finished off the last of the fancy biscuits and sweets that I'd bought yesterday. Yes, I know that I should have thrown them out, but I am a bikiholic. Seriously. Becky and I went to see a film, had ice cream and popcorn. Didn't expect to lose any weight today.

Monday 81.15
Ate a lot of fruit, which was good, but then got depressed (did I tell you I suffer from depression?) and had both McDonalds and a medium sized pizza. Felt a bit better afterwards, didn't feel guilty.

Tuesday 82.1
Was generally good today, although I decided to treat myself to an afternoon tea to celebrate the start that I'm starting at university again. Fruit later on in the day.

Wednesday 80.85
Too early in the day to write about what I've eaten, but I went looking at blogs. Felt sad. The three that I had been following for a while now haven't lost any or have put on weight.

They are:
Opening my eyes to weight loss
This guy has been trying to lose weight for about 18 months now, with not much success. But he's still trying.

Renee gets fit
I've been following Renee for ages now, but she doesn't seem to lose weight or if she does, it's very slowly. She also has a tendancy to put on weight.

Half the man
Imagine a freight train climbing up a steep, large mountain. Wouldn't you be impressed? There's no stopping it. Then it stops, just before losing 100 pounds. This is the one I feel most sad about.

Are we all destined to be in this struggle for the rest of our lives?

So my daily goals are:
eat breakfast
2 or 3 units of protein
listen to my audio programme by Paul McKenna.

Slowly gaining weight

At the moment, I think that I'm slowly gaining weight. That's because, of course I'm having yummy treats. But that will stop soon, I hope. I don't weigh myself that often, which is a shame, really. Oh well, enough negativity.

Weight is stable - I think

Well, it's been a while, hasn't it? At the moment I've put the weight loss on hold, pretty much for reasons of stress. Will fill you in later. Still want to lose the weight, of course.

Starting over again

Well, it's been 2 months since I posted to this blog, as you know this is common for bloggers (and people on a diet), to stop and start a bit. Well, I'm starting over, but this time I'm doing it a bit different. First of all, I'll be listening to my 'mind programming' audio most days, I think that was the reason why I stopped losing weight, I didn't do it consistantly and there wasn't an easy way to do it privately. Now there is.

So it's my intention to daily: weigh myself, listen to the audio, and watch what I eat. Weekly: post here with a graph and comments about how it's going.

I haven't weighed myself recently, but tommorrow I start again. Disappointed that it's turned out this way but glad that I haven't put on much weight recently (will find out how much tomorrow morning).

Generally good week

The week has gone well, I've generally lost weight, but I've been slack in terms of having 'punishment', when I am above the weight I'm meant to be, I don't do anything about it (ie exercise), which I said in the last post (I think). So yes, I'm slack. But apart from this issue, I've done well, I'm losing weight and the point where I reach a peak weight loss rate (87 grams a day) is in sight - about 23 days away. From then it's all down hill, which is nice to know. My weight however is still where I was 2 weeks ago, I peaked and have been losing weight in the last week or so. So I'm good in the short term, and not so good in the long term. Currently losing 63 grams a day. Lowest average weight in 15 days.

A problem and a solution

In the last few days, since my birthday I've been having 'treats' as if it was still my birthday almost. As a consequence, I've been gaining weight. I've been here before, so have many dieters. So the solution is to 'punish' myself by that activity that I hate - exercise. My intention was to lose weight without exercising, which I still think is possible, but now if I'm above that green line on the graph any day, for that day I have to go running. The time that I need to run is the number of minutes equal to the number of times I've been over my limit in the last 14 days. I fully expected to go for a run today, but fortunately I was a smidgen below the line today. To prevent my running now and then in the future, I'll have to be below the line by a safety margin, to allow for variation in weighing values.

Birthday gain

I was looking forward to seeing how my new system (trying to be a specific weight each day) went, and I was pleased that for 5 days, it went well. Then I had my birthday, and I gained weight, but I'm 'allowed' that, I think that even on a diet, you're allowed to over indulge on your birthday. I'm not sure how much I put on, probably about 300-500g.

However, the surprising thing is that today I over indulge again. I have just started at university again, last time I started I put on weight, I have to make sure that it doesn't happen this time too. I bought some white chocolate today, I hardly ever buy that, so something is up with me.

All is not lost though, I'll keep on having the whey powder and fruit, and see what happens. I'm not doing any exercise, though I think maybe I should, just to improve my quality of sleep.

New system

I have decided that I should change the way that I lose weight. Let me explain. I go hungry, eat protein and try to not have treats. That's fine, but the amount I lose each day (or week, or month) is relatively uncontrolled. That's because I generally try my best and that's it. The plan was to lose about 100g a day until I finished.

The plan seemed fine until one of life's changes came along - not a good change, but one nonetheless. I'm not yet ready to divulge to a great degree the intimate details of my life, so apologies if I don't yet tell you. Anyway, that change meant that there was less demand on me to lose weight in a prompt manner. So I have decided that I'll do it differently - rather than lose weight as much as I can, I'll slow it down and have some control on the process.

Because I weigh myself everyday, I decided that I want to weigh a specific weight each day, as close as possible. If I weigh more, I go into diet mode. If I weigh less, I don't go into diet mode. I repeat this process many, many times until I have trained myself to maintain a constant weight, eating well but not gaining. That will take months, no doubt just to train myself.

Another concern is that I reach my goal weight, and what happens? Will I bounce back? I did that in 2001, although there were external issues providing stress in my life.

So my plan is to start off, losing a small amount each day (50g - 350g a week) and slowly increase this until I find it more and more difficult to keep up. When I reach this value, I stay there (or reduce if I am having major problems) until I am 90 days away from the goal. I figure 90 days, 3 months is a nice short period that most people can tolerate. There I will stay, always being 90 days away from the target weight. In other words, the closer I get, the slower I lose weight.

What this means is that I will theoretically never reach my goal weight, although I am sure I will reach it sometime in the future. But it will mean that there won't be a 'bump' as I reach my goal. I won't have to change my eating as the change will be so small that I won't notice it. Anyway, that's the plan. One disadantage of this system is I never reach my goal, so I can never say "I've made it!". But I decided that if I'm 1kg away, I'm pretty much there.

So today, I want to lose 50 grams. Tomorrow, 51, etc etc. I'll graph the amounts weekly so people can see where I'm at. Yes, it adds time to losing weight, but I've been here so long, I don't really care.

A trip away often means putting on weight

Well I was losing weight nicely thanks then I have to drive to my home town 6 hours away to discuss things with my father. However, as often happens, I eat way too much on the drive (I'm almost always alone) there (and back, after all, if you eat a lot there, you might as well eat a lot on the way back). Plus I treated myself to fattening foods while I was there, meaning I ate out a lot, hence my 500g-1kg gain.

This is not a terrible situation, just a week or two and I'll be back to where I was, but I need to train myself not in over indulge. So my goal for the next few weeks is to lose that gain, and then I'll be happy with myself again.

Halfway

Yes folks, I am just over halfway through my weight loss journey. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's taken 11 months to do so, lose 8.8 kg. Pretty slow, yes I'd agree. Click on the graph to see why, lots of ups and downs. Lots of time wasted. I've gained 5-7kg of weight in those 11 months, which I had to lose (as well as the original 8.8kg). So nearly 40% of the time I'm losing not the original weight, but the recent gain. No one said losing weight was easy! It's interesting looking in detail at the graph. The gain in late July was caused by my starting a course at university, it took nearly 3 months to recover from. The second major gain in early November was caused by finishing the same course, 2 1/2 months wasted trying to recover from. That's nearly 6 months wasted just by life changes.

On another note, I'm listening to a "mind programming" CD that comes with a book written by Paul McKenna called "I can make you thin", ISBN 0593050541. I'm not crazy about the title, but listening to the CD every day seems to help. This brings up the issue of weight loss books. I've read a few, and my thoughts (together with reading the readers reviews at Amazon.com) is that no weight loss book, no matter what it's like is going to help a person with weight loss unless the reader reads the book numerous times and structures their life around it. That's why listening to the CD (or others like it, no doubt) helps, but again you've got to listen to it many (maybe hundreds of) times. I'd recommend readers of this blog see whether their local library has a copy. I can't recommend you buy the book, it may just not be any help.

Plateau

Well, I was losing weight nicely and then what happens? I reach a plateau. What is interesting is that looking back at my graphs is that it always happens about 1.5kg after I start losing weight at a reasonable rate. I'm not sure if this is because my body physically holds on to energy more, as it realises that I'm going for it, or psychologically as I just get tired of being hungry all the time.

Fortunately I've pushed through this 'barrier' and I'm continuing downward. However, I am the weight I was 2 1/2 months ago, my life changed a bit (as it does for most people) and I started gaining. Then Christmas came along and a few other things. So that's about 2 1/2 months wasted. Anyway I have 9.25 kg to go - not much and it hopefully will be gone in the next 3-4 months.

Losing weight - for the moment

Well, my current weight loss is going ok for the moment. The whey seems to be easy enough to have - it's quick and simple and doesn't taste awful. So I'm losing weight quickly initially (see the graph above) but the quick loss is slowing down. As you can see in the graph, the diamonds show each daily weight, the white line is the 6-day average and the yellow line is the 3-day average. I look at this graph most days to tell me how I'm going, of course it means that every day there is that feeling of anticipation. Will I lose weight today? Will my average drop by enough? But it's better than say a weekly weigh-in, where there is much more chance to have a problem that you don't know about until it's too late. We all falter, and there isn't a real problem in that, but it's important in my opinion to know when we falter, not a week later.

Because my 6-day average has moved onto another 500g zone (in between 76 and 76.5kg) I had an afternoon tea today - coffee and slice. It was yummy! Muffin Break, of course. Felt good that I can enjoy these rewards and know that they aren't really going to affect my weight loss. I may put on weight tomorrow, but I know that the averages will probably reduce anyway.

Doing well

Yesterday I was really good in terms of eating. I had my whey as planned, it's not bad tasting (well it's flavoured, which helps) and it's a lot easier to eat than either sardines or salmon. However, vegetable protein doesn't have all the amino acids that animal protein has, so I will try to have one meat unit (about 20g) of protein per day. It's been a while since I have been this well controlled. However, I was hungry for a lot of the day, and had a headache as well. I don't have headaches very often, so something is up.

Today I weighed myself, and it's noticeable that my weight has changed. That's more likely to be the fact that the two coffee and slices have exited my body rather than any other effect. I would have probably lost 100g which is way less than the error in the scales or the fluctuation in my body weight. Because of this, I have a simple system to remove fluctuations - I enter the weight into my spreadsheet which averages the last 6 days. Plus it graphs it all as well. It's really simple once it's set up, and because my computer is on all the time (processing seti at home units) I just click on the taskbar and enter the details. Anyway, the average has stopped increasing and will hopefully move downwards from now on.

Attached is a photo that I took about a week ago. Comparing this taken with the one in March last year, when I was 7kg heavier, you wouldn't notice much difference. Hopefully the changes will become apparent as time goes on.

I'll leave it there. Ideally, I'll be at 66kg in about 109 days (early May 2006) which isn't too bad. However, the question is will it happen? Or will I put on the kilos like I've done in the past?

A bit of a problem

Well yesterday, I went out and got my new whey. I also, as stated had a coffee and slice. This is something that I have whenever I feel in the need of a 'treat' - something nice to do either when something is good or when something is bad. I typically go to a mall where Muffin Break is, and have something really tasty. Anyway, yesterday I had that, tried the whey powder, that was fine. But as I was heading back home from my girlfriends place, what did I do? I had a second coffee and slice.

I know why (as well as the slice, I had a cookie as well). It's me having a last 'major treat' before restarting my weight loss. Yes, it's really silly, and it's expensive as well, but it's something I'll do once in a while.

As a result, my weight today (I weigh daily) is up a bit, I am now 76.9 kg. But today I don't intend to have any treats, tommorrow I'll be losing weight now doubt. That's the good thing about weighing daily, I almost immediately know when I'm losing or gaining.

First entry

I thought I'd start my own blog - for the last 10 kg that I want to lose (actually it's 10.8 kg but "The last 10.8kg" doesn't sound quite right). I have lost about 7kg so far - that's 17.3 kg in total that I want to lose.

Today is a special day. Why? Because I'm buying some whey powder. I've never bought it before, but my intention is to use it as a source of protein (which it is). I have found protein especially good for losing weight, the only problems with protein is that it's expensive. My favourite meat, shaved ham costs about $NZ100 per kg of protein. That's just too expensive for me, since I want to consume about 60g a day. A much cheaper source of protein is fish, typically $NZ50 a kg of protein. But sardines, which is what I usually have, are smelly, messy and I'm not really keen on them. Salmon, at roughly the same cost is better tasting, but still messy.

Anyway, I found a good source of whey powder at the same cost as fish. Sure, you have to buy a big container, which will last a month, but it must be better than sardines. As a treat today, I'll buy myself an afternoon tea as a 'last fancy meal', before I start losing weight again. I'll also allow myself treats every 500g lost, I just can't go too long without a good coffee and slice.

As for this blog, it is my intention to post to it weekly. When I finish my diet, I'll post monthly. Hopefully that should keep me on track.