17 Day Diet

My Kick Start week fell apart a little thanks, for a change, not to my falling off the wagon but a moderate dose of pneumonia. So I've lost 5.5k in a week through an unsustainable combination of fatigue, nausea and anorexia instead of the ideal combination of healthy eating and physical exertion.
I'm now two days into a five day antibiotic course and starting to feel better but I think it's going to be a while before I'm able to do anything more exciting than z light walk without having to stop for a breath, and today's the first day I've even felt up to that.
I can, however, watch what I eat. I'm flying back to the UK in just over a month, and I want to get there thinner and fitter than when I left a fortnight ago, and maintain a healthier lifestyle while I'm there, despite a disrupted routine, new (and tempting) food and no kitchen. I decided while away that I'd spend this time between the Kick Start week and my flight doing the first two stages of the 17 Day Diet. See my review for details on the program, but essentially it's a low fat, low carb program that's high in animal protein, low GI fruit and vegetables, with an emphasis on probiotics.
The Kick Start diet's actually been quite a good introduction to a low carb program as, with the exception of yesterday's bowl of cereal, I've had nothing significant in the way of grains in the past week.
I'm not anticipating following this long term, but I think I need something to re-initiate the progress I was making until I got to the magical scary weight that triggered a frightened reversal. I've lost 18 kilos in twelve months, which is certainly a start, and sustainable, but I want to lose another twenty plus in the next year.
So, back to the Moreno program! I started with scrambled eggs mixed with a smidgen of mustard, followed by an orange, which slipped quite nicely down my sore throat. Lunch was a huge bowl of salad with iceberg and mixed leaves, celery, capsicum, raw cauliflower and tomato, topped with a can of drained tuna and drizzled with a tablespoon of olive oil with 2 of vinegar. It was crunchy, fresh, quite filling and surprisingly tasty.
I should have finished the day with steamed vegies and chicken, another piece of fruit and some yoghurt, but all I could manage was a Yakult, but it's a start and I feel quite content. - Alex

Killer cough

O! the horrible coughing-to-the-point-of-gagging.At least I no longer have a fever, but I have post-febrile patheticness and have done little for the past two day but lie in bed. And cough.
Yesterday's orgy of beef and tomatoes didn't happen, and my total intake amounted to 43 calories of Raspberry Zinger tea with honey.
While I was in the UK I bought a vast array of lollies from the awesome A Quarter Of, ostensibly for the licorice care package I'm putting together for a brother-in-law; though I certainly bought a beautiful array of licorice and aniseed treats, half or more of my purchases were for me - pips (tiny little lollies with fantastically intense flavours), Irn Bru-flavoured humbugs, lime hard-boiled lollies, rhubarb and custard lollies, pineapple chunks, raspberry millions, mini Parma violets, Chelsea Whoppers, monkey bars, Krakatoa foaming fizz... and I didn't even know what those last half dozen are! I do, clearly, have impulse control issues, which is how my expedition to buy a pair of shoes netted me two pairs, plus two pairs of ankle boots and a glorious (but unneeded) red leather suitcase. But I digress.
I've been very disciplined since my delivery arrived some three weeks ago, but today I managed to choke down two Cadbury fudge bars (25g and 115 calories each) and two Nestle Caramac bars (30g and 173 calories per bar - they're basically caramel-flavoured white chocolate). They were quite soothing to my irritated throat but sat less well in my still nauseated gut, so I may stick to tea and honey for now. I also had four pips, in banana, cola, strawberry and cream. I can't find any nutrition information on them, but they're tiny boiled lollies, weighing about 2g each so 30 calories.
I just can't do anything physical, thanks to quite unpleasant and persistent shortness of breath with essentially no exertion. So somewhat less the rest of the Kick Start program and rather more of the This Bug is Kicking My Arse... - Alex

The magic of fad diets

So after the two fruit days when any fruit except highly-calorific bananas were allowed, on day four my (by now quite boring) soup can be supplemented by up to three banana smoothies. I'm not quite sure how they're high potassium levels (like the vast quantities of tomatoes in the soup and in the two days ahead) now outweigh their calorie count, but that's why I'm not a fad diet creator.
Yesterday was a bit of a catastrophe, though in the reverse way one might expect. I did, I must confess, break the Kick Start diet a smidge, by eating about 10g of crisps, but my total daily intake was very low. As, in fact it has been since Friday: Friday 546, Saturday 747, Sunday 544, Monday 709, and today a comparatively whopping 1168 - must be the potassium!
I had my soup overnight, plus the alluring crisps (or, to be precise, Smith's Aussie Fries), and before leaving work (at around 8:45AM) I had a multigrain muffin with extra light ricotta and half a tomato, followed by half a packed of delicious Soyco Malaysian Satay tofu (and I'm surprised by LiveStrong's nutrition break down of 47.3% fat when the label says 9.6...) I then went to help my mother pack for a trip to Rome, and got home around 3PM, so exhausted I showered and went to bed, sleeping until 1AM and then again from 3AM til 7:45, so no Day Three update, and not much eating or, sadly, exercising.
That's probably a good thing, as the cold I've been incubating's picked up a touch - last night I had some slightly alarming creaky on inspiration, and as I type I'm shivering with a low-grade fever. So perhaps working out is something to put - or, more accurately, stay - on hold. Just getting the washing off the line made me both short of breath and a little nauseated.
I did cheat a little this morning, weighing in before the week's over: 4.4k off since Saturday's weigh in (or 3.3 since the Friday weight). I think it's way too soon to be triumphant, and no doubt a chunk of that's water weight, but it's still a move in the right direction. - Alex

Heavier already?

So I weighed myself when I got up, and I've managed to gain 1.1k after my first two kick start meals - proof, if any was needed, that day-to-day weighing doesn't accurate reflect anything much.
I started day 2 feeling fine but tired, but when I got up I felt quite dreadful - dull headache, really tired, and just not right. An apple made no difference, so I had - in lieu of a cheese and ham sandwich - a toasted multigrain muffin with reduced fat ricotta and tomato on one half and Vegemite on the other. That and an apple picked things right up. Sadly I didn't do anything much on the exercise front, a problem lately with my night shifts - staying up too late in the morning, then scrambling to get to work in the evening, and probably the next bad habit I need to work on.
I had a small bowl of soup overnight, having neither time nor inclination then for more. Breakfast was a bowl of fruit salad (black grapes, kiwi, rock melon, honeydew and strawberries, accompanied by a diuretic glass of carrot, apple and celery with ginger.
I feel as though I could eat a meal now (some three hours after breakfast, as I'm not working on the early-to-bed thing yet), or just as easily head to bed. I don't, however, feel at all like any more soup, which probably doesn't bode well for the next five and a half days. I'm choosing option B, and will keep you posted. - Alex

Kick starting things

I suspect the reason why people lose weight on this diet is because of the vast amount of time spent chopping and peeling the ingredients. A kilo of carrots, a bunch of spring onions, a couple of capsicum... and already I've gone off program because the recipe specified green and I went for the (tastier, less expensive) red ones instead, and threw in a couple of cloves of garlic. Oh dear, it's all over!
So I had my first bowl of kick start soup at 2AM - it was surprisingly nice, but I suspect I'll be reconsidering that in a couple of days. For now, though, it's all good and I'm feeling quite virtuous.
I've flipped days one and two, starting with soup and vegetables; tomorrow's soup and fruit (because I'm going out for breakfast after work and fruit salad will be on the menu at 8AM, unlike steamed vegies). Monday is soup plus fruit plus vegies (be still my heart), Tuesday is non-chews day, with soup and banana smoothies. On Wednesday I get to add "six luscious tomatoes" (why six? No idea) and beef, plus soup, with beef (or chicken, or tofu) and vegies on Thursday. And on Friday I get brown rice, vegies, fruit juice and the note "you might need more soup today."
So my vegies when I got home where a bunch of steamed asparagus and a handful of snow peas with a little butter and olive oil. Of course, had I been a little more careful with the reading I'd have realised I could reward myself (their words) with a jacket potato topped with butter or yoghurt. Silly me, I was paying attention to day three, when I can eat all I want but no potatoes. Why? No idea - it must be magic.
Fruit day (the official day one and my day two) allows as much fruit as I like, except bananas. This is a little perplexing, because day three (soup, fruit and vegies) says nothing about bananas, and day four I can have up to three large bananas in my smoothies as they're a great source of potassium. But not on day one?
If I have hypoglycemic symptoms (headache, anxiety, drowsiness) I can have up to one sandwich of wholegrain with cheese and ham, but no butter or margarine. Butter's okay with a jacket potato but evil with a wholegrain apparently. Why? No idea - diety magic again.
All of this is, of course, key - mystery and a thin veneer of science, and ignore the discrepancies. And yet here I am, doing it anyway. So I'm off for a little more soup before bed. My cunning plan is weighing in when I get up, a return to the working out for the first time in quite a bit, and a yummy breakfast of soup and maybe a jacket potato (if I'm up to a supermarket trip before work).
Watch this spot. - Alex

Week 13 - day 7 (day 90)

Though there's be a long gap between entries, I haven't (entirely) fallen off the lifestyle-change wagon. I think I've pretty much got the eating part down pat, but the exercise aspect is proving considerably easier to stop and vastly harder to restart, with the unhappy result that I've barely done anything more energetic than an amble in the past month or so. And I know this is a recurring theme, but I'm three months in and don't seem to be doing any better. On the other hand, and I think focusing on how well I'm doing as well as where I need to improve is helpfully, I'm around 8k down; though I'd rather be averaging over a kilo a week instead of just over half that, the goal is that I'm losing, consistently, at an achievable pace, and I'm track with those objectives. - Alex

Week 9 - day 1 (day 57)

So it's day one, which hasn't gone off quite like I planned, because I've been awake since 4AM, which isn't really compatible with safe working overnight, and I rang in sick. Which doesn't fit in with the picture I had.
That aside, however, the first day of my week of eating and exercising optimally has gone well. The first days' food is usually pretty good, and this week was no exception - Bircher muesli and a multigrain muffin with margarine and Vegemite for breakfast, a salad topped with Thai-inspired beef strips and an apple for lunch, snacks of cheese and crackers, peach fruit cup, light fruit cake, and an Asian rice bowl (rice, chicken and vegetables).
More usefully, I tried the third of Australian Biggest Loser trainers Shannan Ponton and Michelle Bridges' work out DVDs, Calorie Killer Circuit. There's a more detailed review here, written after my second experience doing it.
Today was my first time working out to this intensive combination of circuit and pyramid (or ladder) training. It was also a fairly warm day, and between the two I was a fiery red of face, huffing, and damp everywhere I didn't have beads of sweat actively rolling south. I also kept up, though I couldn't quite manage every pushup or sit up.
It might only have been 50 minutes but, combined with three ten minute walks I got over the hourly minimum exercise requirement and felt quite chuffed for the rest of the day.
I noticed that the calorie count for today was higher than 1,800; given that the dinners aren't identical in energy content, with the current options ranging from 317 (steak with creamy mushroom sauce) to 481 (chicken with satay sauce), and the need to offer options, I imagine it evens out to an average of 1,800 per day over the week. And since reading Winning by Losing earlier this year, I think that's probably a good thing. This is the first time I've thought about it, though, so tracking calories this week will be an interesting exercise. - Alex

Fruit: apple, dried apricots, stewed peaches, sultanas
Vegetables: broccoli, capsicum (green and red), carrots, champignons, corn, coriander, ginger, green beans, potato wedges
Energy: 1,975 calories
Fibre: 33g
Exercise: 50 minutes circuit/pyramid training DVD, 3 x 10 minutes moderate intensity walking (flat surface)

Day 56/weigh in

I knew it had been a while since my last update, but didn't realise it had been just under a month. So it's been 8 weeks, and I've lost 7.7kilos from my starting weight, which is a reasonable kilos per week average (though a little disappointing for those of us accustomed to Biggest Loser numbers). It doesn't help that I've been exercising only sporadically, and being a little more liberal in my diet than I ought.
I added the breakfasts a couple of weeks ago, to give them a try, which means I now get two eskies delivered a week! There are a few variations on a theme, including a weekly eggs and bacon treat (which I've passed on, suspecting the eggs aren't free range) and a ham, cheese & tomato sandwich one morning. Generally, though, the breakfasts involve a 30g serving of cereal (which is not a lot, and makes me realise how more generous my routine Weetbix and muesli bowl was), plus a piece or two of multigrain toast, often with Vegemite but no spread, and fruit.
Today marks the beginning of a seven night stretch at work, and I'm throwing myself into the program properly, to see what I can do when I apply myself. The disadvantage of nights is that there's very little time to do much except eat, sleep and work - I leave at 8PM, start work at 9, finish sometimes between 7:30 and 8AM, and arrive home between 8 and 9.
The advantage is that a long stretch can help you stick to a regular and uninterrupted routine. This week, that means only eating the provided Lite'n'Easy food (including, sadly, their anemic tomatoes, which are at least ripening in the fruit bowl instead of loitering palely in the fridge). It also means drinking a pot of green tea when I go out for breakfast over the weekend with my mother, and having the provided fruit muesli, spreadless Vegemite toast and dried apricots when I get home.
I will also be doing between one and two hours of exercise each day, a combination of DVD workouts (bellydancing, cardiowalk, Biggest Loser and circuit programs) and walking. There's a monster hill on the way to work that's 500 steps (I'm a compulsive counter, especially when walking); I take a hundred steps a minute, and that's rough five minute climb that I'm sure counts as interval training, as indicated by my 50 breaths per minute toward the end! I cool down a little on the remaining walk in, for a total of around half an hour of walking, and ramp it up again by climbing stairs to my floor - all 168 of them. Instead of only doing this every now and again, this week I'll do the walk every night, with a potential caveat for heavy rain.
I'm also going to prioritise sleep over reading and TV, and make a more concerted effort to drink more water - a glass an hour at work, plus one on rising, one on arriving at work, one on getting home, and one just before sleeping, will total 3.5L.
Finally, I realise I haven't mentioned anywhere that I suspected I was anemic, and the week I began Lite'n'Easy I started taking an iron supplement, plus 1g of vitamin C (to aid iron absorption) every day with breakfast - I feel so much more energetic and am markedly less breathless on exertion, which I think has far more to do with this than to a sudden increase in aerobic fitness. It does certainly make me feel happier about exercising, and healthier in general, though perhaps I should have had a proper check up first. And now, on to the week of focus! - Alex

Day 27

Lunch today was a pasta bake with broccoli and chicken that was pleasant, followed (the way I structured my meal, anyway) by a raspberry and apple crumble. It was a fairly fruit-heavy day all up, with a raw apple too, a fruit bun, and an apricot muesli bar. I also had my first experience of a “crunchy noodle snack” – a foil pack of a blend of crunchy noodles, say nuts and some kind of crispy wafery thing that was satisfying.
I was going to go out again for dinner tonight, but it was fortunately rescheduled. I say ‘fortunately’ because I’ve somehow ended up with far more dinners than I expected, given that I’ve only had three nights where I ate a non-Lite’n’Easy meal. I went for the sausages and mash option instead, and was pleasantly surprised – the three sausages weren’t massive but they were juicy and full of flavour, tasting as though there was far more meat than filler. The gravy was rich and not as sweet as I’ve found some of the sauces so far, and the vegetables were moist yet crisp.
Tomorrow marks my fourth week of Lite’n’Easy, and so far I’m still enjoying it. Though there are some dishes that recur across the weeks, there’s enough variety and taste to keep it all interesting. Even with that I think I’m eating more widely than I had been on my own, as well as re-educating myself about appropriate portion sizes. There’s a nice balance between sweet and savoury selections, and between meals and snacks, and though I’d like a little more salad, I understand why the fresh vegetable dishes only appear on the first three days of each week; it also makes those days something to look forward to. Now I just need to get up and moving. - Alex

Day 26

Yesterday wasn’t particularly interesting, just too filled with life for an entry.
Lunch was quite exciting today – a hamburger with beetroot relish and a sliced tomato (the provided version substituted with a truss tomato from IGA) that was significantly smaller than anything you’d buy from a shop but bursting with flavour.
My snack was a vegetable frittata, more filling than exciting but not bad, and the oft-recurring fruit and nut mix; my additional snack was a fruit muffin with jam. I was also supposed to have some dried apricots, but the snack pack didn’t make it into the delivery this week – so far I think there have been one or two items missing every week, which is irritating but not enough to have me leave the program.
Unfortunately I more than made up for it by continuing yesterday's chocaholia, dipping into the dark chocolate several times while reading in bed - this encompasses three of my least good habits: mindless snacking, eating when reading, and staying in bed instead of getting up as soon as I wake.
The non-program eating was compounded by a family dinner. One of my cousins moved to Melbourne a couple of years ago – it was her elder daughter’s ninth birthday, and her father’s seventieth a few days early. We ate at a contemporary Australian restaurant in one of Melbourne’s more expensive suburbs, and though many items on the menu sounded tempting, I chose an entrée of that most present of vegetarian options, a caramelised onion tart with goat’s cheese, on this occasion accented with “a bacon crisp” (or, to you and me, a small and crispy strip of bacon). The dish was smaller than I expected, which is no bad thing, and was de-constructed, which was interesting – the tart was more like a disk of crisp pastry topped by caramelised onions and green salad, with a round slice of goat’s cheese alongside, accompanied by a pot of Béarnaise sauce in a tiny jug. I’m not a fan of goat’s cheese, which I tend to find overpowering on its own, but this was delicious. The tart was complex and buttery, its richness cut by the salad; I passed on the sauce altogether, but did have a couple of (fortunately slightly overcooked) French fires. I also had just under half of the chocolate birthday cake, and all of the very decadent vanilla ice cream.
And I had something of a workout, taking the two younger children outside, where they jumped off benches to be caught, swing in the air, twirled around, turned upside down and hunted for, and lifted into the air. It was fun all round, but I had to take a couple of breaks. It will be interesting to see how I do next time, when they’ll be heavier but I will hopefully be stronger. – Alex

Day 24

The food for today was predominantly comprised of dishes I’ve had before, and predominantly frozen given that it’s the fourth day of the week, but very filling – roast chicken linguine, shepherds pie, a baked vegetable patty with sweet chilli sauce, the always-tasty ricotta spinach cake, a slice of walnut and date cake, and a fruit cup.
Tucked into everything are vegetables – the sultana tea cake coming up in a couple of days has sweet potato as its primary ingredient – which may explain a) how so much food can be included for the calorie count and b) why it’s mostly so filling. I’m thinking that next week I might list all the vegetables I encounter each day, just for my own curiosity. Or that may just be sleep deprivation talking.
I intended to leave for home soon after the end of my shift, but instead puttered about for an hour, then spoke with a colleague for another hour; I was still in her office when another colleague popped by inviting her to join him for tea, and I managed to spend another two hours in the tea room before finally wending my way home. By that stage, of course, I wasn’t interested in walking and so another exercise opportunity was avoided thanks to procrastination.
Worse, sleep deprivation impairs my decision making ability and lowers my resistance, which means I hoed into the big container of dark chocolate callettes I have for baking. I'm not sure how much I had, but sucpect if was somewhere between 100g and 200g; even though darl chocolate's high in antioxidants it is better in moderation, and not at all on my plan. - Alex

Day 23

Today’s selections were quite delicious, and I’m really coming to look forward to the more inspiring first half of the week. I had a wrap spread with a generous serving of cucumber raita, filled with salad and three small but filling and tasty Greek meatballs. There was also a muffin made with whole kernels of corn, and a baked potato bolognaise accompanied by a small roll. I also had my first, and hopefully last, encounter with Lite’n’Easy’s vanilla yoghurt.
Until now the yoghurts have been flavoured (passionfruit and forest berry have been the former varieties), surprisingly rich, and very edible. The vanilla? Not so much – it smelled unpleasant when I opened the lid, and the taste did nothing to appeal. As I decant my meals before going to work, I had the opportunity to substitute my own reduced fat vanilla yoghurt, topping it with a little of my perennial favourite, stewed rhubarb and raspberries.
As is usually the case on Sundays, I caught up with my mother for breakfast, and had a rather abstemious pair of poached eggs on unbuttered muffins, accompanied by a far from miserly serving of bacon. Yummy but not, I suspect, falling within my calorie restriction. - Alex

Day 22/weigh in

I've had a smaller loss, this week, of 800g, bringing my total weight loss to 5.2k in three weeks. It's a little disappointing this early and with so far to go, as I was hoping to maintain the previous rate for a few more weeks, but I haven't started to exercise yet, so I suppose it's to be expected. And I am still heading in the right direction.
My dieting friend is a day ahead of Lite'n'Easy's menu thanks to delivery areas, so I'd already had a heads up about today's lunch of warm salad with dim sims dressed with Canton sauce - half a dozen delicious little mouth-sized morsels that are now sadly another four weeks away. The rest of the day's meals were fine but not as exciting - pumpkin soup with a multigrain roll, pears in a faintly orange syrup, the first unpleasant yoghurt I've had thus far (vanilla, that tasted a little not quite right, even after I added some stewed berries), and the scrummy date and banana muffin I ravenously devoured in yesterday's waning.
For dinner I had chicken enchiladas, which had a little too much heat for my wussy super-taster tongue but were certainly filling and a bit of a change from the more usual meat and steamed veg.
Although I've been fairly diligent about not eating anything outside the provided meals (except for breakfast), there are two areas I really need to work on in the next couple of weeks - drinking enough water (particuarly at work, partly because it's busy and partly because I've fallen out of the habit) and exercise (still entirely too sedentary). I am feeling better and less breathless, but I think that's the result of three weeks of iron supplements, taken in conjuntion with vitamin C (which increases absorption). The brand I've chosen is particularly good because it's not constipating and it doesn't turn stools black. I've not lost enough weight and, more importantly, not done enough exercise to change my cardiorespiratory function, so I think my diagnosis of anemia was sound. Which now means there's one fewer excuse for avoiding the workout - my current excuse, however, is that I have to go to sleep. - Alex

Day 18

Oh dear, not a good day at all! I knew going in to work that a group of people were ordering pizza, and planned to say that I forgot and had brought my own food, the latter part of which was certainly true. But, even though my Lite'n'Easy food was both filling and tasty (I deliberately picked a very filling day, skipping ahead to the day 6 menu or hamburger with caramelised onion chutney and a tomato on a soy and linseed roll, chicken chow mein, and popcorn), I still had two slices of pizza with the girls.
That would have been less than ideal but fine, had I not lingered for a while after work and, sitting in the tea room reading, idly polished off another three slices, washed down with about 100ml of Coke, and followed that with three sweets (two pieces of caramel fudge and a piece of coconut ice I didn't even enjoy). This last part is particularly annoying, as I still had a chocoalte muesli bar and two little spicy fruit biscuits left over, along with an orange.
I think I combined mindless eating with a little sleep-deprived grazing (which is why poor sleep is associated with increased caloric consumption) and the hung-for-a-sheep-as-for-a-lamb approach. I'm also mourning the apparent death of my Tivo, but suspect I'm grasping at straws now!
In any event, instead of being thrown into a morass of dietary despair and giving up on the whole thing altogether I'm still commited to my journey and see this as a regretable but forgivable meander. In the normal course of things I'd skip dinner in lieu, but as it's my first day off work and I plan to stay up all day (I have a vast backlog of book reviews to catch up on, two overdue tax returns and a threatening amount of work to do for uni) I think that way will lie devouring of timtams. Hmm, maybe a small nap is in order. Or an early night, now I haven't got Tivo to watch. And I was so lookign forward to the premiere of "Sherlock." - Alex

Day 17

Quite a yummy dat! I had three small Thai chicken cakes with a small but ample mound of Asian slaw dressed with sweet chilli and sesame, an interesting beef and polenta bake that tasted better than it smelled, passionfruit yoghurt, a muesli cookie, and very exciting apple and custard (marred only by the unfortunate piercing of the bag in storage, causing the loss of a portion of the custard).
I went out for breakfast in my weekly maternal catch up ritual, and ordered my new standard of poached eggs on unbuttered muffins with steamed spinach. The latter's a little oversalted, and I'm thinking I may skip it next week, but it was pleasant. I popped in to the supermarket after breakfast, buying the Aldi equivalent of Weetbix and low-fat yoghurt, then wholemeal muffins (on sale!), sensitive toothpaste for my newly sad teeth, and some low-fat muesli from Coles - this is noteworthy only because I didn't even feel tempted by the donuts in the bakery section or the chocolates at the ends of the aisles.
Unfortunately I stayed in the car chatting instead of going home to bed, with the sad resulting bedtime of 1PM, undermining my resolution to get at least seven hours of sleep a day. I'm also not managing to sleep through the afternoon as well as usual, having woken almost every day this week to pee, usually quite large amounts. I suspect (and hope) this will settled down as I become more consistent with water intake and as my body realises it doesn't have to hold on to the fluid for as long.
Because I'd already had breakfast I had dinner when I awoke, choosing the roast lamb with vegetables - it wasn't bad, but I'd have preferred a thicker but less abundant gravy. I've noticed that many of the dishes are sweeter than I'd make myself which, given I've got quit the sweet tooth, is a bit of a call. All in all, though, a good day. - Alex

Day 16

Today has been fairly uneventful - I had tasty SzechwanHokkein noodles (a little heat but nothing distressing), a cup of tomato soup with a soy and linseed roll, poached two fruits, yoghurt with berries, and a slightly dry but perfectly acceptable apple and cranberry muffin. When I got home from work I had spinach and ricotta tortellini (filling, with a pleasant cheese sauce and a heap of sweet corn) then went to bed. Woot! Oh, and I was given a box of Lindor balls, of which I ate only one (and it was the dark, good for you variety) before surrendering it to the masses. Not tempted at all. - Alex

Day 15/weigh in 2

I suspected that today would be a little tricky, if only from the standpoint of getting all the food in. It’s my first shift back on nights, which means switching from day mode. Usually I stay up until around 3AM, with maybe a snack before going to bed, sleep til around midday, have breakfast when I get up, and something to eat before I leave for work. Now I have a set amount of food to eat in each 24-hour period, I think my usual pattern will change to dinner before I go to bed, breakfast on rising, something to eat mid-afternoon, and the snacks when I get to work. This will be followed by the lunch portion overnight (around 3AM), and then dinner when I get home, which is a little more than I’m used to but will work out fine.
This afternoon, however, I had a seminar to go to, which meant dinner before going to bed, breakfast on rising (around 1PM), part one of my lunch/snacks when I got to uni and the rest when I got to work. Yes, I know – fascinating. Well, the seminar (or, strictly speaking, PhD oration) certainly was, but that’s somewhat beside the point.
Day 1 of week D is certainly delicious, and very filling - I had the snack of cheesy chicken spaghetti when I got to uni, some when I got to work (a piece of delicately seasoned roast chicken sliced over a salad and wrapped in a mayonnaise-spread wrap; and a baked vegetable patty with sweet chilli sauce) when I got to work, and dessert (stewed peaches; and a reprise of week B's apple and sultana pancake!) just before midnight.
But before all of that I weighed in - though a little disappointing after my illicit post-diarrhoea weigh in the day before (dehydration may not result in an accurate picture of progress, but it does make for a gratifying one), I've lost a further 2.1K, bringing my loss thus far to 4.4k in two weeks.
I suspect that I'm not going to manage any significant exercise over the weekend, particularly as I didn't fit it in on this least rushed on days, but beginning Monday it's back on, so I can both maintain the loss and so I can build up my fitness as I de-escalate the weight. I can't see myself ever being close to the 60k or so that is recommended by BMI calculators for my height (BMI = 22), but 75k or so (BMI = 28) sounds reasonable and achievable. And my current BMI? Is north of 40, just to give you an idea of where I'm coming from.
For the record, I think BMI is a simplistic and flawed measure of health, that doesn't take frame, ethnicity or gender into account. more importantly, the divisions between categories are purely arbitrary - there are no differences between the health outcomes of a person who's BMI is 24.9 and one whose BMI is 25.1, but one is 'healthy' and the other is 'overweight.' In many cases outcomes are better for people wtih a BMI between 30 and 34 or so. for more criticism of BMI see this article, this response to another article, this article about what's wrong with the western campaign to lose weight instead of to gain fitness, and go here to read about how changing the definitions of BMI categories massively increased the number of 'overweight' Americans overnight; for a more visual representation of the arbitrary nature of BMI check out Kate Harding's BMI Project. Despite all that, my BMI isn't an inaccurate reflection of my size. - Alex

Day 14

Unfortunately, something I had yesterday tripped my intermittently sensitive gut and I had a couple of unhappy early morning liquid experiences involving pain, reactionary nausea, involuntary tears (of the liquid rather than ripping variety) and rocking on the loo, but though a little sore the next day am okay. I used my slightly delicate morning state as a reason to eschew a vigorous workout today, but went for a walk in the afternoon after my delivery arrived.

I’m quite excited about the week ahead, which seems quite salad-filled – tomorrow I’ve got a salad and chicken wrap, Saturday’s Hokkien chicken noodles is much more of a cold salad with pasta than the hot dish I pictured, and on Sunday I’ve got Thai fish cakes with Asian slaw. This is also the first week that has multiple days where no specific country or cuisine is mentioned: so far we’ve had Thai, Turkish, Tandoori, Hawaiian, Moroccan, Greek, Hoisin, Thai again, Asian (admittedly a region not a country), Vietnamese, Mediterranean (another region), Greek again, and Asian twice more.

On the downside, there’s an item missing – the multigrain muffin for Monday’s snack (with peanut butter and honey, though I think I’ll substitute jam). I thought about buying a packet of muffins and freezing them, but I’m trying to have fewer additional groceries. At the moment I’ve swapped out the soy and linseed roll from Saturday’s snack, which is meant to accompany a bowl of tomato soup. As Sunday’s a work night, and I’ll be having all the lunch and snacks together, I think I’ll be fine without it.

My rather pedestrian, Aussie breakfast today was that old standby, porridge with a handful of sultanas, topped by a fresh portion of stewed rhubarb and raspberries, sticking to the research from Real Age reporting that less variety results in a smaller intake. The theory seems to be partly based on a response to the cafeteria diet theory (that the more options one has the more one eats, thanks to the experience we’ve all had of being too full for any more of X but still having room for Y), and partly because eating out of rote rather than choosing a meal reduces our appetite. As I wrote on Tuesday (day 12), that’s one of the things I’ve found unexpected but useful with Lite’n’Easy – I have at least as much variety as I had when I was responsible for all my meals, but I don’t need to do any thinking about it apart from the five or ten minutes I spend once a week ordering the food online. Particularly now I’ve started sorting the food on arrival into frozen and refrigerator bags for each day rather than leaving them in the “day 5 – lunch, freezer” way they’re packaged. Stacking them in the freezer in order means I just have to reach in and take the closest one to me; in the fridge I line them up in a shopping bag with day 7 on the left and day 1 on the right.

It’s interesting that I’m going to some lengths to keep my Lite’n’Easy journey private or secret. Even though I live alone, I’ve been tidying up as I go so a casual, unexpected visitor won’t see any traces of Lite’n’Easy in the kitchen and, as I’ve mentioned previously, I repackage my meals before going in to work.

I remember that when I first got glasses, at the age of eight, I linked them with being fat. I’m the eldest daughter of a woman who’s had a lifetime preoccupation with weight, particularly her own, that persists even though she’s almost seventy and currently in the best shape of her life thanks to a combination of regular aerobic exercise, yoga, weight training and forgetting to eat. I know that my eating and being fat is in part a way of rebelling and exercising control, and many’s the time that, though I’ve recognised the connection, I’ve watched myself leave her after a distressing event or argument and eaten food I didn’t want without being able to stop it. For me, part of that is also maintaining a near-universal façade of being happy with my size, and to an extent that’s true – the size I am now fits the mental picture I’ve had of myself for most of my life, and even though I started this current leg of my life journey at my heaviest ever weight, I’ve still been within about 15% of it for the last twenty years. But I also have fantasies about being ‘normal’ weight, not necessarily because I think my life will transform into perfection – I know I’ll still be me – but because I have no idea what it’s like. When I was thin, in my teens, I thought I was fat, and I destroyed pretty much all the photos of myself, so I have only a handful of pictures of what I looked like then. I can’t visualise what I would like at, say, eighty kilos let alone sixty-five.

My siblings are all thin, and I really like the idea of being able to show people pictures of them without the intake of surprise and the almost required remark that they look so different – two of them are also brunettes, with similar facial structures, and as my sisters (though one a blue-eyed blonde and the other a hazel-eyed brunette) have an increasing resemblance as they progress through their thirties, I’m well aware the surprise is because they’re thin. And though I always make a light-hearted joke about it, I’d like to hear something else instead. I’d also like to see my family’s response, and I’m interested to see how our family dynamic would change. Though, as my siblings all live overseas, the dynamic’s already quite different.

Of course I’m also interested in the health side of things – I want to be fitter and stronger. But that’s really a secondary gain, along with the fact that I know I’ll seek health care more readily when I’m not concerned that my weight will be attributed to the symptoms. I don’t have any chronic health issues, and since I stopped seeing a horrible GP almost twenty years ago it hasn’t even been mentioned by a health practitioner unless I’ve brought it up, but I’ve read horror stories, and being sent off for thyroid function testing (in the absence of any symptoms of hypothyroidism) not once but three times when my presenting issues were wholly unrelated, does have an impact. I’m currently overdue for a Pap smear, breast exam and routine blood work, including the iron studies I think my recent shortness of breath warrants, because since my old GP moved to the other side of town about a decade ago I’ve only gone to multi-practitioner clinics. It’s very exposing, seeing a doctor for the first time, and while I’m happy to do it for a work certificate or to get antibiotics for a persistent chest infection (or, as embarrassingly happened a few months ago, cellulitis), I’m loath to for ongoing care. Which is ridiculous – I certainly know better, and I believe many of the poorer health care outcomes for fat people is because of this very issue. Like many people, though, I can hold two incompatible concepts in my head, which is how I can both champion size acceptance and want to be considerably thinner.

I have told three of my friends about Lite’n’Easy, including Lynn, of course. I like having a couple of people I can discuss how I’m going with, and the husband of one of my friends is thinking about trying it too, so she’s very interested in my reports back.

Which brings me back to today’s menu. So far my microwave has earned that long walk bringing it here entailed, as there were two components that needed reheating. Lunch was a cheese roll with caramelised onion chutney, which I teamed with the vegetable patty that was supposed to be an afternoon snack, adding a few spinach leaves for freshness. The rolls are far smaller than a standard hamburger bun, but as my appetite is being reshaped I found it perfectly adequate and quite tasty. I think I’d have a problem if I was on the 1500 calorie program, but hopefully that will change.

The fruit-filled snacks were an apricot muesli bar, an apple, and the optional (aka 1800 calorie program) “apricot snack pack” that was a handful of dried apricots. The optional element also included a reprise of yesterday’s Asian rice bowl. Dinner was also a reprise, as I had the lasagna last week - the vegetables were fine (carrots, beans and a little cauliflower), and the generous serving of lasagna was delicious. - Alex

Day 13

My plans of embracing exercise have once again fallen flat, but I’m still sticking with the diet part of the program. I used up the last of my non-Lite’n’Easy groceries for a late breakfast of two eggs with a little of last night’s left over tomato, a teaspoon of mustard and a handful each of chopped onions, frozen peas and frozen corn on a multigrain muffin.
Lunch was an Asian rice bowl, which had chicken, veggies and a marinade at the bottom, an apple, some yoghurt with passionfruit, and a spicy fruit biscuit (which for some reason is always in the menu guide as plural but there’s definitely just one of them). My afternoon snack was two corn fritters, which were supposed to be accompanied by a tomato salsa sauce but were instead packaged with (possibly yesterday’s) sweet chilli. I think the salsa would have suited them better, but they were fine anyway.
For dinner I selected a non-traditional beef stroganoff, light (unsurprisingly) on the cream and heavy on the vegetables and tomatoes. The noodles were a little more than al dente, but there was a generous amount of both meat and vegetables, and it was something of a relief to have a break from the steamed vegetables that accompany the majority of the other dinners.
I didn’t have today’s milk allocation at breakfast and, feeling a little cold and needy before bed, instead made a much lighter version of hot chocolate than my usual fare, combining unsweetened cocoa powder with hot water into a paste, adding low fat milk (so much easier in the microwave than on a stovetop, and with no milk-coated pan to wash up), a teaspoon of sugar and a drop of pure vanilla extract. It was significantly less indulgent that my previous version (which involved callets of Belgian milk chocolate melted in full fat milk and topped with a little ice cream) but still hit the spot. - Alex

Day 12

I don’t feel as though I accomplished a lot today, which is a little disappointing – my intentions are always good but then I meander through my day without achieving any of the umpteen things that really need doing. Like ringing the bank to find out why they charged me an unwarranted fee, or doing exercise.

The latter isn’t actually wholly true, because I did go to an evening stretch class, which sounds far more innocuous than the deep breathing, straining reality. I certainly feel a little more limber, but am very disappointed that I couldn’t at all do one of the positions – it involved having kneeling on one leg with your toes on the mat, weight on the foot of the other leg, then rising yourself part way off the floor. I was okay, of not brilliant, when lifting on the right, but couldn’t get off the ground at all on the left side and will have to practice. I ended the class pink and faintly damp, then proceeded to miss my stop tram stop and took over two hours to get home. But at least I’ve got the ball rolling on the exercise front, and it’s a process.

The other thing I did was buy a few truss tomatoes and 100g or so of mesclun salad mix, because I can’t take the anaemic Lite’n’Easy tomatoes another day. I had half of one tomato on my post-stretch return home, with a veggie burger. It was supposed to be on a round roll, rather than the sourdough bun supplied, but that was fine. Oddly, instead of the peach fruit cup, I got a tin of tuna and instead of the sweet chilli sauce I got mayonnaise, and I got one from each of the popular and alternative snacks. I have to say that the truss tomato made a massive difference, and I enjoyed every mouthful.

The additional snack today was a pesto chicken pasta bowl, which was fine, filling and quite warm on a cold Melbourne afternoon. For dinner I tried the roast turkey, which came with pumpkin, roast potatoes, peas and a slightly dull but serviceable sauce. I was quite peckish before bed and, as it was after midnight, had the fruit bun from tomorrow – heated in the microwave in had an attractive, hot cross bun taste and I didn’t miss the butterlessness of it.

I think one of the things I’m finding helpful about doing Lite’n’Easy is that I’m also getting used to not being full, and drinking a glass of water instead of reaching for food when I do feel a little hollow. Once my allocation for the day’s gone, that’s it until tomorrow. I’ve given away responsibility for my food, and there’s something quite liberating about it – except for deciding, once a week, which of the binary options I’ll have for each meal, what I eat is out of my hands. Provided I stick with that mindset, and don’t start adding things (with the exception of salad leaves and decent tomatoes) I think this could be really useful in the long run. This is certainly the longest I’ve gone without chocolate in the better part of two decades, too. – Alex