I thought he was dead...

It was all my fault!  I had become rather complacent, having considered myself far too sensible to do anything as daft as drown the little fella!  Sadly, my complacency was mis-placed, and stupidity took over when I managed to put my Fitbit through a wash cycle.  It was Sunday morning and I got up and went downstairs to have a coffee.  Very rarely, for me, I decided to go down in my nightdress, and, for some reason I still can’t fathom, I attached my Fitbit to the pocket on my nightdress.  WHY on earth would I do such a thing?  It’s not as though I was planning to go for a walk dressed as I was!  Anyway, I had my coffee and went back upstairs to dress, totally forgetting about my Fitbit.  I gathered up a pile of washing, and threw my nightdress into the pile.  I took the pile downstairs and shovelled it into the washing machine without another thought.  It was only later when I as hanging the washing up to dry that I noticed the Fitbit looking very sorry for himself at the bottom of the basket.  I picked him up – his casing looked a bit cracked.  I pressed his button, and, where it should have been giving me numbers of steps, flights, etc, it was giving me words.  Not rude words, thankfully, but it just said things like “Steps”, “Miles” without anything else.  I tried again later and got the same thing.  I was convinced that he was dead, especially as this seems to be a common occurrence if you read the FB forums, and no-one’s FB seems to survive.  I did the only thing I could do – I got on to Amazon and ordered a new one straight away, thinking this was my opportunity to get the new, flashier model, with Bluetooth functionality!! 

I left poor old FB on the charging cradle overnight, and checked him this morning.  When I pressed the button, a little ‘0’ came up – looked promising.  I ran around the room and pressed the button again – a number ‘9’ was displayed!  9 steps!  Rumours of FB’s death were greatly exaggerated!  I quickly got on to Amazon and was, luckily, able to cancel my order. 

Counting units

I mentioned in my previous alcohol-related blog Wine my attempts to cut down.  To support my efforts, I decided to start logging my drinks on My Drinkaware, a website on which you log your consumption and it, very helpfully, gives you the number of units and the number of calories in your drinks.  It also makes lots of 'helpful' suggestions, such as "Did you know that you could have eaten a burger and fries for the same number of calories you have consumed in alcohol today?".  Great, except I'd prefer to drink away my calories than eat a MacDonald's anyday! 

Now I know that most of us are unaware of the number of units in a glass of wine – for years we were told that a small glass was 1 unit.  However, these days, we have had considerable wine inflation!  I don’t mean in the price, as there are still many deals to be had at the supermarket; I mean in the number of units!  I know, I know, I know, that the wine we tend to drink these days is stronger than the Liebfraumilch and Blue Nun that we used to drink 25 years ago, and I KNOW that my favourite wine is 13%, but I hadn’t quite realised quite how this equates to units per glass.  At home I always drink from a small glass, which I know to be 125ml, which I imagined was probably around 1.4-1.5 units.  I was rather shocked, then, to discover that just 2 glasses was 3.4 units according to “My Drinkaware”, and this was OVER the line on their chart of recommended intake!  And I thought I was doing really well, having cut my consumption down to ONLY 2 small glasses!  The only saving grace was that I wasn’t drinking on 4 days a week.  That was, of course, until Christmas!  I don’t just mean Christmas day and the couple of days around it, I mean the whole week before (well, I HAD broken up from work…) and the week or so afterwards…  I continued to dutifully log my drinks on the website until the website started to give me warning messages that I was becoming “At Risk” because of my increased consumption!  I found this REALLY scary, so I stopped logging my drinks until after Christmas!  (Risk level is now showing as ‘Low’)  :-)

Wine

As someone who had become one of those middle-aged, middle-class wine drinkers that the government keep announcing are the scourge of the country, I had been aware for some considerable time that I needed to break the daily wine habit.  I am not talking about a serious, roll around the floor slurring my words problem, just a tendency to open a bottle of wine after a stressful (or un-stressful) day, and having a glass or two.  The week-ends were worse, when I started looking forward to 5 o’clock to justify opening the bottle and having 3 or 4 glasses during the evening.  Whilst this was rather habitual behaviour, I didn’t feel it was addictive. 

Rather than attempt to give up totally, either for a short or longer while, I decided that I would simply drink more consciously, and just have a small glass or 2 with my week-end meals.  It was actually really easy to give up the mid-week drinks.  When the little voice inside my head started saying “don’t you fancy a glass of wine?”, I quickly forced another thought inside my head.  If it persisted, I forced an image of a glass of very warm and very sweet wine to come to mind, and the desire soon went (I like wine very dry and VERY chilled!). 

It’s been well over two months, and I have been sticking to the plan pretty well. As I mentioned in my last post, apart from the week we were away on holiday, when I drank alcohol every day, I have managed to stick to no alcohol Mondays to Thursdays.  The best thing is that it has stopped occurring to me to open a bottle of wine in the evening – in fact, there is an OPEN bottle of wine in the fridge, left over from the week-end and I am going to have to tip it away as it won’t taste very nice by the time Friday comes round.

I have read articles in the past about people giving up alcohol and feeling fitter and healthier, whilst looking 10 years younger.  I am still waiting for this to happen!  Perhaps it only works if you give up totally?  

Back again!

I thought I’d better check in and give a quick update as it’s been a few weeks.  Although the initial enthusiasm for starvation and increased exercise is somewhat reduced, I have kept up with some of my goals...  First the good news – since the holiday, I have got back onto the mid-week wagon, and have managed to stay off alcohol from Monday to Thursday.  I am also keeping up with the 2 days a week fasting, which is just as well because I have had a couple of fairly indulgent week-ends.  There has been no permanent movement on the scales, only a few mid-week fluctuations either way, so the fasting is managing to balance out the over-indulgences! 

The thing that has gone a bit awry is the daily 10k challenge!  It was difficult enough to get that many steps in a day in the good weather, but over the last month or so the weather has turned miserable, wet and cold, and does not entice me to get outside and walk.  I’m no longer walking round to meet the school bus as the evenings are dark and the walk home is along unlit footpaths – it also means a considerable upping of the whinge level from my son if I dare suggest a walk when it is cold/dark/wet.  On-the-spot walking at the bus stop is all very well, but doesn’t go far enough towards getting to the 10k.  I am contemplating buying a treadmill, but DH is very sceptical and is convinced it won’t get used!  I would like to prove him wrong, but past purchases of steppers, re-bounders, gym balls, weights, a cross-country skiing machine, an “iJoy ride” (don’t ask) and a surfing machine, have not given him confidence that a treadmill will be any different.  I am looking out for a reasonable one on eBay that is not too far away.  This time it will be different....

Further Fasting

This is now week 6 of the Intermittent Fasting, and it isn’t getting a lot easier.  Having said that, compared with watching what I eat 24/7, it isn't that bad!  It has also had some amazing results in that I have lost 10 pounds!  No diet that I have ever been on in the past has achieved that sort of a result in such a relatively short space of time.  My body fat percentage has also gone down a few percent, which is a great result too, and shows I am not just losing muscle but am losing some of the lardy stuff clinging to my waist and stomach.  I am comfortably back in my size 10 trousers and feeling much better about myself.  I will be happy with just a few more pounds off, then aiming for long term maintenance, however, I am going on holiday next week, and am unlikely to spend the week off food and alcohol.  Hopefully a couple of fasting days on my return will rectify any overindulgence. 

Two of my male work colleagues have also been following the Intermittent Fasting plan 2 days a week and, like me, they have had some great results.  It is good to have other people to compare rumbling tummies and drool over our other colleagues' sandwiches.  There are, of cause, the well-meaning know-it-alls who like to share their deep nutritional knowledge gleaned from a mixture of alleged "well-known facts", TV adverts, cornflake packets, and what their mother told them.  I have been told on more than one occasion that missing meals is bad for you, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, your metabolism slows down if you go too long without food, blah, blah, blah....  It is difficult to challenge conventional wisdom, however what we are being told about what is good / bad for us is constantly changing as science advances and more research is done into every aspect of what we eat, drink or inhale.  When you cut through all the variety of diets on offer (eat more/less fat/carbs/protein; eat grapefruits, eat only raw food, eat for your body 'type', etc, etc), the overriding factors for successful weight loss are simply eat less and move more.  This doesn't have to mean living every day constantly counting calories and resisting all the nice things we like but are so bad for us.  Our weight isn't determined by our worst or best eating days - it is determined by our average intake over time.  Therefore, by severely restricting intake to around 500-600 calories on 2 days out of every 7, that will provide the body with a calorie deficit over the week of around 2500-3500 calories (dependent upon your sex, weight, activity levels, etc).  Depending on the intake on the other 5 days, this deficit can either be used to balance out any small over-indulgences (the type that tend to slip by un-noticed, but result in a gradual upward movement of the scales and the waist size), or, for those struggling to lose weight, an overall weight loss with relatively low effort.

Research has been carried out and, although still in early days, appears to be demonstrating many other health benefits that can be gained from periods of fasting, including improvements to blood sugar levels, reduction in ageing hormones and improvements to the brain.  It has also been proved that the body doesn't go into starvation mode after missing one or two meals - so the metabolism doesn't slow down.  People have been fasting for religious reasons for centuries, and have felt many health benefits that have not been recorded widely until fairly recently.

A few articles about fasting:

http://www.fasting.com

http://www.doctoryourself.com/juicefast.html

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/feb/18/fasting-protect-brain-diseases-scientists

At last... progress!

So, I can hear you asking  – is any of this working????  3 weeks in to the new approach, and it is time to get down to the nitty gritty of how it is going.

The first week didn’t include the fasting.  I didn’t have an alcoholic drink all week, which would have saved a considerable amount of calories, and I upped my exercise by going to the gym 3 times and, using my Fitbit to count the steps, upped the amount of walking I did (although I didn’t quite manage the 10k on EVERY day).  Whilst I didn’t write down, or count the calorie value, of everything I ate, I don’t tend to eat much rubbish, and I decided to just try and cut down portion sizes.  I stepped on the scales after a week (well actually, I can’t resist stepping on them every day, even though I know I shouldn’t, but only once a week is the ‘official’ recording) and, to my disappointment, they hadn’t shifted at all!  Not even a measly quarter pound!  It was when I went into work the next day and my colleague told me about the intermittent fasting that I decided to try the 5:2 approach, ie eating normally for 5 days and restricting calories to 500 on 2 days a week.  Well, it is by no means easy to go all day until 6.30pm without eating, but it is quite a bit easier than weighing and measuring and writing down every calorie consumed during each day.  By the time I walk into my house, I am ready to eat the front door! 

I am also continuing with keeping up the walking, managing 10k steps on most days.  I am managing 3 sessions at week at the gym, although I definitely need to get a re-assessment as I need an update to my routines.  Still keeping the alcohol down – just sticking to a glass or two only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.  I was very relieved to see at the week 3 weigh-in an overall loss so far of 6 pounds!  Whilst I am very pleased with that, it’s still very early days to know how sustainable the weight loss is – I am pretty sure it is mainly down to the fasting.  I guess a long term solution might be to incorporate some sort of fasting into my week – perhaps one day each week, or perhaps just missing one or two lunches a week will make it easier to keep the weight down whilst still being able to enjoy the occasional indulgence. 

The aim of the changes I am making is to try and put in place a sustainable eating and exercise plan that I am happy to stick to, not just for a few months whilst I try to shed a bit of excess baggage, but for ever more....  I know there will be holidays, Christmases, special occasions, “bad” days, etc, but I want to be able to face these head on – enjoy the overindulgence, then deal with the consequences!    

Eating / not eating

As I said in my introduction, it is not all about weight loss.  That said, it is most definitely in SOME part about weight loss - about 10-14 pounds.  Not a huge amount in the scheme of things, and not particularly noticeable - the sort of amount that can be hidden under well structured clothing, such that people say "You - you don't need to lose any weight…", but you can't hide it from yourself (or your trousers!).  This is the amount that, over the past 2-3 years, has, very gradually, crept on, slowly easy its way around my middle, the result of not dealing with excesses of holidays, Christmases, special occasions, days with a 'Y' in...

As I have spent over 30 years being "careful" what I eat, I should be an expert by now on how much I can eat each day to lose or maintain weight.  Knowing is one thing, and doing is an entirely different thing.  As I don't tend to eat a lot of junk in the form of fatty food, cakes, biscuits, chocolate, sweets, etc, there isn't much to give back on that front.  Calorie reduction can only come from cutting down the wasted calories consumed in liquid form (and I'm not talking about tea and coffee here...), and from managing portion sizes of my meals.  One other option, and one I am going to try, is  to actually miss out some meals.  There are lots of opinions and research about whether or not you should be eating 3 meals a day, and many people saying that you should never miss breakfast, etc, etc.  There is also a lot of research that shows that periods of fasting can not only improve your health, but can significantly increase your expected life span.  [It is at this point that I should be linking through to pages of official research that I have done on this, but hey-ho...].There are many different ways of fasting, including alternate day fasting, fasting for blocks of days at a time, but I am looking for the least inconvenient and painful method.  Having watched a Horizon show on this topic, the presenter tried various methods, and the method he found easiest to live with on an on-going basis was to have 2 days each week with a very low calorie intake (600 calories for men, 500 for women).  This can be split into a couple of small meals, or eaten in just one meal.

My plan is to try this for 2 days a week, eating just one meal on those days.  It will be an evening meal, as I have to prepare meals for DH and DS.  On other days, I will continue to eat sensibly, but not counting every calorie, although I will try to be more aware of keeping portion sizes a bit smaller.  More details of my plans/attempts to follow, but information about the fasting can be found on the BBC website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19112549.  I don't think the program is available on iPlayer any more, but it can be found on YouTube.  This is my second week of intermittant fasting, and I will update my progress soon!

Another new start?

I’m back, with news of a brand new me!  Well, that is the plan anyway... I am in the early stages of my “journey” (as I would describe it, were I to be interviewed for my reality TV programme).  Still the ‘old’ me at the time of writing, but hoping that by blogging my progress, there will actually be some!  So, as you are no doubt dying to know what I am waffling on about, I will tell you dear readers reader: I am going to improve my health and lose some of the excess podge that has slowly been growing around my middle!  Not radical, I know, and not something I haven’t attempted in the past (on MANY occasions), however I am going to try a few different approaches in the quest to feel better, look better, ensure that my twilight years are spent in good health and, hopefully, add a few more years to my life expectancy.  Nothing too radical - just a few variations on the eat less/move more theme that is the only way to lose weight sensibly.  

So, why do this?  

• Well, as more and more birthdays come and go, each year seemingly quicker than the previous, it is becoming ever more difficult to battle the gradual upward creep of the needle on the scales (ok, my scales don’t actually have a needle as they are digital, but it doesn’t sound as good... anyway, I digress..).   
• Secondly, the wine drinking has become far too much of a habit, as confirmed by the overflowing re-cycling bin each week.  
• Having been in denial for the previous 12 months, I finally had to give in and start buying a few pairs of trousers in a bigger size as I thought it might be nice to be able to breathe during the day
• Having lost both my grandmother and mother at relatively young ages to pancreatic cancer, I feel that I can't fight the overwhelming amount of evidence that shows that lifestyle is a major factor in the likelihood of an individual developing many of the cancers.  
• I want to look, and feel, better in my clothes 
• I want to be around when my son grows up

Back soon with more details of my approach, and my progress so far