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’)  :-)

Fast reading

I mentioned in my previous post that Dr Michael Mosley's book was out soon, and, sure enough, it is now in the Amazon store in Kindle or Paperback versions.

As the 5:2 approach has worked so well for me, I am interesting in finding out as much as I can about the research into fasting, and the additional health benefits it can bring.  I am, therefore, reading up as much as I can find, and was tempted to buy the book.  Before going ahead with the purchase, however, I decided to read the introduction, which you can do on Amazon.  I read through the background of Dr Moseley, and how he benefitted from the approach not just in a significant weight loss, but in a reduction in his cholestrol and a lowering of his risk factor for type 2 diabetes.  Fair enough.  I move on to read about Dr Moseley's co-author, Mimi Spencer.  I am immediately suspicious of anyone called "Mimi" - sounds a bit like a poodle or a chihuahua...  Anyway, Mimi has also benefitted from following the 5:2 approach to lose a stone.  Great! Further evidence that the approach works, and very useful to try out the diet you are writing about.  This woman, however,  doesn't live in the same world as normal humans.  She is a journalist, and inhabits a world where anything above a (UK) size 6 is considered obese.  She went from a portly nine and a half stone down to below eight and a half stone, which is great, except that she is five foot seven.  She describes her 'before' BMI of 21.4 as "OK".  OK!!!!  That is at the lower end of the recommended 20-25, and she now has a BMI of 19.4, which is probably still higher than the women who inhabit her planet!

 

5:2

Hello again, and a Happy New Year to all my loyal readers!  Yes, I have now doubled my followers, and I am confident that I am on track to get a follower who isn’t related to me J. Anyway, I would like to welcome my new follower, who has already given me some positive feedback about my blog (and that’s NOT just because he’s married to me…).

It's OK - I practice intermittent fasting

Well, it’s a brand new year, and the most popular time for starting new diets.  I am planning to continue with the “5:2” plan I was following for the last few months of last year, as it was working really well for me.  I am so “on trend”, as it is, most definitely, THE diet of the moment.  I started following the 2 day fasting after watching the BBC Horizon programme, where Dr Michael Moseley investigated various different fasting options and ended up trying the 5:2 approach with considerable success.  Michael Moseley’s book is due to be released this week, but a number of people have already stolen a march on him and released books based on their own fasting experiences.  There are lots of blogs (including this one!), there are Facebook groups and Twitterers (if that’s the right term).  Interested in other people’s experiences, I read one of the ebooks, plus looked at some of the comments and questions on Facebook and Twitter.  Now the thing is, one of the reasons why this approach has worked so well for me is its simplicity;  I don’t have to weigh or measure anything, or look up the calorie values of every crumb that passes my lips. For five days a week, I just carry on eating as usual (with the only change being no alcohol from Monday to Thursday), and for the two “fast” days, I eat no breakfast or lunch, then have a light meal for dinner.  This is just a slightly smaller version of a meal I would normally eat in the evening.  No weighing, no fuss, no hassle!   Simples!  Not so for many of the others that are following the plan, it would seem.  From what I can gather, everyone seems to be carefully weighing their lettuce leaves and counting every calorie that passes their lips.  Now, if that works for them, who am I to knock it?  OK, so my approach might mean I am consuming more than the 500 calories I “should” be having, but what the heck?  I am losing weight.  In fact, by one week BC (Before Christmas), I had lost a stone in total!  That was as much as I wanted to lose.  A few pounds crept back on over Christmas, but will soon be banished with a couple of fasting days this week ( I managed 1 fasting day in Christmas week and 1 this week).  I might have to move to one day a week soon to STOP LOSING WEIGHT!!! (Never thought I would be saying that!).   



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

Further Fitbitting

I’ve now had the Fitbit for 5 weeks and I have to say that it is still surprisingly motivating trying to meet the daily targets of 10,000 steps and 10 flights of stairs.  I am still a bit obsessive about checking the tally at various points during the day, so have taken to wearing it clipped to my trouser pocket, thus avoiding having to fumble down the front of my top to locate the device in the deep depths of my bosom.  Choosing to take the stairs rather than the lift has become second nature, and this works really well at work where I work on the third floor and have to go to the ground floor a few times a day.  I also choose to walk more when the opportunity arises, such as the just under a mile round trip to the bus stop to pick up my son.  I am quite disappointed when it’s pouring with rain and I have to take the car.  If this happens, I now jog up and down on the spot in the bus stop until the school bus arrives.  I don’t know what the motorists going past must think, and it is a main dual carriageway!   If it gets to bedtime and I am sitting at the 9k mark, I run around the house until I get my count up to the magic 10k. 

The Fitbit is not without its flaws, however.  It does exhibit some inconsistencies and strange counting that can skew the logged results.  The first time I noticed anything odd was on the first week-end I had it when we went out for the day.  This was to a “Truck driving experience” (a Father’s Day gift for DH who strangely prefers the idea of driving large trucks to speeding around a race track in a Ferrari....).  This involved an hour or so in the car, followed by a short walk from the car park, a bit of waiting around, 30 minutes or so in the truck (DS and I were allowed to sit in as passengers), and then returning home.  NO climbing flights of stairs or steep hills.  So, when I got home, I was most surprised to see an email from Fitbit giving me my “50 floors in a day” badge!  When I checked the results, it showed that during the time I had been out, I had climbed 68 floors.  More detailed checking of the times I did all this climbing (the display on the website breaks the activities down into 5 minute slots), showed that all that stair climbing had been done whilst I was sitting as a passenger in my husband’s van.  A bit of research on the Fitbit forums shows that driving can frequently log steps and floors, so to get around it you have to record a log of the driving activity.  A bit of a faff, but once I had done this, it wiped out all the erroneous flights of stairs and a number of steps that had been recorded.  More annoyingly, I have to remember to do this every time I make a trip in my husband’s van. 

Another quirk is that the number of flights of stairs it logs when I go from the ground floor to the third varies between 4 and 6.  There are, as you would imagine, 3 flights of stairs between the ground and the third floor.  The first floor is a mezzine floor, so the first flight of stairs is shorter than the others.  Flight 2 and 3 are split in half by a small landing, so technically each could count as 2 flights.  I would probably expect a consistent count of 5, however I sometimes get 4, sometimes 5 and sometimes 6!  What accounts for the difference?  Does it depend on whether I bounce up the stairs enthusiastically, or whether I drag myself slowly??  A mystery.