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!
OOh, would be interested to see how this goes. Andy said he'd watched that programme, wish he'd told me so I could have!
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether I'd like the fasting method though, I hate feeling hungry and not being able to eat. As you know though, I do like the fattening foods you mention which really has been the cause of my problem. If only vegetables tasted as nice!
Look forward to seeing your update. x
You could probably still catch it on YouTube. It isn't TOO horrendous to miss meals - if you ignore the hunger, it goes away (for a while). It is manageable at two days a week just not eating until tea time. I have now managed 2 weeks, and the results on the scales are looking good! Not getting too excited in the short term, as I need to make sure this is something that will work in the longer term. Once I have shifted the excess, I might cut back to 1 day a week, or just miss lunch on a couple of days. More news soon xx
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