Done Dieting

I’m sorry I’ve not been around for a while. Since I last posted on this site I have had something of an epiphany. What I have learned about obesity and dieting as part of my masters has completely changed my life. And not in the way I was thinking.

In honour of the new me, I have launched a business called Never Diet Again UK. You can check out the website here. I’ll be offering private consultations, seminars, and residential retreats for people with a history of weight or eating issues. Never Diet Again will focus on health, fitness, self esteem, body image, and normalising the relationship with food.

And to go with my new business, I have also started up a new blog. Please come by and check it out. It’s called Done Dieting. And it’s at http://neverdietagainuk.blogspot.com/.

Oh, and feel free to come check out the Never Diet Again UK page on Facebook too for all the latest news.

Hope to see you there.

Ang

New goals

If you’ve read the previous post, and the comments below it, you’ll know that I’m into setting monthly goals at the moment. I’m going to go with three for this month – one to try and break my sweet tooth habit, and two to keep me exercising whilst increasing both the amount, maintaining the variety, and addressing particular problem areas (CV fitness and inclines/steps) but hopefully without making it a chore. So here goes:

• No sweets, chocolates, biscuits (=cookies) or cakes
• Minimum 10 miles per week, to be achieved in any combination of walking, jogging or cycling (something new for me)
• At least one dance session, one body-mind session, one interval training session, and one hill training session per week

From a compliance point of view, I’m going for 90% again. So no more than 3 ‘cheats’ allowed for the food one; 31 days in the month so 4 1/2 weeks, or 45 miles. Need to get at least 40 1/2 then; and using same calculations, 18 sessions per month so missing no more than 2 over the next 31 days. Simples.

As for my reward, I’m giving it some thought. Any ideas?

Plus ca change….

It has been 3 months since my last post and a hell of a lot has changed in that time. On the other hand, some things are same ol’ same ol’. I’m not really sure where to begin to be honest. I guess I’m going to have to catch up over a series of posts.

But there have been a couple of epiphanies over that time.

I guess I’ll start with my monthly habit forming exercise. I set myself a goal a month ago to change two behaviours for a month. The first was to walk, or jog/walk, at least a mile, first thing every single morning. The second was to wean myself off sweeties, with chewy sweets bought on my commute a particular weakness. I was aiming for 90% compliance, or no more than 3 slips in the 31 days.

Well tomorrow is day 31. Astonishingly, I have walked or jog/walked a mile on 25 of the 30 days so far. Two of those days I was so ill that I was bed bound. The other three were days when I could have done the walk but didn’t. Tomorrow is the last day and there is no way in hell I’m going to miss it tomorrow. In fact, I might try and beat my record time – more on that tomorrow. Now, to be honest, whilst I started out doing it before breakfast every morning, it certainly didn’t stay that way for long. Some days I walked at lunchtime, some days after work. Some days late at night. But I did it. Does that count? If you’re reading this, what do you think? Technically, I missed 5 days, not 3. Should my 2 sick days be included in my cheat days? And should my not doing the walk first thing matter? Bearing in mind was that having done it a couple of days in a row I was amazed at what a good mood it put me in for the rest of the day, and that was the whole idea in the first place…. Comments please!

The sweetie thing I did even better. Kind of. I found it quite easy to avoid my favourite chewy sweets, only slipping once. But I compensated, when I wanted something sweet, by eating something, anything, that wasn’t a chewy sweet: chocolate, crisps, cake, ice cream…. probably doing worse things to my diet and blood sugar than if I’d had the sweets. Still, I was specific in that goal – I wanted to stop eating the chews and I did. The compensating with other crap is a lesson learned the hard way. I knew early on that sweets weren’t the only problem food in my diet, but I hadn’t wanted to try and change too much too quickly. So I’m going to give myself that one, and ignore the six pounds I’ve gained this month! More on that too in the coming weeks.

The reward I promised myself if I achieved my goal was a tester skiing and snowboarding lesson at a local snowdome.

So what do you think readers? Do I get my reward? Or do I have to be firmer with myself and try again this month?

Hormones schmormones

Well, been keeping track of my goals this week. A quick glance will show you that eating has been reasonable, exercise so-so, and everything else, well…..see for yourself.

Food first: the two missed dinners were when I came home from work and went straight to bed without tea! This working for a living is tough!! The non-compliant food on Wednesday was when hubby bought scones and clotted cream at the supermarket. I had one. I didn’t enjoy it. And I’ve ignored the remainder of the pack for the rest of the week. But the last couple of days, it’s been sugar cravings morning, noon and night. And then today I realised. TTOM. Like ruddy clockwork. I need to find a better way of dealing with these cravings. If you count the ticks – 21 out of a possible 28, or 75%

Exercise: Good bit of walking but been generally quite listless this week. Don’t know if it’s the hormones, the hayfever, or something else. I did do one resistance workout but didn’t push myself to do a second. I also didn’t push myself to do the intervals I’d wanted to start up again this week. My CV fitness has taken a real hit and I need to do something to kick start it. Counting the ticks, there were eight, or two hours’ worth.

Everything else: hmmm.

Goals for this week:

• Nutrition: Aim for 90% compliance.
• Exercise: Aim for three hours, including two resistance sessions and at least one interval session.
• Everything else: Do some studying!!!!!! And surprise my piano teacher and actually practice for once.

Better than I deserve

Just had my first official weekly weigh in for three weeks, and up less than half a pound from where I left off. Although this is time that could have usefully been spent losing another three to five pounds, more or less staying the same is a lot better than I deserve. I have been engaging in the classic dieter’s downfall of ‘well, if I’m not following my plan, I may as well enjoy myself’ and indulging in all the wrong foods: chocolate, take aways, more chocolate, crisps, and chocolate.

Anyhow, have been back on plan now since Monday. I know it’s only two days but am feeling virtuous all the same. Tracking success really does help. Just putting those little ticks in my Joe’s Goals goal chart is so rewarding. Funny really, but I guess all that childhood conditioning means that even as adults, we still like to get the little gold star to show that our achievements have been recognised.

Actually, have just reread the ‘How much weight should I be losing’ posts below and decided to crunch the numbers. In the 15 weeks since the start of the year when I weighed in at 221.6 pounds, I have lost 13.2 pounds, or 6% of my starting weight – an amount that should make a real difference to my health. That works out at 0.4% per week, on average. So according to PN, this could be better but is nevertheless on schedule to produce jaw dropping results if I keep it up. I know what I need to do!

Remembering what works

A few days ago I was interviewed about my weight loss history for a PhD study. One of the things she asked me about was when I was successfully losing or maintaining weight, what things did I attribute my success to. It made me realise that despite knowing what kind of things worked for me in the past, I’ve stopped doing them.

So am going to go back to basics – make small weekly changes, concentrate on upping good behaviours, rather than reducing bad ones, and fill out a goals sheet for motivation. I’ve been playing with following a low-carb diet at Tesco Diets, but for the last few weeks I haven’t been sticking to it. So I have updated my Joe’s Goals account to include a tick box for each of my three meals and one snack per day, and for the next couple of weeks I’m going to concentrate on compliance.

I’ve also added boxes for exercise and sorting out stuff at home, both in 15 minute blocks – baby steps. But the main thing is sticking to my eating plan. There’s no point in trying to fix a plan that I’m not sticking to in the first place! 90% compliance would mean no more than 3 eating opportunities per week that were off plan, so that’s what I’m aiming for.

How much weight should I be losing? Part 2. Or the gospel according to PN

PN, or Precision Nutrition to the uninitiated, is a scientific, restricted carb, weight-management and lifestyle programme. The guy who developed it has a PhD in the field and really knows his stuff. Plus he’s put together a top-notch team of nutrition and exercise experts and coaches everyone from national sports teams to joe blogs. I have tried PN, and to be honest, it didn’t really agree with me or my lifestyle, but I have nothing but respect for the guy and I know people who have had amazing results using the programme.

In fact, over the last 3 years, nearly 6000 men and women have successfully completed the PN online fat-loss programme. Each season they have a big body transformation contest, where the people with the most inspiring transformations can win big prizes. They also keep detailed data about how people are getting on, if they’re following the diet and exercise plans and so on. Based on data from people who did at least 80% of what they were supposed to, AND ended up as finalists in the $50,000 contests, they have calculated what kind of weight loss can be expected from people who are doing everything right. Remember, these are not the world-class athletes. These are everyday schmos who need to lose weight and get in shape. Some of them have had incredible success, but surprisingly, when the numbers were crunched, the week to week weight loss that led to these fantastic body transformations were a lot more modest than you’d expect. And here it is – what you could expect from the men and women who do what they were supposed to and had phenomenal results:

* Men should be losing 0.678% of their body weight each week.
* Women should be losing 0.678% of their body weight each week.

Now these are average weight losses over the 24 week programme. Some weeks were more, some weeks were even less, or nothing at all. Even the odd gain here and there. But over six months, to do something amazing for your body, the average weekly weight loss is just over half a percent of your body weight. Now remember, this is for people who were getting personal weekly coaching and following a cutting edge exercise and nutrition plan. But even so, there are some big variations:

For example, on average, Lean Eating male finalists typically lose between 0.3% and 1.2% of body weight per week to end up with jaw-dropping transformations. And Lean Eating female finalists typically lose between 0.2% and 1.5% of body weight per week to end up with jaw-dropping transformations.

Anyhow, they have done some statistical number crunching and come up with a formula that should give ordinary people a pretty good idea of what to aim for. And those nice people at PN have kindly put a calculator on their site so that you can work out what kind of weight loss you can expect if you are on a sustainable healthy eating and fitness plan. Using their calculator you can find out what your average weekly weight loss should be, and also, how long it will take you to reach your goal if you are following a sensible plan. And without further ado, here it is:

The PN Weight Loss Calculator

If you scroll up the page on their website you can also read more about how they came up with the numbers and see some of the before and after pictures of their contest finalists. You’ll also find links for the PN programme in case you want to find out more about it. I haven’t added a link here because I only recommend programmes that I like myself. But if you’re interested….

For the record, I asked it how long it would take me to go from 15 stone to 10 stone, and the figure it came up with was a surprising 63 weeks! And when I asked it how much I could expect to lose in 4 weeks (you can put in any time you like), the answer was 5 pounds. Remember, this is based on real numbers from people who have done amazing things.

So the take home message is: Don’t give up if you don’t lose half a stone every two weeks. Focus on the big picture. Make it sustainable. Make it long-term. And you will get there. Best of luck.

How much weight should I be losing? Part 1

One of the commonest questions we ask ourselves, if not others, is how much weight should we be losing. Is a pound a week about right? Two pounds? Is it true that if you lose more than 2 pounds a week, it won’t stay off? Does that mean if you lose less than 2 pounds a week it will?

Well let me answer the latter two questions first – except in unusual circumstances (for example, a lot to lose AND first week or two of diet, especially with carb depletion – when much of the ‘weight’ will actually be water loss as you give up your carb stores and the associated water molecules), if you lose more than a couple of pounds a week on a regular basis, chances are it won’t all be fat. Rather, some of your losses will be lean muscle mass.

Why does this matter? Isn’t all weight loss good? Well, no, basically. Your body is made up of a bunch of different tissues – muscle, fat, a bit of bone (not as much as we ‘large-boned’ individuals would like to think), and a lot of water. The fat is not very metabolically active – it just kind of sits there and makes you look like an overstuffed sausage. The muscle, on the other hand, actually uses a lot of fuel to just keep ticking over. What this means is that the more muscle (or lean body mass, if you prefer) that you have, the higher your basal metabolic rate. That is, the more calories you burn at rest. But what does it mean to have a higher (or lower) basal metabolic rate (BMR)?

Here is a simplified explanation. Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that your BMR is 1200 calories. If you eat 2000 calories in a day, your body will actually burn off 1200 of those just to continue its existence – cell repair, moving stuff around, temperature control, that kind of thing. That means you’ll only have 800 excess calories to worry about. You can burn off some of that with exercise, but any that’s left over will be stored as fat. For every 3500 excess calories you store, you will gain a pound. Or thereabouts.

Let’s assume that your weight is stable on 2000 calories a day – you’re not losing and you’re not gaining. We can assume therefore that there are no excess calories and that your daily activities are accounting for the other 800 calories.

Now, let’s say you lose some of your lean body mass and reduce your BMR to 1000 calories per day. If you eat the same 2000 calories as before, now you’ll only burn off 1000 of it, and you’ll have 1000 excess calories you’ll need to deal with. But your daily activities only used up another 800. So now you have an excess of 200 calories. In other words, even though you are now eating the same as before, and exercising the same as before, you won’t be able to hold your weight steady at your starting level. You now only need 1000 for basal metabolism, and 800 for daily activity. So your stay-the-same calorie level isn’t 2000 anymore. It’s 1800 now.

That’s what happens when you diet – you drop your calorie intake – say 1500 instead of 2000. You lose lots of weight. Some of it is fat. Great. But some of it is muscle. Boo. All is well and good as long as you are taking in fewer calories than you need. But as soon as you get fed up of your diet and go back to eating 2000 calories, not only do you put the weight back on, but your weight will rise to higher than when you started!!!

This is why it’s critical to maintain your lean body mass. It explains why if you lose muscle, not only won’t you keep the weight off (if you go back to eating and moving the same as you did before), but you’ll end up heavier than when you started.

This is why we say a fast weight loss means you won’t keep it off. What it means is you are likely to be losing lean body mass as well as fat, mucking up your metabolism, and reducing your ability to burn off calories.

It does NOT mean that if you lose weight slowly that you will automatically keep it off. Even if all the weight you lose is fat, if you go back to eating and activity levels like before, you will go back to your starting weight. The only ways to change this are:

• make sustainable changes to your diet – i.e. reduce your food intake in a way that you can keep up;
• increase your level of physical activity in a sustainable way to account for the extra calories;
• increase your lean body mass.

The only way to do this is to do resistance activities – weight training and the like. Things that build your muscle up. This will allow you to eat more and stay the same or lose weight. Increasing your metabolism (your BMR) is the only way to get off the dieting treadmill. Women, especially, are often scared of building muscle. But believe me, you will not look like Arnie. Even men, with their naturally higher levels of testosterone, have to work out for hours, on a daily basis, and pay fortunes for supplements and steroids to get that look.

Putting on muscle will actually make you look sleeker. As well as being stronger. It’s good for your body in lots of ways, especially for older women. True, it may slow down the rate of WEIGHT loss you observe on the scales. But if you can learn not to value yourself by the number on the scale what you should see is your body getting smaller, dropping a dress size, looking better. I want to recommend two books that you will find useful.

1. Strong Women Stay Young
2. The New Rules of Lifting for Women

These are the kinds of books that can change lives. If you are over 40, I’d start with the first book. If you like what you learn (my 70-year old mother hasn’t looked back since), and want to try something more intensive, you can progress to the second book. If you are young but don’t know how to begin with resistance training, go for the second book.

In my next post, I’m going to provide some tools to actually answer the question “How much weight should I be losing?” in real terms. One for the number crunchers.

Week 2 of carb depletion

Still doing well on the food front. Dropped 2 1/2 pounds this week (week 2), taking my total on Tesco Diets to 6 1/2 pounds.

Starting to find the meals that I really like so a few meals this week I’m repeating during the week, doubling up on ingredients and cutting down on prep time. Still exploring the options though.

I had the option of ending carb depletion this coming week and starting to add in carbs – 5g per day each week. But I decided to stick to 20g per day for another week. I’m finding it quite easy and still losing at a good rate. Will probably move into carb advancement next Thursday.

Exercise front not great again. I did manage an hour and a half of walking, but missed a couple of sessions later in the week because I wasn’t feeling well. Worse, I seem to have had a bit of a falling out with my walking friend, so will need to make sure I do some exercise on my own this week. TD tech support still hasn’t sorted out my planned fitness buddy group problems yet, so am on my own.

The good news is that I took circumference measurements at Xmas, and again four weeks into the year. Today I did my 8-week measurements. Bust, upper arms, waist, hips, widest point, thighs and knees. In the last four weeks I’ve dropped 13.5 cm in total. Added to the 5.5 cm from week 4 and that takes me to 19 cm this year. I’m noticing my face looks thinner, but am not really aware of it anywhere else. My tummy seems to be huge, but I’m wondering if that’s because my waist and hips are narrowing. Upping my exercise should preferentially shift to burning some of that abdominal fat though. Another reason to do it.

Low carbs off to a good start

Yesterday I finished week 1 of the Tesco Diets low-carb diet. It went surprisingly well, with only occasional hunger pangs despite eating three meals and one snack a day and not picking between meals like I normally do. As I’ve mentioned before, any minor temptation that comes my way can easily be dismissed because I don’t have any extra carb allowance. For example, there is a little sweet shop on the platform of the train I take home from work. I’d usually pop in there and buy four or five little chews. Now, as I walk up the hill to the station and think, “Oh, I just fancy some raspberry chews” I remember – “Oh, I can’t”. End of story.

The diet takes a little preparation – I usually spend half an hour each evening preparing my food for the next day. The meal plan gives you different food at every meal. But there is nothing to stop you substituting one meal for another. This would let you multiply up and then use leftovers. I didn’t do that this week because I wanted to explore all the options the diet provides, but it is something I will do in future, both to cut down on prep time and also to use up items that have to be bought in sizes that are larger than one portion, before they go off.

Anyway, weigh-in this morning rewarded me with a four pound loss for the week. I know some of that is water weight, but it is nice to see on the scales all the same and very motivating.

I’ve also signed up to one of the Tesco online support groups. This one is for people with 6 stone or more to lose. I just scrape in there – funny moment while I had to calculate whether I was fat enough to join! But they’re a lovely bunch. I’m also trying to set up a local exercise buddy support group for South Manchester, where I live, but am having technical difficulties, so am waiting on tech support for that.

Otherwise not much to report. Joints are still giving me some problems but definitely seem better than before. Exercise has slid right off the radar this week though. Not good enough. Especially with a house full of weights, DVDs, cardio equipment and other stuff. Bad weather is no excuse.