ZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz…..

Hello again everyone. I would like to start this post off by talking about some of the drawbacks of this new eating plan that I’m on. Yes, I’m still on it – I AM, don’t look at me like that!!

Firstly, even though it seems simple, it does impact your social life a little bit. I have been pretty lucky so far; I went out for dinner three times this week and also to a BBQ this weekend. I managed to find things at each place that I could eat. The way it becomes problematic is that you have to scan through all the delicious forbidden foods on the menu in order to find the ones you can have. The cunning part of my brain teamed up with the part that was craving carbs - they hatched a plan that I could just say it was my day off at each occasion. I had to separate them and made them both sit up the front of the class where I could keep an eye on them.

That’s another thing – carbs. I have a friend who goes on and off carbs depending on whether she feels she needs to lose weight at the time or not. Whenever it’s an ‘off carbs’ time, all she talks about is missing said carbs. I never got it, until now. I have been craving sugar and bread. I don’t even particularly LIKE sugar. Even before I started the diet, many of you will know that I completely avoided chocolate, and would rarely order dessert. On Tuesday this week, despite the cold weather, I walked past a 7 Eleven on the way to work, and could have murdered a slushie. The feeling was overwhelming. So, when my day off arrived on Friday, I walked in and got the biggest one they had. For breakfast. At 7:30am. On an 11 degree day. I didn’t care. God, it was good! On a sidenote, when you don’t have sugar all week, then hit the sugariest drink you can find, the rush is awesome!

Another drawback is that when you’re at a party, and everyone’s got a beer/wine/soft drink/tang, you’re standing there with a glass of water, which kinda sucks. While we’re on the subject of water, a strange phenomenon has been occurring – I’m one of those people who drink inordinate amounts of water. You know the ones. You wonder if they might be leaking from somewhere, and have to keep their fluids up to compensate. Or quite possibly they’re mer-people in disguise. However, since I’ve started the diet, I have been interested in water less and less. This is particularly BAD, as you need to drink heaps of water while eating this way. I’ve had to up the tea factor to stay hydrated. You can get really dry skin and cracked lips if you don’t chug down plenty of H2O. I’ve also come across another bad side effect of not drinking enough water – I’ve been getting annoying headaches. Not really bad ones, just little twinges. They’re not debilitating, but they’re painful.

The last, and most irritating side effect that I’m going to talk about today, is energy levels. Now, I’m used to fluctuations in this department, due to my sleepapnoea. Some days I wouldn’t have slept at all, and would float through the day on a caffeinated high. Usually though, I can combat the worst of these times by getting a red bull or a coke or SOMEthing.. This past week has been pretty bad – not only was work crazy busy, but I couldn’t turn to energy drinks for help when I was feeling a little lethargic, and there’s only so much black coffee you can drink in one day before you feel a little ill. I was so freaking tired all week.

So, with all that out of the way, it’s time for the weigh in.

Weight: 121.9kg

Muscle percentage: 36.5%

Fat percentage: 46.6%

So there’s good and bad news this week folks – my weight has gone down by 3.2kg (woo hoo!), but the fat percentage has shot up by 6.5%. Hmmm. Stay tuned for next week’s episode, and tales of how I go with no smokes!

Tightening the belt

Readers, these are exciting times! About halfway through this week, I realised that while walking around the office, I had to keep pulling my pants back up (not all the way up, you dirty minded people). It took me a while to notice, because it’s not exactly familiar territory for me. At first, it didn’t occur to me to do anything about it except to continue to stick my thumbs into my waistband, and hike it on up. Then I had a crazy idea – I did my belt up a notch tighter! What a novel feeling! I was walking on air for the rest of the day.

Looks like it’s starting to work! On Monday morning I also had a bit of an epiphany while ordering my morning coffee from my ridiculously good looking barista – I… um… mmm hot barista… what? Oh right – I had spent all of last week getting cappuccinos – BIG no no. So this week I’ve been getting black coffee without sugar. And now, for the reveal:

Weight: 125.1kg

Muscle percentage: 37.8%

Fat percentage: 40.1%

So I’m down 2.7kg and 3.6% body fat this week – hell yeah! Bits are falling off me! You’ll all be pleased to know that I didn’t go crazy on my day off this week. I DID indulge in my biggest food weakness – McDonald’s. This was no ordinary visit to the golden arches though. Generally I’ll order about five burgers, two of which will be my favourite, the double quarter pounder. I managed to satisfy my craving with a quarter pounder meal. It tasted amazing. Since this week I still wasn’t up to the vegetable stage of the diet, I found myself on the morning of my day off thinking 'Woohoo, salad!' It was a strange moment. Like when you’re at a great party and the guy in the corner says something totally out of left field. The music inexplicably stops, people stare, it’s all very awkward.

The diet takes a turn starting tomorrow, as I’m allowed to start including vegetables with my mountains of protein. There are definitely exceptions here – no potato, pumpkin, corn, carrot, among other things. As a general rule, you avoid the starchy ones. If anyone is considering jumping on this diet bandwagon, let me know and I’ll send you an email with all the rules. The first rule of diet club is you do not talk about diet club…. I noticed this week that I seem to be naturally walking a bit faster than usual. I’m also getting out of breath less. Speaking of which – starting in June, I’m going for the trifecta: diet, no alcohol except in moderation on my day off (come on guys, I’m not a nun), and NO CIGARETTES. Now THIS should be interesting. The last bastion of my unhealthy lifestyle is going to crumble like a cheap cookie in a fat kid’s chubby little fist. I’m not going to lie; it’s going to be very hard. Food, I can change. Booze, I can avoid. Cigarettes…. Well, let’s just see how I go.

Small Victories

Hello again readers! To start this week’s post, I would first like to thank all of those people who reacted to the news of my blog with overwhelming support, love and kindness. It filled me with so much joy to read your comments, texts and emails, and also a determination to make this thing really work.

I have called this post Small Victories for many reasons, but below is perhaps the definitive one. All of you who know me will agree without a shadow of a doubt that I have a little problem with a foreign concept called will power. Someone explained it to me once, and I came back with “Wait, it means you DON’T do something you really want to do? What on earth FOR?!” Why anyone would adopt such a practice in any area of their lives was beyond me. NOT eat the burger? NOT drink the glass of wine? NOT smoke the cigarette? By the time you’d finished explaining your reasons for doing something like that, I’d have finished the burger, and been sitting back alternating between sips and puffs. Under the religion section on my facebook it says Hedonism. Suffice to say that if you tell me I can’t have something, a small part of my brain sits up, takes notes, and starts plotting on how to get said thing.

About halfway through this week, I left work at about the usual time. I was off in my own world, still thinking about everything I’d done that day, and planning out the following morning. I often walk on autopilot, and so I walked out of the office building and across the street to Hungry Jacks. I was actually in the queue to order before I remembered that I was on a strict eating plan. Ordinarily when something like this happens, the part of my brain (yes, there are many – get to know them, they’re quite nice) that is tirelessly championing me to eat healthily does his little cheer, and tries to convince me to walk out and get a salad. I honestly don’t know why he still works there – the hours are long, the work is hard, and he gets little to no recognition. Anyway, when that happens, I tell him to get back into his corner, and I order three of anything. This time though, I stood there for about two full minutes. I was wracked with indecision. Eventually, I turned around and walked out. It was a very small victory for me, but I like taking small steps.

So, speaking of small victories, the time you’ve all been waiting for – the weigh in. I was very excited tonight when I got the scales out. The stories I’d heard of the weight literally falling off my friends who had tried the diet were flying around in my head, along with the bizarre mental image of bits falling off people.

Weight: 127.8kg

Muscle percentage: 37.1%

Fat percentage: 43.7%

Readers, I won’t lie – I felt a little bit ripped off. How was I supposed to say I had this amazing breakthrough without my clichéd opening line of “You should try it, I lost [insert stupid amount of weight here] in my first week.”? I decided that instead, I would celebrate the fact that for the first time in years I had stepped onto a set of scales, and the number was lower than the time before. I still lost just over half a kilo, and my fat percentage went down by 1%. Woo hoo! Of course, some of this is probably attributed to the fact that I wasn’t a saint in my first week. Surprise, surprise. The hardest part of this diet is actually remembering to eat six times a day. I work in a job where one task flows onto another, so sometimes I stop to look at the clock and half the day is just gone. Some days I only ate four times a day. I ate mostly chicken this week because it’s easy to prepare and pack, along with eggs and cheese. For anyone considering trying this diet, I recommend varying your meat and cheese options. In the weekly shop this time around, I grabbed every type of meat I could get my hands on, and took my time in the dairy section. There are some weird lookin’ cheeses out there. Just sayin’.

I was speaking to my friend this week, and I asked why you’re allowed to eat cheese and cream, but not milk. So apparently, the dieticians took issue with the proteins in cow’s milk. Turns out that we’re not designed to digest them – you know that mucous-y feeling you get in your throat after drinking a glass of milk? That’s actually an immune response! You’d think I’d know that, what with a biology degree under my belt and everything, but it honestly never came up in class. Must be why there are so many lactose intolerant people out there. Also why if you’ve been told you have IBS, the first thing you have to cut out is dairy. During cheese making, the proteins are denatured (means they’re heated up and go all crazy-like) so we don’t react to cheese the same way. I found it was much more fun to eat lots of cheese if you had a large variety. My favourite this week has been Danish fetta.

Another issue I faced this week was that I probably went a little overboard on my day off. On Friday night, I attended a going away dinner for a co-worker of mine, and had decided that to make life easier for everyone I would choose that as my day off. I wasn’t going to drink because of all of the empty calories in alcohol. Early in the evening, one of the guys got a round of tequila for everyone. I was determined to turn mine down gracefully. The bartender started pouring. The smell hit me. My pupils dilated. I got home on Saturday morning at about 8am. Nuff said.

My day off for this coming week has already been allocated to a friend’s birthday party on Saturday, so I will endeavour to be better behaved this time around. I hope you all enjoyed this week’s post, stay tuned for more adventures!

Introduction - the man behind the gut

Welcome, readers. This blog is for all those people out there who, like me, are struggling with weight loss. For the past 4 years, I've been slowly piling on the pounds. Whenever I weighed myself I would shrug and think 'Well, it's not THAT much more than the last time.' It took a couple of reality checks to shake me into gear. The scariest one of these was when I went to my doctor about a constantly upset stomach. She asked a bunch of random questions, and then told me to book in a glucose tolerance test (GTT). Apparently, she thought I might have type 2 diabetes. 'Diabetes?!' I thought, 'That can't be right. Diabetes (well, type 2 diabetes) only happens to people who don't take care of themselves!!' Then I had a sobering realisation - I couldn't remember the last time I'd done any exercise, I had drank nearly every night of the past week, the night before last I'd had 2 double quarter pounders for dinner, and I'd just gone out and bought new jeans two sizes bigger.

Shit just got serious.

So I went for my GTT, and thankfully the results showed that I wasn’t even pre-diabetic – a stage where you don’t have full blown diabetes, but your body is showing signs of the beginning of insulin resistance. As you’ll come to find out, I can be a bit dramatic – so I took the results of my test as a form of near-death experience. I figured that if I didn’t do something soon, I would find myself on a slippery slope. When I thought more closely about it, my weight was already affecting many areas of my life. I have sleepapnoea, which is a syndrome where you don’t get enough oxygen while you’re asleep. To prevent yourself from suffocating, your body’s reaction is to wake you up many times a night. The more weight I put on, the worse it got. Over the past few months I’d had several arguments with my then partner over my health, and endured comments from family and friends – all trying to be helpful, some with a big dose of tough love thrown in as well. I sweat profusely, which is clearly not good for my social life, and now that I’m recently single again, I’m finding it mortifying even considering getting back into the dating arena. When I imagine the possibility of getting undressed in front of someone new, my mind tells me to think about something else, and storms off in a huff. To top it off, last year I also had the incredibly embarrassing experience of walking into a designer clothing store, and not fitting into ANYTHING in the whole place. Cue the movie montage ending with me silently sobbing in the change rooms, surrounded by discarded clothing…

So THAT’S IT.

I am going to kick some serious butt, and start losing weight NOW. Not next week, not when I’m in the mood to go to the gym (which is never), but NOW. My first step is going to be a diet that a friend of mine has been on recently, and swears by. He lost 4kg in the first week, and the person who put him onto it has lost a total of 40kg. This is just the kind of thing I need. It’s a protein based diet:

Six small meals a day, with 150g of protein for each one. No sugar or carbs, so fruit, bread, pasta, vegetables, juice, milk, yoghurt, nuts and cereals are all out. One day a week, you can eat whatever you want. It’s your day off. In the second week you can introduce vegetables, but not starchy ones like potatoes, corn or beet root. In the third week, you can add either 1 piece of wholemeal toast, or 1 cup of rice per day. So, for my first day on the diet I have steamed some lean chicken thigh fillets, hard boiled some eggs, and I have some cottage cheese as well. I will be eating a combination of these spread out through the day as suggested. I’ve also been told that a Monday is the best day to start this kind of thing. Ha - stay tuned to see how this goes down...
I also belong to a gym, so I will be ACTUALLY USING said membership, starting with 3 times per week. I have a panicky sort of desire to start going every day right away, but I know that if I do that, I’ll just end up hurting myself. So to start off with, 3 times a week, and I’ll do more as I get into it.

Now, for the stats. Readers, I know these numbers may shock you, or cause you to run away screaming, but I’m going to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the lard-ridden truth. I went out and bought myself one of those fancy sets of scales that tells you everything from your weight to how many children you’re going to have. After I figured out how to turn them on, and then subsequently, once I’d figured out how to program them, this is what they said to me -

“One at a time, please.”

…. Jokes. What they really said was -

Weight: 128.4kg

Fat percentage: 44.8%

Muscle percentage: 36.7%

I stared down at the scales in astonishment, waiting for them to burst out laughing and say ‘Naaaw, just kidding – here’s your real numbers.’ But they didn’t. They flashed the numbers repeatedly, like a failed exam mark, until I stepped off the scales. The blaring siren may have just been in my head, or possibly outside my window, as I live on a main road. 44.8% body fat!! To put that into context for you, an average male is supposed to be under 19% to be considered a healthy weight. Nearly HALF of what I see in the mirror each morning is blubber. For those of you who haven’t just done the maths in your head, that means I’m carrying around 57.5kg of pure, artery clogging fat. I have friends who freaking WEIGH 57.5kg!!!

Now you know my starting point. I also have an endpoint, a goal that I hope to reach and maintain.

Weight: 85kg

Fat percentage: 18% or less

I don’t know much about average muscle percentages, so will do some research and get back to you on that one.

Aside from the actual numbers, there is another benchmark that I have set – to fit into my Black Shirt. Everyone has something like it – an article of clothing that they love, and look amazing in when they are their ideal weight. Here is a picture of me, wearing said shirt. This was nearly 6 years ago.

For contrast’s sake, here is a picture of me now.

Crazy, huh? So that’s it for now. I hope you enjoy reading about my adventures over the next couple of months. Tips and comments are of course appreciated, or if you want to join in as well and hopefully lose some extra weight, be my guest. The more, the merrier! I will be doing my weigh in once a week and updating the blog after that, but there may be random posts here and there if something really interesting occurs. Or, more likely, if I fall spectacularly off the wagon and need to tell you all about it.