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!