They think it's all over...

This morning as I gasped my way through my 15C bath, I reassured myself that it would be my last.  It's Day 42!  Six weeks have passed (I added a few days to the end to make up for my gluttonous trip to France).  I can relax - or can I?

Actually, I quickly realised that it just can't end here.  I've been through six weeks of privation, chills, and annoyance - but rather than stop it all, I'd rather make sure I keep the gains that all this has brought me.  I've lost over a stone in weight (about 7 kilos), and I'm fitting my clothes better and looking much trimmer too.

Moreover, I haven't actually reached my targets.  I'd rather carry on while I've got some momentum, than leave it all for another year.  However, it does feel like a good time for a rethink.

What to keep?

The main components of the programme are:

1. max 60g carbs per day
2. cold bath - 15C for 15 minutes each morning
3. delaying food - waiting between exercise and your next meal - which in effect means skipping breakfast
4. three periods of movement each day (45, 30, and 15 minutes)

I'm sure the carbohydrate restriction is a good idea - there is a tremendous amount of research evidence for this, and it also fits with my intention to improve my brain health by restricting carbohydrates, hoping to prevent it becoming insulin-resistant.  It also just feels right - I feel physically better if I restrict carbs.

The cold bath is surprisingly bearable, and I know I am burning fat because the water temperature now typically rises by about 1.4C while I'm in there - and at that point in the morning I haven't eaten yet.  I am tempted to change my regimen rather than dump it.  For example, 15C is extremely hard going, and it also takes a long time - making my morning pretty rushed.  If I were to get up earlier, I could have a more relaxed morning, and have time to do some exercise right after the bath, to warm myself up a bit.

Delaying food turns out to be a lot easier than I expected.  Unfortunately, I'm noticing myself becoming increasingly hungry at my two main meals - the effect of skipping breakfast, I imagine.  Here again, my thought is to stick with the delay, but start managing my other meals more closely in terms of calories, not just carbs.  I'm generally having a healthy mix of protein, fat, fibre (from vegetables) and carbs at each of these meals, but afterwards I feel I've eaten too much.  If I can work out sensible quantities that will give me the energy and nutrients I need, I may feel better and lose more weight.

The exercise has been very hard to fit around my busy schedule.  Once again, an earlier start to the day may help.  It doesn't suit me to exercise in the evenings anyway, so pushing the first session early into the morning might well help.  If I do it after the bath, it could help me recover from the chilling as well.  The second and third sessions similarly need to be more carefully thought out - for example using every break and lunch to go for a short walk or run, and to time this so that I can eat my second and third meals after the designated delay.  It just needs more advance planning, so I don't reach the end of the day and find I haven't moved around enough.

To get my weight properly settled into my target zone, I have more work to do, which means continued work with the programme.  Moreover, I need to genuinely get used to these things in order to maintain that weight.  As you can see from the chart on the right, my weight has hit a plateau.  This is not just about gluttony in France - it's about metabolism.

Now, there is one small wrinkle in the past couple of weeks' programme: I take thyroid hormone because I have no thyroid gland at all, and this hormone regulates energy in the body.  I started running out of my medication a couple of weeks ago, and I was completely out by last Sunday.  Owing to mistakes and poor decisions made by the people at my GP surgery, I only managed to get hold of my medication today (by saying some very forceful things to their receptionist, in person, with other patients able to hear my concerns).  It probably helped that when your thyroid hormone is low, you tend to feel pretty grumpy anyway.

However, the low thyroid hormone levels will have also meant that my metabolism was a little slower than usual.  Not so much that I couldn't run, of course.  However, it may well be that my body just wasn't long maintaining the levels of energy that the cold bath is meant to kick into action each morning.  I should see my weight leave the plateau and start dropping again if I carry on with the programme, now that I have caught up on my medication.

In short, it's not over yet.  They say in the US, "it's not over til the fat lady sings" (a phrase originally coined with respect to opera).  In my case, it's not over til the fat lady is gone.

Days 32-36: still working...

Most diets peter out after a month or so - after the thrill of losing lots of weight in your first few weeks, it just stops.  As a result, you stop too, you go back to old habits, and you gain the weight back.

The OMG diet doesn't seem to have that defect.  On the forum where dieters share their experience, everyone there reports that the weight keeps coming off.  That's been my experience too - the weight is coming off slowly, but it's still dropping off a little bit at a time.

The chart on the right shows my progress.  For the first few weeks, I just weighed myself weekly, since that was the advice on the diet.  However, I later decided that I wanted more information, so I started a daily weighing routine.  On the chart, you can see my weigh-in results as dots, while the thin line shows the overall trend.

I'm pleased that I started daily weighing because there was a week long blip where I started unusually low and ended unusually high - had I weighed myself at either end of it, I would have had the wrong idea about my progress.  As it is, you can see that the dip was balanced by a bump - when it was all over I was still on the same trend line.

Day 31: proof that it's working

I'm now into week 5 of this diet - which means I'm now bathing in 16C water (and I'm consequently cold all morning), and still keeping up with the exercise and food restrictions.

I've now lost 18 pounds - just two pounds short of the target that Fulton promises for the "quake" version of his diet.  If I lose those two pounds in the next 10 days, I'll have reached my target.

Week 1

However, even 18 pounds is pretty good all by itself, and it's had some impressive results in terms of getting into my clothes.  I have a favourite dress that has never fitted properly, but I bought it because it was the size I thought I should be, and I liked the colours.  Before the diet, I couldn't actually wear it, and after six days I could only get it zipped up if I breathed right in - and then it made me look pregnant.  Here's a photo of me, squeezed into the dress at the end of week 1.

You're not supposed to wear the waistband that high of course - it's supposed to go round your waist, but on me it didn't.  This is a size 16 dress - I should be able to wear it!

My fat tends to collect around my middle, rather than the usual hips and thighs.  This is meant to be very unhealthy - if you naturally become and "apple" rather than a "pear", this is meant to be a sign that you are more susceptible to all sorts of dreadful conditions that mainly affect the overweight in middle and old age, just when you are least able to cope with that sort of thing.

Week 5

One interesting aspect of the diet is those cold baths - they're meant to attack the really hard-to-shift fat, and for me, that's in the belly.  I spend 13 minutes each morning with my belly submerged in cold water. The water temperature does go up, and I assume that means my body is burning fat - perhaps even that annoying belly fat!
So - is the diet working?  Using the "dress test" I would say it's going extremely well.  The pregnancy tummy is gone, and the waistband isn't pushed up quite so high.  Although my main reason for losing weight is brain health, I'd say that in a way, liking the way you look, and feeling comfortable in your favourite clothes, is probably also fairly beneficial for your mental health.

Days 26-28: what can I eat?

Dieting always has this frustration - what can you eat?  Each new programme has new rules, and either it provides menus you know you won't like, or nothing - so you have to invent your own, potentially quite unlike what you're used to eating, and not matching what's in your kitchen.

With that in mind, what I offer as diet foods on the OMG programme are unlikely to suit everyone, or even many.  Nevertheless, I'll share with you some of my favourites, which you can take or leave.

Breakfast

Black gold for breakfast

Breakfast is so easy!  You have a cup of coffee, black.  That's it - you're not supposed to eat until 3 hours after your morning exertions on the OMG diet, and that means skipping food at breakfast.  My advice: buy the best coffee you can afford, and invest in a decent coffee maker - pictured right is my Aeropress, which I highly recommend for a smooth, rich, relatively low-acid cup of the black stuff.

Lunch
Home: cheese omelette.  You need to count the carbs in cheese, but there's not that much in an omelette.  I'll usually have some green veg with this, or perhaps an apple or some grapes (if you have fruit, you have to count those carbs though).

Work: salad with protein and nuts.  Salad greens don't count on this diet, so they're a good thing to fill up on if you like them (I certainly do).  Add a convenient source of protein - cold leftover chicken, a tin of tuna fish, some smoked trout, or whatever works for you.  Then sprinkle with nuts - walnuts are particularly good for this as they're fairly low in carbohydrate - not something you can say of most nuts.  If at home, I drizzle with "Good Oil" - a brand of oil that is very high in omega oils.

Supper
I often have the same things I'd have for lunch.  However, if I have time, I'll fry some fish and serve with a squeeze of lemon, or roast a chicken stuffed with herbs and butter.  I like to have sauteed greens - spinach, kale, chard, or whatever is available fresh.  On Sunday I try to do a proper roast joint with "meaty" vegetables like broccoli.

The principles of this diet are pretty simple: make sure you get plenty of green veg (not beans, just leafy greens), and fill the other half your plate with meat, fish, or tofu.  You can use all the herbs, spices and salt you like to add different flavours, and you can fry, roast, or do whatever you like - fat is okay on this diet.

Snacks
Once again, this is an easy one - no snacks allowed!  So have another cup of coffee.

Days 24-25: on the run

On day 24 of this diet, a letter turned up fromVirgin London Marathon, saying I'd won a place in the ballot.  That means I get a place on the London Marathon in 2013, and I don't have to beg it from a charity.  In fact, if I do fundraise, I get to do it for any charity I like, and they don't have to pay Virgin for the privilege of getting the money I raise.

But the main thing is - I'm going to be running a marathon in less than 7 months!  I'm not sure whether to be thrilled or terrified.  I'd signed up in the euphoria of seeing my husband finish it last April.  I never really aspired to do such a thing, but you sort of get caught up.  At any rate, I'm very glad I started my diet before this, because people say that trying to lose weight and train for a marathon at the same time is not a good idea.

I plan to finish the diet anyway while I start my training, and to try to make the two fit with each other for the next 2 1/2 weeks.  Exercise is a part of the OMG programme (if not a big one), and sensible eating is part of the training for the marathon.  It must be possible.

On the other hand, carb counting is not part of the marathon training ideal.  I think I will have to deal with this by making sure I get my full complement of 60g of carbs per day in ways that deliver useful content for muscles - perhaps not grains, or sugary foods, but rather lots of vegetables, and a bit more fruit than I've been having.

And I suppose I'll have to play it by ear.  The good news is that I am able to train despite all the weight loss - I'm not weaker, but rather stronger!  I went for a run today for the first time since week 1 of the programme.  I found it much, much easier than on any run in the past year, and in fact genuinely enjoyable.

I'd gone out a few times before in the pleasant summer weather, but I found the running exhausting and hard to keep up.  At that time I was about 15 pounds heavier.  Perhaps the fact that I don't have to haul all that weight around is making the running easier.  They say that exercise doesn't really help you lose weight.  But maybe losing weight helps you exercise....

Day 23: Hunger

On this diet I'm often hungry.  It's not the lack of carb-rich foods that does this to me - it's the long delays between meals.  At the moment, I'm skipping breakfast, eating lunch and supper, and squeezing in a small third meal before bed on some days, but not every day.  The result is hunger, especially in the morning.

What struck me as I started to get used to this pattern is that I remember being hungry from my childhood in the 1970s.  We weren't poor - it's just that in those days, we didn't snack like we do today.  Nowadays - even in the house of my parents, who didn't snack in the 1970s - there are always convenient snacks in a handy cupboard, at the front of the fridge, or on the kitchen counter.  Snacking has just become such an acceptable thing to do, and we're urged to snack on healthy food (apples, nuts, etc) rather than to avoid snacks.  The result in my case is that it's very rare that I'm ever hungry.  I believed that eating frequently was helpful for people trying to control their weight, because it curbed cravings and prevented binging.

The trouble with snacking on healthy food, as the book points out, is that you don't rely on your fat stores for energy.  Instead, the fat builds up little by little until you realise you're overweight.  Why did it not occur to me that this was a problem?  I feel I've been seduced into thinking that hunger is bad for you.  Right now, I'm pretty sure it is a key aspect of my successful weight loss over the last three weeks.  Moreover, once I get to a weight I want to keep, I suspect I'll still need hunger to burn off any excess fat stored after big meals.  Perhaps if I only ever ate tiny meals then I wouldn't have to store any fat, but that just doesn't seem realistic.  Normal meals, with hunger in between, seems like the better approach.

Days 21-22: Warmth!

Trying to follow this programme, with its cold bath regime, is a little harder when it's really cold out - you start the day freezing, and it's hard to warm up.  Having no central heating makes things considerably worse. Until today, I didn't realise just how much difference it would make - I've had no heating for over a fortnight, but the boiler repair guy finally managed to come round today and get it going again.

 

Knowing he was (probably) coming today, and having felt pretty rubbish yesterday, I decided to sleep in a little and postpone the bath until the heating was working.  What a result!  It was a lot easier to cope with than on days when the air in the house was colder than the water in the bath (which is to say, pretty much every day so far).  I wonder whether this will make any difference to the effectiveness of the bath?  My body heat certainly warmed up the water more than usual - not a lot more, but I figure every calorie counts, and seeing as I found the bath more bearable as well, that would be a win all round.

I'm now on week four, which means my bath temperature is 17.0C at the start.  This is really pretty cold.  I find that taking a deep breath, and exhaling fast as I immerse myself, somehow helps me deal with the cold more effectively.  It's almost as if it's a weight lifting exercise.

Perhaps I'm feeling more motivated because I found yet another piece of research relevant to my Alzheimer's concerns.  This study found a direct connection between insulin resistance in the brain and the development of Alzheimer's disease.  This was true even in patients who were not otherwise insulin resistant - in other words, people who did not have diabetes.  In short, if you induce insulin resistance in your brain, even if you're otherwise pretty fit and healthy, you are going to end up with Alzheimer's disease.

Does that mean I don't need to lose weight after all?  Well, perhaps I don't.  However, I have a feeling that the wisest course of action is to carry on indefinitely with this diet that rules out sugar and alcohol, and to consume plenty of omega-3 in one form or another.  Now, the result of that is likely to be maintenance of a relatively low weight.  The main reason I put on the pounds, I believe, is over-consumption of calories, and what I crave is always carbohydrates - especially in combination with fats (waffles, pancakes, buttered toast, chips...).  Keeping a lid on my consumption of them should help me keep to a healthy weight, and also protect my brain.

The research on insulin resistance in the brain seems to be in its early stages, but the conclusion of the New Scientist article that sent me on this weight loss journey is that dietary fat and sugar are the essential cause.  Not weight per se, not exercise, but rather the stuff flowing around in your blood stream.  In other words, it would seem that the diabetes of the brain that leads to Alzheimer's is all about what you eat.  We are not what we eat, but perhaps our future is more determined by what we eat than we realise.

Now, that doesn't mean I need to take cold baths... but I figure, why not carry on for the moment, at least to the end of the six week programme.  By then, I hope I'll have had time to research the connection between body fat and Alzheimer's, and I should know whether carrying on with these is a good idea.  Having said that, once I've really got down to a slim body, I can't see why I would need the baths.  That's certainly something to look forward to!

It's remarkable how much better I'm feeling now that the house isn't cold.  My sense is that prolonged cold isn't a good idea - but somehow the short, sharp shock of the cold bath routine doesn't seem to depress either my mood or my sense of well-being.