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....
Saturday 29 September 2012
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.
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.
Thursday 27 September 2012
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.
Wednesday 26 September 2012
Days 20-21: tiring and travelling
Goodness, but the weather has been appalling. It literally puts a damper on everything! My house is very cold because the boiler doesn't work, and I feel a little less motivated than I did three weeks ago. Nevertheless I tell myself I need to hang in there.
I've spent the last couple of days travelling, and I'd wondered how the diet would work. The answer is - surprisingly well! I found it easier to make time for movement, easier to do exercises in the hotel room than my bedroom, and no problem finding food. However, I spent a great deal of time in a car, which left less time for exercise generally, except at night.
The bath in the hotel was interesting. I had failed to bring my thermometer, so I just tested it by hand and hoped. It felt just like one of my baths at home, so it was probably roughly right.
I reread the article on alzheimer's and diabetes, and have decided that I should try to start having an omega 3 pill whenever I have carbs. I have forgotten all day, but I will try again tomorrow. Some studies have shown that omega 3 has a protective effect.
I've spent the last couple of days travelling, and I'd wondered how the diet would work. The answer is - surprisingly well! I found it easier to make time for movement, easier to do exercises in the hotel room than my bedroom, and no problem finding food. However, I spent a great deal of time in a car, which left less time for exercise generally, except at night.
The bath in the hotel was interesting. I had failed to bring my thermometer, so I just tested it by hand and hoped. It felt just like one of my baths at home, so it was probably roughly right.
I reread the article on alzheimer's and diabetes, and have decided that I should try to start having an omega 3 pill whenever I have carbs. I have forgotten all day, but I will try again tomorrow. Some studies have shown that omega 3 has a protective effect.
Sunday 23 September 2012
Day 19: Fat geek
I've just discovered The Hacker's Diet, a book by the founder of Autodesk, who by 40 had achieved everything desirable - great marriage, great company, wealth, happiness - but also a lot of excess weight that he just couldn't shift. As an engineer and manager, he thought - why not approach this the way I've approached the things where I've succeeded? The result was the book.
He studied weight in humans (this would have been in the 1980s - a lot of this is common knowledge now and hence the first half of the book is pretty boring), and concluded that weight operates like any sort of feedback system. He describes different sorts of feedback systems (representing different people with different histories), and one of these certainly resonated with me. He had one character who was always gaining weight. I weighed 125 pounds in high school when I first attained my current height and stopped growing. At my heaviest, after three decades and intermittent dieting and exercise, I weighed 168 pounds. However, that hasn't come on all at once. Every five years or so I would realise that I had a "new normal" weight, higher than before. If I dieted, I always went back to the new normal.
The Hacker Diet doesn't recommend a specific miracle food or exercise regime (though it does recommend exercise - but only for longevity, not for weight loss). Instead its advice boils down to this: track your weight using a long term rolling average chart so you can visualise your underlying weight, without the daily "noise" produced by the amount of water you're carrying or the "solids" in your digestive tract. The idea is that you will feel less defeated by high points that are just "noise", and you'll have clear information about whether whatever you're doing is making your "new normal" lower, higher, or the same. That it takes him over 100 pages to say this much indicates that the book was written by a professional engineer rather than a professional writer.
At any rate, my inner geek has suffered degrees of frustration - yesterday's technology disaster has been followed by success, but only after much gnashing of teeth. Fresh batteries? Check. Consistent readings? Not a bit of it. Googled for solutions? Check. Does it give consistent readings now that it's off the (flat) carpet and on the lino? Check - and at last I can get at my data.
The result is that I know know how much of my body is fat - and it's a lot. Really that much? 44% apparently. Now, I do find that a little hard to believe. I mean, yes, I'm overweight, and I realise there's fat all over the place - under the skin, surrounding every organ, and of course in the blood and stored in muscle and so on. But close to half?
Well, I will keep measuring each day and see whether it maintains the same or similar ratio of fat. If so, I'll just have to accept that I'm a whole lot fatter than I thought. And if I do have this information, I can act on it with repeated experiments and measurements - Excel spreadsheets here we come.
 |
| Not me - but I'll have some data soon |
He studied weight in humans (this would have been in the 1980s - a lot of this is common knowledge now and hence the first half of the book is pretty boring), and concluded that weight operates like any sort of feedback system. He describes different sorts of feedback systems (representing different people with different histories), and one of these certainly resonated with me. He had one character who was always gaining weight. I weighed 125 pounds in high school when I first attained my current height and stopped growing. At my heaviest, after three decades and intermittent dieting and exercise, I weighed 168 pounds. However, that hasn't come on all at once. Every five years or so I would realise that I had a "new normal" weight, higher than before. If I dieted, I always went back to the new normal.
The Hacker Diet doesn't recommend a specific miracle food or exercise regime (though it does recommend exercise - but only for longevity, not for weight loss). Instead its advice boils down to this: track your weight using a long term rolling average chart so you can visualise your underlying weight, without the daily "noise" produced by the amount of water you're carrying or the "solids" in your digestive tract. The idea is that you will feel less defeated by high points that are just "noise", and you'll have clear information about whether whatever you're doing is making your "new normal" lower, higher, or the same. That it takes him over 100 pages to say this much indicates that the book was written by a professional engineer rather than a professional writer.
At any rate, my inner geek has suffered degrees of frustration - yesterday's technology disaster has been followed by success, but only after much gnashing of teeth. Fresh batteries? Check. Consistent readings? Not a bit of it. Googled for solutions? Check. Does it give consistent readings now that it's off the (flat) carpet and on the lino? Check - and at last I can get at my data.
The result is that I know know how much of my body is fat - and it's a lot. Really that much? 44% apparently. Now, I do find that a little hard to believe. I mean, yes, I'm overweight, and I realise there's fat all over the place - under the skin, surrounding every organ, and of course in the blood and stored in muscle and so on. But close to half?
Well, I will keep measuring each day and see whether it maintains the same or similar ratio of fat. If so, I'll just have to accept that I'm a whole lot fatter than I thought. And if I do have this information, I can act on it with repeated experiments and measurements - Excel spreadsheets here we come.
Saturday 22 September 2012
Day 18: Technology Day
After my recent sneak peek at the scales, and my enthusiasm for what they showed, I decided it was time I invested in really good scales. I've had my doubts about the old set. They are the simple type with a spinning dial - could their accuracy be affected by the strain of over a decade of having heavy people stand on them, hoping for better news?
Accordingly, I picked up a set of fancy scales from our favourite pharmacy. Would they work? A woman behind the desk reassured me that she'd bought them and thought they were great. I got them home, and read the instructions. Of course they needed AAA batteries, and we had none left. Back out to the store. Lucky I'd done all my chores for the day....
With my eco-friendly rechargeable batteries duly installed, I followed the instructions and got my weight. Amazing! Exactly the same as the old scales. Maybe old tech is better than I was prepared to give it credit for.
Moreover, new tech turned out not to be that superb either. Mind you, it's gorgeous - glass and digital readings and everything. It reads tenths of pounds and kilos - something I couldn't possibly have got from the rotary scales. It is supposed to read my body fat, something I was very enthusiastic to learn. Apparently it sends some sort of electric pulse through your body and works out how much fat, bone and muscle you've got. What's not to like?
Well, my main gripe is that apart from weight, I haven't had a reading yet. I waited in vain for % fat and other metrics, then looked for troubleshooting notes. I found the bit at the end of the booklet that said not to use rechargeable batteries.
Defeated! But never mind - with luck I'll get some non-rechargeables tomorrow, and find out about what my body is made of. Unless the technology finds some other way to trip me up.
On a more positive note, I found by this evening that I'd consumed almost no carbs other than the green leaves ignored by this diet. I'd had a large lump of cheese in a hungry moment, but on reading the label, I found it was carbohydrate-free! I had green beans in my salad at suppertime, but on googling their carb content, I found the small serving I ate had only about 1g carbohydrate - I suppose they're largely water and fiber. My allocation per day is 60 grams of carbohydrate, and I'd hardly had any! So as a treat before bedtime, I indulged in 100g of salted cashews (25g carbs). Funny - when you haven't eaten much in the way of carbs, cashews taste pleasantly sweet! Moreover, they are much more filling than they were before I started this diet.
Accordingly, I picked up a set of fancy scales from our favourite pharmacy. Would they work? A woman behind the desk reassured me that she'd bought them and thought they were great. I got them home, and read the instructions. Of course they needed AAA batteries, and we had none left. Back out to the store. Lucky I'd done all my chores for the day....
Moreover, new tech turned out not to be that superb either. Mind you, it's gorgeous - glass and digital readings and everything. It reads tenths of pounds and kilos - something I couldn't possibly have got from the rotary scales. It is supposed to read my body fat, something I was very enthusiastic to learn. Apparently it sends some sort of electric pulse through your body and works out how much fat, bone and muscle you've got. What's not to like?
Well, my main gripe is that apart from weight, I haven't had a reading yet. I waited in vain for % fat and other metrics, then looked for troubleshooting notes. I found the bit at the end of the booklet that said not to use rechargeable batteries.
Defeated! But never mind - with luck I'll get some non-rechargeables tomorrow, and find out about what my body is made of. Unless the technology finds some other way to trip me up.
On a more positive note, I found by this evening that I'd consumed almost no carbs other than the green leaves ignored by this diet. I'd had a large lump of cheese in a hungry moment, but on reading the label, I found it was carbohydrate-free! I had green beans in my salad at suppertime, but on googling their carb content, I found the small serving I ate had only about 1g carbohydrate - I suppose they're largely water and fiber. My allocation per day is 60 grams of carbohydrate, and I'd hardly had any! So as a treat before bedtime, I indulged in 100g of salted cashews (25g carbs). Funny - when you haven't eaten much in the way of carbs, cashews taste pleasantly sweet! Moreover, they are much more filling than they were before I started this diet.
Days 15-17 Heavy drinking
Last week my weight loss slowed down, and I looked back over my notes to see what had changed. I'm keeping a paper diary of my days - what I eat and drink, time and activity type for exercise, when I wake, how I feel. I noticed that two things had changed. One was that I wasn't sticking to the exercise timings as I should. My intention is to have three periods of "movement" - it doesn't need to be vigorous but just needs to get my circulation going - of 45, 30, and 15 minutes respectively. The other difference was that I wasn't drinking as much water as I had in the first week.
I decided to pick just one thing to correct - the water. I'm rising each morning with a tall glass of water, and trying to remember to drink water whenever I feel thirsty.
Does it make any difference? We shall see, because I've only been making this change for four days, but I did sneak a look at the scales this morning, and if that's anything to go by, I'll have lost more weight this week than I did last week. Three cheers for water!
Wednesday 19 September 2012
Days 12-14 Slowing down
As with any new activity, once the novelty wears off, it can be hard to stick with it. You get distracted. Other things may seem more important. Now, I wouldn't say that I have fallen off the wagon, but home and work have been busy, there have been deadlines and pressures unrelated to my weight, health, or long term brain function, and meanwhile I've felt quite settled into the OMG routine. And perhaps for these reasons, there are some things that have slipped.
Slightly to my surprise, one thing that I've stuck with is the cold bath. For the end of week 2 the temperature continues to be 19.0C, as measured on my Avent bath thermometer. The precision of the temperature is reassuring, though I do wonder whether it's genuinely accurate. Perhaps I am being lulled into thinking I'm doing better than I really am by a thermometer that gives a water temperature much lower than it really is? At any rate, my daily 15 minutes in the bath have raised the water temperature as one would expect - to 19.8C and 20.0C on days 12 and 13, and from 18.8C to 19.6C on day 14. If nothing else, my body must be burning some calories to warm up a deep bath of water.
So much for the good performance - on the flip side, I've been pretty poor at fitting in my "POMs" - the "periods of movement". I should be doing three per day, of 45, 30 and 15 minutes, in that order. Lately I've barely managed to do any movement, much less these times. Because I work in a desk job and am frequently on the road, getting movement in requires a bit of planning and creativity. Perhaps the advantage of the bath is that it requires neither of these - you get up, you run the bath, you get in. Because I always have a morning routine of some sort, it's not hard to just push this to the front of the schedule.
So today I must make a renewed commitment - I must squeeze those POMs in! Step 1: go do something right now. As they say, there's no time like the present.
Slightly to my surprise, one thing that I've stuck with is the cold bath. For the end of week 2 the temperature continues to be 19.0C, as measured on my Avent bath thermometer. The precision of the temperature is reassuring, though I do wonder whether it's genuinely accurate. Perhaps I am being lulled into thinking I'm doing better than I really am by a thermometer that gives a water temperature much lower than it really is? At any rate, my daily 15 minutes in the bath have raised the water temperature as one would expect - to 19.8C and 20.0C on days 12 and 13, and from 18.8C to 19.6C on day 14. If nothing else, my body must be burning some calories to warm up a deep bath of water.
So much for the good performance - on the flip side, I've been pretty poor at fitting in my "POMs" - the "periods of movement". I should be doing three per day, of 45, 30 and 15 minutes, in that order. Lately I've barely managed to do any movement, much less these times. Because I work in a desk job and am frequently on the road, getting movement in requires a bit of planning and creativity. Perhaps the advantage of the bath is that it requires neither of these - you get up, you run the bath, you get in. Because I always have a morning routine of some sort, it's not hard to just push this to the front of the schedule.
So today I must make a renewed commitment - I must squeeze those POMs in! Step 1: go do something right now. As they say, there's no time like the present.
Sunday 16 September 2012
Days 10-11: wilfully cold
As autumn sets in, this programme is getting easier. Specifically, it's a lot easier to make my body work hard to stay warm!
Letting the temperature do the work
For one thing, our boiler has stopped, so the house is a steady 16-17C. I'm deliberately not wearing a sweater or fleece in the house, as has been my habit in the past when it's chilly. I don't know how many extra grams of fat I'm burning to stay warm, but I figure every little helps.
Secondly, the cold bath is now a lot easier to arrange. Our mains is a thin pipe running under our front lawn, so the water tends to take on the temperature of the ground a few inches down. Right now it's running at 16C, so more or less the same as room temperature.
In a previous blog entry I measured the calories my body had burned to raise my bath water 1C. It occurred to me that I'd also like to know how much fat that might mean I'd burned (on the basis that I'm bathing after sleeping, and before eating, so I must be burning body fat or muscle, not food). Apparently there are 9 kcal in a gram of fat, so if I've burned 150 kcal in the bath, that would mean I'd lost about 16g of fat, or about half an ounce. So... lying in a cold bath doesn't result in high levels of immediate weight loss. I suppose I knew that. Still, over 32 days (just over a month) of cold baths, that would result in a pound of weight loss - could be worse.
Perhaps a better solution to using cold water for weight loss would be to go for a swim outdoors. Anyone who watched the triathlon at this year's Olympics probably enjoyed seeing the competitors taking on the Serpentine in London. Of course, not everyone lives near the Serpentine, but I found a UK organisation called the Outdoor Swimming Society who have maps of places to swim in lakes, rivers, lidos and so on.
Now, outdoor swimming has a certain appeal. One assumes there are no sharks (I gather you may get fish in some of these locations), and you get fresh air and an outdoor scene to look at. It's probably quieter than the local pool as well. Will I ever try it? I'm not sure, but it's mildly tempting.
In the meantime, I'm hoping that keeping the house cool and not bundling up will help me along a little with this diet.
Who needs carbs?
One surprising aspect of this regime is that when I eat a lot of carbs at once - for instance a packet of cashews - I now feel unpleasantly over-full. Why didn't I feel like that before? I don't know, but it's helping me to avoid eating a lot of carbs at one go. Who needs to feel ill after a meal? I hate it.
Another very odd change is that I used to have a lot of trouble with burping at bedtime. Who knows why - I'd tried changing all sorts of things in my diet but nothing got rid of the problem. Now I'm finding that it doesn't happen any more (hooray!) unless I've just eaten a lot of carbs. So I'm experimenting to see what I can eat last thing at night without getting all this air coming up when I lie down.
On a high
A less surprising but very welcome change is that I've had a lot of upswings in my mood - even when I'm hungry - but no downswings. This is undoubtedly making it easier to stay on the OMG regime. What could be causing it? Certainly not the exercise, which has been very gentle. Something is causing those endorphins to flow. I might do a little research at some point to see what could be causing it. Better regulation of blood sugar? That would certainly fit with the book's focus on improving the body's management of insulin. Who knows, but if it carries on like this, it should make continued weight loss considerably easier! That's always the hard part - staying slim once you've got there. I tend to start gaining weight again pretty quickly. But if I'm feeling cheerful about my new lifestyle (whatever bits of it I try to keep permanent), perhaps I'll find it easier to maintain my new weight.
Letting the temperature do the work
For one thing, our boiler has stopped, so the house is a steady 16-17C. I'm deliberately not wearing a sweater or fleece in the house, as has been my habit in the past when it's chilly. I don't know how many extra grams of fat I'm burning to stay warm, but I figure every little helps.
Secondly, the cold bath is now a lot easier to arrange. Our mains is a thin pipe running under our front lawn, so the water tends to take on the temperature of the ground a few inches down. Right now it's running at 16C, so more or less the same as room temperature.
In a previous blog entry I measured the calories my body had burned to raise my bath water 1C. It occurred to me that I'd also like to know how much fat that might mean I'd burned (on the basis that I'm bathing after sleeping, and before eating, so I must be burning body fat or muscle, not food). Apparently there are 9 kcal in a gram of fat, so if I've burned 150 kcal in the bath, that would mean I'd lost about 16g of fat, or about half an ounce. So... lying in a cold bath doesn't result in high levels of immediate weight loss. I suppose I knew that. Still, over 32 days (just over a month) of cold baths, that would result in a pound of weight loss - could be worse.
Perhaps a better solution to using cold water for weight loss would be to go for a swim outdoors. Anyone who watched the triathlon at this year's Olympics probably enjoyed seeing the competitors taking on the Serpentine in London. Of course, not everyone lives near the Serpentine, but I found a UK organisation called the Outdoor Swimming Society who have maps of places to swim in lakes, rivers, lidos and so on.
Now, outdoor swimming has a certain appeal. One assumes there are no sharks (I gather you may get fish in some of these locations), and you get fresh air and an outdoor scene to look at. It's probably quieter than the local pool as well. Will I ever try it? I'm not sure, but it's mildly tempting.
In the meantime, I'm hoping that keeping the house cool and not bundling up will help me along a little with this diet.
Who needs carbs?
One surprising aspect of this regime is that when I eat a lot of carbs at once - for instance a packet of cashews - I now feel unpleasantly over-full. Why didn't I feel like that before? I don't know, but it's helping me to avoid eating a lot of carbs at one go. Who needs to feel ill after a meal? I hate it.
Another very odd change is that I used to have a lot of trouble with burping at bedtime. Who knows why - I'd tried changing all sorts of things in my diet but nothing got rid of the problem. Now I'm finding that it doesn't happen any more (hooray!) unless I've just eaten a lot of carbs. So I'm experimenting to see what I can eat last thing at night without getting all this air coming up when I lie down.
On a high
A less surprising but very welcome change is that I've had a lot of upswings in my mood - even when I'm hungry - but no downswings. This is undoubtedly making it easier to stay on the OMG regime. What could be causing it? Certainly not the exercise, which has been very gentle. Something is causing those endorphins to flow. I might do a little research at some point to see what could be causing it. Better regulation of blood sugar? That would certainly fit with the book's focus on improving the body's management of insulin. Who knows, but if it carries on like this, it should make continued weight loss considerably easier! That's always the hard part - staying slim once you've got there. I tend to start gaining weight again pretty quickly. But if I'm feeling cheerful about my new lifestyle (whatever bits of it I try to keep permanent), perhaps I'll find it easier to maintain my new weight.
Friday 14 September 2012
Day 9: too long in the bath...
The trouble with technology is that you get used to it, and you assume it will keep working, the same as you keep assuming the sun will come up in the morning. The sun does indeed rise each morning, but technology inevitably fails.
Of course, it is often the fault of the human that this happens, and so it was on the morning of Day 9, my second day with the 19C bath. I've been using the timer on my phone. It has always been set to go black when unused, so I can't see the timer running down. Unfortunately, I had previously also set it to silent, and had forgotten to turn the sound back on. I didn't notice this with the 2- and 3-minute segments of the bathing programme - I saw the timer light up the phone. However, I saw nothing during the 10 minute full submersion, for the obvious reason that I was immersed in water, with a bathtub wall in between me and the phone. After a while, I began to wonder when the time would be up. And after a very long while, I decided to check the phone. Of course the timer was finished, and I realised the phone was on silent. I was also remarkably shivery. I'd got the bath temperature up from 19C to 20C just by being in it (the room temperature was below 19C, so it really was me).
The result was that I was shivery for more or less the whole day. Luckily it was a sunny day, and standing in the sun's warmth was very pleasant. I didn't mind the ordeal in any case - I survived it, and could think of all the fat I was burning! At any rate, I have now reset the phone so that it doesn't go blank until it has been ignored for 10 minutes.
The science of weight loss
I mentioned last week that most diet books turn me off - they tend not to work, or tell me what I already knew, or are badly referenced so I don't know whether they have real evidence for their claims or just personal experience (which worked for them but might not work for me). An exception to this is the articles and books by Dr. Briffa, a british doctor and journalist who writes on health generally, including the ever popular subject of diet and weight loss. He has a regular blog with commentary on recently published medical research, what it might mean, whether it's reliable, and how it fits with what he's said before. This week he has written about fasting and weight loss in a mouse study.
He is careful to point out that mice are not people, so you can't take all this as being definitely something that would work for our species. He also provides references to the research, and to other relevant research and commentary. This approach to writing diet advice appeals to me enormously. I am inclined to listen to what he has to say because I've been doing so for years, and whenever I've had any doubts, I've read the original medical research, and found that he is drawing sound conclusions. He also has clinical experience of working with patients who are trying to lose weight, and he is very good about saying when he is drawing on that clinical experience (which is interesting, but not scientific), and when he is reflecting on the results of proper research.
The interesting thing about the current mouse study is that it found a particular state in which fat was not stored, but rather used for energy. In this instance, mice were eating high fat diets, but their eating times were very restricted, and the result was that they didn't store as much fat as the mice who ate high fat diets but without any time restrictions.
How this fits with OMG
Fulton's diet also makes use of periods of fasting - in other words, restrictions on the times when you can eat. Everyone notices the advice to skip breakfast, the banning of snacks, and the regimented delay between exercise and eating. This mouse study is not the first to look at the impact of restricting eating times, but it does show that even on a high fat diet, mice gain less weight if their eating time is restriction (in other words, if they fast), than if they can eat whenever they want.
In short, when it comes to the various ways of restricting when you eat on the OMG diet, there is recent research to support the idea that this should help reduce the amount of weight that is stored as fat when you eat.
Of course, it is often the fault of the human that this happens, and so it was on the morning of Day 9, my second day with the 19C bath. I've been using the timer on my phone. It has always been set to go black when unused, so I can't see the timer running down. Unfortunately, I had previously also set it to silent, and had forgotten to turn the sound back on. I didn't notice this with the 2- and 3-minute segments of the bathing programme - I saw the timer light up the phone. However, I saw nothing during the 10 minute full submersion, for the obvious reason that I was immersed in water, with a bathtub wall in between me and the phone. After a while, I began to wonder when the time would be up. And after a very long while, I decided to check the phone. Of course the timer was finished, and I realised the phone was on silent. I was also remarkably shivery. I'd got the bath temperature up from 19C to 20C just by being in it (the room temperature was below 19C, so it really was me).
The result was that I was shivery for more or less the whole day. Luckily it was a sunny day, and standing in the sun's warmth was very pleasant. I didn't mind the ordeal in any case - I survived it, and could think of all the fat I was burning! At any rate, I have now reset the phone so that it doesn't go blank until it has been ignored for 10 minutes.
The science of weight loss
I mentioned last week that most diet books turn me off - they tend not to work, or tell me what I already knew, or are badly referenced so I don't know whether they have real evidence for their claims or just personal experience (which worked for them but might not work for me). An exception to this is the articles and books by Dr. Briffa, a british doctor and journalist who writes on health generally, including the ever popular subject of diet and weight loss. He has a regular blog with commentary on recently published medical research, what it might mean, whether it's reliable, and how it fits with what he's said before. This week he has written about fasting and weight loss in a mouse study.
He is careful to point out that mice are not people, so you can't take all this as being definitely something that would work for our species. He also provides references to the research, and to other relevant research and commentary. This approach to writing diet advice appeals to me enormously. I am inclined to listen to what he has to say because I've been doing so for years, and whenever I've had any doubts, I've read the original medical research, and found that he is drawing sound conclusions. He also has clinical experience of working with patients who are trying to lose weight, and he is very good about saying when he is drawing on that clinical experience (which is interesting, but not scientific), and when he is reflecting on the results of proper research.
The interesting thing about the current mouse study is that it found a particular state in which fat was not stored, but rather used for energy. In this instance, mice were eating high fat diets, but their eating times were very restricted, and the result was that they didn't store as much fat as the mice who ate high fat diets but without any time restrictions.
How this fits with OMG
Fulton's diet also makes use of periods of fasting - in other words, restrictions on the times when you can eat. Everyone notices the advice to skip breakfast, the banning of snacks, and the regimented delay between exercise and eating. This mouse study is not the first to look at the impact of restricting eating times, but it does show that even on a high fat diet, mice gain less weight if their eating time is restriction (in other words, if they fast), than if they can eat whenever they want.
In short, when it comes to the various ways of restricting when you eat on the OMG diet, there is recent research to support the idea that this should help reduce the amount of weight that is stored as fat when you eat.
Wednesday 12 September 2012
Day 8: How thin do I need to be?
There are charts based on body shape, height, and much else. Some people, for example the author of Six Weeks to OMG don't specify a target weight, but just advise you to get to where you think you should be. That's all very empowering, but I am trying to achieve a specific health outcome: to reduce my risk of developing dementia. I need more than a "whatever you like" target.
A good predictor of health outcomes such as alzheimers risk - is the waist-to-hip-ratio (WHR). An article from the BBC suggests that my current WHR of 0.912 is "extreme". That's just what I didn't want to hear, but I am not surprised. It recommends a WHR of 75-80% as "good" and less than that as "excellent". I have not seen a WHR of 80% in over 25 years. That in itself bodes badly for my health risks.
There are other measures of obesity - waist circumference and body mass index, for example - but WHR has the advantage that it's not just easy to do, but does take into account body shape (how much of a pear or apple you are). That means that improvements improve the way you look, as well as your health.
If I were never to lose any weight from my hips, then an 80% WHR would be about 82cm (a reduction of 11cm), an a 75% WHR would be about 76cm, a reduction of 17cm - which is a huge amount of fat to lose! Still, that is fat currently wrapped around my inner organs, and I'm sure it doesn't need to be there.
Progress
The good news is that my WHR is already a little better - on Day 1 it was 0.956, so in 7 days I have reduced my WHR by 0.044. I have also lost 10 pounds! The important thing this statistic shows that not only am I losing weight from thighs, arms and so on, but that I am also losing it from my waist - with luck from around my inner organs - and I'm losing it there faster than around my hips, so my shape is improving.
A 76cm waistline seem like a good target. At 75% of my current hip measurement it would rate as "excellent", and even if I lose some hip circumference I may still qualify as "good" at an 80% WHR with luck. That would mean a waistline of just over 28 inches - something I haven't seen in a while, but which would mean I could fit every item stashed away in my wardrobe. That in itself would be a great reward!
For me, this is rapid progress. The last time I tried the Atkins diet I did not lose any weight at all. I had previously done Atkins and lost some weight, but not as much as 10 pounds in a week. Combining low-carb diet, cold water, and morning fasting does seem to help speed the weight loss along.
A good predictor of health outcomes such as alzheimers risk - is the waist-to-hip-ratio (WHR). An article from the BBC suggests that my current WHR of 0.912 is "extreme". That's just what I didn't want to hear, but I am not surprised. It recommends a WHR of 75-80% as "good" and less than that as "excellent". I have not seen a WHR of 80% in over 25 years. That in itself bodes badly for my health risks.
There are other measures of obesity - waist circumference and body mass index, for example - but WHR has the advantage that it's not just easy to do, but does take into account body shape (how much of a pear or apple you are). That means that improvements improve the way you look, as well as your health.
If I were never to lose any weight from my hips, then an 80% WHR would be about 82cm (a reduction of 11cm), an a 75% WHR would be about 76cm, a reduction of 17cm - which is a huge amount of fat to lose! Still, that is fat currently wrapped around my inner organs, and I'm sure it doesn't need to be there.
Progress
The good news is that my WHR is already a little better - on Day 1 it was 0.956, so in 7 days I have reduced my WHR by 0.044. I have also lost 10 pounds! The important thing this statistic shows that not only am I losing weight from thighs, arms and so on, but that I am also losing it from my waist - with luck from around my inner organs - and I'm losing it there faster than around my hips, so my shape is improving.
A 76cm waistline seem like a good target. At 75% of my current hip measurement it would rate as "excellent", and even if I lose some hip circumference I may still qualify as "good" at an 80% WHR with luck. That would mean a waistline of just over 28 inches - something I haven't seen in a while, but which would mean I could fit every item stashed away in my wardrobe. That in itself would be a great reward!
For me, this is rapid progress. The last time I tried the Atkins diet I did not lose any weight at all. I had previously done Atkins and lost some weight, but not as much as 10 pounds in a week. Combining low-carb diet, cold water, and morning fasting does seem to help speed the weight loss along.
Tuesday 11 September 2012
Days 6-7 - take a deep breath
Over the past week, I've noticed a number of changes. Some were expected - I'm often tired and hungry, for example, and I've lost some weight already. Some are entirely unexpected - and the strangest one is my tendency to take deep breaths.
Now, I've taken deep breaths before, so this ought to be a normal thing - but I can't say I've tended to do it when I'm just walking, or sitting, or standing around. Deep breaths are for when I'm preparing for exercise, or drinking in a pleasant summer breeze, or just sighing over something. I've also had to breathe deeply to blow up those balloons that are supposed to make my tummy flatter.
However, over the past couple of days I've frequently felt the urge to take a deep breath, and have been surprised - I can't work out why I want one at that moment. No matter - breathing deeply feels good, so I'm entirely happy to cave in to these urges. I'm just puzzled as to why I'm getting them.
For example, I wondered whether I was short of oxygen? I don't have any breathing problems like asthma or allergies, and I've never smoked; I live and work in a rural area and I get plenty of fresh air. So I can't see why either my lungs or the air itself should be a problem.
One possibility is that I just need more oxygen on this programme, and my body hasn't yet got used to that so my breathing is bringing in a little less air than I now need. On average, that might add up to one extra big breath every hour or so.
I've been web surfing to try to find an explanation, and my best guess so far is this: burning fat apparently uses more oxygen (per unit of energy produced) than burning carbohydrate. In other words, this low carb diet needs more oxygen than my normal diet would have required, just to keep me warm and moving. In fact, given that I'm moving around a bit more than usual, I probably need still more. And if my body's expectations of the amount of oxygen I'll need for a given level of exercise were set by my old carb-rich diet, then it may take a while for it to adjust to this diet that has almost no carbs at all.
Thus ends Week 1! Tomorrow I start the day with a colder bath - 19C instead of 20C. Can't wait.
Now, I've taken deep breaths before, so this ought to be a normal thing - but I can't say I've tended to do it when I'm just walking, or sitting, or standing around. Deep breaths are for when I'm preparing for exercise, or drinking in a pleasant summer breeze, or just sighing over something. I've also had to breathe deeply to blow up those balloons that are supposed to make my tummy flatter.
However, over the past couple of days I've frequently felt the urge to take a deep breath, and have been surprised - I can't work out why I want one at that moment. No matter - breathing deeply feels good, so I'm entirely happy to cave in to these urges. I'm just puzzled as to why I'm getting them.
For example, I wondered whether I was short of oxygen? I don't have any breathing problems like asthma or allergies, and I've never smoked; I live and work in a rural area and I get plenty of fresh air. So I can't see why either my lungs or the air itself should be a problem.
One possibility is that I just need more oxygen on this programme, and my body hasn't yet got used to that so my breathing is bringing in a little less air than I now need. On average, that might add up to one extra big breath every hour or so.
I've been web surfing to try to find an explanation, and my best guess so far is this: burning fat apparently uses more oxygen (per unit of energy produced) than burning carbohydrate. In other words, this low carb diet needs more oxygen than my normal diet would have required, just to keep me warm and moving. In fact, given that I'm moving around a bit more than usual, I probably need still more. And if my body's expectations of the amount of oxygen I'll need for a given level of exercise were set by my old carb-rich diet, then it may take a while for it to adjust to this diet that has almost no carbs at all.
Thus ends Week 1! Tomorrow I start the day with a colder bath - 19C instead of 20C. Can't wait.
Sunday 9 September 2012
Days 4-5: the first weekend
Well, I failed to write a blog entry yesterday, because we had visitors. However, I managed to stay on the programme. That surprised me - most diet and exercise regimes just don't go with playing host. This fit seamlessly. The cold bath happens at my normal bathtime. The exercise fits with the housework to prepare for guests, and with a gentle game of badminton in the back garden. The food restrictions are fine as long as I plan the menu to allow me to fill my plate with allowed food so I won't look as though I'm denying myself. I blew up balloons for my children and their visitors so they could play with them.
Skinny dipping
The cold bath has been the most interesting part of the OMG plan. Originally I found it very hard indeed, but this weekend it has seemed much less daunting. In fact today, I almost enjoyed it! Of course, a big part of the reason for this is that I've managed to actually brave the bath for 15 minutes as required every day, and have even managed to wash my hair during those baths, so I feel a tremendous sense of achievement.
Immersing my torso (and head) has been a lot harder than my legs, but I've developed a trick - I imagine my children's lives are at risk. I've got to get the bath water higher or something terrible will happen. This is silly and should not work, but it does. I can suspend disbelief for long enough to grab the sides of the bath and push myself further down, until eventually I'm fully immersed. Once I'm there, it's not so bad - I get used to the cold water fairly quickly.
Another trick that has helped me get going is to put things that I like around the bath - nice-smelling bath scrub, expensive shampoo, a sparkly rubber duck, and a wooden handled back scrubber. The idea of getting into a cold bath has filled me with dread, but these things have made the "ritual" of getting ready a great deal easier to face.
Yesterday I had a very deep bath and raised the temperature by about half a degree centigrade. Today I went for a smaller bath and raised it a whole degree. I wondered how many calories I was burning on raising the bath temperature?
Science interlude
So this morning I measured the depth of the water, and the width and length a bit below the fill line (the sides of the bath slope a bit, so I took a midway point to try to get the estimate more accurate). The dimensions: 25cm x 46cm x 130cm. Multiply those and you get 149,500 cubic centimeters of water.
Conveniently, a calorie is defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one cubic centimeter (actually, it's 1 gram, but the two are in fact the same thing) of water by 1 degree centigrade. That means that it must have taken 149,500 calories of energy to increase my bath water's temperature today. When we talk about calories in food, we really mean kilo-calories - i.e. 1000s of calories. So to get the calories I must have burned in dietary terms, I divide by 1000. That means that my body used about 150 calories during the 15 minutes involved just to warm up my bath. That's equivalent to around 30 minutes of walking at my weight, so in terms of calorie burn, it's pretty efficient in calories burned per unit of time. Given that I have a busy life, I find that a very appealing statistic.
Black coffee and green tea
I've got more used to hot drinks without milk (or in my case, soya milk). Although I've decided to allow myself to put soya milk in my drinks, I figured I would do without when I could. In fact, I've gone without all weekend, without really trying.
In short, at the end of my first weekend, I'm feeling remarkably positive about this weight loss plan. And of course feeling positive is meant to be good for your brain! I've been at it for nearly a week, and if it's going to carry on like this, I'm sure I can manage to carry on for the full six weeks.
Skinny dipping
The cold bath has been the most interesting part of the OMG plan. Originally I found it very hard indeed, but this weekend it has seemed much less daunting. In fact today, I almost enjoyed it! Of course, a big part of the reason for this is that I've managed to actually brave the bath for 15 minutes as required every day, and have even managed to wash my hair during those baths, so I feel a tremendous sense of achievement.
Immersing my torso (and head) has been a lot harder than my legs, but I've developed a trick - I imagine my children's lives are at risk. I've got to get the bath water higher or something terrible will happen. This is silly and should not work, but it does. I can suspend disbelief for long enough to grab the sides of the bath and push myself further down, until eventually I'm fully immersed. Once I'm there, it's not so bad - I get used to the cold water fairly quickly.
Another trick that has helped me get going is to put things that I like around the bath - nice-smelling bath scrub, expensive shampoo, a sparkly rubber duck, and a wooden handled back scrubber. The idea of getting into a cold bath has filled me with dread, but these things have made the "ritual" of getting ready a great deal easier to face.
Yesterday I had a very deep bath and raised the temperature by about half a degree centigrade. Today I went for a smaller bath and raised it a whole degree. I wondered how many calories I was burning on raising the bath temperature?
Science interlude
So this morning I measured the depth of the water, and the width and length a bit below the fill line (the sides of the bath slope a bit, so I took a midway point to try to get the estimate more accurate). The dimensions: 25cm x 46cm x 130cm. Multiply those and you get 149,500 cubic centimeters of water.
Conveniently, a calorie is defined as the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one cubic centimeter (actually, it's 1 gram, but the two are in fact the same thing) of water by 1 degree centigrade. That means that it must have taken 149,500 calories of energy to increase my bath water's temperature today. When we talk about calories in food, we really mean kilo-calories - i.e. 1000s of calories. So to get the calories I must have burned in dietary terms, I divide by 1000. That means that my body used about 150 calories during the 15 minutes involved just to warm up my bath. That's equivalent to around 30 minutes of walking at my weight, so in terms of calorie burn, it's pretty efficient in calories burned per unit of time. Given that I have a busy life, I find that a very appealing statistic.
Black coffee and green tea
I've got more used to hot drinks without milk (or in my case, soya milk). Although I've decided to allow myself to put soya milk in my drinks, I figured I would do without when I could. In fact, I've gone without all weekend, without really trying.
In short, at the end of my first weekend, I'm feeling remarkably positive about this weight loss plan. And of course feeling positive is meant to be good for your brain! I've been at it for nearly a week, and if it's going to carry on like this, I'm sure I can manage to carry on for the full six weeks.
Saturday 8 September 2012
Day 3 Week 1 - not easy, but easier
Was I more organised this morning? No. I tried, but I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to get up half an hour earlier - as if the OMG routine weren't a big enough ask.
The hardest part is the bath. It's painful, yes, but the point is that you've got to stick with it for 15 minutes. That's a quarter of the hour I usually give myself for getting ready in the morning, and the routine didn't have me sitting and wondering what to do for 15 minutes - it's got to come from somewhere, and clearly my morning ablutions must have been quicker than 15 minutes. Maybe 5.
At any rate, skipping breakfast today was remarkably easy, and my work day was unusually productive. I even had an odd sense that I was living off my own fat - very pleasant, but I wonder whether it's that, or just that it was a sunny day.
Unfortunately, my thighs have still not recovered from yesterday's morning run. I stuck with housework and walking for my movement today, but my legs feel like I have only just finished a 200m sprint. I think I should avoid taking the cold bath right after a hot run.
Getting through the day with the low carb diet and exercise was easy, though not always easy to remember. That is the hardest thing about this diet - every day I forget something important.
The hardest part is the bath. It's painful, yes, but the point is that you've got to stick with it for 15 minutes. That's a quarter of the hour I usually give myself for getting ready in the morning, and the routine didn't have me sitting and wondering what to do for 15 minutes - it's got to come from somewhere, and clearly my morning ablutions must have been quicker than 15 minutes. Maybe 5.
At any rate, skipping breakfast today was remarkably easy, and my work day was unusually productive. I even had an odd sense that I was living off my own fat - very pleasant, but I wonder whether it's that, or just that it was a sunny day.
Unfortunately, my thighs have still not recovered from yesterday's morning run. I stuck with housework and walking for my movement today, but my legs feel like I have only just finished a 200m sprint. I think I should avoid taking the cold bath right after a hot run.
Getting through the day with the low carb diet and exercise was easy, though not always easy to remember. That is the hardest thing about this diet - every day I forget something important.
Thursday 6 September 2012
Day 2 - Ouch!
I wasn't wholly prepared for today. In addition to getting used to a new routine, I had to get the kids to school for the first day of term, and of course I had to get to work. I got up at 6am and by some miracle the kids were more or less on time and so was I, but what a rush!
First came the pain, though. As soon as I was out of bed, I was into my running kit and out on the road. The sun was out and warm on my face, the roads were quiet apart from a few long distance commuters, and I could smell the faintly musty, warm fragrance of recently harvested grain. Of course, all this distracted me, and so I failed to stretch before running. I followed the book - the exercise followed by the long wait before eating - but the book isn't there to remind you to stretch - you're meant to have a bit of sense. My thighs still hurt, many hours later.
After an invigorating run, I thought I'd be in great condition to brave the cold bath. Yet again, a triumph of hope over sense. It was far more painful than yesterday. By the end of my bath, I'd warmed the water by 1.5C, but I felt nothing like the sense of accomplishment that I felt yesterday - I just felt cold. Very, very cold. Nevertheless, I survived the full 15 minutes, including a good scrub and washed hair. An hour later, as I was finally eating my breakfast, I still felt cold. I thought my body was supposed to warm itself up - that was how I'd lose weight, by burning fat to stay warm. Is this working?
Lunch was a huge salad - a whole head of cob lettuce, a tin of sardines, a handful of walnuts. This was actually pretty satisfying, so I didn't feel hungry at all in the afternoon - but I did need my cups of milky tea and coffee. You're meant to have these drinks black, but somehow I knew that I needed the white stuff to keep myself motivated. Never mind the cold bath - I want my tea! So I have officially decided that black tea and coffee are optional on my version of the diet. But no sweeteners, and I'm not going overboard, it's still mostly water - besides, I'm using unsweetened soya milk, which has a very low carbohydrate count.
The hardest thing to get used to (at least, as of Day 2) is remembering to plan exercise and waiting time before a meal. I get to lunchtime, I think - Hooray! Then I remember that I haven't gone for a walk yet, haven't had the wait. So today's lunchtime was a walk around our site, followed by making my salad (a shorter wait than I was supposed to have, but it will do for today), and finally the meal. I got several comments on my "healthy" lunch. No one has guessed my guilty secret - that I am desperate to lose weight. Will they notice when I come in wearing a size smaller outfit?
One great relief today - I had no headaches. I don't know why yesterday was so bad and today has not been. Have I been slacking, or was it a 24-hour wonder? I hope it's the latter - a sign that I had some clearing out to do, and that now the worst of the toxins are out of my system. However, that once again sounds like a triumph of hope over sense. So have the toxins stayed, and am I in for more headaches? One thing is for sure - painful thighs are much more tolerable than a splitting head.
First came the pain, though. As soon as I was out of bed, I was into my running kit and out on the road. The sun was out and warm on my face, the roads were quiet apart from a few long distance commuters, and I could smell the faintly musty, warm fragrance of recently harvested grain. Of course, all this distracted me, and so I failed to stretch before running. I followed the book - the exercise followed by the long wait before eating - but the book isn't there to remind you to stretch - you're meant to have a bit of sense. My thighs still hurt, many hours later.
After an invigorating run, I thought I'd be in great condition to brave the cold bath. Yet again, a triumph of hope over sense. It was far more painful than yesterday. By the end of my bath, I'd warmed the water by 1.5C, but I felt nothing like the sense of accomplishment that I felt yesterday - I just felt cold. Very, very cold. Nevertheless, I survived the full 15 minutes, including a good scrub and washed hair. An hour later, as I was finally eating my breakfast, I still felt cold. I thought my body was supposed to warm itself up - that was how I'd lose weight, by burning fat to stay warm. Is this working?
Lunch was a huge salad - a whole head of cob lettuce, a tin of sardines, a handful of walnuts. This was actually pretty satisfying, so I didn't feel hungry at all in the afternoon - but I did need my cups of milky tea and coffee. You're meant to have these drinks black, but somehow I knew that I needed the white stuff to keep myself motivated. Never mind the cold bath - I want my tea! So I have officially decided that black tea and coffee are optional on my version of the diet. But no sweeteners, and I'm not going overboard, it's still mostly water - besides, I'm using unsweetened soya milk, which has a very low carbohydrate count.
The hardest thing to get used to (at least, as of Day 2) is remembering to plan exercise and waiting time before a meal. I get to lunchtime, I think - Hooray! Then I remember that I haven't gone for a walk yet, haven't had the wait. So today's lunchtime was a walk around our site, followed by making my salad (a shorter wait than I was supposed to have, but it will do for today), and finally the meal. I got several comments on my "healthy" lunch. No one has guessed my guilty secret - that I am desperate to lose weight. Will they notice when I come in wearing a size smaller outfit?
One great relief today - I had no headaches. I don't know why yesterday was so bad and today has not been. Have I been slacking, or was it a 24-hour wonder? I hope it's the latter - a sign that I had some clearing out to do, and that now the worst of the toxins are out of my system. However, that once again sounds like a triumph of hope over sense. So have the toxins stayed, and am I in for more headaches? One thing is for sure - painful thighs are much more tolerable than a splitting head.
Wednesday 5 September 2012
Day 1 Week 1
I try not to buy diet books. They always disappoint - either they're the same old thing in a different package, or they just don't work, or look so badly researched that I'm not even going to try them.
However, what I did pick up this week was the latest edition of The New Scientist, which featured an article on a possible link between obesity and alzheimer's disease. Because Alzheimer's runs in my family, I've kept an eye out for any research that suggests preventative measures. This article ticked that box in a big way, and also noted other possible links including stroke and heart disease (which also run in my family, especially stroke). Having read it, I bought the next diet book I saw, and this turned out to be the unpromisingly titled Six Weeks to OMG by London-based sports scientist Venice A. Fulton. The book is written in the style of all successful self-help books, full of exclamation marks and enthusiastic statements of the obvious. However, I was looking for anything that contained a programme, and this book does. I've tried to lose weight and get fit plenty of times, and without a detailed plan, I tend to drift off course.
This is a seriously eccentric plan. It combines several conventional ideas with some that are entirely new to me. The dietary advice is pretty normal - low carb, high protein, plenty of low carb veg, some fasting (skip breakfast), and forget the low fat advice but do stay away from all forms of sugar, especially the sneaky ones with names like high fructose corn syrup.
The exercise plan is not onerous at all, but it contains some truly weird advice. To get a flat tummy, I am to blow up a balloon 20 times, ideally just before bed. In the mornings, I have to take a cold (room temperature) bath. Apart from that, I must do three sessions of exercise per day, including the occasional session of weights (3 times per month ideally). Eating and exercising are spaced out so that the pattern is exercise - wait - eat.
I'm going to give this a go - why not? I find weird ideas oddly appealing, and this at least has some familiar aspects that I've tried successfully before, such as the low carb advice.
At the moment I weigh a shocking 168 lbs (76 kg) - the most I have ever knowingly weighed, outside pregnancy. The last time I went on a serious diet and exercise regime (many years ago) I weighed 66 kg. Shrinking my belly has enormous appeal, but the main motivation is my brain. I would rather die of just about anything than get Alzheimer's Disease. I just hope no one comes up with research later on to suggest that major fat loss increases your chances of developing the disease.
My plan is to keep a record of my progress through this blog. For one thing, it might help me stay the course. Also, if it's successful, I'll appreciate having the record of what happened if I ever have to do it again....
However, what I did pick up this week was the latest edition of The New Scientist, which featured an article on a possible link between obesity and alzheimer's disease. Because Alzheimer's runs in my family, I've kept an eye out for any research that suggests preventative measures. This article ticked that box in a big way, and also noted other possible links including stroke and heart disease (which also run in my family, especially stroke). Having read it, I bought the next diet book I saw, and this turned out to be the unpromisingly titled Six Weeks to OMG by London-based sports scientist Venice A. Fulton. The book is written in the style of all successful self-help books, full of exclamation marks and enthusiastic statements of the obvious. However, I was looking for anything that contained a programme, and this book does. I've tried to lose weight and get fit plenty of times, and without a detailed plan, I tend to drift off course.
This is a seriously eccentric plan. It combines several conventional ideas with some that are entirely new to me. The dietary advice is pretty normal - low carb, high protein, plenty of low carb veg, some fasting (skip breakfast), and forget the low fat advice but do stay away from all forms of sugar, especially the sneaky ones with names like high fructose corn syrup.
The exercise plan is not onerous at all, but it contains some truly weird advice. To get a flat tummy, I am to blow up a balloon 20 times, ideally just before bed. In the mornings, I have to take a cold (room temperature) bath. Apart from that, I must do three sessions of exercise per day, including the occasional session of weights (3 times per month ideally). Eating and exercising are spaced out so that the pattern is exercise - wait - eat.
I'm going to give this a go - why not? I find weird ideas oddly appealing, and this at least has some familiar aspects that I've tried successfully before, such as the low carb advice.
At the moment I weigh a shocking 168 lbs (76 kg) - the most I have ever knowingly weighed, outside pregnancy. The last time I went on a serious diet and exercise regime (many years ago) I weighed 66 kg. Shrinking my belly has enormous appeal, but the main motivation is my brain. I would rather die of just about anything than get Alzheimer's Disease. I just hope no one comes up with research later on to suggest that major fat loss increases your chances of developing the disease.
My plan is to keep a record of my progress through this blog. For one thing, it might help me stay the course. Also, if it's successful, I'll appreciate having the record of what happened if I ever have to do it again....
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