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 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.

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.

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.