Vital stats: BMI 37.4 (good gravy! 🙁 it was 50.3 two years back, and pictures imply more than that before. getting there I guess.) Def. not sharing my weight with the world, but I will share my losses and BMI changes (when they’re worth sharing). I am not diabetic, but was insulin resistant and diagnosed with PCOS in my 20’s. Currently my BP/Chol is fine, not had a GTT for about 5 years, but passed the last one. Strong family history of type 2 and also autoimmune diseases.

Tendency towards anaemia, so I have to watch my iron levels, currently ferritin is 68. I also have inflammation issues (need one more marker to rise enough to get a rheumatologist referral) so it will be interesting to see if this regime decreases my random joint pains (no visible swelling or damage/deformity – pain isn’t enough for a referral, you gotta LOOK like you have arthritis too! grr!).

Plan: two weeks of shakes and one cooked meal, to get past the craving phase without having to faff about in the kitchen too much. I know from past experiences that after two weeks I will be ready to kick shakes – but I may rotate in my favorite protein shake (not a VLCD though, so I can’t use it for most-of-my-meal replacement) for occasional breakfasts – it is convenient and not particularly sweet (unlike VLCD ones. ugh. I’m still carb addicted and think they’re sickly… )

Method: Weekly weight change. Plus minor updates/blog about how I’m going, what I ate, cries for help, requests for internet equivalent of a good slapping across the chops and a good shake.

yesterday went ok, shakes horrid, I had more coffee than I really should have, but also drank so much water and peppermint tea, so not concerned about fluid balances. headache showed up early evening. I made myself some panfried haloumi and added a quarter of a shredded cabbage which I sweated down in the pan with some water and butter, added a heap of cracked black pepper. I also had 30g of salted nuts.

I learned that haloumi is definitely not something you want more than 30g of (I had to have 60g to make up calories – even the dog wouldn’t eat the bits I couldn’t manage). Cabbage was lovely though, one of my fave veg sweated down in a pan with butter, salt and pepper (don’t add salt if there’s haloumi around – glad I remembered not to!)

went ok. sneaky look at scales showed weight had gone up, my fault for looking. I must restrain myself for a few days. I am a cyclical loser – not much one week, good loss the next type. Its a bit demoralising. Must just carry on. Might measure waist tonight to help.

so far today a coffee (I have no sweetener and a dollop of milk, try to only have three a day. before you faint, that’s me cutting down…) a big glass of water with a berocca (fizzy vitamin) and a shake. Tonight i am going to experiment with a vegetable spiral thing and a zucchini for dinner. Protein will be cottage cheese on the side. I might add some tomato passata to the zucchini. Be VERY careful of tomato/pasta sauces, most have sugar added! passata in the bottles is usually just tomatoes and citric acid, always read the label!

I am doing this as the final push to get down to an acceptable weight – I want to get out of the obese into overweight category, that is my goal. 20kg will do it. I have learned that carb craving builds up if you let it, so am accepting the fact that the med style of eating will be the way going forward, sadly for me and my devotion to toast. I shall have to find some other means of transporting peanut butter into my gob 😛 (when I have the calories for it, not right now, caveat) Lets get this over with! Quietly determined but not ‘pumped’ and enthused. I know this is hard work, and I also know most of my battlefield is in my head.

Hi chongolo, you have done well to reduce your Bmi so much.
Instead of pasatta have you thought of garlic and so.e cream cheese added to your courgetti?

Hi hashimoto,

No I hadn’t thought of that – I have always preferred tomato based sauces for pasta and stuff (fuel for the parmesan!) but that IS a good idea. I need to stop in at the shops and grab some dogfood and maybe a chicken breast for tomorrows dinner, I will add some philly to the basket.

One thing I have noted is so far this diet has had me racing tot eh loo all the time, and is playing havoc with my acid reflux. I am changing meds anyway (too insecure about PPI’s so trying the H+ ones) but yesterday and today the reflux has showed up MUCH earlier. Possibly previous continual snacking kept it at bay somewhat?

its annoying, I have antacid chewables on me. Here’s hoping it chills out, i have read other have had their reflux improve?

oh well. talk later 🙂

Wow that’s strange Chongololo
A lot of folks have reported that their acid reflux has vastly improved during the 8 weeks.
In fact I’m sure Hashimoto is one of them.
I’m sure she’ll be along soon to confirm that.
Anyhow, best of luck with the plan. If you can stick with it then 20kg is very acheivable, others have lost that and more.

Hi Chongolo, you do need to go to the loo a lot at first but it settles down after a while.

I am one of those whose acid reflux has disappeared, yours may settle down soon. This diet causes huge changes in the body in the first couple of weeks so give it time! !

The garlic and a teaspoon of cream cheese gives you a lot of bang for your buck on this diet! Saves wasting most of a jar of passata as well!
I love chilli so always add that as well. If you like chilli it is vit C rich and anti inflammatory as well 🙂

We were obviously typing at the same time Bill! 🙂

Hmm first my secret identity and now this!!!
I’m seriously beginning to believe in clairvoyancy here. Hope you can’t read my innermost thoughts Judith 😀

Day 2, evening.

dinner was amended at short notice when I discovered that the tub of cottage cheese was actually sour cream – bugger! so substituted it for some of the sour cream and 25g of havarti cheese. I can report that spiralled zucchini is AMAZING yum yum, cooked with a smidge of onion powder some garlic and fresh pepper.

now its near 8 pm, and i have the evening munchies, so I am compromising with a small bowl of raw fresh red radishes. they are nice and low in carbs and calorie, have a nice bite – really crisp. Ordinarily I would be having cheese and crackers to ‘fill the gap’ and now I have had to measure out 25g of cheese I know I was adding a huge whack of calories every time I did that!

another of my interminable peppermint teas, looking forward to the hunger disappearing. I’m pretty good at this dieting malarkey so I know that the really hard part is going to be in the next few days. I must focus on the right now and not get bogged down in the future! (yup, deleted a great big paragraph of twaddle.)

I can also heartily endorse radishes as an emergency snack.

I love your musings chongolo. I am reading as many posts as I can in order to distract myself…gave up on the ironing! Like you I am determined, not sure how many kilos I need to lose to move into overweight bit I suspect it would be twent five + kilos. I should check it out. At the moment I am planning to get through this eating approach day by day. Day three and I miss my carbs…interestingly not my wine so that is a good thing! One habit at least being changed.

Oh but I can Bill 😉

Oh dear
my teachers at school could as well 🙁
I can just imagine the conversation between you and Cheryl next month 😮

Hi Bill,
Your ears will be burning lol 🙂
We are going to have lots of fun next month. Dolphin cruise, long walks
(might be a bit puffed to do much talking there), visit to a nice curry place and some beach walks. I think Judith has a bike ride planned, and maybe some winery visits. One things for sure, she won’t be getting me in the ocean for a swim at this time of year! Bit too cold for me. 🙂
If you and your OH could brave the long trip over (stopover somewhere for retail therapy?), I’d be happy to show you around too.

Day Three!

(puts hand up for dolphin cruise, waits for hashimoto to out bill as a weekend caped crusader or something equally eye-opening…)

busy work day today, so I didn’t get any peppermint teas into me, but stuck to my three coffees and did manage lots of water.

had two shakes and for dinner I have just finished up chicken breast which I pan fried in a small amount of coconut oil, and I used a dollop of hot peri peri sauce. Once coloured up I tipped in some zucchini, one yellow button squash, and a floret of broccoli (spiralled and sliced up as required) and finished it with a tsp of marscapone cheese to add some fat and calories. Dee-lish-us.

I have cooked vegetables three nights in a row. unprecedented. it does take a little time, but the novelty hasn’t worn off yet. (just as well, day three and all that)

I still have over 100 cal, so I will either have another of the 150 cal shakes, or maybe make a cocoa with some stevia and some of the full-cream milk I bought. Thing is, I dislike full-cream milk, i PREFER skim the most, hilo next – creamy drinks horrify me. Dated from having jersey-cow-warm milk as a kid URRRGHUGH the tongue coating was instant… (jersey cows have high butterfat percentage, and old daisy was especially icky. yes. she was called daisy. I know. don’t look at me, it was Grandad who named her.)

anyway, unsure if I will be able to cope with a full-cream-milky drink. See how I go.

Overall, today was pretty easy, but I was busy. I even eschewed chocolate cake (birthday in the office today) headache was minor last night, I don’t think I will get one tonight, if I do it will be late. After day 2’s ^&%&$ weight gain of .2 I have just glared at the scales so far, I will try to leave it until next Monday. I have to sort of system which will lose one week, and then give me nothing or gain for a week, I read peoples lamentations about ‘no loss for two days’ with amusement – MEASURE you waists, people! when the scales stay the same you’re often still centimeter-ing down!

did a clinical pilates class tonight, I was a tad worried I would be a bit pathetic because of the lack of food, but it went well and has actually raised my energy levels – I did feel a bit flat and slightly light headed this afternoon. My glands in my neck are also slightly up – dunno if its a dip in immunity because of the regime change, maybe I’m just fighting off something? wait and see.

so far, so good. not really hungry, but I did imagine roast potatoes when I was in the fruit and veg aisle. Odd, chocolate and lollies, – MEH. piles of spuds – transported to roast veg and gravy…

still think the most important part (for my relationship with food, and emotional connection to it, comfort crutch etc etc boring psych stuff here) is to focus on each week. not the whole timeframe. not how I’m gonna eat forever. just the right now.

right. time to try the full moo.

Hi Cherrianne
I’d love to visit but there is absolutely no chance for the OH
She doesn’t like planes anyway and was having panic attacks on the flight to Mexico which is only half the time.
It doesn’t help that she’s been watching that stupid nothing to declare program and considers Australian customs officials to be nothing short of demons 🙁

Hi Bill I had an hilarious experience with the Oz airport officials! I love ’em!

Sorry to all cliff richards fans for what follows:
On a flight from darwin to alice we were delayed ( sitting on a very hot plane) for nearly an hour – with a hot and bothered asthmatic toddler, when the great man entered with his groupies. Then he had a hissy fit because his groupies were allocated seats with him. He demanded first class and his groupies to sit at the back. It was a tiny plane, no 1st class so people had to move from their seats so his groupies could be seated at the back and him in the front. Then he got off at Mt Isa with a lot of fuss before we continued to alice.

A week later i was catching a flight to Perth, went to find a trolley for the bags and banged right into Cliff who was looking very lost by the trolleys. The groupies of course were still waiting to get off the plane.
I turned back to the desk, trolley and bags in tow just in time to hear this conversation between a receptionist and a burly, uniformed, gun on each hip airport official:

‘you’re supposed to be looking after cliff richards ‘
Cliffs face lights up
‘how the hell am i supposed to know who he is’
Cliffs face falls

Bill, roflmao!!!

Hi Chongololo
For someone who hates cooking you are doing a great job! No cake , tick. One step at a time gets you where you are going to.

and so we continue. Deliberately didn’t start this on Friday so as to make Monday my weigh in day to try to limit weekend over-indulgences.

fairly easy day, again felt a little bit spaced out and useless early-mid afternoon. I have an avo ripening up to attempt the avo baked egg recipe from the book on the weekend.

I was just out looking for new boots (found some!) and it was frankly a little odd to not buy something tasty for tea/to munch tonight. I’m not really too hungry but I do miss flavours. Also, there was exactly NO food options at the outlet mall I was at. Not one option, unless I just got a coffee Or went for a full on sit down meal and threw away the bread etc. Quite annoying!

food today: three shakes and I just whipped up some steamed cauli, mashed up with butter and marscapone with shredded ham, salt and pepper. Tasty, easy ‘can’t be bothered’ meal. It would have been nice with a poached egg on top actually. Quite filling. boring, though. Lots of water and peppermint tea.

Out at a hip hop concert tomorrow night, so bit worried about the eating out part – my friend will poo-poo the diet as ‘extreme and starvation’ I suspect. Wait and see.

so far so good. might check the scales in the morning. goodnight.

right, Sunday before first Monday weigh-in but I did check the scales and all is going well. Albeit inflated loss due to water which is bound in the glycogen which is releasing from the liver.

Saturday I ate too much.
Shakes for breakfast and before I went out, and I had a boiled egg and some cheese as a snack in the afternoon. Lunch was a plain greek yoghurt, mixed with a tsp of stevia – had 75g of strawberries and 10g of raw cacao nibs – 174 odd calories and oh so so tasty, raw cacao is completely unprocessed chocolate precursor. so they are crunchy, and full of fibre and things, and add the choc flavour to things like plain ccoa powder does.Very much a winner with berries in yoghurt! that was probably a bit more than 800, but then I ate out last night too!!! – I had a goi salad at a vietnamese restaurant – poached chicken breast with a salad of cabbage and coriander and carrot and cucumber and bean shoots and mint. (racks memory.. I checked it carefully for the ubiquitous rice vermicelli, but there was no carb in there, and I ignored the sweet dipping sauce on the side. had fresh chopped red chilli on top) so yes, too many calories, but they were all good ones. I think i shall attempt to poach a chicken breast in stock, its so moist and delicious – be good to add to salads for lunches!

add to that well over 10k steps because of walking around the city and dancing at the concert and I think all is well.

today I had my yoghurt/strawberry/cacao mix for breakfast. i shall have a shake for lunch and I am planning to invent some sort of japanese-inspired chicken and egg with veg omelette thing for dinner, okonomiyaki style without the sugary sauces – stick to plain soy. we shall see how it goes – usually chock full of onion, but I’m planning on trying the zucchini strings – with some onion – to amp it up.

overall, for day 6, truly not hungry, but psychological food cravings are strong! But only if they are ‘in my face’ so to speak. It is much easier to ignore them, the urge disappears very quickly. I have a stock of boiled eggs in the fridge to eat if I really feel like I am flagging and need something – safer then cheese, I LOVE cheese, and 20g of it is piddling. good to add to a dish etc, but on its own – its just a small sad cube.

Oh, to follow up, my friend I concerted with was very pro the diet after all 🙂 She actually suggested the egg omelette experiment, and gave me tips on chicken poaching for later in the week too. She is a green thumb so also said she will try to grow me some winter veg (helps to have someone else to try to eat something which has worked and is therefore going mental in the garden!)

I still drink ‘too much’ coffee but it contains very little milk, and I alternate it with water and a herbal tea. Something to tweak later, I’m not counting my dollops of milk in beverages at this stage. Because I’m not, I’m really careful to only add a cm or so – I really don’t want to give up/cut dowm coffee, and I dislike it black.

finally, the clear-headed feeling from no sugar/wheaty carbs is kicking in. It just makes you feel more alert, more on the ball. I’m not sure if its wheat OR sugar or a synergy – I did get the effect when I cut out wheat (low inflammation effort) but it was fleeting, came and went. So my n=1 observational study says ‘its dropping both’ so far.

I will check in with tomorrows weigh in in the am! good luck all.

well, I’d like to report a 3kg loss this morning 2/5/16 😀 that’s 6.6lbs in the old money (I am a child of the metric system) happy with that, I was expecting 2 though – also I started on Tuesday, so this is 6 days, not seven, but Mondays is where I want to keep it!

‘okonomiyaki’ egg omelette was very good, I would stick to cabbage and up the onion volume next time, poor old zucchini was a bit lost in this one. I chopped the chicken into small bits and marinated it with a tsp of minced garlic and the soy and a quarter capful of thai fish sauce. Fried down the onion, then added the chicken stuff to cook. when done I removed the meat and onion and sweated down the veges with a splash of water. then I added the meat back in when they were suitably dead, whisked two eggs with another quarter cap of fish sauce and poured that on and let it cook (I did poke it about a bit to get the egg to set a bit like a scramble – there’s not enough egg to make it set through) very nice! too much really, dog got the last 5th or so (onion-free bit). I used a bit of coconut oil for the initial frying of the onion and chicken.

onto week two. be interesting to see if I lose much – history shows a much slower loss every second week for me.

awesome loss! I’m expecting to slow down in week 2 too, will be happy if I lose 1 kilo!

scales said anotheer 0.6 this mroning, but I’m not banking it until official weigh in next monday.

A bit of a trying food day today, i forgot to take my reflux drug this morning, and boy did I notice it. It makes me hungry-ish and is uncomfy, so today I struggled the most of any day so far. I had two shakes, and then my comfort food – yoghurt, strawbs and nibs – as a ‘snack’ (plus I had a boiled egg in the early afternoon and the rest of my radishes too)

therefore dinner was quite spartan – chicken cooked on the stove with some tinned tomatoes and frozen spinach, garlic and italian herbs, and a small grating of hard cheddar on top to finish. Small serving, but worked out ok.

I have an apple for a treat for tomorrow, I took a lot of time to choose a small, shiny yet heavy one – I plan on enjoying it, I hope its really crisp!

overall so far i have been 10 to 60 cals over most days, plus I don’t count my milk dollops in coffee etc. But its working ok, so I can finesse that later. I also seem to have a LOT more protein, 80 plus grams usually. That’s probably the shakes. Don’t want to cannibalise my muscles for amino acids, but I should really give some thought to nixing one shake a day soon I think so I get more veg in.

oh well, onward and downward. remembering reflux meds tomorrow, oh MY yes.

Apple was horrible. very disappointed, cut it and half had a great big brown area of death, so I was down to half, and then that half was floury and horrible so I binned the lot. 🙁 I was really looking forward to it. *sulks* I only bought one.

I have a tin of salmon I am going to attempt more fishcakes with tonight with salad for tea. One shake for lunch, yoghurt/strawbs and nibs for breakfast.

scale went down 0.2 overnight, but I’m not peeing like a fiend anymore, so water weight phase is over, so loss should slow down now! If only there was a crisp apple around… bye all.

Morning,

still going well, albeit having a square of 70% dark lindt each night the last few days. It doesn’t seem to have triggered in general carb cravings etc though. i guess it really isn’t very sweet, but such a fabulous flavour.

I bought pile of ready made fresh soups from woolies, and have been swapping them in instead of a shake – yesterday i had no shakes, but had one today for breakfast as i don’t want to wear out the joy of yoghurt/berries/nibs for brekky! I have been lurking at IGA to nab some of that herman Brot bread – unsuccessfully so far – but I HAVE got their pasta.

Which leads me to a dilemma, they are low carb etc but they do have wheat in them – and my goodness if most of my random aches and pains have dried up in the last week… which is often attributed to cutting out carbs and wheat proteins – so I’m unsure if I even want to open that ‘box’ as yet? At this stage I think i will wait until I’m near the end of the 8 weeks before I add in ‘carbs’ like these. then i will see if I get a reaction? (I am also afraid of the toast slippery slope. I love toast.)

had four Ikea meatballs cooked in a onion/tomato/peas/corn/carrot/garlic/chilli ‘bolognese’ sauce for tea, with cheese on top. It was delicious! and too much, I have to watch my portion sizes – ok for cals, but if I can’t finish the serves its a bit counter productive – in this case I would have been better to add an extra meatball and decrease a bit of the veg volume.

scales have slowed down massively as expected, but so far it looks like I shall squeak in over a kg loss for week two, so that’s nice :). Still looking for the perfect apple – I have selected another ‘victim’ so we shall see if its worth the calories tonight after dinner! otherwise I’ll have more lindt instead.

still easy, not hungry, not too hard, head would still inhale a chocolate croissant if it knew it could get away with it though ^_^. (It couldn’t. and then body would feel awful and get mad at head. and then head would decide to go on an overthinking marathon and wheedle body into more croissants.. so keeping the head firmly in check at this stage!)

Hi chongolo, glad to hear it is still going well for you. MM refers to having an occasional small square of dark chocolate. I guess at 70% there can’t be too much sugar in there! Aldi do a range of single origin bars from 65 to 85 %, though I don’t know if Aldi have opened in perth yet.

nah, there’s not much sugar in there, it definitely hasn’t woken the carb monster at all – and oh Hashimoto – we get Aldi on the 9th of June! WOOHOO I am excited, we have been waiting donkeys ages for it, I will go through it with a fine toothed comb!! I hear they have good greek yoghurt too.

Saturday near lunch and all I have had is coffee do far, i guess I should go break some eggs or something, ho hum. Stayed on plan yesterday, in fact was under so bad I had a babybel and a boiled egg before bed. must remeber to keep the water up, I have been a bit slacker in this regard the last couple of days, nad its water which is used up in the fat processing – so not enough water, not enough fat burning!
seeyas.

Hi, I’m glad you are getting an Aldi soon 🙂

Week 2, down another 1.2 kg 🙂 very very happy with that, 4.2 in two weeks is astonishing really.

Expecting much slower losses from now on. I have largely nixed the shakes now, but the cold has hit with a vengeance, which makes me want warm meals! (5.2 degrees when I got up this morning. Brrrrrr. Reckon it was about 10 in the house!! Wish I could justify the $$$$& for heat!)

Onward and downward 🙂

Hi Chongololo or is it Chongolo? It’s spelt both ways!
Excellent achievement, keep it up😀Perhaps the cold weather will be an excuse to do more exercise in the mornings before you go to work!
Linda

GAH, I left a “lo” off the thread title… silly me. A chongololo was the name for a very VERY fat black long millipede in Africa where I was a kidlet. They are funny heavy things, and liked to throw caution to the wind and cross roads, not very safe of them. about a cm or more in diameter and 10 or more cm long, the big ones. They were fun to follow, and rescue from all the scrapes they got themselves into.

Blurk, Linda, no chance of morning exercise in the freezing cold, I leave the house at 10 to 7 to head in to work anyway. I do my pilates class twice a week and that will do for exercise for now, I want to weigh significantly less before I add any sort of sustained carrying on, to ensure I don’t damage my joints at all. I have heard of early hip replacements (with long waiting periods in static agony waiting for surgery) that will NOT be me. Pilates and walking about will do for now 🙂

going ok, no hunger at all, quite easy to stick with as long as I’m busy. boredom is a big danger though, so far any cheating is done with veg or cheese or boiled eggs, so the cals may be well over (certainly still well below the magic 1200 though..) but it gets you through.

When you’re busy, then its easy to under-eat – I had to have a cup of milk before bed last night to plug a gap (even after my 70% lindt!) its because of the salmon salad for lunch – bulky but really low cal. I have a beef and vege soup today which is more, so no choking down a cup of milk at 10pm tonight!

goodbye all 🙂

oh, scales moved down a tiny bit today, golly 🙂 should manage a half kg for week 3, which would make me very pleased indeed! Wait and see. must stop jumping on the scales every day though.

*waves*

Hi Chongololo
If it works for you, ‘just do it’ is what I say. If we can all get healthy from eating like this, so long as we can keep up the motivation then it’s got to be a good thing.
Ooh, Africa, I love it, what country did you grow up in and how did you come to be there?
I travelled there back in the mid 80’s and absolutely loved it and intend to go back. I went to Morocco, Algeria, Niger, Chad and Central Africa Republic on one of those overland holidays in the back of a truck. I’d like to go back and see Kenya, Tanzania and perhaps Ethiopia along with Egypt. That’s a lot to see in one trip, might have to go back more than once.😀

Hi Linda – It was Zambia, as my dad worked on the mines there, great place to grow up. Escaped when i was 11.

well, BSD is going along ok, but week three plateau has hit – that 0.2 which showed up missing three days ago is still just 0.2. I knew this was going to happen, so I’m pressing on, but deep down dropping numbers really boosts your mood! I still fee like things are shrinking slowly, and that is the main thing after all!

I made a really carby meal using cannelini beans and tomatoes and onion/garlic/bacon – probably abrinch recipe for people really on the first few weeks an dlooking for glucose control, but ok for me. It was super tasty, but I got 4 portions out of one can of beans, just goes to show what you can be satisfied with.

continually astonished with the low cal values of veg, too. I discovered Huon brand smoked salmon bites (well, its like chunks of cooked smoked salmon in a pouch in the same place where you would find the usual smoked salmon raw slices here in oz supermarkets) my god, everyone buy some and mix it with salad leaves, salad veg and some cottage cheese or sour cream – hop to it – its SO DELICIOUS. I had this for lunch today, really tasty and satisfying.

tried to make the coconut flatbreads but the mix was too thick I think. they are also such a wodge in your tum, too. I need to get my technique right, and have a suitable meal to go with one – I just made them on a whim – I think they would be nice with a curry (not found gram flour yet for those flatbreads)

overall its going ok. the odd day where dinner volume doesn’t satisfy me, and I find myself wanting more – so the cheese comes out. i have gone over 800 quite often, but never with any food ‘off plan’ so to speak, and almost never more then 1200 cal total. So I recognise this will slow loss a bit, but this is for a long time, so better to have a bit more then throw in the towel I think.

My nibs in yoghurt and squares of 70% lindt are keeping urges for sweet sugary sh!t at bay very well. We shall see how the regime comes with hormonal ‘must eat all the things surge’ pre-period – though I have decided if it becomes too much I will just give myself leeway to have as much as I want of allowed stuff (not nuts though) for those few days. Better than being ‘miserable’ and breaking out the croissants.

I also finally managed to get a loaf of that herman brot bread (mmm, had one slice under those beans to try it) so i can let myself have a daily slice of that to if needed (to help assuage hormonal stupidity – its in the freezer now so i don’t just eat some daily). Just conscious of the wheat in it – because….

I have really REALLY noticed that all of my minor unexplained aches and pains in my hands and forearms, feet after pilates etc have gone. Completely. wrists hated some pilates moves – again, gone. the overall back pain is still the same, but the disappearance of all the other achey symptoms which we were watching as suspected beginning of AI arthritis is awesome! this could be attributed to the removal of all the white carbs and wheat/rice… a bit sad for maintenance eating in the future perhaps, I will have to find the level i can consume when I go to 5:2 or so – I can cope with wheat as a treat only, but would ultimately like to have brown rice and kumara back.

enough of a wall of text. I will check in in a few days with further observations. 🙂

Hi chongolo believe me you won’t want any of the white starch once you have done 8+ weeks of this diet as you will look at that kind of stuff and associate it with discomfort and weight gain. You will find you prefer to eat the BSD way : )

Hi Chongololo,
You should be able to get the chickpea flour at Drake’s, it’s called besan flour there.
The Drakes Greek yoghurt, Mythos brand, is much better than Aldi’s and is nearly half the carbs!
Well done on your weight loss so far 🙂

Hi diary,

late check in – lost 500g for the week, which was more than I was expecting to be honest, and it has dipped 400g below that in the previous couple of days too – all depends on how the fibre consumption goes if you know what I mean, I think 🙂

I went ‘off plan’ last night for tea, I had oven chips and sauce and veg. and a packet of jelly belly beans. The chips were sensational, the jelly beans much less so which was quite interesting. i REALLY enjoyed the first 5 or 6 beans, but then after that they were all just too sweet and it was mindless consumption. I threw the rest away in the end (I did make sure all the coconut, choc and pear flavoured ones were eaten first, I’m not a monster lol)

anyway, today we carry on as per normal, which isn’t proving too difficult, I can sense how a cheat meal would set up a cascade if your resolve was wavering though – I’m just drowning myself in tea and water when my mouth says it wouldn’t mind some toast or something (smelling others cooking toast and toasting their lunchtime wraps/panninis etc is a bit trying today) I weighed up this effect and decided the ships were worth it. they were, but the jellybeans definitely weren’t – note for future self!

something for those using my diet diary app – check the calories etc carefully on the items which come up in the database – I have found many many discrepancies – chobani yoghurt pots for one, and also the woolies select soups too – protein, carbs AND calories out in some cases!

lets see what happens this week. possibly not much, but we’re due for a stalemate in the weight loss soon.

🙂

CHIPS!!! not ships. Ships are worthy, too – but not in terms of diets. Apart from the nausea they often engender. 😛

Hey Chongololo, was just thinking about you and wondering how you’re getting on??
Cheers
Linda