My low fat diet blog from “The Recovering Fataholic” #11 February 2013

Hi folks.

Ok the news report. Did I lose weight or not? Yes! I did it again. This is great. I don’t lose weight for ages, and then suddenly I am losing weight consistently three weeks in a row and this one makes four weeks.

I am now 121.5kg. I can’t see this lasting. I am not exercising. And I know that in order to make this lifestyle change a permanent feature of my life I am going to have to get off my bottom and on my feet and do something. So in honour of that fact. I am going to do 10 minutes of walking on my treadmill. Then at the hefty weight of 121.5kg I am going to let you know how it felt. Here goes…

Phew! Ten minutes and 5 seconds. Travelling at 4kph on a 5 degree upward incline. I didn’t have to go at that speed. I just knew I had to get “out of breath”. So I snuck the speed higher and higher until I had reached a point at which I knew I could do ten minutes but out of puff throughout. It wasn’t so bad. I am thirsty now though. That kind of exercise is going to make me dry which is a good thing because I need to increase my water intake. I added a small amount of orange squash to the water. Much easier to take. I have no idea how many calories I used, or how it affects me. Now I shall log on to my http://www.fatsecret.co.uk website and add that to the breakfast foods I consumed.

You know I still crave chips, even now at 10:20am – Chips made by the local chipshop. With some Brava Sauce I got given from Spain. (I mentioned I used to like “Patatas Brava” and began to explain how it was made to the person who recently went there on holiday. And they remembered me. How kind. How 20th Century!).

I ought to remind you – the reader – that I am not on a diet. I am exploring the emotional and mental side of being a fataholic and trying to stay “off the fat”. I am doing a home-made change of eating style which I have called my “paying attention” diet. Where nothing is off limits but when presented with a choice I would choose the low fat option each time.

Speaking of emotions and thoughts I was looking at myself in the mirror the other day, after a shower, and noticed that my arms are nearer to my body than they have been for ages. I had to jiggle myself about a bit to make sure it wasn’t just the way I happened to be standing at that moment. I was also told by my lovely, suportive and incredibly patient wife that the crease under my man-boobs has diminished to no crease at all. It seems I am “changing shape” along with everything else. The main reason I wanted to do things at such a tortuously slow pace anyway was to prevent sagging skin folds. You cannot go from 20 stone to 14 stone without having a little bit of flapping flesh. And I gather from research that the elastin in my skin is generally exhausted by the time I pass puberty so I may well be buggered whatever I do – but this shape-shifting is quite a positive feeling. It helps me (in my head) to stay focussed on the reason I am doing this. It’s not to lose weight, it’s to stay alive and keep my liver going after the serious diagnosis I received. I must keep going to make sure I can only pass away once all the debts and mortgages (that are part of normal life) are paid off, so my wife and kids have nothing to worry about. That’s my motivation I suppose. The family. I am not sure that if they weren’t about I wouldn’t be down the chippy buying a bag of fatty badness right now. Us fataholics are a tempestuous bunch ain’t we?

What do you think? Should I have a better reason for dieting? I’ve never been vain to that extent.
Ok. 1/2 litre of water consumed. 10 mins of my daily exercise done. Back to work then! See you next time.

My low fat diet blog from “The Recovering Fataholic” #10 February 2013

I recently caught wind of a website while i was rummaging around, looking for a food diary site. It’s called http://www.fatsecret.co.uk and the best bit, (right now), is that it’s free.

I registered and got all functional and began throwing food at it. It coped with brand names like St Dalfour (Jam). It coped with staples like fruit and veg. It coped with combined foods that are regularly eaten, (like my fruit salad for breakfast with a fat-free yoghurt). In short it was remarkably resilient to my testing it. It even had the pre-packaged Healthy Choice Co-Operative brand of Chicken Salad Sandwich I regularly eat for lunch, because it comes in at a low 3.6g of fat.

I got a copy on my Blackberry phone and off I went. Chucking foods into my food diary, on my phone. It calculates ALL your calorie burning activities including resting and sleeping based on the input for your height, weight etc and any activity you do, like gardening, shopping etc you can deduct from your overall calories. It’s really good.

So there was no reason to procrastinate. After a few days of twiddling with it’s various corners – I am very pleased. Now after some months of mind and soul searching I am eating better than ever. I began this whole thing; after I was warned off alcohol, fizzy drink and fat by the liver consultant, by paying attention to what I was shoving in my mouth. With this great little tool on my mobile (and it’s more functional big brother on the pc) I am finding out things about the food I put in my mouth that I never knew. Like the fact that in order to maintain my current weight etc I apparently need to ‘consume’ an RDI (recommended daily intake) of 2800 calories. But I can clear a few of those just by lying in bed, asleep or awake by entering the details into this great app. I love it!

So the upshot of this is that I noticed after a few days that I was only ever acheiving 80-90% of my RDI of total fat (68g) and was shocked to see how much sat fat certain other foods have.

I was watching some television recently and saw a government advert for eating healthy. It talked about sugar cubes in fizzy drinks and gloopy fat in pizzas. So for a laugh I searched the FatSecret app for POPULAR BRANDS. I was looking for Domino’s Pepperoni Passion 12″ Pizza. Prior to this diet I would happily consume an entire 12″ on my own with chips and a bottle of Coke or Pepsi if I was hungry, in one sitting, no problem. The app gave me information I never had before about this kind of food. I mean, how much damage can one little pizza do to this whopping 20 stone (126kg at the start) body? Surely I could do some exercise later and it would all be ok? No, seriously! This is how I used to think! FFS! Anyway I entered this pizza and did you know I would be consuming my entire day’s allowance of fat in just 6 slices of this same Pepperoni Passion 12″ Pizza from Domino’s? Disgusting. And I would not have known that if it wasn’t for http://www.fatsecret.co.uk cheers chaps!

Anyway, you’re probably not interested in that are you? You want to know – did I lose weight or didn’t I? Well the answer is:

I did. I am now 0.2kg lighter than I was last week and that makes me 121.8kg Woo! Hoo!

Dieting with one of those faddy diet plans? Why would anybody bother wasting that much money on something so simple as eating more healthy food and doing a bit more exercise?

I reckon I got my weight moving again by seeing the facts laid out on this website. It’s clean, it’s free and it’s compatible with multiple platforms. I reckon it helped me to “pay attention” to what I was eating just a bit more than before.

See you next time.