Sarahs Weightloss Blog

Hi Everyone,

Said I would bare ALL in telling you about my ‘diet’ so here goes.  I’ve been dieting for a while, nearly a year now, and couldn’t remember a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ day in particular, so thought I would concentrate on more current examples which were more fresh in my memory, so I could also tell you things about situations I found myself in and my thoughts and feelings at the time which led to eating or abstaining from things I shouldn’t have and ways I coped (or didn’t) in these situations.

So yesterday started out well.  I had been super organised and packed a lunch consisting of a salad (mixed lettuce, cucumber, grated carrot, a couple of tomatoes, a small amount (30 g’s) of full fat feta cheese and 5 large green olives), 2 whole meal pittas with a small (90g) tub of reduced pat houmous, and 40 g’s of mixed dried fruit and nuts.

I had cereal for breakfast (40 g’s of bran flakes with dried fruit and nuts with 130 mls of semi-skimmed milk) and then walked (instead of cycled into uni) for about 1hr, since it was a really sunny day.

So it was starting out a good day – I had healthy food which I would eat since I packed it and would be less likely to get really hungry and go grab a muffin as I had snacks ready to munch on at my desk (the pittas houmous and fruit/nut mix).

However for us girls there are certain times of month when some of us (particularly myself) can get really REALLY HUNGRY.  I try to eat little and often and fill up on large salads to try and combat this, but it only helps a little.  My theory is that my body must be craving specific things it needs.  I try everything else then give in a little, depending on how I feel.  First I craved a coffee – fine, so I had a skinny cap – not problem there.  Then I craved a muffin – a chocolate one.  ’Can’t have that’ I told myself and spaced out my snacks like a good girl and drank plenty of water to fill me.  STILL fantasising about that muffin though.  So I call my husband to meet after work at the coffee shop – OH DEAR! I walk the 40 minutes to the starbucks and order another skinny cap, am really temped by the full fat, icing encrusted banoffee cake, but resist and replace that with a skinny peach and rasperry muffin – an acceptable compromise with my monthly craving I think and I am not too disappointed with myself.  I also manage to only stick my finger into my husbands choc cake twice, maybe three times, just to taste the chocolate a little.

However I am STILL hungry – not usually like me at all.  But I wait for a while and drink more water to be sure.  But yeah I am hungry still and crave a burger of all things – don’t usually like those at all.  I’m starting to feel a bit off colour too – time of month is such a great gift from nature girls isn’t? (sorry guys – don’t mean to give you too much info, avert your ears/eyes) So we go to mac donalds and I make another compromise – I have a kids portion of burger and fries.  I put all the cheater calories into my shapeup app and include the fast food kids meal as ‘dinner’ and the cake as ‘other’ as I already had my alloted snacks.  The overall fat % for the day is higher than I would like – fast food burgers are NOT good, but the overall calories are below my daily intake because I stayed active.  I then feel good enough with a few pain killers to go to aikido and feel great after doing that.

I think we avoid this topic sometimes, but I think its worth discussing if you have the same problem as me with cravings before a period.  Some months are fine and I only crave healthy stuff, other times I HAVE to have chocolate NOW.  I also find that if I abstain too much from stuff I crave if it’s bad – I feel really ill over the next few days as compared to when I did have it.  I also completely lose my appetite due to feeling unwell over the next few days anyway.  My theory is that your body craves in this situation for a reason – it needs stuff, and you should give it what it needs.  It’s different to a craving something because I can’t have it anymore and am used to having it, which you get with cutting out food you previously didn’t really limit yourself.  However we can minimise the damage this may cause by compromising – skinny muffin, dark chocolate (less milk so less fat and sugar), kids portion of fast food take out.

This advice also applies to guys and anyone who has a craving for whatever reason – if you must have it and you’re at breaking point, have it, or something like it but compromise in order to minimse the damage.  This also gives you some control back and makes me feel less guilty, because in that situation you didn’t completely lose control, you made a tactical decision to keep you the straight and narrow of the diet in the long run.

I also only lost 0.2 of a kg due to obvious reasons this week (damn water belly ) but hopefully my weight will take a nose dive next week when its all over (again sorry about the too much info people).  So girls please don’t freak when your weight fluctuates, it probably wasn’t the choc brownies you so badly craved, its the water your body is soaking up and storing for no one knows why (really I looked it up no one seems to know why this happens – mother nature fools the scientists).

By the way, although I posted a few pics of my progress previously I never added anything up really so here is the ‘official’ penultimate summary of what I have lost so far.  I post it here to show everyone that you can lose a significant amount of weight, feel good for it and enjoy doing it immensely! NO MORE no joy ‘diets’, come on say it with me . . .

BEFORE – May 1st 2009: 107kgs/16 stone 11.9 lbs/235.4 pounds/BMI 40.7/UK size 22

‘AFTER’ (Today, not quite finished yet but nearly there ) April 19th 2010: 70 kgs/11.02 stone/154 pounds/BMI 26.6/UK size 12

Total loss: 37kgs/5 stone 11.6 lbs/81.4 pounds/5 dress sizes

Now I have lost most of the weight I want to lose (5.2 kg’s to go) I don’t worry too much anymore about ‘OK’ days – now the metabolism is up, I can slip up more without as much of a set back.  Remember Maik said that the more you lose, the more often you are allowed a cheat meal – so, even more reason to lose weight!  I worry more about the ‘bad’ days.  However I don’t really have so much of them anymore, as I can actually stop eating now after a point and feel full, whereas before I would literally keep on and on eating, even when people said I should stop.  I also tend to fill up on more wholesome foods than junk.  For example we had a barbeque at home when the weather turned sunny and I had a small lean sausage, 2 plain chicken breasts, an absolute heap of grilled veg, some cous cous with assorted veg and a little feta cheese and 1 small home made low fat pork burger – it was a lot of food for me and I felt really really full, uncomfortably so, but the calories weren’t that bad and I still lost weight that week.  Before it would have been marinated with mayo, bread, been full fat and much much more plentiful in supply.

What I hope this all shows you is that small changes made over a long period of time make real long lasting changes without you even noticing it, and not requiring a mammoth amount of strength or effort – providing you make reasonable changes set at your own pace for your own reasons.  Take it slow, if you lose 1/2 a pound a week you will get there and it is worth the effort.  It will take me a minimum of 10 weeks to shift this 5.2 kgs, but I don’t think about the time ahead or the length of the hill in front left to climb – I look behind me to see how much I have climbed so far and how much larger that is that what I have left to go.  At the beginning I didn’t look ahead at all, I looked in the now and focused on the successes no matter how small, which took me half a step up the mountain.

Good luck to you all

Till next time