Sarahs Weightloss Blog

Hi Everyone!

I’ve been reading through my blogs and have realised that I have not written much about my diet.  Lots on exercise and training, but not much on food.  So I thought I would tell you my story.  Please remember I’m not a nutritionist, I don’t know if what I’ve done is right or even recommendable – cross check with Maik and Maria to be sure.  Also Maik and Maria – please correct me and give advice to me, I would appreciate it.

I suppose the reason for lack of telling you about my diet is because, quite simply, I have not been following a ‘diet’.  I researched diets – south beach, weight watchers shakes, Atkins, low fat, low cal, low carb – SO CONFUSING!  I had tried all of these before at some point, and none of them worked, mostly I ended up putting ON weight! At best maintaining weight, for a while at least, but then I would end up putting on more when I got disheartened.

I had also tried cutting my calories severely.  I did this when I was young, about 12 – 16 yrs since I was sick of being bullied for being fat and was really depressed about that.  I got very thin, I was not much shorter than I am now (5 ft 3 inches) and was 8 stone, which was probably quite under weight.  However when I started uni and met my husband, I was much happier and started eating again – A LOT.  And over 6 yrs put on over 8 stone!  So what to do? Diets didn’t work, restricting eating was impractical in the long term and very unhealthy.   

I don’t know what clicked, but there were a few motivators: not being able to buy any clothes that fitted, my GP recommending diet pill, weightloss surgery, having to change a medication so my weight didn’t get higher – I knew I was in trouble and didn’t want to follow the drug or surgery route.  I had to do something.  

I eventually twigged that only controlling food was not the answer, as I had tried this before and never succeeded.  I realised that I had never had a healthy understanding or relationship with eating, either under of over eating, and that needed to change.  I contacted the uni gym and asked an instructor.  He said that with exercise I could achieve my goal in comparatively no time as compared to dieting alone, and although results would be best with a change in diet, if I was exercising, the eating side of things would be a bit more forgiving.  So I launched into exercise, but to ensure the best results I still needed to change my eating.  But I still had no ‘diet’ plan to follow, so just decided to start with counting calories and worry about the specifics later.  My instructor also advised me to eat normally first off and keep a food diary which we would work through together.

I got an iphone and browsed their app store for a calorie counting app and found shapeup club – it looked like just what I needed to track what I ate at meals and balance this against my exercise.  I found that as I counted calories on the shapeup app, I grew an understanding of healthy and unhealthy foods and what food I could eat more of which would satisfy me and be low in calories.  Crisps, cake, soda, burgers, sausages, beef mince, butter, sauces, fries and chocolate had loads of calories but didn’t fill me, so they were out – I wasn’t going to blow calories on those foods which previously formed my diet.  Rice cakes, lean fish, chicken, salads, veg, soup with a little cheese, nuts and fruit were really low calories, filling and yummy – so lots of those were in.  My instructor also gave me advice, but it wasn’t really anything I wasn’t learning for myself – pick healthy stuff, eat little and often, don’t have too many calories.

I started to learn what a portion was, the importance of eating regularly and having gaps between eating – since I had to fill in different meals and snacks into the shapeup app.  Everything started to change – no more starving myself till evening and then stuffing myself till full to bursting with unhealthy foods.

Surprisingly I hardly ever felt hungry, until the evening – it was really hard to break out of the starving during the day, bingeing at night cycle, but I started to manage to abstaine more and more and just go to bed.  In the beginning snacking on bran cereal or fruit before bed helped, but now I don’t need to do this anymore.  I started to look forward to breakfast, and so actually started to eat it – something I didn’t do before.  Now I can’t get through the day without a good breaky My favourite is 40 g’s of bran flakes with dried fruit and nuts with 125 mls of skimmed milk.  

Even more surprising I started to have MORE energy and feel LESS hungry! – but surely I shouldn’t feel more satisfied and more full of energy on less food than when I was stuffing my face with anything and everything and never feeling full or having any energy whatsoever?  But I did.

Its been a slow and difficult transition over the past 11 months.  Although it feels more natural than before to make healthy choices, I’m still counting calories as I still can’t really trust myself to under or over eat.  My diet has also become more inclusive.  At the beginning I cut out fruit juice and nuts as well as junk as these were danger foods to me – I always blew my daily calorie allowance on just having these ’snacks’.  But now I have more self control and so have put these back into my diet as a snack, but keep a tab on how much of them I eat with the shapeup app.

However I still haven’t got round to the ‘diet’ bit, I just try to be sensible and eat lots of different foods in moderation.  I also allow myself treats – I like a rack of ribs with fries and onion rings, or a burger, just not very often (like once a month, maybe less).  Also I have a cheat meal once a week, which is usually a big roast on a Friday night with my husband – lots of protein from the turkey, lots of cooked veg and naughty roast potatoes, yorkshire pudding and stuffing

However with the diet change and exercise I have lost 5 stone so far over 11 months and gone from a UK size 22 to a size 12.  

If I were to advise anyone on anything to do with losing weight I would say:

1) Take it slow – if you try and do it all at once unless your a super hero you probably won’t manage it.  Set goals for each week and month and slowly exclude bad food and replace with healthy ones.  When you’re comfortable with the first change, then add another.  Its really hard at first but then gets easier, and after some effort becomes seconds nature

2) Be realistic and sensible with your goals, how you eat and exercise.  Allow yourself treats, don’t beat yourself up.

3) Don’t just change your diet and don’t exercise or just exercise with no improvement in diet – try to do both.  I have Maik’s advice as a sort of mantra in my head – ‘you can’t exercise out a bad diet’ (Maik has mentioned this many times in his blog – read it and see).  

4) Stick with it – it is harder for some than others.  Please don’t think that because I have managed to lose most of what I need to lose that I find it easy and you would never be able to do it – The first few weeks and months were really hard for me and I have had set backs along the way (like my weightloss plateau).  But I managed to stick with it and break through.

Hope you find my story useful.  Post a question if you want more details, or make your own comments – what has worked for you? Do you think you will try a similar thing?

Over the next few weeks I’ll post some examples of my diet and exercise, including both good days and bad days, so you have more of an idea of how I eat and exercise.  

Till next time