Tag: walking

Firstly apologies because I know I’m a day late with this post. All I can say is I was busy.

Secondly apologies because I know I need to post some reviews or some other non-Lesamy stuff for those of you who just-don’t-care-about-the-diet. I’ll get to that, I really will.

The Land of Temptation

So I spent the weekend at M.’s place. Something I do about once every six weeks, two months, or so. But this was the first time since I started the diet. On the one hand I was determined not to let my diet affect her so I wanted to eat normally (or close to it) whilst I was there. By which I meant I would not count calories just keep an eye on portion size. On the other I knew this would still be more than my usual amount and set my expectations low as a result. Back on the first hand again, when I started this adventure I decided I could have a 2300 calorie pig-out day once a week and so far I’ve had none. So this could be five weeks of treats in one weekend.

How Did I Do?

Well the good news is that I pretty much stuck to the eat normally part. The keep an eye on portion size part went out the window and I was back to the old me portion wise. But I did avoid eating between meals. Mostly.

Friday we had a takeaway, Saturday a home-cooked meal and Sunday a meal out (I had starter and main). In between I had toast and sandwiches and water. We did a fair amount of walking around.

A Gift that Counts

Whilst I was there M. bought me a pedometer which was cool. It’s my new favourite toy. Now my spreadsheet has all sorts of extra info on it. I’ve discovered my normal walk in the park is 3 miles and that I expend ~500 calories doing it (fewer than I thought). I’m using it to make sure my weekend walks, which are non-park and can be a bit random, are roughly equivalent.

I Can Eat What I Want?

Anyway, once I got back from a great, if indulgent, weekend I weighed myself and here’s the shock: not only had I lost weight (I’d’ve been happy breaking even) I lost exactly the same as last week. I lost the average amount I’ve been losing these past 5 weeks. Weird huh?

So that means I lost 2.4kg, 5.3lbs and in total have lost 12kg, 26.5lbs or almost 2st. It means I’m a few pounds away from my 10% reduction milestone. I’d originally planned on hitting that by Christmas.

Time to Slow Down?

This raises the big question of whether I should slow down. I’m still averaging over 5lbs a week, more than twice the recommended amount. And what’s interesting is that my extra exercise probably only accounts for about a pound of that per week. So am I going to slow down, do less, eat more? Probably not. I am starting from a high base and I’m sure the rate will slow. I haven’t done the maths but I suspect that my old diet was something like 3,500 calories a day, or higher and so dropping to 1800 is a bigger change than it might have been. I’m inclined to take advantage of this rate of loss whilst I can. I’m in this for the long haul anyway and it’ll still be next year before I’m at my ideal weight and I’ll be consciously maintaining it for the next year or two. (hopefully after that I’ll have learnt enough good habits to not put it all back on).

Here we are again, monday is weigh-in day.

So what I learnt this week is that even if all you decide to do is limit your calories you end up changing what you eat anyway. It just makes more sense for example to eat an apple instead of one of those low-calorie yoghurt biscuits that I like. The apple is more filling and the biscuits come in packs of two and so even though it’s roughly the same on its own, in terms of what you end up eating it’s two apples’ worth of calories. Similar logic leads me to buy lower fat yoghurts which I can have as part of my lunch rather the thick and creamy ones that would have to be my lunch. And so on.

So even though I started this regime with the idea of not changing too much too soon, I have drifted towards a more healthy and varied diet anyway.

I’ve been off work this week and so instead of my inside exercises I’ve been taking brisk walks in the part every day (2-3miles). This is quite pleasant, I strap on my ipod and head off, and the weather’s been quite nice, although the one day it rained was actually welcome as it cooled me down.

I’m telling you this as it may go some way to explain this surprise:

Weight loss this week:   3.2kg (7lbs)

Total loss so far:  5.3kg (11.7lbs)

I’m still waiting for this to settle down – I really don’t want to lose the weight too quickly – but I can’t deny being happy.