Tuesday 23 February 2010

An update and another non-weigh in

Anyone reading my blog in one or two sessions will notice that my methods are likely to change, and do so frequently. I'm not sure why that is, but again, it's the case today. First, how did my going off the sugar experiment go? 115 hours without sugar. That's less than I thought it would be, and given the negotiations in my head, I have to say that yes, I am addicted to sugar. After that experiment, a few days before my birthday I pretty much stopped trying to lose weight. This happens to me each year, so it's not unexpected. My birthday involved eating reasonably, and having some treats, but the birthday cake choice was either small or large, and since I wanted to share the cake with Becky, I chose the large size. I wish that birthday cakes came with nutritional information, but they don't, thankfully birthdays only come once a year.

After finishing the cake, it was time to get back into the weight loss game. Recently I've been reading dire stories about how people are screwing up their metabolism by eating far less than they should be. Could that happen to me? Who knows, but it's better to be safe than sorry, which is why I yet again change my weight loss methods.

Starting today I aim to eat 7,000kJ a day. This is just really a guesstimate about how much I should eat, I'd rather aim for too much than too little. I very much doubt that I will put on weight at that intake. One issue to consider is that although I am counting kilojoules and weighing stuff, there seems to be a difference in energy values of the food I'm eating depending on the source I look up. Usually this is within about 10% but even so, that's quite a bit. I'm hoping that it will all average out to zero but of course there is no guarantee that will happen.

I don't intend to post daily lists of how much and what I'm eating, but today I have eaten: peanuts, whey protein powder, mixed veges, tuna, apples, bananas, peas, carrots, olives and Special K. Generally speaking, the less energy dense the food, the more of it I'll eat ie I'll eat 243kj of peanuts and 1,300kJ of apples.

I know that I absolutely hate counting energy values of food, but given the recent slowdown of losing weight, I have one choice presented to me:

Start counting kilojoules or start exercising.

Given that I want to say that exercise is not necessary to my having lost the weight, I need to start counting.

On to the usual motivations that I have. On my birthday, we went to see Avatar, but it was sold out, so we went to see Shutter Island instead. It was ok, I've seen better films though. Yes, I am allowed to see a film on my birthday (and on Becky's birthday too), although I have no idea when I will be able to see a film based on the normal rules that I have. Yesterday, I was too scared to weigh myself (that starts tomorrow) so out goes a shirt. That means I've thrown out ten shirts! I didn't know I had so many. Because I have chosen to slow down my weight loss, by eating this amount of food, I've decided that I won't be throwing out any more shirts, so long as I stay at 7,000kJ. However, the other motivations (buying coffee from the supermarket, swimming, seeing a film) stay, I need to get below what I was the last time I did these.

I'm trying to see how long I can go again without sugar, the last time I had it was Sunday afternoon, so I'll post in a week to say how that went. I've given up on the trying to lose 100g a day, at least temporarily, because I have a fixed energy intake now, I can't really expect to lose at a certain rate when I am eating a certain amount. It will be interesting to see how much I lose, and from that, make inferences on how much energy my body is using. I'm guessing now that my body will be non-linear, in other words, if you were to do the calculations, you'd end up with lots of different values that didn't make sense.

Today being day 1 of the 7,000kJ trial, I have to say that I feel just a little bit hungry, although I seem to have been eating for a lot of the day. Generally speaking, I'm a grazer, I don't have specific meals (with the possible exception of breakfast).

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