FYI & Portfolio Development

Well two months on and a new blog post has appeared as sporadically as the last one. What actually happened last time was that I wrote three blog posts three days in a row and thought I had found a tool that allowed them to publish at a preset time in the future, thus allowing me to write what ever I wanted when I wanted. What actually happened was that none of the posts posted and when I came to blog posting again I realised that my flow no longer made sense, damn it. I don't think you missed much. Blog post titles included 'A Blog A Day Keeps The Doctor Away' which briefly explained what I thought I had discovered. Needles to say I got disheartened and then I procrastinated and now we are here. I'm beginning to understand no rules whatsoever is better than not creating so if that means five short blogs a day to one massive one a week or even a month is better than nothing. Besides I'm trying to build up some kind of crazy writing portfolio to make money writing article on the internet. Through this process I have discovered that although I may have written quite a few press releases and other things I have written absolutely no articles whatsoever. So if you need any articles written I'm available.

I have changed the look on the blog though am considering further work to give it more 'identity'.  If you want to keep updated with this blog you can click on follow. Oh and thanks for all the blog views I can see it on my stats.

In the scales

Mum told me that the weight would drop off like butter once I got to South Africa due to the heat. I'm sad to say that isn't true. I started out cutting out carbs, then continued there on with the Dukan Diet and having quite a bit of success and then Christmas came. Yes Christmas and I couldn't stop the need for cake. Am I the only one who has trouble with stuff, it's amazing how much brain room is necessary for remembering what not to eat. I know it's dull for a girl to start a blog entry talking about diets. However what amazes me is that there are so many websites out there trying their best to rip you off and/or recommending dieting pills which aren't much better than speed. Having a brain I didn't think speed was the answer. Then I was filled with the fear of becoming a yo-yo dieter which seemed like an evil condition similar to being addicted to smack.

The main problem was that there was nothing particularly out of whack with my diet. Most meals were made from scratch, so no added preservatives only fresh ingredients and local, organic and free range when I can manage it. I barely add salt there is virtually no sugar except when eating things that were obviously sweet like cake. For the most part eating take-away like fish and chips is a once a week event maybe followed with a cheeky can of coke. Pasties happened about twice week. There is a once a month drinking session. My biggest sin if you can call it that is one chai latte a day with one and a half sugars.

The main cause of me putting on weight was a severe bout of anxiety that lasted about 18 months which prevented me from being as active as I had been. I stopped going out to see friends as much and exercising. Prior to this I walked and cycled to get where I was going. I was still easily walking a couple of miles a day though. The weight just piled on. I have no idea how much as prior to this my weight had never really been a problem but I reckon I gained 6 kilos which is just over 13lbs. I only really began to notice when I couldn't fit into my clothes. I have to say that is one of my main motivators to loose weight. I mean who wants to buy a whole new wardrobe so that you can sit on the bus and feel your belly wobble in style. I know 6 kilos (13lbs) doesn't sound like a lot especially when you watch some programmes where we observe people who are stones over weight and manage to drop stones in short spaces of time. On another note I think these programmes are very dangerous as they lull us into a false sense of security where we can sit on the couch and say “Well I know I'm overweight but it's not that bad”. Besides (13lbs) is just under a stone. So if we assume I didn't have the physique of a professional athlete prior to the weight gain we have to predict that I am now carrying around an extra stone in fat that I don't need. I don't know about you but that is 1 stone to many. Once I felt the situation had got sufficiently bad enough i.e. I couldn't fit into my clothes I decided to go and visit the practice nurse in order to get accurately weighed. That's because I didn't own a set of scales. When the practice nurse saw me she was a little surprised, “We normally see people that are a little bit bigger” trying not to upset anyone. So she weighed me, you'll probably be shocked to find out I was 59.3 kilos (9 st 6lbs), let me put that into perspective for you I'm 156cm (5ft 1in) and although the situation wasn't severe, on closer inspection I was at the upper end of the healthy Body Mass Index scale of 24.5 I left that appointment determined not to slide into the overweight category.

I went for that appointment at the end of May last year. I threw myself into the Dukan Diet having borrowed the book from a friend. Went out bought lots of steak and crab-sticks and got cracking. I think I managed to stick at it for about two weeks and in that time lost about two kilos. However I just found the whole thing too restrictive and kept on getting confused between the alternating protein and allowed carbs days in the cruise phase. I rapidly went back to my own regular diet and put it all back on again plus some.

In the meantime I ask advice from friends, some who were virtually carbohydrate free due to health conditions, others who had chosen to loose weight by altering the way they ate carbs like not combining carbs and protein in any meal, while others were loosing weight via dieting groups like slimming world, all had been successful for them. The biggest problem here was that in order to get the right information I either had to buy a plethora of books or get banded about a variety of slimming websites that conveyed conflicting information. I got very very confused and disheartened and calorie counting seemed like a perfect fail to someone who finds counting of any kind difficult. I also don't believe that I should have to pay for this kind of information as it is for the betterment of my health. In hindsight buying all that steak was quite a hefty investment that didn't pay off. I also took an interest in the Atkins Diet as I loved cheese and decided it wasn't worth the risk. In the meantime trying to maintain some kind of effort I was sporadically cutting out carbs and for the first time saying the words “I am on a diet”. These days I think those words sprout alarm in most listeners and friends expressed concern. They told horror stories of friends they had known on everything form The Grapefruit Diet to The Soup Diet, how they lost all the weight and put it all on again. By the end of the diets these girls were starving and clearly a little emotionally unbalanced to get that obsessed about weight in the first place. All I wanted to do was stay in the clothes that I had.

Luckily I had a friend going through the same problem who was working in conservation walking miles everyday tracking Corn Buntings and still putting on weight. We tried running a bit, experimented with gyms, and learned that growing older gave us the confidence to do bench presses on picnic tables without really caring that boy racers were watching us. We also pondered if being that wee bit older was influencing our weight gain.

At the end of November I moved to South Africa (which might explain the bout of anxiety) and by the time I got here I was just under 62 kilos at 61 kilos I became officially overweight. Life here is very different I haven't been able to adapt to the heat enough in order to walk any real distance and I now drive everywhere. I was swimming 25 lengths every couple of days but still no significant weight loss and by significant I mean over a kilo (3lbs). Though that kilo has stayed off for the moment. I tried simply cutting out carbs and attempted the Dukon Diet again with the same results, also bringing about the question; Is aspartame really good for you? I've come to the conclusion the answer is no. I also found it alarming that my true weight was calculated at 49.72 kilos (7st 11lbs). Which meant that the weight I was at 15 was actually correct.

To my horror my partner accidently lost 4 kilos in two weeks when he returned to playing football after Christmas. He put my stagnating weight down to a lack of exercise. I have never described myself as bookish before. However it has to be said that sport is just not my thing. I like to be active. I like walking places or cycling to the shops but the idea of paying six quid to crunch you abs or play some pointless sport is beyond me. If I find the activity either therapeutic or exhilarating and meaningful then that's a different story.

I was becoming concerned that I had fallen into the trap of becoming a yo-yo dieter being passive about my weight when I felt confident and then going all out when it occurred to me that I might have to go out and by a size 14 dress for some event I was going to. At this point I can feel you all rolling your eyes and saying “Get a grip of yourself, a size 14 what are you worrying about”. Just to be clear I simply don't feel comfortable with my weight. I've never had rolls of fat before or had to be careful about the dresses I wore in order to hide lumps and bumps. My partner is very supportive and reassuring. I just don't like that sometimes I rolled onto my back and their is a layer of flab trapped underneath my shoulder blade or that I can feel my belly wobble if I jump up and down. I didn't want my weight gain to get any worse.

About six weeks ago I conceded and decided to call a truce with myself because despite all my efforts over the last few months I'd forgotten to acknowledge something really rather important. I had not gained weight. So whatever I was doing was enough. For the most part I just find dieting confusing. What you can eat? When you can eat it? What food combinations to try? I don't like salad, even living in a hot country. I want controlling my weight and therefor diet to be simple and uninhibiting.

Last year the BBC put out a Horizon documentary called Eat, Fast and live longer presented By Doctor Michael Mosley at the time I found it's findings on fasting interesting but felt the eating extremes people went to to live longer both extreme and weird. By the time I'd got to the end of it I considered Dr Mosley's more balanced approach still a bit to much for me to be able to handle. Never mind that it brought back images of desperate teenage girls who weren't fat fainting in class. About a month ago I tried to revisit the documentary to see if I could gain anymore insight from it as I hadn't completely dismissed fasting. Being in South Africa I couldn't watch it on BBC iplayer, I don't think it is available to view anymore but managed to find the information that I needed in a review of the show in The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/aug/06/eat-fast-and-live-longer.

Dr Mosley's diet recommended fasting two days a week, by reducing your calorie intake to 500 calories if you were a woman and 600 calories if you were a man. I can only assume for transexuals it would be 550? That is all that is required. Seemed like an easy deal to me.

I decided to give it a go on the basis that it wasn't costing me anything. All I needed to do was restrict my food intake a couple of days a week. For convenience I actually decided to put the two days together so I fast on Mondays and Tuesday as they are my least active days. The first two days were pretty difficult and used fluids to stave my hunger and still do. Clearly they are low calorie fluids such as tea and water. I don't drink a lot caffeine but I think if you wanted to loose weight quickly or if have to keep your energy for a busy work day it would give you the edge. Using the fluids to stave hunger makes it pretty easy. I start fasting tomorrow again and I'm not even slightly dreading it. I think the whole process sharpens my senses.

I don't have a strict routine which is why I found it difficult to diet in the first place. I eat when I am hungry which could be anytime. I've found this website really helpful http://caloriecount.about.com/ because I can check if what I am eating is within the limits of 500 calories as prior I didn't have a clue about calorie counting. To be honest I'm not sure that I even stick within the 500 calories as I still drink tea with milk or might have a biscuit as well. I mean if I wanted to have cake as the whole 500 I would. The main thing is that my calories are still dramatically reduced. I'm finding ways of breaking up the limited calories like hard boiled eggs. They are really easy to transport (if you keep then in their shell). Mainly though I start the morning with plain yoghurt, seeds and honey with a sprinkling of barley grass powder. Which works out at around 300 calories. I reckon that's got enough nutritional value and flavour for anybody to start the day without feeling cheated.

So I've been fasting now for four weeks and start the fifth week tomorrow. The fasting is working my weight now varies from 57 kilos on Wednesday morning going back up to 59 kilos on a Sunday night. And each week the starting weight drops slightly. I'm lightest in the morning and this morning still weighed in at 58 kilos. I like how it works because you intrinsically know that the weight isn't going to go constantly down and so there isn't the pressure of watching the weight drop off, it feels very gradual and therefor more healthy and less intrusive. Your whole life balance which isn't being thrown into turmoil. Another benefit is that when you tell people that you are fasting there is virtually no reaction maybe it's because they think it's part of a religious practice. Either way it prevents the worried looks.

Many of the people who know me might find it a little odd that I am writing about this and possibly completely out of character as weight loss genuinely wouldn't be something I was normally concerned about, much less because I can still fit into size 12 jeans. However after having experienced this period of weight gain I now realise how distressing it can be and how hard it is to get it back under control. Not only that how crazy the whole diet industry is. That it won't give you basic dietary information with out paying ridiculous amounts of money or having to sit through a 15minute infomercial. Then having to navigate conflicting information and magical formulas promoted by friends. Also that a medical professional might quire you concern as you are not obese but yet, though you know you are well on the way. Which is probably more of a reflection on the nations health rather than my own. Despite that the NHS website is probably the best for balanced information.

http://www.nhs.uk/livewell/Pages/Livewellhub.aspx

It is also worrying that we seemed to have created such a stigma within our society about dieting combined with trying to raise awareness of the idea of 'big is beautiful', that we forget, it is actually OK for someone not to be comfortable with their weight and want to do something about it, without the need to develop an eating disorder. The term yo-yo dieter isn't going to help ether. If you go on a diet more than once does that mean you've become emotionally destructive towards yourself. No it just means you want to loose weight and find it hard keeping it off. The basic science is you gain weight by either over eating or under exercising or a combination of both. I was over eating for my reduced exercise. It is my choice that I would now rather under eat than over exercise to reduce my weight and hopefully maintain it.

It's been 10 months since I first decided to do something about my weight it has taken me this long to find a solution that I might be able to live with long enough to get the weight down. Since that day in May I gained 2 ½ kilos despite my efforts and though you could say I've lost 4 kilos I'm only 1 ½ kilos below where I started. I still see rolls of fat that can only be measured by the depth of creases in my skin. I can still fit into the clothes I started out with,well the ones that weren't culled on the way to South Africa. The main point is that it takes time to figure out what does and doesn't work for you. Don't be disheartened I believe the answers are out there.

Dr Mosley has written a book called The Fast Diet if you are interested to find out more. Though I don't believe you need it to get started.