Tag Archives: experiment

Just Not For Me

In the here & now, , ,

So if you’ve been following me for a while, you’ll remember that me and a couple of the posse have been experimenting with a different way of spending our food budget, to kind of shock our respective metabolisms and see if we can’t fool their ass into working harder and faster. I’ve given it a good go over the last four weeks but honestly, I think I’m scoring an epic fail.

And I’m troubled. I don’t think it’s working for me on a number of levels so it’s time to chuck in the towel…I’m going to go back to my old non-experiment way. Here’s why.

Firstly, the pounds in my pants aren’t disappearing any more quickly than they did before, in fact they’ve slowed down if anything. Apart from that one amazing week where four melted away pretty much overnight, my weight loss has been distinctly underwhelming, and a couple of weeks ago the needle went up for the first time this year. The following week it nudged down again but only by one quarter of a pound, so the results aren’t great.

I don’t know what I’ve lost this week yet, because weigh day isn’t until Wednesday, and I don’t like that either. I like my weigh days on Sundays, not Wednesdays and I can’t get used to it. I walked into the bathroom yesterday and looked at the Shitbird Scale, but I didn’t stop for a chat and call me a weirdo but it just felt wrong.

I can’t approach it with the same sense of anticipation on a week day somehow. I don’t have time for my best of fifteen routine for a start, and I miss being able to potter about afterwards and pick over the bones of how my week shaped up. There’s no sense of occasion when I do it on a Wednesday because I’m generally flying around getting ready for work. It’s just not for me.

Most important of all, giving myself license to eat all my weekly points on one or two days is driving exactly the sort of behaviour around food that dug me into deep shit in the first place. For me to maintain any kind of balance I need to take a measured and considered approach to eating, and yet I can feel a really unhealthy focus forming around the days where I can eat and eat. It’s not good for me…I think it’s pushing all my buttons, and getting a bit too close for comfort to the big one that says self destruct.

Yesterday, I made protein balls, so I had a quick and nutritious protein-rich snack for after my workouts this week. They’re quite rich, and you can only really eat one or maybe two at a push. Yesterday, I ate ten in one sitting. I needed to use up my points, and of course the Asshole voice was egging me on…more more more…happy days, right? Except it wasn’t. It felt like a binge. And usually if something looks like a binge and smells like a binge, well…it‘s a binge. Consequently this morning I’ve woken up feeling as sick as a dog and like something happened that shouldn’t have. Which technically it didn’t but it still feels wrong.

It’s not the first time the wheels have wobbled in the last couple of weeks either, there was an incident last week too if you recall. I think a light-bulb has come on in my head and I’m feeling flaky because the new routine just isn’t for me. I tried it on, looked at it from every angle, and the long and short of it is that it just doesn’t suit me. What about you guys, has it worked for you?

I’m glad I gave it a go because it never hurts to mix it up a bit, but my gut is telling me it’s time to re-set everything and go back to normal. I’ll hop aboard the Shitbird on Wednesday, record whatever it says but then my next weigh-day will be my old friend Sunday.

I might even do a best of thirty, just because I can 🙂

 

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Spend, Spend, Spend!

In the here & now, ,

You’ll be relieved to know that today I have no intention of curdling your mood. I was a proper oxygen thief on Monday wasn’t I? Sorry about that. I do have the good grace to look a bit sheepish. I guess I just needed to vent, and by the way I really appreciate all your lovely notes and emails about my screwed up knee…it’s much better thank you. I reckon another day or so with the brace on and then I’ll be fine.

Thanks also to all of you who reached out with words of reassurance about my snail’s pace weight loss. I take enormous comfort from knowing that it’s not just me. Shitbird Scales across the nation regularly piss on your chips too, so I feel like we’re collectively engaged in a much wider battle with the needle than the shitstorm that goes down in my bathroom every Sunday. Welcome to the life of a dieter, right?

Anyway, you know how I’m always on the lookout for new ideas? Beth sent me the link to an interesting article about some bloke who’s figured out some kind of optimum usage of weight watchers’ points, and he reckons that when you eat them is almost as important as what you eat. Beth’s going to give it a go and report back, but you know what, I think I’m going to give it a go too. I’ve got nothing to lose, have I?

What..? Well yes okay, technically if we’re splitting hairs you could say I’ve got one hundred and two fucking pounds to lose. Smart arse.

Anyway, you can read this guy’s theory HERE if you’re interested, but in a nutshell he reckons that you should stick to your daily points allowance on weigh day and the day after that, then have your daily points and all your weekly ones over the next three days. Finally, the last two days before weigh-in should be daily points only.

His theory is that speeding your metabolism up for a few days in the middle of the week is like sprinkling your food plan with magic dust because your body has to work harder to process the increased volume of food, and on days six and seven it carries on at warp speed when you’ve cut back on your portions and Boom that’s when the magic happens. He also recommends spending some of the extra points you earn when you exercise, and I never do that. I used to, but in recent times I’ve just allowed them to stack up.

What do you reckon? I mean, you are looking at a fully paid up member of the I’ll believe any old crap if there’s a chance it might work society…I’ve gone down so many blind alleys over the years where folk have offered up this or that theory/diet/lifestyle as the optimum way to reduce the size of my arse, and I’d go so far as to say that if I’d been born and raised in past times I would’ve had cupboards overflowing with snake oil, you know? I’m an easy sell when I want to believe that whatever outlandish claims in front of me are true. But in this case, I mean what if…?

So anyway, me and Beth are leading the charge. We’re going to road test it. I mean, it’s not a supplement, or a fad diet, so to be honest if all I have to do is rearrange the running order of when I spend my weeklies, it’s got to be worth a shot, right?

I swear my eagerness to get cracking has got nothing to do with the fact that as we speak I haven’t touched my weekly points, and I’m bang in the middle of my dieting week, so by the time I shut my eyes tomorrow night I need to have eaten a whole weeks’ worth of extra points…

Look at this innocent face. The thought never even crossed my mind m’lud 🙂

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