My Diet Progress, or rather lack of it!

My diet progress – or rather lack of it! One of my 2017 goals is to lose 10kg. We are now at the end of March, and my progress to date has been nothing at all. Zero, nada… Or rather, I lose 1 or 2kg, take my eye off the ball, and they are straight back on again.  So in an attempt to make me more focused I am going public with my struggle. I’ll just have to get over a bit of personal embarrassment. Hopefully it will be worth it.

On Monday 27th March,  I weighed myself 78.7kg. Suffice to say, that is heavier than either of my 6ft 2in sons, and I am only 5ft 5in….. Interestingly enough, while I think it is awful, it is still in the Overweight category in the BMI charts, not Obese. Getting down to 68kg will bring me into the upper end of normal, a weight I would be far happier at. Ideally, I would like to get between 60-65kg, but I’m going to take it slowly, otherwise it will all pile on again. A joke I read recently said ‘I wish I was at the weight I was, when I first thought I was overweight!’ In my case that was 60kg.

So what to do? In 2013, I managed to lose about 8kg, my starting point was about the same place. I did it using the Harcombe Diet. It was great, but the long term success plan is avoiding fat and carbohydrates on the same plate. No sugar anywhere! You can cheat a little with no impact, but not every day…. However, I love fresh toast and butter, baked potato with cheese, roast potatoes and gravy with my meat etc,  so I was a backslider. Not to mention the sneaky biscuits, sweets and glasses of wine. I am my own worst enemy.

Through 2016, I tried Slimming World. I thought it would work for me, as I was allowed potatoes with meat etc. But despite many attempts and fresh starts, overall I ended up the year pretty much where I started. The one thing I have totally adjusted to though, is cooking pretty much fat-free…. I still love butter and cheese though, which is rather a counter balance!

So a yet another fresh start is needed. I have decided to revert to Zoe Harcombe’s diet. If it worked once, it should work again.I am not advertising it, just saying it is what I personally am following. I have not signed up to her diet club, but I did buy her book second-hand on Amazon in 2013. It’s basic premise is that many of the cravings dieters get are caused by three things. Candida, Food Intolerances, Hypoglycaemia, or a mix of all 3.

I fought a really bad cough for about 3 months at the turn of the year, and ended up on 4 courses of antibiotics. Antibiotics, while they are really effective at killing the bug itself, are also bad for the system in general. So I suspect my system has been knocked sideways a bit as well. This also ties in with a blogpost I spotted yesterday,written by Carly On Purpose on gut health, which effectively says, if your gut is healthy, so are you. (Sorry Carly, I resisted your special offers on lots of gut health eBooks etc)

So on 27th March, I have started a 5 day detox. As much meat, eggs, vegetables, natural live yogurt as I want,  and up to 50g of brown rice. No dairy, sauces, vinegar, sugar, wine, bread etc. The idea is to kill any Candida overgrowth, cut out insulin surges, and by removing  most of the foods that can cause intolerances, they will work their way out of your system in the 5 days. Apparently I can expect to feel awful about Day 3…  I can’t remember being particularly badly affected last time, but who knows?

After that I can eat what I like (except processed foods and sugar!). The emphasis is on trying to keep carbohydrates and fat separate. Cook from scratch. Have a lovely pasta and tomato sauce, but skip the cheese, or meat and veg, but no potatoes.

So here goes. Day 1 is already gone, only 4 days of the detox left! Expect 3 updates.

• End of Week 1 Highs & Lows
• End of Month 1
• End of June, when I will tie in with my quarterly update on my 2017 goals.

By the way, if you want to try calculating your own BMI, there’s an excellent calculator on the NHS website

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