Quickie update – Weighed in today

Hi all,

I just got off the scale and am proud to say, I lost 1.6kg since last Monday. That is grand! On my first fasting day, 15-Apr, I weighed in at 146.6kg or 323.1lbs. Since then, I have lost 2.6kg or 5.8 pounds. I know that this isn’t much but if I can lose a kilo a week, I would be thrilled. Now please don’t look at me and think “poor sod, he’s going to plateau or even gain a bit now and again.” I am fully aware of the ups and downs of dieting but as my new found blogmate Slim says, “as long as the trend is downward.”

I wanted to remind and update you, that back on 25-Apr I mentioned that I had begun taking Super CitriMax supplements. As far as weight loss is concerned, I have no idea as to whether or not they work. What I do want to mention is that taking these has helped me to quit snacking throughout the day. Not because they have quelled my appetite, hell, they could be placebos for all I know, but because I am to take them 30 – 60 minutes before each meal, 3 times a day, on an EMPTY stomach. I can no longer have pre-meal snacks due to the instructions on the pills. That alone has reduced my caloric intake on my feed days. I still have to work on not eating after dinner but one thing at a time.

Alrighty then, I said this would be a quick update, so bye for now. See you Thursday.

Sunday Fast Day 28/4/13, Not Monday

As I said in my last post, this fasting day was changed to today (Sunday) due to a Monday (tomorrow) visit from my mum. Nothing has changed as far as my typical fasting day meals are concerned. Today for breakfast I ate a fried egg (75cal) on a slice of low-cal toast (60). I seems that drinking two cups of black coffee (10cal) throughout the morning helps with any pre-dinner hunger pangs that may arise. For dinner (picture to follow), I cooked a four ounce boneless, skinless chicken breast that was stuffed with two tablespoons of herbed feta cheese (155cal), one-third cup brown rice (73cal), 200g steamed veg (75cal), 3oz. mixed baby greens (20cal), 3oz. sliced bell peppers (40cal), the other 2T feta cheese (35cal), all tossed together with 1T salad dressing (12.5cal). A whopping total of 555.5 calories.

All in all, I feel quite good about this way of eating. As I’ve said before, this is a diet that I can stick with until I have lost the need to eat food. Last week I went to the gym all five weekdays. I exercised thirty minutes for four of the days and on the other, it was a forty-five minute routine. According to the elliptical machine, last weeks total calories burned were almost 2800! I hope that I can keep this up.

I’m not going to weigh myself until tomorrow after I come back from the gym. I think that will give me the best weight and I will consistently weigh myself once a week at that time.

Thanks for stopping by and as I said before, feel free to leave a comment, they are encouraging. Oh right, as promised, here is a picture of my dinner.

Cheers

Thursday Fast day 25/4/13

Right. Here we are, another day to fast. I must admit, this is going along better than I thought it would. I awoke today feeling like I am in control of what I put into my mouth, finally. If any of you have done research on this way of eating, you have probably read something from the naysayers of the 5:2 diet, cackling on about the potential for over-indulgence on the non-fasting days. I must say that I am feeling quite the opposite. On my feed days, I am becoming evermore aware of the foods that I choose to eat.

I’d like to take this time to fill you in on a bit of back-story. Right around the time that I was hearing about the 5:2 diet, I had watched a television show called Dr. Oz. Those of you who are not from the U.S. may not have heard of him but his programme airs during the weekdays. It was on this program that I heard about garcinia cambogia. Here is the link to that Dr. Oz segment.

That being said, I need to tell you that I am more than skeptical regarding these types of claims so I continued to do some research. This lead me to a study that was conducted and published in a peer-reviewed journal. Here is the link to the article for this study. If you are less inclined to read a journal article, just read the abstract that is in the beginning of the paper. It was here that I heard about a supplement called Super CitriMax (it is in section 2.3 called “Study Materials”). I ordered a two month supply and took my first dosage yesterday before dinner. *Disclaimer* I am neither affiliated nor have any investments with either Dr. Oz or Super CitriMax. I just want to lose weight. I am letting you all know what I am doing so that if, by some slim chance, I happen to lose more weight than what is to be expected on the 5:2 diet, you will know why.

Back to the diet. As of noon today, I have consumed one fried egg (75cal), one slice of toast (60cal) and two cups of black coffee (10cal). I think this will be a standard breakfast/lunch for the foreseeable future, or until I tire of it.

Before I sign off for the afternoon, I wanted to say hello and thank you to my fellow 5:2 blogger, Slim. If you have not read his blog, please do. It is not only informative but he has a very clever writing style. Let him know that you are reading his posts; your comments are an encouragement. Here is the link that takes you to the beginning of his journey. See you all after dinner. I’ll try to post a pic; I’m having grilled Tilapia, yummy.

Sorry, I was quite hungry when dinner came around so taking a pic was not even remotely on my mind. I will, however, relate to you the account of my delicious din-din. See, I bought a new gas grill yesterday and have been going bonkers grilling food. It wasn’t actually new, as I bought it used, but new to me. I placed a sheet of slightly oiled tinfoil right on the grill, put the frozen Tilapia filets on the foil and seasoned with seasoning salt and lemon pepper. I turned on the two middle burners, directly below the fish, and in 15 minutes, had some stunning (as Gordon Ramsey would say) grilled Tilapia (200g for 200cal). I steamed some frozen veggies and had 200g as well (75cal). My salad has become a staple for fast dinner with: 3oz baby greens (20cal), 3oz sliced mini bell peppers (40cal), 1/4C herbed feta cheese (70cal) all tossed together with 1T salad dressing (a type of vinaigrette adding 12.5cal). I consumed a whopping 562.5 calories.

As I will be doing for the next two months, I preceded both of my meals today with two of those Super CitriMax supplements. On my feed day I will be taking them thrice daily. They are to be taken 30-60 minutes before a meal. I must confess, they seem to help me through until the next meal.

This coming Monday, my mum and her hubby are visiting for dinner, so I will be changing my fast day to Sunday the 28th. I will remain true to my weigh-in on Monday, so my next post will be Monday, about mid-morning, with Sunday’s recap and my new weight.

Thanks for stopping by and please feel free to leave me a comment, if the mood strikes.

Third Day of Calorie Restriction Fast

I’m going to do today a little differently. Not in the way that I intend to fast but in how I blog about it. Since I’m still new to using WordPress, this may go horribly wrong but as the saying goes, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” I’m going to post throughout the day and try to add pictures of what I am eating on these fasting days.

To begin with, it is currently 11:00am. I have already come back from the gym, weighed myself and ate breakfast. I rode the elliptical machine for thirty minutes, for a total of 507 calories burned (according to the machine). I came home, stripped down and hopped on the scale. I weighed in at 145.6kg. I have lost exactly one kilo in one week and for this I am glad. After my shower, I fried (with cooking spray) one egg over easy, and had with it, one piece of low-cal bread along with two cups of black coffee. I’m still working on the coffee, by the way. Oh, so far my caloric intake is 130 kcal.

I’ll post lunch, with a picture, when I get around to eating.

Well, when lunchtime came around, I wasn’t all that hungry, so I waited until 5:30 to eat dinner. This consisted of 200g mixed baby greens (23cal), 1T salad dressing (12.5cal), 3oz sliced mini bell peppers (40cal), 1/4C herbed feta cheese (70cal), 4oz grilled chicken breast (120), 200g steamed veggies (75cal), and 1/3C brown rice (73). I’ll tell you what, after eating a big dinner like this, I was full. Now it’s 8:00pm and I think I’ll watch a movie. Today’s total calorie count is 543.5; that will be good.

I honestly believe that I can do this for the rest of my days. Fasting this way is not too difficult. The only thing that I truly dislike is weighing and measuring my food but having to do it only two days a week seems quite reasonable. Below is a picture of my dinner. They will be relatively similar on my fasting days so as to eliminate having to weigh and measure new things each week.

Cheers and see you on Thursday(ish)

Second Fasting Day (18/4/13)

It’s early Saturday morn but I’ll be writing about this past Thursday. All in all, my fast day went well. I did, however, only consume 472.5 calories instead of the 600 I am supposed to eat on my fasting day. I’m not trying to prove anything by eating less calories, I simply refrained from buttering my toast and I ate no rice with dinner.

My menu consisted of: Breakfast, which I ate at 11:00am; 2C black coffee (10kcal), 1 fried egg (75) on dry low cal toast (45). Dinner was eaten at 6:00pm; a heaping 2C mixed baby greens (20), 1T dressing (12.5), 3oz mini peppers (40), 1/4C feta cheese (70), a grilled chicken breast (120) and a heaping 2C steamed veggies (80).

I was surprised that green beans had more calories than a veggie mix containing carrots, zucchini, broccoli and cauliflower. I also did not miss the butter (margarine) on my toast. The reason I chose not to eat the rice was I thought it rather forced. The only reason to eat it was to raise my caloric intake but I was plenty full after I ate my dinner, sans rice.

Along with eating fewer calories two days a week, I am exercising too. I have gone to the gym every day this past week for my 30 minute cardio workout. I use a pre-programmed setting called Kilimanjaro, which begins easily and incrementally increases resistance until I am at the summit (half way through the workout). Upon my decent, the resistance decreases. On Thursday’s workout, I went for 45 minutes but all others were 30.

While eating this way, I noticed that I have become aware of my caloric intake during my non-fasting days. I find this not only interesting but frightening as well. Just yesterday I had a bagel, buttered of course, and a three egg spinach omelet with Swiss cheese. My breakfast was almost 1100 calories!! Now I’m not going to obsess with my caloric intake during my non-fasting days because that will burn me out but good Lord, 1100 calories for breakfast? Another thing that I noticed , in the desire to reduce calories, was that I went out to dinner, Mexican to be exact. I ordered the chicken fajitas and a to-go box. Upon the arrival of my food, I placed half of it into the take-out box and ate half the portion. That half portion, along with the many chips, salsa and a Margarita, had filled me up so much that I came home and went to bed. I can definitely sense that my eating habits are changing, I just hope that it is for the better.

The First Fasting Day

Well, everything was largely uneventful. I woke up yesterday morning, weighed myself and started thinking about all the food I would not be able to eat. I weighed in at 146.6Kg.

After running a few errands, I had my breakfast at about 11:00. The egg on buttered toast lasted about twenty bites, as I savoured each one. I tried to busy myself but it is amazing how much you think of something when you are denied that something. I was able to wait until 6:00 before having dinner. The salad, chicken and veggies did quite well at sating my appetite and I was good until bedtime. I had a bit of a headache when I went to sleep but awoke feeling fine.

For those of you wondering, I posted my fasting menu on the fourteenth.

So far so good. I’ll be weighing in every Monday and as I stated earlier, I’ll be doing my calorie reduction fasting days on Monday’s and Thursday’s.

Oh, I cooked my chicken breast with a bit of lemon pepper and seasoning salt; it was delicious.

That’s all I’ve got for now.

Cheers!

The day before

Well, I don’t know why I am so apprehensive/excited about this 5/2 diet. I’ve tried a few others and it seemed like the Atkins diet was the only successful diet. The only problem was that you have to be consumed with the carbs you eat. See, I love to cook my own food and compiling the carbs for all the ingredients was too laborious. Then there was the fact that I could not eat tabbouleh, hummus or lentils, which I craved after being denied.

Now with this new 5/2 diet (or lifestyle), I will eat normally five days a week and fast* two days a week. The reason I put the asterisk by the word fast is that it is not really fasting, in the traditional sense. To me, and most everybody else, fasting is consuming nothing but water for a period of time. Granted, there are various types of fasting, (i.e., juice fast, fasting a meal, etc.) but I have not heard of this type. It is simply a calorie restriction fast.

So my plan is to eat normally on Sun., Tue., Wed., Fri., and Sat. but restrict my caloric intake to no more than 600 calories (kcal) on Mon. and Thu.

As far as exercise goes, I had been going to Planet Fitness off and on for the last year. About two months ago, I really began to get into the exercise groove and was going five days a week. I have an awesome mix of music on my mp3 player and I would ride on the elliptical for thirty minutes. I was even up to a forty-five minute regimen but then I got sick. This has been the worst cold I have ever had and has been going on for a month. Needless to say, I had to stop going to the gym; so I’ll be starting fresh. I still have a bit chest congestion, which means that I’ll be jumping back on the exercise wagon slowly. I think this will help be more realistic in whatever is going to happen to my body. I hope it is weight loss.

I think that by doing this blog, it will keep me accountable as to what I eat. As I said, I like to cook my own meals, so eating junk food or pre-packaged meals is not my thing. I’ve worked out a menu that I’ll try for a bit. On my fasting days, breakfast will consist of 1 fried egg on a piece of low-cal bread, toasted, with 1/2T smart balance butter spread. Lunch will be 2C mixed baby greens with 2T cheese fantastico dressing, 3oz of sliced mini-peppers and 1/4C feta cheese. Dinner is a 4oz grilled boneless/skinless chicken breast, 2C cooked veggies and 1/2C brown rice. (This is 600 calories +/- 5 to 10)

Alrighty then, tomorrow I’ll weigh myself and we’ll start. See you tomorrow.