Go your own way – RTM week 11 weigh in – Day 217

 

Well it’s time for a much needed update. I’ve braved the horde of chavs trashing the city today to bring you this update hot off the presses! Let’s get the weight out of the way. Weighed in at 13 stone and 3lbs this morning which is actually 3lbs heavier than this time last week. It’s not a problem though. I’m well within the 13 dead to 13 5 range and the reality is I’ll probably be 13 2 or 13 1 tomorrow. I guess I spiked a tad cos I went out last night. Beers and pasta will do that to a man. Talking of spiking on the weight front I had the shock of my life when the scales said 13 stone 12lbs on Saturday night before I went to bed. Jeeez! I couldn’t believe it. It goes to show just how much the scales can move just as a result of increased glycogen and sheer weight of food and drink in your system. Don’t get me wrong, I never thought for a second that I’d gained 12lbs of fat in less than a week. That would mean I had eaten over 40,000 calories more than my body needed in 5 days! I don’t think even my pre lighterlife self could do that. Heh, maybe…..

 

Anywho, after 3 days of getting back on the normal regime I’m back in my comfort zone. This has been a bit more of a difficult week than usual cos I’m not counting my calories. You can imagine the amount grief a larger than normal spike caused on the first week I wasn’t counting calories! Typical. Anyway, I kept the faith though and carried on as normal so I’m very happy to see the old scales evening out again. As today is the last day of week 11 of the lighterlife route to management phase I’m about to start my last ever week as a lighterlifer. The good news is that after you’ve completed RTM you sort of become a ‘lifetime member’ type thing which means you can pop back and be weighed etc as much as you like and it doesn’t cost you anything. I should bleedin think so too with the amount of cash this diet has cost me. Worth it though. So, after next week’s weigh in (my final one of RTM) I will be returning to my LLC for a weigh in and catch up every 4 weeks. My counsellor sees this continued contact as key to long term success. She’s had many members be very successful only to slip back in to old habits when they stop attending (semi) regularly. Talking of bad habits the old beer monster has been creeping back into my life a bit lately. As a result I’ve decided to rein that in a bit. I still haven’t broken the ‘once at weekend and once during the week’ deal but I’ve come close a few times. I turned a lunch down today as it goes and am feeling better for it. I LOVE to eat when I’ve had a few. It really is my kryptonite.

 

So, how is my non recording of all things calories going? Pretty well I think. Although I’m not counting the kcals I’m pretty much sticking to the things I know so I haven’t exactly changed what I’m doing really. The non recording is quite a big step for me though. Long time readers will know that I’m pretty obsessive when it comes to the numbers so this uncontrolled approach really isn’t me. It’s strangely…..liberating all the same.

 

On the spreadsheet front I’ve had a few questions from people regarding what I actually record and what kind of portion sizes etc I use. Well, on the recording front I logged everything I ate in the day including weight, calories, fat, saturated fat, carbs and sugar then I add all of these columns up to give me my daily totals. Then I add all the daily totals for the week to give me my weekly totals. Divide them by 7 to give me my daily average. I find the averaging step to be very important as if I was to eat the max I was ‘allowed’ every day, when I had and off day, those extra calories would instantly be in the ‘more than I needed’ category. Not good news. As a very quick example, I averaged less than 2000 calories a day during the week last week but between 2500 and 3000 on Saturday and Sunday to give me around a 2000 calorie a day average for the week. In terms of calories burned and appropriate intake level, that’s got to be down to the individual. It’s one of the many reasons why people on RTM increase their calorie intake quite slowly in order to ‘edge up to’ their own personal maintaining line rather than flying past it and having no idea where you went wrong. There is evidence out there to suggest that people who were once overweight and shed the pounds have to eat less and work harder to maintain their weight that someone who has never been overweight. I think that’s certainly proved correct for me. This is why I don’t put too much stock in BMR (basic metabolic rate) calculators. With my age, sex and activity level I apparently should be consuming around 2700 calories a day. The reality is that I’m successfully maintaining at around 2000. Everyone is different and something like lighterlife is bound to affect your BMR for a period of time. Maybe I will one day be eating at ‘average’ levels but if I’d gone straight into eating at those recommendations I would literally be piling on the pounds! As a result of all this I only count the calories burned that I do on treadmill then deduct this from the weekly total. That then gives me my ‘net’ intake for the week/day. Sheesh. Well done for getting through all that. It probably makes no sense whatsoever but there you go. I think the fact that everyone is different is the most important thing to take away from all this. What works for me may not work for anyone else.

 

When it comes to portion sizes I don’t really have much to say. The RTM books are very quiet on what a portion is. I do use the guides on packets but now I generally just eyeball it. Being a young energetic man (lol) I like to have a decent size meal. Also, I like to have quite a big dinner cos I enjoy feeling full before I go to bed. As a result I guess my main meal portion size is too big. It’s back to the ‘everyone is different’ vibe again. I eat relatively small amounts at regular intervals during the day with a bigger than average evening meal. It’s what works for me…..

 

…….. I’m back. I know you didn’t know I was gone but I was eating an apple. Where was I? Right, weighing. Someone asked me if I weigh stuff still. Yes I do. I don’t weigh fruit and stuff any more (yes I was THAT obsessive about it at one point) but I do weigh my breakfast in the morning. I have a sachet of porridge in the morning which I obviously don’t have to weigh but I also have 30g or sultanas in it and around 150g of milk. I know it sounds strange weighing milk but I can’t be arsed to keep measuring out 180ml of milk so I just weighed it one day. I already have the scales out so it seems to make sense. I also weigh my carbs (pasta and rice mainly). I don’t weigh veg or salad anymore as I’m now in a place where I can have as much as I want of those. I don’t weigh my protein anymore but I do take note of the weights on packets when I buy it. Salmon fillets for example, I don’t normally buy ones that are over 180g. At the end of the day RTM does help you reintroduce food but it’s as much about finding your own way as it is anything else. I’m not done with numbers though don’t you worry. I finish in a week. Surely that’s worthy of one last stat attack?!

 

I’m looking forward to a relatively quiet week and weekend now. It was my sons 4^th birthday last Friday to after a trip to the sea life centre in the morning and a party in the afternoon, combined with family coming to visit all day Saturday, a night out last night and business lunch yesterday, I’m feeling pretty good about where I am on the weight front.

 

Shock, horror, I seem to be leading a ‘normal’ life. Who’d have thought it…..

 

G