One week on

Wow... one week and a day. Almost 4 fasts later (today is my fourth, but it technically doesn't end until tomorrow morning's breakfast) and I'm thinking this is do-able. Manageable even.

Last week, to kick start the diet, I fasted Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This week the plan is to fast today and Thursday. By Saturday morning I had lost 4kg but I expected that some of it would return. And it did. I weighed myself last night and I was still down from a week ago but obviously not as low as on Saturday morning. By last night I was down 2.5kg from last week, which is still impressive. I was working on the assumption that dieting this way would drop about a kilo a week. In fairness, I did run and do weights on Monday and Wednesday and I have to say, it's not that bad exercising on an empty stomach, not easy but not insurmountable.

Plan for this week..... Well as I mentioned, today and Thursday are the fast days, and I plan on running 5km on Thursday along with a spin class on Friday. There may also be a run on Saturday depending on the weather. Will update the exercise regime later in the week. In the meantime, here's today's menu plan was as follows:

April 23, 2013
Foods	Calories	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Cholest	Sodium	Sugars	Fiber
Breakfast
Ryvita - Crackerbread, 1 Cracker	19	4g	0g	1g	0mg	60mg	0g	1g
Kraft Philadelphia - Light Cream Cheese Mini Tub, 40 g	52	3g	2g	4g	0mg	109mg	0g	0g
Boiled Egg, 2 egg	160	1g	11g	13g	424mg	124mg	1g	0g
Fish - Smoked Salmon Slices, 65 g	120	3g	6g	13g	468mg	468mg	0g	0g
Dinner
Organic Chicken Breast - Chicken Breast Skinless Boneless , 3.5 oz	105	0g	1g	14g	41mg	0mg	0g	0g
Onions - Raw, 1 medium (2-1/2" dia)	46	11g	0g	1g	0mg	3mg	5g	2g
Cauliflower - Cooked, boiled, drained, without salt, 100 g	23	4g	0g	2g	0mg	15mg	1g	3g
Fresh - Broccoli, Fresh, 100 g	38	2g	1g	3g	0mg	33mg	2g	3g
Oxo - Chicken Stock Cube, 0.5 Cube (5.9g)	10	2g	0g	1g	0mg	390mg	0g	0g
Clover - Butter, 7.5 g	48	0g	5g	0g	0mg	53mg	0g	0g
TOTAL:	621	30g	26g	52g	933mg	1,255mg	9g	9g
	Calories	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Sodium	Sugar
Totals	621	30	26	52	1,255	9
Your Daily Goal	1,870	257	62	70	2,500	37
Remaining	1,249	227	36	18	1,245	28

sheepish hello

hello!

Ok so I have neglected this blog for a couple of months now... initially from a sense of euphoria that I didn't have to lose quite as much as I thought- cue my 360 health assessment at Nuffield health who said I only need to lose about 22kgs-  but then subsequently because I have been injured as a result of over training, I have had to take over a month's rest. I developed tendonitis over the top of my foot and it's been a very long and slow recovery...so, inevitably between the lack of exercise and the lack of focus and motivation my weight has steadily been creeping up. Back to where I started. Again.

But as many of you tell me, this is a journey, not just a means to an end and in the spirit of that philosophy I have decided to pick my self up and get back on that pony now that my foot has started to mend.

Quite by chance I stumbled upon the fast diet or 5:2 diet.... 5 days feast 2 days famine. I'm going to give it a try. I've not been bought by the science but there seems to be quite a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that there may be more to the theory that we aren't designed for grazing 16 hours a day, every day of our lives. A few people I know have mentioned that they have lost significant amounts of weight on this diet, and you certainly can tell that they are a lot smaller. The thing is I didn't think that they needed to lose weight to begin with so clearly the diet works by finding that "hidden fat" and eviscerating it!

The basic concept of the diet is that you fast by limiting your calorie intake to no more than 600 calories for men, 500 for women on your fast days and you can chose to either eat them all in one go or divide them over 2 meals. I've opted for the latter. Today is my first day of fasting and all things considered it's been alright so far. I had 145g smoked salmon for breakfast and have only drunk herbal teas, water and a coke zero all day. Later this evening I had a small supper and will now fast until breakfast tomorrow. And that's it, until day two - Wednesday- and then no more until next week. Let's see how this goes.

My intake today:
145 g smoked salmon: 170 calories
150g pork tenderloin: 204 calories
1 medium onion: 45 calories
80g broccoli : 30 calories
100g Cauliflower: 25calories
7 g butter: 50 calories
200ml stock: 20 calories

Total calories: 544