10 Things You Should Know...

No diet blog would be complete without a comment on the BBC programme "10 Things You Should Know About Losing Weight" which was aired on 27th May and is available on BBC iPlayer for just a few more hours now.

I watched it with a notebook and pen in my hand, and scribbled several pages of notes as I watched. I have made less notes at uni lectures! It was actually full of very interesting information, not all of it necessarily obvious even to the lifelong dieter that I am. For those who have watched, share your thoughts in comments! For those who have not, here's the 10 things, plus a few bits of further information, and maybe a comment or 2 from me!

1: Don't skip meals.

OK we all know we should at 3 meals a day because that's what we've always been told. But now we've been told exactly why skipping meals is so very counterproductive to healthy eating. Through brain scans, scientists have been able to show that there is increased brain activity when starved subjects are shown pictures of high calorie, high fat foods, verus low cal food. When the subject had eaten, there was no difference in brain activity. So in other words, when we starve ourselves, our brains compel us to seek high calorie food to make up for the lost meal. Sounds pretty obvious when you put it like that, but it's nice to be told that it isn't merely a matter of willpower!

I can eat regularly, it will take discipline, because currently I don't. But I can.

2: Use a smaller plate.

Again, we know this don't we? An experiment was shown where people were given either a large or "small" bucket of popcorn while watching a film, and instructed to eat their fill. Apparently the buckets were all large enough that everyone could eat as much as they wanted, and still leave some food. They found that those with the large bucket ate a lot more than those with the small bucket, possibly the size of the container leaving them unable to recognise their full signals? The conclusion was that by reducing plate size it is possible to cut calorie intake by up to 22% without even trying!

I have 3 different size dinner plate in my cupboard. From now on I will certainly choose the smallest even if only eating a salad.

3: Count calories.

Calories, points, yep that's fine. Common enough knowledge. It was interesting though to see all the different ways of consuming 300 cals - a large bowl of fresh fruit salad (a popular choice of mine!) or a small pork pie, a chicken dinner or a smoothie - those healthy treats (every Friday after school, delicious!) certainly do add up!

4: Don't blame your metabolism

OK I'm sure many of us must, at some time or other, have tried to blame slow metabolism for our inability to shed pounds. So what the programme makers did was send a lovely volunteer, actress Debbie Chazen, a lady who eats a healthy diet and gets plenty of exercise but is still overweight, for a metabolism test. And the result was normal which must have been a bit of a blow really! She then had to keep a video diary, plus a written food diary (written at the time of eating the food!) and in addition she was given a special water to drink that would enable scientists to analyse her urine and calculate her calorie intake and output.

Now personally I'm just not sure about the special water! But the result of the test claimed that Debbie was under reporting her food intake by 43%, even when writing her food diary at the time of eating. Isn't that a little bit astonishing? I mean, if I am keeping a food diary, and I have chicken, veg and rice for a meal, how am I going to miss 43% of the meal off the list? I know from doing an SAS log a while ago that I tend not to look at food values until I have already eaten them, but that's a whole different issue.

So if we believe in the magic water, then this lady with a healthy diet is actually overeating by around 1000 calories per day, and portion sizes are the main problem. I can't argue with portion sizes, and that leads back to points 2 and 3.

5: Protein staves off hunger pangs.

Now this one is interesting! Eating 10% more protein at each meal floods our brains with a hormone called PYY and causes the brain to think we are full. That's pretty useful information. If I choose a boiled egg for my breakfast, that means, allegedly, that I should feel fuller for longer than if I choose toast or more usually fruit and yoghurt. This is going to come back to discipline though, making the effort to have a little bit of protein with every meal - it's a small change but new habits do take a while to sink in.

Atkins fans must be delighted by this information now I think about it!

6: Soup keeps you fuller for longer.

Wow, this one really is quite surprising in my opinion. This theory was proven by giving the exact same meal to 2 groups of people. I think it was chicken, rice, veg and a glass of water. Group 1 ate the meal and drank the water. Group 2 had the water mixed with the food and liquidised it into a soup before eating. Then they had scans done of their full bellies, and the soup group had full stomachs for longer than the solids group. We are told that this is because when the glass of water is drunk seperately, it briefly inflates the stomach but then leaves quickly, leaving the much smaller volume of solid food left to digest. But when the liquid is mixed with the food and consumed as soup, it isn't able to pass through the stomach as quickly, leaving you fuller for longer. Result! I love soup, I have a blender, happy days!

7: The wider the choice, the more you eat.

Apparently we are absolutely hardwired to eat more when there is greater choice. The prrof presented to us was in the form of 2 bowls of sweets. 1 multicoloured, the other all one colour. They were left on a table with a hidden camera in a public place. The multicoloured sweets were rapidly eaten, while the single colour sweets were largely ignored. Hmmm. Again, not sure about this - the evidence is a bit flimsy there really. Multicoloured sweets look more appetising, in the same way that a multicoloured salad looks much nicer than a plate of beige food. I'm not convinced restricting choice has any connection to that. But I agree with them that at a buffet table there is a tendency to overeat because there is so much choice. Hmmm. What do you think?

8: Low fat dairy helps you excrete more fat.

Wow, low fat dairy works like Xenical! Apparently the calcium binds fat molecules in the small intestine and transports them undigested from your body - brilliant!

Well that's me in trouble then because I consume very little dairy. I hate milk, I don't even use milk in hot drinks. I take my coffee black. I do love cheese, but cheese is a real danger food for me so I don't buy it. No point buying it if I'm going to end up eating my own body weight in the stuff - I doubt it's *that* magical! I eat yoghurt, but not loads. And especially not now on WW because there's no particular incentive to do so. I ate more on SW because, as any SW member can tell you, Muller Lights are free food!

So give me your top dairy consuming tips, pretty please!

9: Exercise goes on burning fat even while you sleep.

Here's some heartening news. For hours and hours and hours after you step off the treadmill, your metabolism remains higher, and the fat keeps on burning. But we already knew exercise is good for us in so many ways. It is nice to know it just keeps on giving though hey!

10: Keep moving and lose weight!

Yep, and writing a blog isn't using that much energy, so I'm off to walk my dogs!

A catalogue of bruises!

Wow, what gorgeous weather we are having! I've managed to get a teeny bit sunburned, even though I've really not spent ages in the sun. I suppose accumulated time must count almost as much as lengthy roastings on hot beaches. If you take into account 20 minutes or so twice a day to school and back, plus dog walks, plus pottering in the garden, plus sitting in the garden reading for half an hour, plus whatever else I do outside, and not forgetting being in the car with windows and sun roof open, there is a fair chunk of exposure, and my shoulders know it!

There isn't much of me that doesn't hurt right now. 10 days ago I had a couple of falls while skating. My own fault entirely for getting carried away and joining in a game of British Bulldog (a game that I believe is banned from school playgrounds but is alive and well and on skates at the leisure centre every Saturday!) I bruised my hands, my wrists ached, but primarily my coccyx hurt. A lot. It still does. I can't sit properly, any sitting position has to be carefully considered and arranged so that my weight is taken on one cheek or the other, but never on my coccyx. Levering myself out of the car involves hauling myself up a little on the handy handle above the door (why *is* that there anyway??) so that I can exit the vehicle with the least possible pressure on my bottom. I'm semi reclined on the sofa, on my right hand side even as I type. Thank God for laptops!

So there's the bruised coccyx and mild sunburn. And then there's the bruises all down my left side from when I fell of a wall onto a bike. That happened Friday I think. It's hard for me to explain how, but I was sober and it only happened because I was wearing a skirt. Had I been in jeans, my stride would not have been curtailed halfway through my leap and I would have landed on my feet on the path, instead of face down in a bike halfway down some steps. So my left arm is a criss cross of brusing (think bicycle wheel spokes!), plus there are 2 cuts on my elbow, and further bruising to my left thigh, which hurts deep into the muscle! Oh and a couple of less dramatic bruises to my right shin.

So I'm moving like an old and very infirm woman. At church on Sunday I had to give serious though to whether it would be wise for me to kneel for communion, but in the end the call of leaving my hard seat for a few minutes was too great and I went for it.

It's a good thing I have no pride, because if I had any, you can bet that would be hurting most of all!

Holiday Snaps.

We're back!

We ended up coming home a day early because we had a day and a half of horrible weather, high wind, driving rain and so so cold, so in the end we gave up, packed up and headed for a day trip to Blackpool on the way home instead. As it happens, the weather turned and the sun shone that very afternoon, but I still think we made the right decision because we were getting tired and grouchy in a cold wet tent. And the tent suffered a modicum of damage, in the form of a rip to a seam, so water was getting in. But I am actually very happy with the tent's performance - it really was getting battered by the wind, enough that I was up in the night walking round checking everything was still pegged down. The wind can sound scary in the dead of night when you can feel the groundsheet underneath you trying to lift off the ground!

Anyway, photo time!

We had a visitor in the form of Barnaby Bear from school, and our task is to create a photo diary of Barnaby's half term, so the first photos are of Barnaby at a ballet class, and the following day at church.



We went to a lovely camp site near Morcambe, called Red Bank Farm. We've been before, and loved the wide open spaces, but found the facilities just a little bit too basic. But since then there has been an upgrade, and the facilities are lovely now. There is even a lovely cafe on site, which was very handy for a warming breakfast after a night of holding the tent down. No Points counted I'm afraid, my excuse was I was cold to my very core and if I didn't warm up I might die!

Here's the view from our tent.



Gorgeous isn't it!

Rebecca playing, plus the required inclusion of Barnaby!



The weather looks fab there doesn't it! How could I possibly need a hot breakfast bun plus hot chocolate then?





I think you can actually see the chill in the air in those shots!

But we went on to have a blast in Blackpool, walking along the beach, playing with the waves, fair rides etc, and I think these pics show that we found fun in the end!






We camped with friends, but obviously I have not used photos with them in, since I haven't asked their permission to plaster them all over the internet!

Oh yes, this is my diet blog so I had better mention it! I found a Weight Watchers class in Morcambe and trotted along to get weighed - I lost 4 1/2lbs! I can't complain at that at all, it makes it all worthwhile.

Hope you enjoyed my holiday snaps!

I'll have a banana!

Well, this Weight Watchers malarky is quite a revelation! Early signs are that it is easier to eat the wrong things on WW, whereas it is easier to eat to the point of gluttony and beyond with SW. So I guess what works best will depend on what your particular vice is. I did a good job of learning to make wise food choices with SW, but the portion control side of things was out of the window. So in that regard, WW is proving to be a good thing, although I'm not in love with feeling hungry!

Here's what I mean about eating the wrong things though. In a direct choice between a banana and a packet of WW cheese puffs, the right choice is clearly the banana. But the banana is a higher point value than the cheese puffs, so the person who has a bigger appetite won't need much persuading to take the orange coloured maize snack. I could have 3 packets of them for the price of 2 bananas!

That said, I'm enjoying making different choices to when I did SW. It's easier to eat on the go - I can buy a ready made sandwich if I need to and just work out the points. It really never seemed so easy to work out the values of the same meal on SW to be honest. Your experience may vary.

I am off camping tomorrow. I've printed out a list of the nearest WW classes to my campsite, so all things being equal, I should be getting weighed while I'm gone, but I won't be able to tell you about it until I get back at the weekend. I'm crossing my fingers for a decent loss, because the portions of rice I have been eating have made me feel ravenous! A bad result will hurl me into the pit of despair and I don't like that pit one little bit.

From SW to WW - It isn't Easy!

Oh man, Weight Watchers is hard! The concept is easy enough: Eat this many points worth of food per day and you will lose weight. It's the execution that has my head spinning. I need to forget everything I ever thought I knew about eating and start from scratch. No longer can I grab an apple, or gorge on a punnet of strawberries because fruit is not free food! It all has points, and it's going to take me a while to adjust to that cold hard fact!

And as for portion sizes, well I'm feeling faint at the WW concept of a medium portion of rice, pasta, cereal etc. This is what I expected though. I ate a LOT of these foods before, I filled my boots. And now I can't. 'Tis a fair shock to the system!

The truth is, I am currently feeling properly hungry, but stupidly I don't need to be. I have points left. But I also have to go to work tonight, and I don't want to leave myself short of meal options for there.

Here's what I've eaten today:

Breakfast was a sachet of Oatso Simple with 180mls of semi skimmed milk. As fas as I can tell, this is 4 points worth. I would love to be corrected if I'm wrong!

Lunch was a handy WW ready meal consisting of 5.5 points. It was delicious. It fitted on a side plate. I followed this with a tasty WW yoghurt at 0.5 points.

For tea I had a WW pizza (3.5 points) and filled up with a massive salad, including about 1 points worth of coleslaw. I don't intend to survive soley on WW branded products, but I'm just trying to feel my way in to it. Tomorrow I will cook from scratch. Probably. I have also had a sugar free jelly (nil points) and an orange (0.5 points)

That's 15 points. My usual points allowance will be 26, but I think I'm meant to be having 18 this week, for the Fast Start thingy. That leaves me 3 for the night shift then. I'm pretty certain that the only way I can survive it is to take a day, whatever sort of day, work or otherwise, to be midnight to midnight meaning I can take a cereal bar and some fruit to eat after midnight, and still be able to have a mini pitta with tuna and salad before midnight.

It's all very complicated. I needed to wear my glasses to do the grocery shopping today, because I spent all my time reading food labels and trying to work out the points.

I implore all the WW followers in Blogland to come to my aid and give my your best tips!

Very Conflicted!

My last weigh in at SW was 13th April, and I weighed 17st 5lbs. Since then I have let one bad habit after another slip back in. I'd be in Tesco buying lovely salad inrgedients, and then a Chunky Kit Kat would fall into my basket. The call of white bread proved too strong, and in particular toast suddenly became part of my daily diet again. And then the convenience of the vending machine at work, which I hadn't visited for well over a year, suddenly became essential!

So it goes without saying that the pounds have crept back on, and that's why I've not blogged - I didn't want to blog about gaining weight, and I couldn't just chatter inanely and ignore the big fat weak willed bloater in the room! So I kept logging on to my blog, starting a few sentences and then clicking the cross in the corner and leaving it "for now..."

So what brings me back? Well I couldn't allow this to go on for another day, so I've taken a drastic step. One that I feel very conflicted about. I've been this morning and joined Weight Watchers. I had a voucher out of the newspaper making this week a freebie, so I went with the "nothing to lose" mindset. The reason I'm so conflicted about this decision is that a: I know SW works as long as you do actually stick to it, and b: I really really miss being inspired by Heather and the members of my old SW class. But I can't get to my old class. Heather does a class on another day too, but for all sorts of reasons a Weds morning class is actually very convenient for me. And I did say when I was on the eternal plateau that I needed to change something, so let's give WW a go. I need to sit down and look at the points, shake the SW plan out of my brain and work on some meal plans now.

Oh, you probably want to know about the weigh in. It is with deep, deep regret that I have to inform you that I weigh 18st and half a pound this morning. I could blame my heavy denim skirt, or that "last meal" breakfast I ate before I went. Or I could even say the scales are probably wrong because they are on carpet and definitely wobbled when I stood on them. But what I'm actually going to say is 9 1/2lbs on? It could be a hell of a lot worse actually, I gained 7 in Xmas week alone! We are away next week for half term, so I'm going to have to find a class to attend to get weighed while we are away. I could have waited until we got back to join, it would have been easier in a way. But I couldn't just keep sliding for another fortnight. Today's the day I take myself in hand!

And now I'm going to find the WW forum and look for some inspiration and ideas. Wish me luck!

A Wonder Pill?

Ack, too much time has slipped by since my last post, that's no good!

So how has it been going? Well, I've made some good choices, some OK choices, and some bad choices. I feel as though I'm relearning how to function at the moment which is a bit mad. I need to focus now though or things will slide away from me. I got weighed in Boots shortly after my last post, and according to their scales I had lost 1lb. Obviously I have no idea how their calibration compares to the SW scales, so I'm just going to have to take that weight (17st 4lb) as the baseline and see how I go from there.

Interestingly, the day I went to weigh myself, use of the scales was free. This was due to an instore promo for the release of the over the counter diet pill, Alli. As far as I can gather, Alli is the little brother of Xenical, containing half the strength of the active ingredient, Orlistat, making it available for over the counter sales. I've taken Xenical, oh yes! I'm sure you will have read all about the heinous side effects of that little wonder drug...most notably, and horrifyingly the way the fat is expelled, often without prior warning, from your body. I didn't suffer that particular unacceptable side effect, I tend to think this is because while I was taking them I followed a very low fat diet. I shudder to think what would have happened if I had fancied a curry one night....

The crux of the matter though is that they didn't prove to be the answer. Yes I followed a low fat diet for a while, but as soon as I fell off the wagon, I just stopped taking them. I probably have the unfinished pack somewhere. Would I take them again? I wouldn't rule it out, I would consider all the options available to help me get to a healthy weight. I would by far prefer to do it without pills or surgery or witchcraft, but I had a lightbulb moment after writing about wanting to be in Slimming World magazine. It's meant to be about me losing weight, not glory seeking. I don't need to appear in print to be a success. I just need to lose the damn weight! So I will give due consideration to any and all possible solutions. What I won't be doing however is paying £1 a day for a pill that is half the strength of the version available for the price of a prescription. There is a recession on after all!