Day Twenty-two: normal service is resumed

I’ve been feeling pretty rubbish the last few days, a combination of feeling sorry for myself about Sunday’s results, my insomnia making renewed inroads into my sleep patterns, and probably some uncalled for hormonal surge – always a good one to blame things on I find.

I had no problem completing a fast day on Monday, but over the last two days I have been reverting to some less than ideal eating habits, with a lot of snacking and ready-made food that ironically makes me feel even more lethargic. (On the upside, I have cycled the two (and a bit) miles to the station on both days, so I can give myself a small pat on the back for that.)

A number of the feedback comments I have had since Sunday touched on the approach to non-fast days. While desperately clinging to the promise I made to myself to not count calories in between fast days, I started doing some reading around the subject. The fast diet forums are a wealth of experience and advice, and Michael Mosley himself chips in on the subject of plateaus and speeding up weight loss.

http://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/more-on-what-to-do-if-youre-not-losing-weight-five-things-to-consider/

The basis of the 5:2 strategy is that you fast 2 days a week, and eat “normally” on the other 5. So the next question is – what is “normal”? I've never been very good at normal, in so many areas of my life, so where to even start?

My rationale has been, to this point, that if the balance of food and exercise I was achieving before starting on the 5:2 strategy, was giving me a steady size and weight, then I could carry on with that for my 5 non-fast days, and the fasting days would give me the reduction I needed to lose weight. That seems to be the implication in the BOOK, with even some hinting that you could pretty much eat anything you like the rest of the time.

Obviously, this simply isn’t true. If you assume that you eat 2000kCal on “normal days” and 500 on fast days, you are down 3000kCal per week (compared to eating 2000 every day) which equates to about 1 pound of fat lost. If however you eat 2600 on each normal day and 500 on fast days, you are evening up again, so no loss. And as we all know, 600 calories ain’t a lot of food. Or in my case, not a lot of wine. I also know from my health report records that my weight has not, actually, been stable over the last 3 years, it has been slowly but steadily increasing.

I have wrestled with the prospect of counting on non-fast days and I am still holding out against it. But it would appear that I do need to do something, to avoid sabotaging my efforts on fast days. One idea that my boyfriend suggested when I started (and I instantly dismissed, of course), popped up on the forum. The idea is to simply log what you eat for a limited amount of time, in order to identify foods which might be causing problems and could be easily avoided. Examples of shock foods exposed by this include Mosley’s muffins – yes, we instinctively know they are not great for you but finding out that they can be up to 600kCal which is a quarter of your daily requirement comes as a surprise – and breakfast cereal, specifically granola, which seems to be a healthy choice but is packed with sugar and calories.

As any good scientist knows, as soon as you start to measure something, you run the risk of altering the very parameter that you are trying to monitor. This particularly applies with food diaries and calorie counting. As soon as you know you have to write it down, you immediately start making different choices about what to eat. If you log the calories as you go, your choices are likely to be even more affected. This is why food diaries have been shown to be such effective weight loss tools.

Added to this, one unintended consequence of food diaries is that as some foods are tricky to estimate calories for, people using this method tend to avoid home-made fresh food in favour of pre-packaged pre-counted items, which isn’t always a healthy choice.

For the purpose of this exercise, I want to minimise the changes to my choices, in order to get useful data on what is “normal” for me and how I can improve. Therefore for the next week or so, I am going to write down everything I eat, but will not be looking up the calories. At the end of the period I will go through and add it all up, and probably give myself heart failure. I’m already regretting yesterday morning’s bacon sandwich.

I’m aware that my estimates may not be very accurate in the final reckoning, as I won’t be weighing foods to the last gram or querying the ingredients in my take-away curry. I’m not too bothered by this as what I am looking for is patterns and comparisons, items that really jump out, rather than a 100% perfect record of my consumption. On second thoughts, I may have to measure the wine volume…

I’m sure that I will change some of my food choices along the way, but hopefully that will not be a bad thing and I will avoid becoming obsessive about it. Knowing it is for a limited period will help. I’m committed to getting healthy and active and improving the quality of my life as a result, and I have lots of wonderful support to help me get there, so no excuses. As always, results will be reported here.