Results tagged “Dieting”

I knew Christmas was going to have a negative impact.

I just wasn't too sure how much of an impact it would turn out to be.

So, after weighing myself just now, Christmas indulgence has led to an increase in my weight of just over 1 kilo (or two pounds)

It could have been a lot worse, so I should be thankful for that.

Tomorrow is a "normal" day, so it's back to eating salads and avoiding "goodies" again.

I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to get rid of the excess weight quite quickly, as a kilo isn't exactly a HUGE amount of weight to gain or lose.

Christmas is proving to be an absolute nightmare for multiple reasons.

To start with there is an abundance of tasty treats readily available - Christmas cake, Christmas pudding, chocolates etc., etc.

The other problem is that there is very little else to do over the few days of Christmas except eat and drink. Sure, you could go to visit friends, but if you do, they're only going to offer you more food and drink!

So I guess my diet has taken a bit of a nose dive for the week.

Hopefully I'll be able to make up the losses when things get back to normal in the New Year ...

The last week hasn't been exactly stellar.

Apart from anything else I was hit with a touch of 'flu which "knocked me for six" in more ways than one.

As a result of the 'flu I ended up spending several days feeling pretty dire and eating quite badly.

I may not have put on much weight, but I definitely didn't make any progress in losing weight as a result.

Lack of progress is bad. You end up in a "catch 22". Your lack of progress means you feel quite negative. The negative feeling makes you feel more negative, so you don't have any motivation. Without motivation it becomes really hard.

Hopefully when I've fully recovered I'll be able to get my "mojo" back!

How are you feeling?
Are you happy?
Are you sad?
Are you in love?
Are you bored?
Are you stressed?

These aren't questions that I ask myself every single day - if I did I'd probably lose my mind, but when it comes to dieting and eating properly they are very important.

You could read lots of studies about how people's moods affects their eating habits. But is there any need?

When they're bored a lot of people snack.

If you're not happy you tend to eat badly - you've probably heard people talking about "comfort food" or eating to cheer themselves up.

I'm the same.

When I started making a concerted effort to reduce my waistline and lose weight I was in quite a good mood. Of course that wasn't going to last forever. Things happen in your daily life that have an impact on how you feel, so it's very tempting to either "pig out" or simply lose the motivation to keep up your regime.

At the moment, for example, I am not 100% happy. However I also do not want to have wasted any gains (well they're really losses!) that I've made by straying from "the path".

Over the last few years I've read quite a bit about how our bodies build up junk. Whether you have a good diet or not you still seem to end up with undigested leftovers and other undesirable stuff floating around your stomach and intestine.
Some friends of mine, who were into archaeology, used to purify themselves using quite an extreme method which involved drinking water and very little else for several days!

Fortunately there are other options open to us these days.

One of them, that I was interested in trying, is a series of detox tablets. Supposedly this helps reduce the amount of toxins in your bowel areas etc., which should help with weight loss and digestion. I know that it would probably do me good, as I've been treating my body like a playground for as long as I can remember!

Find out more about the detox tablets (and other solutions) here (the free shipping to Ireland really caught my eye!)

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As I've mentioned before, I work in IT, so I like gadgets and web services. However I am pragmatic. If it's going to take me hours to setup a profile on a site and keep it up to date, then I probably won't really use it.

In my quest to keep track of my dieting and weight loss (I prefer to refer to it as "change of lifestyle") I sought out some online services to help me.

Weight Watchers have an online service, but as it's pay to use I haven't assessed it as yet.

Three other sites did attract my attention:
Daily Plate
Fit Day
Traineo

There were problems with all 3 sites.

Both Daily Plate and Fit Day are very American, while Traineo's signup page was broken on my first visit. While I did eventually manage to signup a number of the site's functions are not working correctly at present, which is more than a little annoying.
Of the three only two sent me confirmation emails after signing up. FitDay didn't, so I had to search my browser history to work out the site's name.
That is annoying.

Anyway, what about the site's themselves?

All three offer very similar functionality. The main difference is in how you can access it and add your details ie. keep track of your eating, exercise and weight etc.,

Traineo would appear to be the slickest and simplest to use, as they give you a relatively simple "portal" to work from. Unfortunately, like the other sites, it allows you to enter data in lbs or kg, but then displays suggestions related to lbs only, which is really annoying.

Daily Plate is quite powerful by the looks of things, but to be able to access any of the more advanced features you need to upgrade to a paid subscription. It allows you to track what you eat by searching their database, but unfortunately it's very American in its bias and the display of options when you search is confusing to say the least

Fit Day is quite easy to use and doesn't seem to want my money to access any of its features. Unfortunately, while it allows me to set targets and enter data using metric values it provides all of its advice and graphs using Imperial measurements!

After playing around a bit with all three services I'm really none the wiser.

If someone were to launch a more Euro-centric solution I'd probably be a lot happier.

If you're trying to lose weight it's tempting to think that not eating is a solution.

It's not.

Changing what you eat, how you eat, how much you eat etc., can all be positive moves in your battle with your waistline, but starving yourself is not a good idea.

Skipping a meal will only make you want to snack or drive the urge to gorge yourself on convenience foods.

Don't do it.

Starving yourself is not a diet - it's just a bad idea!

I've started this little blog as a sideline and personal journal about losing weight (the domain name should give that one away!)

I'm not 100% happy with my weight at present, or more precisely, with my waist size.

I'm in my mid-thirties, so I know that if I don't do something about it now it will be even harder to rectify later.

I'm not going to go on a "crazy diet" or try to run a marathon. I know damn well that trying to do anything extreme is not going to work for me, so instead I'm going to focus on making small changes to my lifestyle that will hopefully help reduce my waist size.

I'll be the first to admit that I've never been thin, but over the last few years I've gone from being a bit heavier than some to being overweight.

I work in IT and sit at a desk all day long and my lifestyle in general hasn't helped matters.

So now I need to change.

Let's see how we get on!