Burger King and Fish & Chips

Confession time! Well, sort of.

At the weekend I went to Burger King and had fish & chips on the same day.  But I didn't go over 1400 calories, would you believe it?  It was tough, but...

When I think Burger King I think double Whopper with cheese meal please, with lemonade... Large?  Oh go on then.  Having found myself in their on Sunday afternoon I realised I had to find another way to go about eating there - clearly it's not going to be a regular thing, but at some time or another over the next 10 weeks I'm probably going to come across the same problem a few times.  And let's face it, the last thing I want to do after putting all this effort in to lose my fat ass is to grow a new one!

I had a good look at their menu and they do a few low calorie options.  I had a sweet chilli chicken wrap which came in at 296 calories and wasn't too bad in the fat stakes either (though I didn't check the salt).  I was also pretty tempted by the chicken caesar wrap and the veggie wrap.  All the big fast food places now seem display their food's calorific content in the store (admittedly in very small type so you really have to get up close to the menu) and online so you can always check before you go if you don't want to hold the queue up.

I'm not going to say it was easy - all I wanted was that Whopper - but also I really want to lose that two stone.  And I want that more than the Whopper... but only just.

So, on to the fish & chips.  Needless to say they weren't from the local chippy!  It was home cooked fish & chips, baked in the oven and I didn't even feel sad that it wasn't the 'real thing'.  I found the recipe on the meal mixer website I keep banging on about - it really is worth a try and I'd managed to save up my calories in the day so I could have two slices of bread and butter with mine.  Admittedly, after that I couldn't 'afford' mayonnaise but brown sauce was a good substitute.  It even passed the Chris-test so it can't have been bad!

Weigh in day comes around too quickly!!

Steak - iron rich but my worst nightmare....

Well, weigh in day is here again.  I was pretty nervous for two reason - firstly, it's not week one so I thought my body might be getting used to it and I wouldn't do as well, and secondly because I've resisted so many biscuits this week and I haven't really had a 'bad' day so there would be no reason for me not to lose any weight - make sense?

Results: I've lost four pounds and half an inch.

So that means that today I weigh 11st 9lb, and my waist is 35 and three quarter inches!  I'm quite astonished to be honest - I would have been happy with one singular pound.  This means that my BMI is 27.1 - for the first time this is closer to healthy than obese.  It also means I've lost half a stone over the last two weeks.  I should point out that I'm absolutely not expecting this rapid loss of fatness to continue - I'm sure it's going to slow down at some point.

So to quickly tell you about this week... I have to say this week I have felt so tired (someone actually told me I looked pale and 'was I OK?' on Wednesday) almost all of the time.  Tired enough to struggle to function really - I've forgotten how to spell, how to do simple tasks - I've even forgotten what day it is.  I've been contemplating a few different reasons for this.  Perhaps it's because I've cut my calories down to less than 1400 per day and I haven't got used to it yet.  After all, I'm taking in less energy than I'm using up so it seems logical that I might not feel particularly energetic.  If this is the case then hopefully I will get used to it - I felt terrible yesterday but today I feel a lot better.  As well as that I cycled to work and back on Monday, which is about 15 miles (and all into the wind) so I had probably exhausted myself  before the week even began.  

The My Fitness Pal app also monitors some of the more well known nutrients including iron and I've noticed that I don't really get a lot of it.  I don't think I ever have on the basis that I don't really like red meat or nuts, plus I don't eat a lot of dried fruit (apart from in my porridge in the morning).  In fact, I've gone back through my food diary and it turns out most days I'm eating less than 10% of my recommended daily intake on iron.  So, this week I will be eating an actual stew with beef in that I will be making - for those of you who know my dietary 'quirks' you'll know that this is going to be a pretty substantial challenge for me.  I've also read that wholegrain cereals (which I've eaten a lot of), although high in iron, are an iron blocker - I'm not sure of the truth in this because I only seem able to find mention of it on websites like beefnutrition.org (yes really) and the 'Wild Rose College of Natural Healing' - there's not a single mention of it on the NHS page about iron.

On the other hand it could be that I've just had a bit of a virus because it definitely felt like I was ill.

Although I've been tired a lot this week I haven't been particularly hungry, but I've realised that I might have been making it sound like it's been really easy because of this.  I've been so tempted by a whole load of things - office biscuits, buffets in the office or in meetings, trips to McDonalds, takeaway on Friday night (where I live smells like a takeaway when you get out of the car on a Friday evening) - even little things like licking the spoon when you're cooking or tasting dinner more than you need to as you eat - it's all extra calories.  There have been so many temptations but I'm pleased, proud and slightly smug when I say I have resisted all of them.  Admittedly, I was about to have a biscuit on Friday when I realised that there were none left....

Weigh in Number 1

Reckon I should treat myself once I've lost a stone - halfway goal marker

Weigh in day today and I made sure I weighed myself before breakfast (well, I've got to give myself a chance haven't I).  Having had that enormous burger on Friday night I was half expecting to have put a pound or to on, but fortunately excellent results - I've lost '3lbs in weight and lost three quarters of an inch from my waist!  Woopee!!  

That makes me 11st 13lb and 36 and a quarter inch waist, which in turns means my BMI is now 27.7 (down from 28.5).  I'm really relieved I've made some progress this week as it was probably going to be make or break in terms of motivation.  I was only hoping for 1-2lbs loss each week so I've exceeded my target for the week.  I suppose it could be because it's the first week and my body hasn't had time to adjust to the reduced calories and increased exercise but only time will tell.

In other news, last night I posted my blog on Facebook expecting a couple of people to have a look - just enough so I feel guilty approaching the biscuit jar at work.  What actually happened was 92 people looked at this blog in 4-5 hours, along with another 70 people today.  So thanks everyone for your interest!  But serious pressure now not to fail (which is a good thing by the way).

I've tried to be good this week with what I was eating (except for the aforementioned burger), but also tried not to change my habits too much.  For example, I know I find it easier to eat well at work and I fall down in the evening when I get peckish.  So, I've been having a decent breakfast (porridge and raisins), soup with a bread roll (no butter) for lunch, snack on fruit mid afternoon and a proper dinner - I've had potato salads, cottage pie, potato and onion hotpot, jacket potatoes with a LOAD of chicken filling... Honestly, it hasn't felt like diet food at all.  I've been getting my ideas from the NHS Change 4 Life meal mixer, it's been really helpful.  Also, I've found that I had some calories left over in the evening so I can snack on Ryvita with some marmite or cheese spread on.

I've been really surprised by the amount of sugar in food - I have been aiming for 30g of sugar a day, as advised on My Fitness Pal, but to be honest by time I've added 20g of sultanas to my porridge in the morning I'm already pretty much at my target.  I haven't managed to stay under 30g any day this week. So I've decided not to worry about it, as long as I don't eat processed sugar.  Most, if not all, of the sugar I'm eating is naturally occurring in fruits etc - I haven't been having coffee or tea to put sugar in, I'm not adding extra sugar to my cereal.  I reckon that the natural sugars I'm consuming are the price to pay for all of the nutrients and fibre I'm getting from those sugary fruits and I can definitely live with that.

So, all in all, a good day - now to just keep it up for another week, though clearly with so many of your watching me I'm not going to have a choice (seriously, if you see me eyeing up those biscuits at work, beat me with a big stick...).

Now to decide what to reward myself with when I've lost my first stone - I reckon spa day!!

Calorie shocker and a looming weigh in day...

To be clear, this was not the burger in question.....

So, I've been really good all week and stuck to my 1400 calories a day (mostly - as you will see).  Most days I've been a little under throughout the day so I've had some extra to play with when it comes to dinner or a snack (i.e. Ryvita with marmite) in the evening.  I've been using the Smart Recipes provided by the NHS as part of the Change 4 Life campaign - you can find them here.  Use the meal mixer to randomly choose a days worth of meals and then you can download the recipes for the day.  I've been using them mostly for dinners and they are quite substantial meals - certainly not how you would expect 'diet food' to be at all.  Plan the week out and only buy the things you need - it takes a little longer on a Sunday night to put the food order in but I certainly think it has made the week easier in terms of snacking.  If you don't buy it, you can't have it.

But I'll tell you more about the good things I've been eating tomorrow when I weight in!  I'm pretty nervous about it to be honest because if I haven't lost anything I'm probably going to be pretty demotivated but I know I need to just plough on no matter what, but it will certainly make it more difficult.  I've not found this week particularly difficult, mostly (I think) because the first week always seems to carry the most motivation - I'm not bored of being on a diet yet and I'm still shocked about what I found our about my weight (see Post 1: A Full Analysis of My Fat Ass).

However, I had a massive shock last night.  We went out for dinner at a pub, which turned out to be a Hungry Horse pub and I had a Smoky Bean Chili Beefburger with chips - I knew it would put me over my calories but guessed it would have been 700-800 calories all in.  It was a birthday party so not something that would happen every week and I had skipped on my bread roll and fruit at lunch to save up some calories.  When we got home I checked out the calories to add to my diary and found out it was a whopping 1194 calories!!!  I, honestly, could have cried - I hadn't been expecting that at all and I'm not even clear if it includes the chips.  Thinking about it, I could have made it at home for about a third of those calories AND without all of the other stuff like a high fat content and salt, which by that point I was too terrified to look at.  If you want to have a look at the Hungry Horse's nutritional information you can see it here.  But I would say that after a week of being strict that burger tasted AMAZING and it's done now so I'm not beating myself up over it - but live and learn, next time I'll know to have a look at the menu and nutritional information before I get somewhere so I can make a better decision.

Finally, I recommend watching a really interesting program - Horizon: Sugar vs Fat which at the moment you can find on the BBC iPlayer.  It's a really interesting look at what is really bad for you with some surprising results based on actual science rather than a fad diet book by an author you've never heard of with some random, made up qualification.  SPOILER ALERT one of the the people on the program ends up nearly being pre-diabetic after one month, and it might not be down to the reasons you would think.