Day 36

Bollocks. Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks!

As a consequence of being a few minutes late this morning, I left the house without my food packs.

I posted a message on the Lighterlife forum asking for advice, but no one replied in time. I went to the local convenience store and bought three packets of meats, checking the calories and carbs contents of each.

I walked back to work eating them quickly - I didn't want to be seen eating slices of turkey or ham out of the packet, and I would have been at work. I probably bolted my food a little, but I hope its testament to the reduced size of my stomach that I'm feeling pretty bloated at the moment. The only solid food I've had for weeks now has been the daily bar at 3 o'clock, and this lot has replaced both that and the midday meal.

I'm saying bollocks at the top because I'm annoyed at breaking the diet, but I'm not going to beat myself up about it too much. I don't think it should have too much effect, and I should remain in ketosis. Obviously we'll see what happens on Sunday...

Week 5 - Week 5 Meeting

A much better week this week. I knew I was doing better with my water, and I could see the scales at home moving, but I was surprised - I don't trust the scales at home to be completely accurate - to discover that I'd lost 8lbs this week. That means that in five weeks, I've lost just three pounds under three stone in weight.

I've included a new line - in green - that tracks an estimate of my actual weight, since I'm getting weighed wearing jeans with man-crap in the pockets, pants, t-shirt, socks and trainers every week. I estimate they weigh about 6lbs, so I'm only just above 16 Stone now, which is good news. It's been a few years since that was the case!

It's immediately obvious that I've lost weight; my face has changed shape, and my cheekbones are positively angular, and there's clearly less tummy and moobs. People are starting to comment about it now. I'm not particularly keen on talking about it beyond acknowleging that, yes, I have lost weight, but it's all been compliamentary.


Unfortunately, I don't know whether my blood pressure issue has improved or worsened. There's a chap who comes to our group who is a retired nurse, and thus qualified to take BP. He wasn't there this week.

Day 28 - Week 4 Meeting

A disappointing week this week, although it's not really that bad!

As you can see from the graph, I've gone down from 17.7 to 17.4, roughly three lbs. This is disapointing in terms of my recent progress, but pretty good when you consider that most diets aim for about a pound a week. I think I was pretty bad with my water intake this week, and this diet necessitates a regular intake of liquid in which to disolve the sugars from the fats.



The other thing that happened this week was that we checked my blood pressure. Normally on this diet, it would go down. Unfortunately, mine has gone up.

When I started, my blood pressure was 132/72. Now it's 151/85, which is quite a substantial rise. The first figure, the systolic pressure (which is the pressure away from the heart as it beats, is over the top of what's considered healthy of 140. Hmmm. Not good. Better is the fact that my heart rate is now 64 bmp. down from 86 bmp. I need to keep an eye on this.

Day 21 - Week 3 Meeting

Well, here's the results from this week:

Weight

I dropped to 17.7 stone, a drop of 6.2 lbs. In total, I've lost fractionally under two stone in just 21 days of dieting, which is incredible!

My BMI has also improved again. It's now 32.8. At the current rate of improvement, I should be below the recommended 30 in just three more weeks!


I'm going to spread out my posts a little more, so I have more to write about in the week, and because shorter posts are more enjoyable to read!

Day 20

I had a hard day today.

I don't really know why it was so difficult, but I had a couple of bad moments. In one, I managed to mess up some eggy bread I was making for the kids - I tore a hole in the slice in the frying pan and it looked terrible. I was going to chuck it in the bin, but something stopped me. I placed it on the side. The next thing I knew, I was stuffing it into my mouth. I had no intention of swallowing it, but I really wanted to taste it.

It tasted nice, but it wasn't worth the disgust at knowing I'd cheated, swallowing or not.

Then I was spitting it out into the bin and not feeling any too proud of myself.

My wife also had a go at me for a couple of food-related issues. I went to the supermarket in the morning, and bought crisps for my daughter's lunch. In fact, I bought three multi-packs. because they were on offer. It's a fair cop. I got carried away.

Later on, she chastised me for buying sweets for our daughter. I only gave her a few Skittles, but apparently it's not fair for me to give my daughter a few sweets while being on a diet myself. I just gave her a few sweets because she'd been a really good girl while we were out. We've always been careful with what we feed our kids, and we've also never been over the top about things like sweets. They don't have them often, but they're not banned either. I don't think I was giving her sweets because I wanted them, though. I certainly hope not.

Day 016

I'm on a week-long training course in a delightfully banal trading estate. There's no where to go for a walk, and one small room where we break out for a coffee and to eat our lunch. There is, therefore, no way that I can possibly hide the fact that I'm not eating the buffet meal.

I have thus had to front up to the fact that I'm on a diet.

Day 015 - Week 02 Meeting

I went along to the meeting this evening hoping for another big weight loss. I felt like I probably had lost quite a considerable amount, though I wasn't sure how much it might be.

I was feeling very virtuous as we'd had a small party for my child's first birthday, and there was an amazing spread of food laid on by my wife. Although I could have cheerfully eaten the whole lot, I put a sandwich on my plate to make it look as though I was eating and munched on bits of a cranberry bar instead.

When I got on the scales to be weighed, I actually felt quite apprehensive. The previous week's 15 lb was a huge amount to lose and surely it couldn't be anywhere near that much again. I was right. This week, it was a 6 lb loss. I felt slightly disappointed at this, even though that's silly; 6 lb in a week is still an awful lot of weight. That's a stone and a half in a fortnight.

We discussed our updated bridge metaphors. I told J that I'd really tried to work out whether there was any relationship between my eating and times of stress, but I wasn't sure there was. We discussed how long it had been that I'd been aware of overeating and I had to say that it goes all the way back to my very first job after university - I remember buying two foot long subs to eat. I'd munch one out of the office, as I knew it was gluttonous and embarrassing. I likened this behaviour to something I once heard about Keith Chegwin and his alcoholism. He talked about hiding bottles of scotch away in different places so he called always get one when he needed it. I don't hide food in that sense, but I certainly do most of my overeating behind my wife's back and wouldn't be keen to reveal it because I know it's not very nice.

J said that maybe I'll never know what causes my overeating. It may simply be too long ago and I've forgotten. The important thing is that I stop.

Day 014

Here's my homework for this week - updating the river metaphor from the week before. The idea is that we give more detail and more specifics to tailor it to our specific circumstances rather than being rather general, particularly with regard to the What's Stopping Me Getting To The Other Side section.

So, with that in mind, here goes:

Where I Am:

• Nearly twenty stone
• Fearful of dying early, susceptible to diabetes, heart disease and other health-related complaints
• Bad habits around eating too much and not eating things that are good for me
• Too sedentary

What's Stopping Me From Getting To The Other Side:

• Lack of knowledge about food; I'm not completely ignorant, but I'm sure knowing more about what I eat could help me make better decisions. To get over this issue, I need to speak to my wife, because she's got more cooking books than Gordon Ramsay. She'll certainly have resources I can use.
• Willpower - need I say more? Viewing things as choices I make rather than restrictions that are put upon me has been helpful.
• Overcoming a lifetime's dislike of sport, engendered because I'm useless at it! I have actually signed up for a programme at work that might help.
  
• A need to take responsibility for where I am. J suggested that my eating might co-inside with times of stress at work, but over time had become habituated to just eating the same way all the time. I certainly think that my eating habits - particularly at work - have become habitualised (even ritualised), and I certainly use food to comfort myself, but whether this is related to work stress, I'm not sure. Unfortunately, because I'm not eating as I would have done because I'm on the diet, there's no way of checking whether this is the case, but I will certainly look to see whether this is the case in future.
  

Where I Want To Be:

• 13 Stone
• More Active
• Able to make informed choices about my food and lifestyle that will ensure I stay healthy. Knowing that I have a choice to
  
• I want to be able to go and have a nice meal, or go for a drink from time to time without letting it overrule my desire to be healthy.

Day 010

The week before I began my weight loss programme, we were sent an internal mail about a research programme called MoveM8 that is attempting to discover whether people can be motivated to be more physically active through the use of different communication technologies.

As I'm well aware I need to up my physical activity levels, I signed up.

You get asked to a questionnaire about your current levels of physical activity and motivation up front. The next stage is that you receive between one and three emails (and, if randomly selected, SMS messages) a week encouraging you to do more. A week after the programme ends, you get another questionnaire, and a month after that, one more.

This morning, I got my first email encouraging me to be more active. In a couple of minutes, I'm going to go for a brisk walk for half an hour.

---

...and I'm just back. I fairly stomped my way up and down the river for half an hour. I've never really bothered to spend much time there before, considering it's just a few minutes from my office, but it's quite pleasant, with ducks, Mute Swans and Canada Geese all paddling about. It certainly got the heart moving, which was the point of the exercise.

In other news, I've felt really hungry so far this week. I thought this was supposed to stop when ketosis kicked in? I've not really felt like trying to cheat, but I'm not enjoying the constant tummy rumbles.

Day 009

At the close of my previous post, I said I'd return to the homework we'd been given for this week. In our workbooks, this is titled 'Challenging Crooked Thinking', although it was done with regard t the metaphor of the river which I discussed on Day 004. You'll recall we had the river:

We were each asked to read out one thing from either side of the 'river' from the list we'd written up at home. Next, we were invited to call out one thing from the river itself, which is to say something that is preventing us from getting from where we are to where we need to be. After everything everyone else had said, I felt most of the items on my list had already been covered, so I choose the final item from my river; 'responsibility'.

A need to take responsibility for where I am. I need to ensure I keep track of my weight responsibly and don't hide my head in the sand about it, and, if it's not where I want it to be, doing something about it.

Actually, I didn't just read that out, but expressed it more along the lines of, "I need to take responsibility for my gluttony rather than being a passive victim of it." J found this very interesting. She'd already told us that she'd push us on the specifics of what we meant, because only through being specific can we properly identify if and when things are going awry. The river metaphor isn't just something we need to do for the lessons, but something to continually refer back to in order to check our progress. It's a tool.

She asked me about responsibility. Did I have a responsible job? Yes, fairly responsible; I have a job that requires me to speak to the upper levels of management in an organisation of some three thousand people or so. Apparently this was interesting to J too. She asked me whether my overeating coincided with time at work when I felt out of control. The honest answer to this is that I don't know. However, if I'm completely honest, there were times when I bought food when I felt out of control. My job is rather reactive, so I can't always plan my time effectively. In addition, I don't always plan my time effectively even when I could do so, and sometimes pay the consequences of this.

Perhaps J was onto something. When I said about how I'd buy the large amount of food in advance, she suggested that what this did was cover up the real reason I eat food. I don't know that this is true. I'd buy the same - literally the same - thing every single day. I used to go into the shop and buy a large amount of food and proceed to stuff it into my face in a specific order, at a specific time. I didn't particularly think of it like this, but that's what I did. J suggested that this represented an action that had become habitual. I'd been doing it for so long that I couldn't remember why I was doing it, but that there had been an initial spark. It was certainly habitual, but I'm not sure about the other bit. I wish there were some specific trigger I could pin my eating habits on, but I fear that I just went in to buy my lunch and it gradually got larger and larger until it was huge.

Of course, part of the reason I might not be able to remember the specific trigger is that I've been doing a similar thing for an awfully long time now. I'll continue to think about this and put down any thoughts I may have.

There was lots of other helpful advice though. This included the idea that you can replace one habit with another; i.e. you replace your bad eating habit with a good one. It sounds simple, but the point is about aversion and deliberately choosing to replace one with the other until the instinct to do the good habit becomes the strongest.

We need to put specific boundaries in place. Without strict boundaries, one can get sucked into lazy patterns, slips and habits. If you, for example, decide that you're going to set a strict calorie total for each day, then it becomes much simpler to manage your food.

We need to actively manage uncomfortable feelings, otherwise we reach for food. We all know that food is often eaten because it gives us (an illusory) sense of comfort. If we recognise we're having negative feelings we can be more aware that food will only give us that temporary fix and it would be better to fix the specific issue at fault.


J asked us how it's possible to get across the river. We duly chucked out a range of options. Swim, wade, bridge, go round it, jet pack, pole vault, plane, boat etc. She said the simplest method was a bridge (I disagree - it's wading - but that's just being wanky and anyway too literal), and described how the tools we're getting on this course - simply saying 'No', making choices rather than being stuck in fixed behaviours, setting boundaries, ensuring we drink a lot because often hunger is thirst and the food packs - form our bridge to where we want to be. If at any time we find ourselves back in the water, the tools are there to help us get back to where we want to be.

Day 008

Another way to think about my weight loss is to picture it as something concrete I know and understand.

Last week, I lost more than this amount of weight:


In fact, I lost another half a bag.

Tell me that isn't scary? If you had that lot in a plastic bag, your fingers would know all about it by the time you got it home, wouldn't they?

Day 007 - Week 01 Meeting

I knew I'd lost some weight, but I honestly didn't really know how much. There was a certain amount of anticipation in sitting there waiting to be weighed. For various reasons, there were just four of us this week, which meant that we each had to be more talkative.

The first task was to order our food packs. I decided to drop the chocolate shakes - they never seemed to mix well - and drop some of the Thai Chili and Vanilla. Instead, I got some mushroom soups, some chicken soups, some banana shakes and more bars - apparently the rasperberry and cranberry ones are nice, so I'm trying those.

Then we went up to get weighed. I was wearing roughly what I was last week - jeans and a t-shirt, so that wouldn't become a confounding variable. J asked me how I felt and I sort of ummed and erred a little. It's not that I've felt bad over the past week, but that I haven't felt significantly better, which isn't to say I felt bad either! I'd felt fine, but I hadn't really noticed any great difference, although possibly, I told her, my trousers felt a little less tight. You will understand, therefore, how gobsmacked I was when I discovered how much weight I'd lost.

Last week, I was 124.7 kg. This week, I was 118.1 kg! That is a reduction of 14.6 lbs, or just over a stone in a week! Simply incredible - I had no idea that I might be losing that much weight. J said that I must have been retaining a lot of fluid to drop that much in a week, and that I shouldn't expect so much next week. She suggested I might expect to see another couple of weeks where I lost about 8 lbs, but then it would slow down. Even so, that's a very encouraging start. My BMI has also gone down from 36.4 to 34.5, which is excellent news.

WEIGHT

In the rest of the session we talked about the river analogy we made last week, but I'd like to save that for another post, because it's also our homework this week.

Day 006

Two things to remark upon.

Firstly, one of the known side-effects of this kind of diet is constipation. I can confirm this is true. It wasn't too bad though. More water should sort this out. I had noticed that I wasn't going to the toilet for number twos quite so often, so it wasn't unexpected.

The other thing is a few drops of Red Tobasco Sauce certainly makes life a little more interesting.

Tomorrow is our meeting when I'll find out how well I've done. I've had a look on the scales at home, but I've no idea how accurate they are, and I'm not really sure where I started either.

Day 005

Some live blogging!

16:06 by my clock.

I am about to eat my first solid piece of food for four and a half days. You have no idea how good a "Crispy Peanut Bar" sounds. I don't mean that I'm looking forward to gorging, I mean I'm looking forward to actually chewing something!

Here's hoping it tastes good...



Yum! That's great. Enough blogging for now; I'm going to enjoy this alone.

Day 004

I wee'd on a ketone stick this morning. These can show you whether you're passing ketones in your urine; ketones being a sign that fat is being burned for energy purposes. It would appear that I am in ketosis, which is a good indicator that I should be seeing some weight loss (it's really too early to tell right now).

Today is the start of the Hindu Festival of Lights, Diwali. We received an email to tell us that there's a load of free nosh in the staff kitchen. Normally, I'd be right in there, but I stayed on the good course. It helped that I had my veg soup in my hand at the time, so I was about to eat anyway.

Right, well, on to the homework. We've been asked to visualise a river. On one bank is "Where I Am" and the other is "Where I want to be". In the middle, the river represents "what's stopping me from getting to the other side".

I'm not entirely sure how much of an essay they expect here.

Where I Am:

• Nearly twenty stone
• Fearful of dying early, susceptible to diabetes, heart disease and other health-related complaints
• Bad habits around eating too much and not eating things that are good for me
• Too sedentary

What's Stopping Me From Getting To The Other Side:

• Lack of knowledge about food; I'm not completely ignorant, but I'm sure knowing more about what I eat could help me make better decisions. To get over this issue, I need to speak to my wife, because she's got more cooking books than Gordon Ramsay. She'll certainly have resources I can use.
• Willpower - need I say more? I think the idea of viewing things as choices I make rather than restrictions that are put upon me is helpful.
• Overcoming a lifetime's dislike of sport, engendered because I'm useless at it! I have actually signed up for a programme at work that might help. I may blog about this tomorrow.
• A need to take responsibility for where I am. I need to ensure I keep track of my weight responsibly and don't hide my head in the sand about it, and, if it's not where I want it to be, doing something about it.

Where I Want To Be:

• 13 Stone
• More Active
• Able to make informed choices about my food and lifestyle that will ensure I stay healthy
• I want to be able to go and have a nice meal, or go for a drink from time to time without letting it overrule my desire to be healthy.

I may change this a little before Sunday's meeting, but that will do to start with.

Day 003

Gluttony is an emotional escape, a sign something is eating us. - Peter De Vries

I slept like a log last night, despite my two year-old deciding to climb into bed with us at some point in the night, and felt pretty well rested when I was awoken by the alarm going off.

At our weekly sessions, we get given homework to do. This consists of an exercise that is designed to get us to change the way we think about our lifestyle - I nearly said 'the way we think about food', but that's not the emphasis of the programme - and develop strategies for managing challenging situations. Yeah, there's a temptation to write it all off as New Age pseudo-scientific bullshit, and as a confirmed sceptic, the moment I hear anything that rings bells, I'll be the first to denounce it, but actually, nothing I've read or heard thus far has been anything particularly outlandish.

There are actually two books. One is the rather tweely-titled 'My Journey', in which we record our progress, and the other is a work book entitled 'Connections', which covers a week at a time.

In the front of 'My Journey', there's a statement that they ask you to sign and date. It asks you to commit to losing the weight by following the programme, attend the meetings, do the homework, keep matters discussed at the meetings confidential and manage my weight once I reach my end goal.

The next page suggests that writing a letter to yourself is a good way to commit to the programme. Again, it sounds all horribly and self-helpy, but I have to keep reminding myself that I am actually engaged in what is essentially a self-help programme, albeit a facilitated one. Therefore, I am going to write the letter in the spirit they advise (which is positive rather than self-deprecating and sarcastic, which is my natural inclination). So...

Dear Less = More,

I'm writing this to you to remind you of why you undertook this programme in the first place. Time, as they say, is a great healer, but that can lead to complacancy. Before I focus on the positive stuff, I'd like to take an objective look at how you are at the start of this programme.

• You are, to be frank, pretty disgusted with yourself. That's not to be knocked, because it's this disgust which has motivated you to change things. It's not unreasonable either:
• You have moobs, aka man boobs. Actually, let's be more descriptive, you have saggy, hairy tits that are larger than some of your previous girlfriends', that make you feel embarrased because you know that even clothes can't hide them.
• You have a gut that spills over your belt like a giant sagging jelly, and not just at the front, but around the sides. This embarrases you. Even when you hold it in - which you do all the time - you have a fat gut.
• You spend vast amounts of money on food that you know you don't need and which you cram into your gaping maw like coal into Ivor the Engine's furnace and which gives you but momentary pleasure. And then you wonder why you never have any money.
• You have a - not unrealistic - fear that you will die of a heart attack or end up with diabetes as a consequence of your lifestyle. This genuinely scares you, not least because you may widow your wife and orphan your children because essentially, you prefer food to them.

But, there's good news. You've taken a positive step to change all of that. No more self-loathing and disgust! No more embarrasment! No, you've taken the decision to change your life and put yourself, not food, in control., and you can do it as long as you stay focussed. This is what you want to achieve in the next year.

• Get your weight down to thirteen stone.
• Change the way you think about food so that you're in control of the choices you make.
• Be more active and take steps to protect your health.
• Go skydiving!

I'm going to print this letter out, put it in a SAE and give it to J, so that if she ever thinks your committment is waning, she can send it to you to remind you that you are positive and engaged with this programme and that you can do it.

You owe it to me to stick with it and hit your goals.

Yours sincerely,

Less = More

In my next post, I will discuss the homework assignment.

Day 002

"Dieting is wishful shrinking" - Author Unknown

Today was my first day at work on the diet. As I am a desk worker, and it's where a lot of my over-eating occurs, I felt sure it would be a challenge.

I had a banana shake while getting the kids fed and managed not to unconsciously mop up any crumbs from the worktop, or inadvertently swallow a cow as I passed the fridge. This made me feel disproportionately proud considering what a small thing this is, but then it genuinely requires an act of will for me to do.

Most mornings, I meet up with a bunch of friends and colleagues at the station, and at the far end, most of us walk in the same direction. This morning, there was only one going my way and as I walked passed the small convenience store rather than my usual practice of buying a fried mastodon to stuff my face with, I was surprised to hear myself tell him I was on a diet. I hadn't actually intended to mention it, but then it's part of the routine, so not going in probably would have been noticed. It's a good thing, and I did feel I was making a choice not to go in there rather than feel restricted from going, even if a part of me is tempted to put air quotes around the words "making a choice" and saying them in an airheaded American accent.

I'd thought was an empty pastic litre bottle under my deskbut there wasn't. I'd managed to leave my LL water bottle at my mother-in-law's, so this meant that I only had a normal-size mug for my water. Ensuring you drink a lot of fluids is very important because the body needs to break the fat down into a liquid form in order to use it, but also because dehydration can cause headaches, lightheadedness and constipation among other things. However, it's also important to spread the drinking across the day as over-hydration can cause it's own problems, including death. Eeek! The point is to spread it out over the day.

At 11 o'clock, the fire alarms went off. We'd been primed that this was going to happen and I took the opportunity - we're not registered after an alarm, so it was OK to do this - to nip into the shop and bought a litre bottle of water. I didn't really feel that bothered about the food on offer, although one of the women who works there asked if I'd come in for my sandwiches, brandishing the ones I always have. It's a sad day when your food habits are so ingrained the staff notice when you don't buy your usual. I laughed it off by saying I wanted to keep them on their toes...

I had a veg soup at lunchtime and started working on this blog, writing a back-dated Introduction and the first day's entry. As a side note, I haven't decided if I'll blog every day; I can't believe there will continue to be anything of note in repetition, but I may end up doing that. We'll see.

By mid afternoon, I was pretty hungry, chewing myself from the inside out. I made the chocolate drink, though didn't make a good job of it and it was lumpy. I may need to buy a small whisk or something. Probably adding the water more gradually would help too. It tasted passable, even so.

By the time it came to time to go home, I felt hungry again, and for a short while on the walk back to the station, I did feel a little lightheaded and worried about driving from the station back home. However, by the time I got off the train, I was feeling normal, and the drive home was uneventful other than the slight concern that I should have gone to the petrol station at the start of the journey rather than the one at the other end.

My evening meal was Thai chili. I made it slightly thicker than the previous night and it was better for it. The temptation is to go for more water in the hope it feels like more food.

By ten o'clock, I was sleeping on the sofa and by eleven, I was in bed. Normally I'll stay up into the wee small hours arguing with people on the Internet, so it'd be no bad thing if I went to bed a bit earlier. They always say that lack of sleep makes you fatter.

Two days down, not too bad so far.

Day 001

Don't dig your grave with your own knife and fork - English Proverb

Although Day 1 was a Monday, I wasn't at work because I had expected to have to take charge of the childcare while my wife and her mother went off and took a balloon trip. In the event, it had been cancelled the night before as the predicted weather was inclement, and since I was off anyway, we had decided we would take the kids to the zoo the next day.

Having got the kids up and dressed, I took them downstairs and prepared breakfast for them while my wife showered. I made up my banana shake and poured it into a pint glass, and then got on with sorting out the kids. I was in the process of buttering the toast when I realised I'd dabbed my finger into a blob of butter that had fallen off the knife onto the plate and stuck it into my mouth.

I felt really naughty for doing this. I know that such a tiny blob at the very start of the process is not enough to derail the diet, but it was the realisation of how often I probably do this kind of thing and am totally unconscious of putting food in my mouth. That evening, when we returned, I did it again, with a blob of tomato ketchup my daughter managed to get onto her table mat and was in danger of spreading everywhere. I'm going to need to be so much more vigilant!

The day itself went fine. I was less hungry than I thought I might be, though there was definitely a couple of moment mid-afternoon where I thought a tiger was roaring nearby only to discover the source of the loud noise was rather closer to home...

I think it was really good not to have started my diet with a standard work day. I eat at my desk, so there's an association with 'eat' and 'stuff your face'. I have to break that, but it made it easier that we were out somewhere new and and exciting and that I had the kids to attract my attention away from whether my stomach was nagging me.

I had taken just one meal with me, a vegetable soup, which was surprisingly tasty and not too obviously good for you. In retrospect, I probably should have taken two, as when we were driving home, I was conscious that I felt a bit tired. I wasn't dangerous, but I could definitely feel it starting to come on. When we got home, I actually took a kip for three quarters of an hour.

My wife remembered that she'd promised to attend some event with her sister, and ended up leaving me to put the kids to bed alone. Our youngest was out like a light, but our two and a half-year old took a little more convincing. She wasn't naughty, but she just wouldn't settle, so in the end, it was nine at night before I actually got to eat my Thai chili. It wasn't unpleasant, but it wasn't exactly what I'd call a Thai chili either. It smelled right, it just didn't have any punch to it. I might try something else next week, or I might try red Tobasco, which is apparently ok to add.

So, day 1 over, and actually I feel pretty good. Tomorrow, I'm back to work and the challenges that entails, but for now, I'm quite happy.

Day 000 - Week 00* Meeting

This evening, I attended my introductory session at the local LighterLife office.

When I arrived, I found six other men of varying ages and sizes sitting in the corridor. There was a little bit of chat, but mostly they were quiet. It wasn't unfriendly, but as the new person, I would have appreciated some acknowledgement. I suppose this is just blokes for you, and I dare say that I might have been the same, put in their position.

After a few minutes, we went into the main room, which has chairs around three walls and a blackboard and flip chart along the other. We were instructed to grab pens and clipboards from the table and then we were given forms to fill out. Our leader, whom I shall call J, suggested I get assistance from one of the more experienced members. I looked at it and could see that it had various foods listed on it - vanilla, chocolate, chicken, mushroom, Thai chili etc.; clearly the Very Low Calorie food packs we would be purchasing. However, it wasn't clear how many I was supposed to choose.

The chap sitting next to me - typical men, we all had at least one spare seat between us - was busy filling out his form, but eventually looked up and told me that I could choose any combination of packs so long as it totalled 28. Additionally, there were some bars - toffee was one, peanut was another, but we couldn't have these for the first four days.

I duly picked a combination of packs; 7*vanilla, 7*vegetable soup, 7*Thai chili, 4*chocolate and some bars for the end of the week. My thought is to stick to vanilla for breakfast, veg soup for lunch, Thai chili for my evening meal, with the chocolate/ bars as a snack. One of the guys said his wife was on the programme, and she cut her bars into sweet-sized pieces and had them throughout the day.

J was out of the room while this was happening, and since we were talking, I admitted I was apprehensive about getting through the first few days without finding myself chewing off my own arm come ten o'clock at night. They told me that it was hard, but that the fear of failing was worse than actually getting on with getting through it.

While this was going on, J came back in and the other chaps were taken into a corner of the room where they were weighed and measured. When it came to my turn, I discovered I'm 124.7 kg. She also measured round my moobs, waist and hips, but she didn't record those in my book, so I don't have a record. I'll attempt to rectify that.

Once we'd all being measured, J handed out work books that would take us through the next four weeks. As it was my first week, I couldn't do quite the exercise everyone else worked on but I did something similar. I was asked to divide my page in to two and note down "where I am now" with my weight, and secondly, "where you want to be".

Now, at this point, I want to note that a part of me really wanted to reject this exercise. I'm a reasonably well-educated and intelligent person and this exercise just seemed to be a bit basic, a bit beneath me, perhaps. And then I thought about the weeks I'd spent continuing to stuff my face because I lack the self-control to eat sensibly waiting to start on the LighterLife programme, and I thought, no, this is not beneath me. Maybe it should be, but actually, every day I demonstrate that I'm not capable of exercising the self-restraint necessary to ensure I won't end up dying in my forties, or have my quality of life drastically reduced. So, I had to tell myself that actually I do have to do this and I have to do this properly and uncynically if I'm going to make the changes I want to see, and I have to do it honestly too.

So, here's what I noted down:

Where I am now:

• Fearful of dying and not seeing family grow up and widowing wife.
• While on holiday with my dad and brothers, had to wear a t-shirt swimming out of embarrasment.
• Fed up of aches and pains.
• Dislike of getting sweaty after fairly minimal exertion.
• Sense of disgust at lack of self-control.
• Feel unattractive for wife.
  

Where I will be:

• Chance to see family grow up
• Opportunity to take advantage of life
• Feel more attractive and confident
• Better able to handle work stress
  
• Have promised myself a skydive - currently wouldn't be allowed to take part
• Healthier and happier
  
• Better off!
  

J then asked each of the other men to introduce themselves and pass on one piece of advice. Much of this was fairly basic, along the lines of 'you can do it', but it was all encouraging.

After an hour, the rest went home and I had a short one to one with J. She asked me whether I had any concerns, and I reiterated my worry that I'd fail in the first couple of days. She sketched out a diagram of how the brain makes decisions and showed me the difference between a positive loop and a negative one. The negative loop is where you end up in a situation where you would eat but faced with not being able to, choose to see it as 'restrictive' and 'unfair'. This leads to anxiety and frustration and it's fairly obvious why this is negative. In the positive scenario, it's more about seeing not having food as a deliberate choice one has made, and this leads to a feeling of being in control.

I picked up my bag of food for the week from the office. It's less than I eat at work on a normal day (although obviously this is largely due to it being powders). Hmmm.

Tomorrow, I start to change my relationship with food, and resist the temptation to have one last blow out when I get home.

* a quick note on the numbering; as I didn't start the diet until the day after my first meeting, I've decided that this first meeting is Day 000, Week 00. This will mean the following weeks are more logically named.

Introduction

Hello!

As it says at the top of the page, I'm a 38 year-old man from the East Midlands in the UK who weighs nearly 20 stone (126 kg).

For a long time now, I have been aware that I couldn't go on being as heavy as I am. The potential consequences are as serious as they can get and the benefits of doing something about it too great to ignore.

I've tried to diet before. The most successful in terms of weight loss, was Atkins. I lost nearly five stone before my wedding, and I looked and felt good on the day. However, although Atkins allowed me to lose the weight, it didn't give me the tools I needed to keep it off. I've tried other programmes, with varying levels of success, but again, they didn't give me the necessary tools to adjust my lifestyle.

An aquaintance of mine lost a significant amount of weight by going to LighterLife and a mutual friend told me about the counselling sessions that form an integral part of the programme. That sounded like what I needed, and I resolved to find out more. I would like to put on record that beyond being on the programme, I have no associations with LighterLife. If I want to be critical, I will, and if I want to praise it, you can be assured that it's genuinely given.

I went alone for an initial briefing session that gave me an overview of the programme, and a couple of weeks later met a GP to check whether I was medically suitable. Unfortunately, because of the timing for seeing the GP, I then had to wait three weeks before I could begin the programme.

This Blog is intended for me, as a way to track my progress over the weeks, but I would be delighted if it picks up a few readers along the way, and please leave a comment if you feel this is helpful to you. I intend to be as honest with myself as I possibly can on this blog, and I may choose to discuss pretty personal things, and to allow me to do that, I have chosen to be anonymous.

So, read on - what have you got to lose?

Less=More