50lbs to lose, age 59…reset life!

This topic contains 17 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by Odette C 8 years, 8 months ago.

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Odette C

11:26 am
13 Mar 16
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I wanted somewhere to diary my reset, and maybe get some friends and feedback as I progress, I hope this is the right place to do it…
I like the idea of ‘resetting’ life – so like resttting a phone or pc I will clear out all the bugs, bad programmes and overloaded memories and patterns and make permanent new programme for a healthier life

I will offer any ideas I have for making low carb food delicious for people like me that find it hard to give up carbs.

Pre-reset- nearly 4 stones overweight from a lifetime of spuds, crisps, chips, bread and butter, pies and intermittant low fat crash diets – you know the story. Then add on a serious white wine habit, hypertension and hypothyroidism and before you know it you get where I am.

So, I’m pressing the reset button on my life and from now on I will live differently.
I want to be fit (health benefits fit, not athelete fit!)
I want to be 10 stone (last time I wieghed that was 40 years ago)
I want to enjoy cooking and eating really tasty food
so that.. I manage to spend all my pension having a ball!

My strategies that I can live with are:
DIETWISE:
5:2 fasting as per the book
10-6 eating on non fast days
A glass of water handy so that I take a drink each time I pass it
Eating low carbs – and really using my imagination, cooking and shopping skills to make this a permanent change NOT a faddy diet.
NO ALCOHOL. This is a tricky one as drinking with friends is so much a part of my social life and I cna’t find a way to announce Im giving up without sounding prim or righteous, and I don’t want to give up my social life, so I have avoided the issue by offering to drive and by declaring a problem (not untrue) with alcohol and hot flushes. Not an excuse blokes can use, I guess. I anticipate that after a few months it will just be the norm that I dont drink.

HEALTHWISE:
HIT training – I’ve started skipping – don’t you just love Youtube! I popped down to the local discount sport shop and bought a skipping rope for £2.99 and started skipping in the kitchen. I’ll skip in the garden when the weather is better. Really funny – I used my kitchen timer to do 5 minutes and never got past 10 consecutive skips – but when the 5 minutes was up I was really out of breath, which is a good thing, right?

ATTITUDE:
I tend to become a bit obsessed with diets (I’ve done them ALL), then I crash and burn, so this time I am focussing on the other things I love in my life so that the changes become the new normal for me.

I plan to write the diary when I have a good idea and to record progress:
So far Ist 2fast days done and 5 days low carbs – 4lbs lost, but Im guessing that is mostly water, still, in the right direction.

Odette C

12:03 pm
13 Mar 16
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FOOD TIP FOR CARB HEADS..
Has anyone else discovered the protein bread sold by Tescos in the Euphorium Bakery section? I’ve contacted them to find out the nutrition info, but found out it is 40% protein, which is much more than the HiLo lo-carb Bread sold by Sainsburys.

Anyway I tried it toastedthis morning and it is delicious – and doesn’t have the distinctive bitter taste of HiLo.

I am so glad this type of product exists as it satisfies my need for carb texture and crunch, great for breakfast with eggs and to have with a creamy soup or piece of smoked mackeral as a main meal.

Odette C

8:57 am
14 Mar 16
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Dammit, I binged last night… suffice to say it was a LOT of calories including most of a bottle of red wine.. I went to bed feeling horrible and wondering why I do this at my age.
So…. PRESS the rest button agin.

I need to think of something compelling that will make me pause and choose not to binge.. I will give it serious thought. So it is monday morning and I,ve declared my binge a rogue programme that I missed in the reset.. and Im back on track. My usual pattern is to follow up the binge with a pity party and lots of negative beliefs like I am doomed to stay fat. Not this time!

So two days of fasting now and the lovely homemade soup is already made so that i don’t have to worry about meals.

I make brocolli and stilton in home made chicken stock the flavour is very strong so that I can dilute and keep the calories within the 500 a day. Post again on Wednesday

Bronx

1:58 pm
14 Mar 16
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Hi Odette,

Don’t feel bad, I go through the same thing. I’m 58 and although I don’t really have any weight to lose I fast to keep from gaining. Sundays are my “Day off” from watching what I eat and I always seem to overdo it, yesterday being no exception. My local Sprouts store had bulk chocolate covered almonds on sale last week so I filled up a bag with milk and another with dark chocolate and had them yesterday. Of course I ate too many and woke up in the middle of the night feeling sick. It happens every Sunday and every Monday I swear next week will be different, but no, I never learn.

Not trying to make excuses but I think my main problem comes from my childhood. Both my parents were overweight and I was never taught how to eat properly. We always had junk food and snacks in the house and I don’t remember ever having any food restrictions put on me. In fact, at that time we were encouraged to clean our plates and I still have trouble leaving food on a plate without feeling guilty about it. Don’t waste food when there are children somewhere in the world starving!

So you’re not alone. We all have our successes and failures. The main thing is don’t give up and you will make it!

Bronx

Odette C

2:36 pm
14 Mar 16
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Hello Bron, thanks for kind words and I get the childhood patterns thing (Im scottish and all my female relatives loved feeding people.. all the time!). I so understand the waking up in the middle of the night, it’s horrible. We need to put our heads together and come up with some ideas and tactics to break the habit, at the very least we are both heading for acid reflux issues!

I have been reflecting on what triggers my binges:

emotional – feelings I dont want to cope with – so I eat to smother them… maybe

habitual thoughts – beliefs and things I say to myself that lead to binging…maybe

physical… now this is a new idea for me that I am playing around with, because I always binge at night – yesterday I was tired and wished I could just take a nap, and didn’t because it’s ‘lazy’ to take a nap and I won’t get to sleep at night if I take a nap. I realise I have been chronically tired for years and can even trace it back to childhood, so… if I can become more rested, and more resourced, may be I won’t binge so much.

Ill let you know how I get on.

HappyNow

3:43 pm
14 Mar 16
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Odette,

Re: being tired and bingeing… You might be interested to read the following:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/29/lack-of-sleep-alters-brain-chemicals-to-bring-on-cannabis-style-munchies

MelindaShay

4:35 pm
14 Mar 16
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Hi Odette,
I can relate to so much of what you have written. I have been a carb addict and binge eater for most of my life. I have tried everything and have at least 50 more pounds to go. (I lost 25 on a slow carb diet since last summer).

These last two weeks doing alternate day fasting have been such a revelation for me I wanted to share with you even though I am far from an expert and have not been doing it long enough to be a success at it yet.
That said, I am going to share anyway. 🙂

Have you watched the youtube videos by Dr. Jason Fung? He is amazing.

I also like most of the info on this website which includes a lot of Dr. Fung’s research. There’s a ton of information to pick and choose from though so as with most things you just have to see what makes sense to you:

http://www.dietdoctor.com/how-to-lose-weight#5

Mostly what keeps me going is results. I am getting huge results (10lbs in two weeks!) fasting every other day (no meals – just lots of water and black coffee….sometimes chicken broth if I get light headed or a head ache – but those have gone away this week). That way I am only one day away from whatever food I want to eat. This has shrunk my stomach and I can’t eat all day long on my eating days – and I am satisfied with one or two servings of whatever foods I am craving on my eating days. And instead of calling these binges I look at them like indulgences that I will balance out by not eating the very next day.

I tried eating 500 calories on fast days and found that for me most days it is much easier to skip all food. I struggle with sleep issues too and keep those 500 calories as a backup plan to help me sleep if I need them (I would have some eggs and bacon, low carb, high fat – so far I have not been needing them.)

This was longer than I meant to write. But I hope some of it made sense.
This intermittent fasting seems to have so many ways to tweak it to make it work for different personalities and struggles. I will likely need to keep tweaking as I go along and get to different stages of weight loss too. I hope you keep up with it and find what works for you. Wish you the best!
Cheers

Bronx

8:18 pm
14 Mar 16
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Interesting article about lack of sleep; hadn’t heard that before.

I’m the opposite of an emotional eater. If something happens to make me mad or upset I lose my appetite and don’t eat at all. Actually that’s what got me to start 0 calorie fast days. I won’t go into details but something got me really mad on a fast day and because of it I didn’t feel like eating anything, which in turn made me realize 0 calories wasn’t really as hard to do as originally thought.

My problem is mindless eating. I can sit down and watch TV with a jar of peanuts and before I know it 3/4 of the jar is empty! These days what helps is I limit the days when I eat while watching TV to the weekends and then try to be responsible but it still happens, like it did yesterday with the chocolate covered almonds.

My worst one was at a Las Vegas buffet. I wanted to get my money’s worth and ate 5 overloaded plates of food. I remember being so full that when I was finished I could feel the food sloshing back and forth as I walked out of the buffet. Then I felt so sick I had to go to a men’s room stall and just sit in there for about an hour before I felt better. With that I learned my lesson about all you can eat buffets; never again!

Bronx

Odette C

3:27 pm
16 Mar 16
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Hello to you all,

Happy Now, what an interesting article – so timely and coinciding with my own thinking.The idea of carving carbs and fats when tired is perfectly aligned with our Friday night fish and chips tradition – bought because we are too pooped to cook!

And Bronx I so get the mindless eating and buffet scavenging – I confess I have used two plates so that it looked like I was also collecting for my partner…

Melinda – I haven’t had time to check out the website you recommend but I will thank you for posting, it is so helpful to have support, Im very grateful to you all.

I am adding ‘a good nights sleep’ to the list of positive ideas to help me make the changes. Now for the update, very quickly, the binge didn’t do too much harm and my Mon and Tues 48hr fast went fine. I’ve lost about 5lbs since I started (that’s 10% of the weight I need to lose).

Two ideas: I like a bowl of soup at lunch and a bowl of soup around six on my fast days, high on flavour and low on calories – it also adds the missing water. It’s fast too so I stay out of the kitchen!

Re eating lo carb for a carb lover… I bought the Shirataki noodles via Amazon (no carbs and 7 calories for a portion, and was pleasantly surprised – I made a prawn pad thai using the noodles and they were fine. They look glutinous and smell yuck when you get them out of the pack, but if you rinse; boil in water for one minute and then drain and return to the heat to evapourate the remaining water, you are left with perfectly acceptable noodles – similar to the consistency of heinz tinned spaghetti. So Im going to add the noodles add to my line up of acceptable replacements for carbs. The other is protein bread, of course.

Odette C

8:39 pm
17 Mar 16
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I’ve done my two day fast and found it straightforward. Large bowl of veg soup at lunch and the same at 6pm. I have a bovril around 9pm. So taking in lots of fluid on my fast days. No problems, no pangs, no headaches. It feels quite a sustainable regime. I will keep to MONDAY AND TUESDAY where possible.

Melinda – I looked at the diet doctor.com and watched the video they email to you when you subscribe (not paying, just subscribe to their email). It was really interesting and accords with the lo carb eating. but even more ‘black and white’ about eating carbs. (i.e. none!). I’m not there yet, just trying to keep them as low as possible. But I’ve bookedmarked the website as there is more for me to learn

I watched the NEWS today and there ws a lot of reporting about the new tax on sugary drinks. In one report they interviewed two overweight teenagers and the reporter STILL talked about them eating too much fat. It is going to take a long time to get people to understand it is carbs that are the problem… My son is at boarding school for sixth form (a long story and his idea not ours) and I send him treats as he loves getting parcels, Im now sending him bags of roast in the shell peanuts where I used to send him chocolate and he’s fine with that – he’s very into fitness and sport so that helps. Now, how do I persuade my dughter that chocolate is not essential to life??

Bronx

4:47 pm
18 Mar 16
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Odette,

I’m glad you haven’t had any problems with fasting. As you get into a rhythm it will get even easier and become just a normal part of your routine.

As a Yank, I smiled when you mentioned your son is at boarding school for sixth form. We don’t call it that over here and I’m not even sure if sixth form is the same thing as 6th grade in the states, but it reminded me of the old movie “Tom Brown’s School Days.” I love reading and hearing the different dialects and phrases of English speakers from around the world. Some of my co-workers are from England, New Zealand and South Africa. They all have different “British” accents and phrases and it makes for wonderful conversations.

Have a great day to everyone reading this!

Bronx

Odette C

1:49 pm
22 Mar 16
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Hello Bronx, It’s not quite Tom Brown’s school days – it’s boys and girls, and all of the students in the school are destined for engineering careers, it’s very modern and vibrant, but I do miss him.

Well just done another two days fast – no problem really – I like the routine of a good bowl of soup at lunch and then at dinner. I did have a morning headache and suspect I need to drink more water. So weight loss maybe a pound, but have lost an inch or two and feeling well enough and energetic enough to go back to the gym, aqua aerobics for us ladies of a certain age…

I had a call from my Doctor, to be told all is well except that results indicate I am prediabetic – so a real wake up call. The test was done just before I started 5:2 (or in my case 4:2) so Im hoping I will be able to reverse the situation.

I must say that I am impressed with how well I feel… a happy combination of fasting, less booze and SPRING! |Don’t you just love this time of year?

Odette C

7:39 pm
26 Mar 16
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Hello again,

Just ending day one of my two day fast, it is really straightforward, I made a spicy tomato soup and as I have been doing previously I have a bowl at lunch time and onother at dinner. I bought a prerssure cooker and can make chicken stock and tasty soup really quickly.

What I am finding hard…

1) the weight loss is frustratingly slow, seemingly being prediabetic and over 50 and having an underactive thyroid is all part of the mix, I just have to keep going – what is it they say, ‘there is no failure except no longer trying’.

Ill let you now on Tuesday if I have lost any more weighht this week.

I have just bought and read the DR Michael Mosley book ‘the 8 week blood sugar diet’ and am considering going for the ‘Full Monty’ and following this plan…

2) Cooking for the family – there is no doubt about it the Mediterranean diet is delicious and satisfying, but it takes a lot of veg prep and shopping. Im also piddling about reading recipes, finding ingredients and cooking and washing up.

So with two hungry health conscious teenagers around for Easter and a busy husband, I don’t feel it is fair to ask them to fend for themselves while I fast, but I would rather forget about food while I am fasting.

I have been reading about the idea of spending a day cooking a months worth of meals and then freezing them… I think my biggest learning point is that I need to find a way to make fasting and eating differently permanent, so I have to learn how to do this with less effort, I guess it will come naturally if I keep practising.

Lolly_

8:46 pm
26 Mar 16
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Hi, Odette —

I love your reset goals, especially the one about living to spend your pension well! I identify with so much that you’re saying, and this forum is chock-a-block with experience and support, so I’m feeling really encouraged and not alone.

Thanks everyone for your honest sharing, it really does help so much.

Odette C

10:38 pm
29 Mar 16
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Hello Lolly,
lovely to hear from you, and you never need to feel alone – just check out the forums and find one that is current and lively! Jump right in – I’ve yet to see a grumpy post – which is so refreshing.

Well, here is my update, it is the end of another two day fast and another couple of pounds lost, slow and steady,and Im guessing the hidden health benefits of fasting are also happening, for which I am grateful. But I did buy the new book about the 8 week diet and it appeals so much, especially given my ‘prediabetes’ diagnosis.

Sooooo… I am going to switch onto this diet… to see if I can get faster results, particularly in changing the health metrics – BP, resting pulse etc. I will keep up with 5;2 for another couple of weeks until I get my kitchen refocussed on medeterranean diet and ditching the carbs properly.. so |I have my work cut out.

I di have ONE huge lightening bolt of inspiration. I do occasionally binge – have done since I was a teenager – and a binge is always a reason to prove that I will always be fat/have no willpower/can’t control myself. etc etc. And I have suddenly realised that I can count my binges into my progress as being speedbumps rather than barriers. It means that I accept my binges, and will live with them, because the binge doesn’t do the harm necessarily, what does the harm is my response to them and the way it affects my thinking.

wow.

Lolly_

11:54 pm
30 Mar 16
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What a wonderful realisation and way to take back your power. And congratulations on waving that weight goodbye!

Odette C

8:14 pm
31 Mar 16
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Hello Lolly – I am trying to get together people who are doing the fast diet or 5:2.

You don’t happen to live in SE england?

Odette C

7:43 am
3 Apr 16
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Hello everyone,
I guess I am pleased that I have been attending to the health issues (obesity, blood pressure , pre diabetes), The happy tio known as metabolic syndrome, and since I started this thread on the 13th of march, I have learned a great deal about how to address these issues through diet/exercise/mindfulness.
I am now on my second day of follwing the blood sugar diet to theletter. So I am going to carry on posting here, as it is my record of how I am doing, and in eight weeks time I will be back to 5:2.