IMPORTANT. I AM NOT A NUTRITIONIST OR FOOD EXPERT SO, EVEN THOUGH THIS DIET WORKED FOR ME AND I HAVE HAD NO PROBLEMS, I CAN'T GUARANTEE IT IS SAFE OR HEALTHY FOR YOU TO TRY.
THIS PAGE IS A RECORD OF MY OWN WEIGHT LOSS
On 3/10/2021 (after almost 2.5
years) I reached my target of exactly 10 and a half stone which is
the ideal weight for someone my age and height.
I've always been good at anything I put my mind to, but this is my first serious attempt at weight loss.
I've been lucky to find out about, and try a weight loss technique which worked for me as there are a million different "miracle" weight loss diets out there.
On 13/4/2019 I started at 14 stone 1.4 pounds so I've lost 3 stone 8.4 pounds or 22.86kg.
If you have a set of weights or similar, try lifting 23kg then imagine carrying that with you every time you go for a walk, jog or cycle (that's what I have done for over 10 years).
It's bloody heavy.
An example of that weight would be carrying a car battery in
each hand.
During the year and a half building my 3d printed drum kit, I bought and sold quite a few kits for research, so I got digital scales to save me driving to the post office to get an accurate weight for postage prices.
My weight was over 13 and a half stone and fast approaching 14 so I decided once I hit 14 I would put lots of effort into losing weight. For some strange reason the scales only show 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 of a pound (there are no odd numbers).
I thought it would go from 13 stone 9.8 to 14 stone 0.0, but it went to 13 stone 10.0, then I realised I still had another 4 pounds to go. But instead of taking that opportunity to start being healthy, I carried on getting fatter till I hit 14 stone 1.4.
When I started I had to make an extra hole in my belt as it was too tight and now I can comfortably wear the same belt with another extra hole as it was too slack.
There is about six and a half inches between the old hole and the new.
I was wearing 36 inch waist trousers, but I recently bought 32 waist trousers and they fit me fine.
I could get 30 inch trousers on ok but they were just a touch tight.
My actual waist measurement when relaxed today is 33 inches.
I seemed to reach 34 inches very quickly maybe a few months after starting the diet and that didn't change much even when losing another 2 stones.
You lose weight all over your body, so it's best
not to concentrate on just your waist measurement.
In the past when I attempted to lose weight, all I did was change things like shortbread, digestive or chocolate biscuits to rich tea and cream crackers or other biscuits that taste bland.
For example, Ryvita dark rye crispbread which looks and tastes like recycled cardboard or the more white coloured original Ryvita crackerbread which looks and tastes like recycled polystyrene.
(I'm only joking as I like the tase of these, but I'm surprised that this change made me lose any weight and I would go back to normal biscuits after a while).
I'm using a mix of intermittent fasting and a low carb diet.
I got a lot of info about it from Dr. Erik Berg on youtube, but I don't follow what he says religiously as he often recommends organic stuff which is expensive.
It's also recommended I only have black coffee
between meals, but I don't like the taste of that so
I'm not getting the full benefits of intermittent
fasting as I take powdered skimmed milk in my
coffee.
If I wake at 8am I will have my first meal/dessert at 12 then my second at 4pm then nothing else (apart from coffee).
So when I have my first meal I haven't eaten anything for 20 hours.
So I spend 20 hours every day not eating.
That is massively different from my previous whole
life where I would eat anything I wanted at any
time.
I have two normal caffiene coffees at the start of the day (with 2 stevia sweeteners and half a teaspoon of powdered skimmed milk) then I start taking decaffeinated coffee for the rest of the day.
I never really feel hungry, but if I feel like eating, a coffee stops that.
The coffee leaves a hot and full feeling in my stomach which gets rid of any urge to eat more.
(If anyone wants to try an easy way of losing
weight, if you normally have a coffee or tea with
biscuits or cakes etc., try just having the drink on
its own. It leaves you feeling full and not hungry
anymore).
I have very rarely heard my stomach rumbling and
that has only been when I have been busy and missed
my normal eating time by a few hours.
What I eat is basically meat, fish, eggs and vegetables (plus dessert), but what I actually eat is purely down to what I can afford, so I could be eating healthier if I buy organic or prime meat/fish etc.
I don't have fish or meat with any coatings like
barbecued, breaded or battered etc. unless the
coating is healthy like peppered mackerel.
I take a multivitamin/mineral tablet every day.
Before each meal I had half a cup of water with one
table spoon of apple cider vinegar (with the
mother), but I stopped that after about a year.
I took this as it has lots of health benefits (aids
digestion etc.) but my weight loss is down to me
eating massively much less than I ever have in my
life.
My first meal is 3 slices of bacon and one egg fried (I changed it to two eggs around July 2020).
When I crack the egg I sprinkle in garlic granules and garlic seasoning which includes Dried Garlic (47%), Dried Onion, Dried Red Pepper, Sea Salt, Cracked Black Pepper, Dried Parsley, Dried Green Pepper.
I had about a quarter of a plate of organic baby spinach leaves as that is very high in potassium, but I later changed that to the same mixed salad as my second meal.
I have had a few symptoms of low potassium levels in the past ie. twitching in my leg muscles, but that has gone now.
2 or 3 pickled onions, 2 or 3 slices of sweet cucumber and some beetroot with sea salt.
FIRST MEAL
My second meal is two roast chicken thighs, one piece of
mackerel and lots of mixed salad.
2 or 3 pickled onions, 2 or 3 slices of sweet cucumber and some beetroot with sea salt.
SECOND MEAL
After each meal I have a full punnet of strawberries (approx 225g) and half a can of spray cream (full fat) with cinnamon sprinkled on top.
And mixed seeds (Sunflower Seeds, Pumpkin Seeds, Sesame Seeds, Golden Flax seeds) on top of that.
DESSERT (these are big strawberries so it is a lot).
WITH ADDED CREAM (half a can which is a lot), CINNAMON AND
SEEDS
Below is what I buy every week apart from the chicken which is usually roast chicken thighs.
And I use garlic granules and garlic seasoning instead of mixed herbs and I usually don't get the organic spinach just normal baby spinach.
I have these garlic products.
And this salt.
This is what I use to make my coffee.
I'm not a coffee connoisseur so I get the cheapest stuff
available and it tastes good to me.
I go shopping every 7 days and get exactly what I need to last 7 days so when I go shopping my fridge is totally empty.
Also, if I find myself out and about, eg. when I recently drove to Buckhaven to buy a used washing machine.
It was a sunny day so I went for a walk and took photos along the coast. I would normally "treat" myself to a fish supper or a bag of chips and a can of coke in a situation like that, but I felt no need to do that at all.
And, if I find myself in a shop midweek for something unexpected like a diy item, I might normally also buy whatever food I fancy like crisps or nuts etc., but I never do that anymore.
I used to go into my kitchen, open the fridge or a cupboard and
think "Ok, what do I fancy eating?", but I haven't done that
since I started this.
I buy what I need at tescos for the week and never buy any more food or drink.
I have only been at my local shop a handful of times eg. when tesco was out of one of my regular items.
I also haven't ever felt tempted to eat something extra.
Even though I only buy exactly enough food to last seven days, when this virus carry on started I did what lots of people did and bought about two weeks worth of the tinned equivalent of my diet.
A couple of times I have had to throw out strawberries as they sometimes go off towards the 7th day, so I have used some of the tinned fruit until I went shopping again.
But all of the other tins are still there and I intend to use all of them now that I have reached my target weight.
(There are quite a few differences in the tinned
food versus my normal diet so using the tins might
make me put weight on).
I just don't feel like eating anything extra and I don't consider doing that as a treat.
In 2022 I took my KX to a few shows in England which included one or two days at a campsite.
In the past, when stopping at motorway service stations, I would have "stocked up" for the next leg of the journey with maybe a large bottle of coke, crisps, nuts and chocolate etc., but because I don't eat snacks of any kind and only drink my own coffee, I am saving a fortune (especially at service station prices).
On my trip to the kickback show in Gloucester which included a campsite Saturday and Sunday (paid for months earlier), apart from diesel (where I managed 59 MPG for the whole trip), the only money I spent was to buy a T shirt that I had arranged to buy months earlier.
So I had all of my normal food with me which I ate before/after each long drive and before/after the show and I had coffee in 3 flasks during each journey and during the show.
I think that's great to go for what I consider a short holiday and to not waste one single penny.
Exercise doesn't seem to make any difference to my weight loss.
This is a chart from an excel spreadsheet file which has my weight taken every day after waking and details of walks/cycle rides etc. and changes to what I eat.
There's times when I was walking/jogging for and hour in the morning then cycling round Loch leven in the afternoon so that was 16 miles a day and my weight loss was the same as when I did no exercise.
I sometimes didn't exercise for months mainly due to cold weather or rain and it didn't affect my weight loss rate.
Theres a few times in the chart where my weight stayed similar for a long time (1.5, 3 and 15 months).
I would also regularly draw an imaginary line continuing the graph in its downward trend and could see that I should reach my target in maybe a few months.
But I had to keep extending the end date of the graph which means moving every one of the text boxes/arrows individually as the graph had shrunk in length.
If you draw a straight line through the first 4
months, I should have got to 10st 7 around December
2019.
If you look at the 12 stone line, my weight was constantly shooting downwards to the 11s and I was looking forward to seeing the number 11 on scales for the first time in a lot of years.
On 15/8/2019 it got down to 12st 0.8 pounds then my
weight rocketed up due to adding walnuts and grapes.
Then 2 and a half months later on 4/11/2019 my weight showed for 2 seconds on the scales as 11 stone 13.8 pounds then it went to 12 stone 0.0 pounds and stayed there.
So that was agonizingly close to being in the 11s then it took 2 more weeks to actually get into the 11s at 11st 13.8 but this time the scales stayed on that weight.
The same thing happened when getting close to my final target weight of exactly 10 and a half stones which on my scales shows as 10st 7.0 pounds.
You can see the chart going down and down then it starts to level off a bit and it carries on fluctuating agonizingly close to my target even though I hadn't changed my eating for about 6 months.
I only got into the 10st 7s for two days reaching 10st 7.8 on 17/9/2020 then 10st 7.6 the next day and in the previous 5 days it had went down 0.2 pounds a day, so I was looking at reaching my final target of 10st 7.0 on 21/9/2020.
But it unbeleivably went back up again and even went back into 11 stones for one day reaching 11st 0.2 on 6/1/2021.
So just like the above paragraph where it took an
annoying 3 months to go from 12st 0.8 to eventually
get in to the 11s, this time it took an extremely
annoying 1 year and 15 days to go from 10st 7.6 to
eventually reach 10st 7.0.
In May 2021 after using coffee whitener for a lot of months thinking it was the same as powdered milk (and it was cheaper), I found out it has lots of sugar in it.
So I suspected that might be what stopped my weight
loss around that time.
It must just be coincidence that the diet I have
chosen (including choosing to have two meals a day)
seems to be exactly the right amount of food for me
to gradually lose weight as, if I change even the
slightest thing about my diet, my weight starts
going up quickly.
It's only in the past month I realised that seeds are the most important thing and I should now have full control over my weight and can choose whether to lose or gain weight by adding or taking away seeds.
If I have around 2
bags per week my weight stays fairly constant.
As Dr. Erik Berg recommends, it's very important to
have no snacks of any kind between meals.
I only eat what I have mentioned here and absolutely nothing else.
In 2.5 years I have had no bread, cakes, pies, rice, pasta, biscuits, crisps, cereal, pizza, ready made meals eg. Indian or Chinese, sweets, chocolate or juice of any kind (including fresh orange which I used to drink every day).
Everything has to be full fat as anything that has fat removed loses all of its taste so they add lots of bad stuff to make it taste better.
I used to have a handful of walnuts with my coffee after each meal.
I chose walnuts as they are the second lowest carbohydrate of all the nuts and are high in fat (which is good), but I noticed much later that they are very high in calories.
I tried one punnet of grapes and one punnet of strawberries a day and quickly put on weight as grapes are very high in sugar and low in fibre.
Both of these things massively delayed my weight loss but I might add those again when I want to keep my weight constant.
You can see my weight going up because of these from 13/8/2019 to 13/9/2019.
Herbal tea is recommended instead of coffee or normal tea for intermittent fasting (the milk in my coffee might affect the fasting or keto part), but I tried almost every different kind of herbal tea bag eg. mint, green, different mixes like apple and cinnamon and different fruit bags.
Every one of these tea bags smelled really good, but after adding water always tasted like it was massively over diluted.
There's a good scene in the Ben Elton comedy "Blessed" which shows that fruit tea tastes like a cup of boiling water with a fruit polo dipped in it for one second.
But in September 2021 I finally sussed my own way of making fruit tea that tastes just like juice, but it is much more healthy as it has no sugar or preservatives etc.
I put 4 cups of cold water in a pot and 8 fruit tea bags (2 bags per cup) and leave that for hours or even overnight.
I then pour a cupfull and microwave it so it gets hot but doesn't boil (boiling sometimes removes the goodness out of food).
I then add two stevia sweeteners and it tastes like normal fruit flavoured diluting juice.
My favourite so far is twinings strawberry and
raspberry.
So I now have one fruit tea then a coffee one hour
apart which has halved the number of coffees I have.
This has to be a lifelong commitment.
I have done this for 2.5 years and feel very good for it so it's not like I can't handle it or have cravings for food.
I would enjoy eating lots of different things, but I've changed my way of thinking about food as something to eat to survive and not for pleasure.
A lot of people think of food as a treat or a
reward, but being overweight is a massive worldwide
problem causing bad health issues (including killing
people) and, eating more than you need doesn't do
you any good.
I know some weight loss courses allow what they call a "sin" once a week or whatever, but I think by doing that they are giving food the status of a good thing like a treat/reward.
I think you have to think of food as something that
can potentially be very dangerous to your health.
Even though I've had the same thing every day for
that long, I still enjoy each meal, but I'm careful
about what that enjoyment means.
I had an occasional upset stomach for years before this diet and I would regularly use antacid tablets, but that finished very soon after starting the diet.
My weight today was taken at my usual time just after waking so that's the lowest my weight will be during the day.
It has also happened a few times where my weight
went down by a lot in one day (maybe 1 pound) then
went back up to where it was before sometimes for
weeks.
So for that reason my intention was to keep losing weight till I was maybe nearer 10 stone first thing in the morning so I would be at my ideal weight at some point during the day.
But on the 6th Nov 2021 (just 1 month after reaching my first target) I acheived this final target being exactly 10 stone 7.0 pounds at 8pm after waking at 8am, having my 1st meal at 12 noon and my 2nd at 4pm.
So that is the heaviest I would be that day and, first thing that morning my weight was 10 stone 5.8 pounds, so that is the weight I intend to stay hovering around.
I will adjust how many bags of seeds I have per week to control that weight.
2022 UPDATE
This is a chart from the first day I reached my target weight of 10 stone 7 pounds for the next year. It shows how I have stayed around my 10 stone 7 target all year finishing on 10 stone 3.6 pounds.
2023 UPDATE
13/4/2023 is exactly four years since I started the diet and I am still doing it. Today I was about 11 stone which is half a stone over my target weight, but for a few months, to save money, I have changed strawberries for grapes.
I know grapes are not as good for weight loss as strawberries but strawberries are expensive so I might have seven days of grapes or maybe four days strawberries and three days grapes.
For a long time now I have had my first meal at 12 and my second at 6pm. The only slight changes are the addition of curry powder which I am not sure is a benefit or not.
And I have stopped cinnamon as it seemed to cause occasional blisters in my mouth and stopping it has stopped the blisters.
