Sometime last year I wrote the following and then forgot about it. I was delighted to trip over it again today because it’s just a helpful way to think. It doesn’t really matter how you approach weight loss as long as it doesn’t become toxic in your life. A burden. A guilt trip. A health-destroyer. A pleasure-killer.

Here’s the old post:

Although I can talk “goal weights” with the best of them, my fantasy weight loss goal is actually having food be a complete non-issue. You know – like when they ask a celebrity or a chef what they ate on a “normal” day and the answer is something like:

For breakfast I had a cup of espresso and a slice of mango. Lunch was a a couple of biscuits with a chunk of really strong cheddar and a cup of tea. Dinner was grilled salmon with new potatoes and green beans from my garden and a glass of white wine.

Yeah sure – and a packet of 40 cigarettes.

I KNOW it’s not true but it’s still my fantasy to have healthy eating “just happen”.

But how do I balance that goal with my long and sordidly unbalanced history with food?

• Step One: Remove as many “diet trappings” as possible.

What does that mean? No more weighing of self? No more journalling? I guess it’s essential to decide which elements of the dieting trap are toxic and which are helpful. This is purely personal; one woman’s help is another woman’s poison.

• Toxic – Interesting exercise. Turns out toxic is a state of mind.

thinking about food all the time.

ruining happy social times with thoughts of “I can’t eat that”.

tying my weight to any concept of success or failure of me as a person

behaviour that leads to guilt about eating

allowing myself to get carried away by short term results aka dieting euphoria

To sum up : negativity and obsessing of any kind.

• Helpful – but only helpful if they don’t lead to the toxic stuff above

weighing self

measuring waist

weighing and measuring ingredients and portions

journalling food

How do I use those helpful tools in a non-toxic way? That’s the cruncher. I guess my question is my answer. To be non-toxic, these things have to be tools rather than obsessions.

*******

And back to today – Have I managed to detox my dieting life?

In many ways, yes. I’ve decided that I don’t need goals and deadlines – just permission to mix the intensity of planning to lose weight with the more relaxed approach to keeping it off. I never have to be “on” or “off” a wagon – just eating good food and moving my body sometimes to lose weight and sometimes just to enjoy staying the same weight.

If I can continue to do this then my life will look less like a rollercoaster and more like a gentle dance of the sort you see in Pride & Prejudice – just coming close and moving away – nothing frantic and no particular exhilaration.

This is the closest to food sanity that I’ve been since I was a very small child. It feels good.

I can be intense for only so long and then I need to step back for a bit, but “stepping back” is NOT the same as falling off wagons or “being bad” or gaining weight.

Stepping back is just that – eating mindfully for a week without weighing & measuring food or self. Therefore, when I stepped on the scale this morning, it wasn’t to see “damage” but to see what happens when I don’t pay attention to the minute detail of amounts eaten and exercised. C’est tout. (that’s all – it’s French and sounds rather educated, don’t you think?)

And what was the effect of 7 days of just being me? About a pound up. That makes me happy. And relieved? Yes – I do admit to a bit of relief.

So, it’s back to dieting like an accountant tomorrow with two very low calorie days.

And what’s my goal? I’ve decided that vanity wins over health at this point. Yes, my waist should be smaller for health but, even more urgently, there’s one very cute blue linen dress in my wardrobe just waiting to be fitted over a more shapely me.

I confess to watching Supersize vs Superskinny and I confess to almost always changing channels when the week’s worth of food comes down that tube. It just makes me feel a little queasy. But today, I wondered what my week of food looks like when I’m eating well. It’s one thing to look at a food diary broken down by day, but what about just all the things I’ve eaten in one place like…..like the food tube? So here’s the word version of that tube.

From Monday to Sunday night I ate a total of around 10,200 calories and exercised off about 2,150 calories. I ate 100% of my 5 a day and only drank 12 units of alcohol. The 2 non-scale successes were doing my belt back up to it’s normal place and having a completely sane week during what is normally a hormonal firestorm. THAT is what this is all about for me.

So here’s what a week of good eating looks like. And no, no, that’s not green tea.

18 mugs of coffee
23 mugs of tea
13 cups or 5.2 pints 1% milk
2 large cappuccinos
195 g or 1/2  lb oats with raisins, nuts & cinnamon
530g – about 1 tub greek yogurt non-fat
4 eggs
3 slices streaky bacon
1.5 cups blueberries
2 tiny bananas
9 medium clementines
20 ready to eat prunes
1.5 large tubs of low fat cottage cheese
16 slices dark rye ryvita
1 small serving tomato soup
2 Tbs peanut butter
5 decent servings of strong cheddar
mozarella & tomato panini
1 slice bread
1 tin tuna in water
6 medium carrots
1/2 cucumber
3 medium tomatoes
2 red peppers
1 green pepper
1 onion
1/4 swede
8 small new potatoes, roasted
200 grams- just under 1/2 a pound chicken breast
1 pack stir fry veg
1/2 a tin of pineapple pieces in juice
1/4 pack rice noodles
1/4 pack pesto & goat cheese tortelloni
250 grams or just over 1/2 lb extra lean turkey mince
1/2 small jar seeds of change tomato & basil sauce
1/2 tin of crushed tomatoes
1/4 pack spinach & ricotta tortelloni
6 cumberland chipolatas
2 heaped Tbs mashed potatoes
2 Yorkshire puddings
1 small slice strawberry pavlova
2 Tbs ketchup
2 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp sugar
3 tsp stock powder
2 Tbs balsamic vinegar
2 Tbs light soy sauce
1 Tbs corn starch
lots and lots of fresh basil
2 single shot gin & tonics
2/3 bottle white wine
3/4 bottle red wine

Brown Rice

Potatoes

Ryvita

Oats

Dried Fruit

I can eat (and have eaten all of these this week) without any negative effect on my weight loss or my digestive system.

Bread

This seems to be a problem.

I haven’t tried pasta or white rice yet but the list above seems to indicate that carbs aren’t a problem for me. I can obviously eat gluten – so what’s the problem with bread?

I’ll have to experiment with some pasta this week and see what happens. Interesting.

Start with the numbers: in 2 weeks, I’ve lost 5.5 pounds. Just fine with me. I’ve had some lovely social, food-oriented times and have not been craving sugar or alcohol at all. Again – just fine with me.

In fact – I’ve been feeling so well that I turned down a third glass of wine because I didn’t want that foggy head the next morning. (I know; I’m a cheap date.) But that’s such a victory that I’m going to cling to it for a while. Will let you know if it happens again!

This is heavy hormone week and I struggled with the super low calorie days. Luckily, I’m a grown-up so I ate enough to make it bearable and still kept them “pretty low calorie” days at 800 and 950 calories.

I’m trying to think of exercise, NOT as something that earns me more food, but as a new rhythm of life. To that end, I’ve noted whether my moving is:

• r/w – run walk – 11 – 12 minute mile
• walk  – as in a power walk – got to be under a 15 minute mile
• o&a – out and about – I count it as a 20 minute mile though my pace is faster than that when I’m on my own.

Last week I had 1 walk, 3 run/walks and 5 sessions just out and about, burning off over 2,ooo calories in the process. I reckon I put in somewhere around 10 o&a miles of walking just going to the train and walking across town for errands.

What was hard?

I will never like the fact that I have to be so focused on food and weight in order to lose but there’s no other option. The only time weight has just fallen off in the past 10 years, I was either ill or very very stressed (or both) and it was incredibly scary. What gives me hope is that in a few weeks I’ll be able to scrap the two VLC days and start eating to maintain my weight. I’ll be in Canada for five weeks so it will give me a chance to establish new eating and exercise habits in that home too.

But that’s looking way forward – a proven toxic behaviour when it comes to weight loss for me. I need to picture the me I want to be – but concentrate on immediate behaviours. So I guess I’d better eat breakfast and get on with the day.

Daily Weigh is still going on if you are that thrilled with numbers.

So – likes and dislikes so far about this intermittent low calorie diet.

Strictly, this means two days of very low calories (VLC) and 5 days of *regular healthy eating*. For my own sanity, I’m journalling my food and exercise every day while I’m losing to make sure that I’m on track. My week looks like this:

Monday & Tuesday: 650-700 calories

Wednesday, Thursday & Friday: 1550 – 1600 calories

Saturday & Sunday: 1800 calories – or use this time to balance what’s been eaten the rest of the week – such as a nice dinner out on Friday night.

As long as I average 1400 calories per day eaten and 200 calories per day burned by exercise then I should look forward to losing up to 1.5 pounds per week. And that is stupendous if it is consistent.

• Dislikes:

The low calorie days feel, not exactly unhealthy, but so dietish that I wonder what I’m doing to myself. However, the Likes are so significant that I can ignore that little problem.

• Likes

Even on the VLCDays, I can meet someone for a coffee. That is key to my happiness when I’m trying to lose weight. The thought that “I can’t” really draws out the rebel in me and failure ends up right around the corner.

The other 5 days per week are wonderful rehearsals for real life with real food. I feel like, by journaling and tracking now, I’m really preparing myself for a life where I don’t keep gaining weight.

The usual 1400 calories per day gets so so boring and every social event becomes a choice between being on and off the wagon. This method means that I can eat with friends when the occasion demands – in a relaxed way.

There is so much wiggle room in the remaining 5 days that I never play diet games. In fact, I’m eating what I’ll be eating to maintain my weight. The only difference will be stopping the VLCDays which makes me look forward to “normal”.

I’ve already learned that, if there’s a high calorie event planned, it doesn’t really hurt to eat less the day before or after. It’s just reality if I want to stay slim. Naturally slim people take eating a lot one day as a cue to eat less the following day. Naturally fat people take eating a lot one day as a cue to keep on eating!

My beloved is also happy with the plan. He knows that he’s on his own for dinner for one day per week and he’s happy to have a VLC meal on the other day. The rest of the week is just like usual – that’s usual when we’re choosing to be healthy.

*And that would be my only warning.* If you don’t know how to eat healthily, then this may not be for you. I don’t crave junk food and we don’t have unhealthy snacks – cookies, chips, etc -  in the house at all.  We worked through that years ago and this is really about losing a few pounds that have crept on over the past year.

Look here for information about the Intermittent Diet.

Here’s the Good Housekeeping article that got me curious in the first place.

How often should you weigh yourself?

If I were starting out on this weight loss thing for the first time, I’d say never more than once a week.

However, I have a history with scale insanity – brought about by the combination of my natural fear of failure and the stressful weekly ritual of the Weight Watchers weigh-in.

What do I mean by scale insanity?

I mean wearing the lightest clothes I own – but only after the initial weigh-in – then progressing to taking off my watch then my wedding ring.

I mean not eating breakfast and taking my coffee in a travel mug so that I can drink it after stepping on the scale.

I mean seeing that weekly event as something that could make or break my day.

I mean allowing myself to be defined by a number.

That’s not sane.

So the only way I could think of breaking that was to weigh myself every day till it held no power over me.

It works but there are strict parameters:

Weigh only first thing in the morning without clothes. (wedding ring can stay!)

Weigh only once. If your scale doesn’t give the same reading when you weigh yourself 3 times in 3 minutes, get a new scale.

Practice and practice some more the skill of seeing that the scale is just measuring changes in the weight of the composition of your body. It will fluctuate all over the place and does not in any way reflect who you are as a person.

Only another sufferer of scale insanity would think that the above sentence is not crazy.

Please please please only embark on daily weighing if it makes you more sane about your body rather than less. And never ever ever step on the scale in the evening. Really. Just don’t.

If you’d like to be bored to tears by the slow progress of my own weight loss, you can keep tabs on my Daily Weigh page.

I have made it through my two Very Low Calorie Days (VLCD) and it was a bit of a challenge. Yesterday I ended up replacing some of the milk with some poached chicken because I just needed the protein. But I still stuck to the calories give or take a handful and, Googling around, I see that the dairy is nothing special; it’s the low calories/low carbs on those days that seem to make the difference – so I’ll be experimenting with what makes me feel best on those days.

It just dawned on me that the best thing about those two days was learning that hunger won’t kill me. Therefore, when I’m back to maintaining a healthy weight and have a heavy social eating day, I can eat little the next day and not perish. I honestly don’t know why that never dawned on me before. I see now that it’s better to turn the carb switch right to “off” immediately for a day than to struggle on as usual with my “self control in the face of bread” issues. Just chuck the bread in the freezer, poach some chicken, make a salad or roast some vegetables and eat well for the day.

But now it’s onto the slightly harder “moderation” days. I’m not sure why I wrote “slightly harder”. I guess it will be more like I’ve always done before so it’s more routine so it’s more boring so it’s harder.

I’m also oddly worried that, because I can eat more for the rest of the week, my body will somehow refuse to lose weight because it doesn’t feel like it’s being deprived of anything. Yes – I hesitated to write that because it sounds a bit unbalanced but I think everyone knows by now that any kind of weight loss programme leads to a certain level of food/body insanity. The trick is to find the least crazy approach and stay as grounded as possible.

I am jet-lagged so coherant thought may be just a little lacking but I’ve got some things swimming around in my brain that need expressing.

I am all for healthy eating over dieting. But what if you eat healthily and still put on weight? Then, the only solution is to pay attention to your balance of calories consumed versus calories expended and that, without any waffling, is dieting.

In our house we eat a very balanced and healthy diet. In fact, we were once chosen to do one of those “what the average British family eats” studies and were told that they’d never encountered a family that ate so much healthy and fresh food.

But we can eat a lot of it  – especially now that there are two of us at home rather than four.

So – to lose weight, I need to temporarily put myself into a calorie deficit situation. In other words, I need to diet to lose weight – but the diet is just a pared down version of our normal healthy way of eating.

At this point my problem is boredom.  Most things that I claim to hate, like ironing, running and doing my taxes, I just hate the thought of. Once I’m into the thick of the activity I always find that I enjoy it despite my initial feelings. Dieting is the opposite. I love the idea of being in control and seeing results on the scale. Once I start however, I hate the whole boring thing.

I hate the amount of mental energy it takes to lose weight.

I hate the fussing over social engagements.

I hate saying, or even thinking, “I can’t eat that”.

But I know there is no magic solution. The goal of fitting back into my spring wardrobe can only be acheived with a certain amount of sacrifice. My next step then is to find a way to do this hard work with the minimum of resentment and the maximum of joy.

• First step: good tools.  If I’m going to have to write down everything I’m eating, it better be easy and enjoyable. Nutracheck still offers the best online journal I can find and I’m happy to pay the less that 20 pence per day to use it! 20 pence. I also need good kitchen scales and good ingredients.

• Second step: no gimmicks. That means food from all the food groups and nothing between me and my calories. That includes Points TM. I just need to be able to think about what I’m eating and how much, how I’m moving and for how long. I know now that I cannot survive on a low carb diet so I won’t try. I also know that I can’t live without healthy oils. I can, however, temporarily do without alcohol and certainly without sugar and refined carbs.

• Third step: rhythm of life. How do I incorporate eating less and moving more into my life without it taking over my life? I don’t mind hard work but I refuse to be obsessional. I’m tentatively hopeful that this Intermittent Low Calorie plan will help me with that. I can work very hard for 2 days per week, moderately hard for 3 days per week, then chill out a bit for the remaining 2 days before starting all over again. The average eaten over a week should lead to a pound or so lost but the mental anguish should be fairly minimal.

Now on with Day 2.

For the first time in a long time I am overweight with a BMI of 26.1. I’m furious with myself but also determined. I know what it’s like to be fat and I’m not going to be one of the 95% who gain it all back.

The reason I’ve got to this weight (yeah, yeah, besides the fact that I’ve been eating too much and moving too little) is that I’ve been struggling to engage in calorie restriction. Just the thought of day after day after day of paying close attention makes me die a little inside. However, I may have found a short term solution…..

Flying home from Canada yesterday, I finally took out my January UK Good Housekeeping. I usually look at whatever “New Year, New You” diet they have on offer and immediately flip the page because, trust me, I have seen it all before. But this one was different. It connected with the low attention span me. It took something that I’ve already thought about, gave it structure and backed it up with research.

So – I’m embarking today on the Intermittent Diet. It’s a seriously boring name but I’ve decided to find that endearing.

The intermittent plan (referred to as the 2 Day Diet – which it’s not) involves very low calories on 2 days per week which then makes the other 5 days of healthy eating feel less restrictive.

I find it almost impossible these days to be restrictive seven days per week, so I love the fact that I only really need to get my head into that deprivation zone for 2 days. I can do that. I do it when I fast and this is far from fasting – instead offering around 650 calories on each of those 2 days.

I also like that most of the calories on those low days come from milk and milk products. I am a milky person. Milk Milk Milk. You can see why I thought it might be a good fit. However, I’ve been reading that any protein would do instead of milk. Will have to research that a bit more.

The calories on the “high” days come from a basically Mediterranean diet – or what I now call “normal eating”. Yes, it’s still a bit restrictive but not like trying to stick to 1400 calories a day every day.  This allows fexibility for eating out and travelling which would normally throw me right off the losing track.

I think I’ll choose Monday and Tuesday as the “milk days” but I wanted to get started so this week only it’s Wednesday/Thursday.

Today I’m having

• 2 cups of milk in tea or coffee.
• 150 g Greek yogurt with a cup of blueberries
• 2 cups milk – plain for drinking.
• 4 carrots  – because I haven’t been shopping and that’s what’s in the crisper. I’ll probably micro them and eat them drizzled with balsamic vinegar and a pinch of salt.

So that’s my plan. I’m going to stick to it. I’m going to pay attention. I may also go back to public weigh-ins which do help to keep me accountable.

If you’re interested in trying it out, all the information is at the site of Genesis UK, a cancer research organisation.

NB For my North American readers, 2 pints is 5 cups/40 liquid ounces and not 32!