minini gets skininny - my weightloss diary

Well, yesterday was my first day back home and my first day on the diet. I weighed in the morning, 102.7kg my ultimate goal weight is about 60kg, so I have a lot of work to do.

I've decided I'm doing the perfect health diet for now. It's basically like the paleo/primal diet, but not low carb. I might try reducing my carbs slowly over time and easing back into primal eating, but for the moment, I feel like I could do with the extra energy that carbs give me.

I'm starting for two weeks with the perfect health version of the potato protocol diet. The idea behind PPD is you eat nothing, but potatoes for two weeks, but having read the Dukan diet book, I think the key to it working is that you're on a very low fat diet, the same as the pure protein stage of Dukan. Dukan says cause your body needs fat for cell repair and stuff, it forces you to use the fat in your fat cells. On the perfect health version of the potato diet you can eat any veggies or proteins so long as you stay very low fat and have a pound of potatoes a day to help keep you full, because apparently they're the most satiating of all foods. I wouldn't stick to that forever because your body needs some fat for vitamin absorption, but I don't think a couple of weeks is going to kill me and there should be enough variety to make it not as hard to stick to as pure potatoes or pure meat. After 2 weeks I'm going to start adding more fat in around 10g increments until my weightloss starts slowing down too much. The main attraction of this diet for me is it's cheap. Eating a ton of potatoes versus eating a ton of meat, there's no contest when it comes to my bank balance and after Christmas, my bank balance is begging for some love.


My goals for this week are
Survive the first week - lol
Drink 8 glasses of water a day and no soda - I bought one of those water bottles with a built-in filter because the water where I live tastes like a swimming pool and it's been brilliant for getting my 8 glasses a day in. Much more convenient than waiting for water to filter through a jug.
Track all my food on cronometer
Create an exercise journal and figure out a routine to follow
Weigh in at 100.Xkg or less on Thursday 10th

My first day was ok, I had some cravings for chocolate but I stayed strong and it was well worth it when I weighed this morning. I'm already down to 101.9, probably water weight but I'm not going to complain because it's incredibly motivating. My sleeping patterns are messed up from the holiday season and I needed a nap in the afternoon, but I got up at 9am today, so my mini-goal today is not to nap and to be in bed by midnight. Now I'm off to make lunch.

Well, I weighed this morning, 100.9kg, so technically I've already hit my goal for the week I guess my goal now is just to stick to the diet and see where that gets me at the end of the week, ::crosses fingers:: under 100kg, please?

I managed to steer clear of soda and drink my water, but I also had a lot of coffee, though mostly decaf. I had a couple of cravings for sweet things, but they seemed to pass pretty quickly. I've been doing a meditation practice where you name your feelings or sensations as they come up until they change or disappear, it's supposed to teach you that you can have feelings without having to respond to them. So I've been walking round going "craving, craving, craving, craving..." whenever I get one and it bizarrely seems to help.

Also, I made the most delicious salsa. Baby plum tomatoes, a handful of chopped red onion, half a bunch of fresh corriander and a dash of hot sauce. Sooo good. I ate it with spinach salad and baked potatoes.

100.5kg this morning, and I had so much energy yesterday, which makes sense looking at my cron data, I had 250g of carbs, still makes me a bit coming from Primal. But when I low carb I usually aim for 80-150g and I feel like hibernating, especially when it comes to work and anything that needs concentration. It's amazing the difference 100g extra carbs can make. No cravings yesterday, either.

I still need to come up with an exercise routine, I'm reading the you are your own gym book and trying to make a note of the (few) exercises out of shape me can actually do. But I'm planning some yoga and maybe a bash at HIIT this morning. One of my long-term fitness goals is to be able to go running. I used to get crippled with joint pain for months afterwards if I did even a few mins of gentle intervals, but since giving up wheat I've found nearly all my joint issues disappeared. My aerobic fitness for running is still really carp, though, and recently I've been really sedentary so I'm pretty much starting from zero.

Slight gain this morning, 100.6kg, but I'm not fussed, it's only 100g. Even though I did kinda overeat yesterday - in terms of snacking when I wasn't hungry, not like a huge binge or anything. I didn't plan my evening and ended up snacking on a potato after dinner just because I was bored.

I also did some HIIT biking yesterday and some Kundalini Yoga, and gonna do some more this evening since I'm hardly sore at all. I think Kundalini yoga's a good one to stick with cause it has a bit of everything, cardio, flexibility, & strength. I don't want to commit to doing strength training and x workouts a week and all that yet cause I'm still focusing on adjusting to my diet.

Down to 100.1kg today and I should bloody think so too, after the workout I did last night. Started off with the HIIT, moved onto my yoga, and then ended up doing about 40mins of star-jumps, squats, incline push-ups, sit-ups etc. I am sore today, so no workouts, I need to study, anyway, so behind at uni. I ate relatively heavy on the protein yesterday, 3/4lb of chicken breast meat over the day, strange to say it felt like a reward after several days of lower protein, higher carb eating.

I've been reading about resistant starches. These are carbs your body can't digest so they pass straight through you into your colon where bacteria break them down, but by then, it's too late for you to absorb what they get broken down into. Apparently this is part of a high-potato diet's mechanism, too. Cooked and cooled potato is about 50% resistant starch, so when you eat cold cooked potatoes, theoretically half the carb calories (about 45% of total cals) are just gonna pass straight through you without being absorbed. I'm not sure how that plays into the saiety/satiation thing with them, I need to reread wholehealthsource's posts about satiation and think on that. Did I mention I'm kinda a geek?

Totally forgot to check in yesterday, cause I was in student beast-mode to get a paper finished. Yesterday I weighed 99.7kg, finished editing my paper at about 10pm and today I'm 98.9kg. Not enough in the world, though probably the huge drop between yesterday and today is because I was hitting the caffeine hard to get me through the day and spent half the afternoon peeing.

I was so sore last night from a combination of sitting all day, I think, and the day before's workout, but I'm feeling better again so I think I might work out today. I'm gonna check out the new sports centre at my campus and see if it's less full of muscley young guys and intimidatingly tiny girls than the one on the main campus. I'm freaking out a bit too, cause I need an extension for my thesis submission because of all my previous drama, and today is the first of many hurdles to getting it, by the end of today day that paper could've been like 10hrs of pointless work. So my reward for facing all this is to get a coffee from Starbucks when I'm done, and it might just be a caramel macchiato with cream, :break_diet: but I'll try and make it a small one.

Super-quick update today. Stayed the same yesterday, today I'm 98.8kg. Almost 4kg down still sticking with the very low fat diet until Thursday, then I'm going to start upping my fat intake until my weightloss starts getting affected too much. My next big goal is to be under 96kg, and also to never see the 100s again. My meeting went ok, too.

Heya minini, massive congrats on getting under the 100kg! You're doing really well, stick at it x

Thanks, tweekedgirl!