Kelpie's Diary

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a_kelpie

Full Member
I've been reading here for a couple of days and wanted to join in, as doing this bizarre thing is strange without people to talk to!

I'm on Day 5 of Total Solution and getting on with it better than I'd hoped. I just had shakes to begin with because I caught them on a groupon, but ordered some bars after the first two days because HO BOY. Shakes taste like shoes. Strawberry shoes. Chocolate shoes. Unidentifiable sugary-cake shoes. Having something the chew once a day has been fantastic, and now we're rolling. I guess my taste buds are adjusting (dying?) because I found myself thinking, "hmm, tasty chocolate shoes," today. I find the shakes way better if I just make them short and thick and don't think about them much.

Getting into the swing hasn't been too hard: I've been COLD IN MY SOUL a couple of times, day 3 was cluster headache central, and I'm a bit dopey (really looking forward to that Increased Mental Acuity, please) but nothing that terrible. Other people's food smells amazing and I want to eat it, but I'm not going to. I'm not actually hungry. I mean... I did eye up the fat balls I was putting out for the birds yesterday, but I it was just a gentle eyeing, so... no harm, no foul.

I was a very sporty teenager, but then fell into an outrageously unhealthy lifestyle at university, and haven't been able to fix it since (I'm 33 now). I lost 35lb two years ago eating paleo, but I didn't get any further or maintain it because I am a weak and feeble water-horse, and couldn't be bothered working out how to fiddle macros to get rid of hunger. Things I also couldn't be bothered to do included avoiding beer, not eating cake, and not being a pizza-lord. Yeah, no mystery as to why that all came undone. I'm looking forward to transitioning back to that way of eating after Exante, though, because it's delicious and my body gets on with it.

Lost 10lb between October and now by being lazily careful, so starting Exante at 223lb (I hate thinking in stones, because lbs just go down one-by-one, but that's... 15st9? Bleh). 153 (10st9) is the top of the healthy weight range for my height so I guess that's where I'm trying to head.

It has to be now, really. My personal life is a bit post-apocalyptic, and feeling better/being healthier might just help. I'm also starting to do public events in my career, and people look at me. I wish they wouldn't. But they do.

Cheers for all the great words to read here - it has genuinely helped to know some smart and funny folks are on the same road. There are some moments where I think, "Oh god, this is absolutely mental, what if I die and then I will be in the Daily Mail as a CRASH DIET VICTIM, and 1700 men will write 'uuuuurrrrghhh calories in-calories out!' in the comments." Which is a very specific panic attack but... I have it. I have done all the reading and I do understand how the diet works, but sometimes the irrational brain takes over. Has been very good to know that regular folks are out there having success and not becoming a gutter press tragedy. Hashtag-goals.

My weigh-in day is Friday, when I shall pretend I haven't been on the scales every morning (it's worrrrrrrking).
 
Hi, ha ha you made me laugh out loud with the sugar coated shoes, strawberry shoes. Which is one way of discribing the shakes
Anyways welcome and good luck 😉
 
welcome! I'm sure you'll do great with your positive mindset, I mean, you are eating strawberry and chocolate shoes and not giving up! ;) Good luck for tomorrow's weigh-in
 
Thank you all for the warm welcome!

Day 6 has dawned bright and gorgeous, so I'll be in the garden all day pottering about.

Yesterday I felt like the beginner's side effects were wearing off slightly more - a tiny headache but more energy and not so ditzy.
I had Strawberry shake (second favourite), Double chocolate bar (glorious chewing, let's not probe too deeply what it's actually made of) and Cookies & Cream shake (still think this is the Most Shoe-Tasting, but forcing myself not to keep them all until the end of my supplies because that would be awful).

We had a hellish day in work. My boss phoned me in the evening for a chat and just to update me on some of the nightmares that had happened, and I was really shocked by the, "Oh, I am HUUUUNGRY!" feeling when I put down the phone. I don't think I've ever had such a strong demonstration of how emotional my eating is. Because eating is not an option, I was able to sit with the feeling and recognise it, and explain to myself that I wasn't at all hungry, just sad and stressed. Spent the rest of the evening watching Blackadder and writing a plan to turn our misfortunes around, and now everything looks slightly better.

I'm a writer on the side and had news of a story sale this morning, so I'm celebrating with Chocolate Shoes, my favourite shoes. Off to see the sorceress who fixes my eyebrows this afternoon: always makes my face look thinner when she has practised her dark arts. Fingers crossed for tomorrow's weighing :)
 
Hope your doing well Kelpie.

I understand the whole looking at lbs rather than stone thing. That said, I used to make spreadsheets for my losses and I would have stone, lbs and kg Colin’s so I had milestones nearly every few pounds because it would hit a nice round number in one of the categories almost every week - it helped with the motivation - but then I love data :)

Had a grin at your line about comments from men regarding calories in and out. I think I’ve actually read the same article and yes, it obviously happened but there must have been other things at play there. Most medical people will tell an obese person that any amount of time at their weight is unhealthier and more dangerous than any VLCD they might choose and I was/am content with that :) It tickled me that we had seen the same thing. The comments are always the best part of those articles, especially from the article sources - usually Daily Mail/Express which I always take as comedy reading at its finest 😂
 
Absolutely, Gymbunny - that's a great way to quieten that argument (either within or from others) - way more dangerous to be obese. Comedy-reading the terrible newspapers is a guilty pleasure, glad I'm not alone. I always picture a particularly stout, red-faced man typing about how it's easy to be thin. Nigel Farage with more pouch.

First week done today, and I'm down 7.5lbs. Not as dramatic as some people's first weeks, but I wouldn't have lost that much in a week doing anything else so... I'll definitely take it! Got stuck at work finishing up documents and not home until 8.45pm, having had breakfast shoes at 6.45 and lunch bar at 12.30, and amazingly I don't feel that bad. Just gulped down a vanilla shake but that's me full.

Hope everyone else is going strong and looking forward to the weekend.
 
Well done Kelpie. 7.5lbs is amazing. Like you said, it couldn't be done on any other diet. I'm starting tomorrow, and also will be counting lbs, not stones, I don't know why, it just feels better that way. I'm not sure what flavour 'shoes' to start with tomorrow, but I'll be giving it a damn good go!
 
Thank you all.

I think the lbs thing is from reading so much American weight loss 'stuff'... like progress pics websites and reddit and instagram. I'm also not the mathiest (although I do like data!) so asking me to think in multiples of 14 is hilarious. I travelled in Scandinavia quite a bit, a few years ago when currency was better, and the various kroner would always be some multiple of 8 or something hideous, and I had to give up working out what that is in GBP. A good idea when in Norway anyway, because everything is Ahundredandohmygodpoundsfifty.

Cherryblossom, I wonder if you'll get into the habit of choosing your shoes in advance... I do quite like laying out the three products I'm going to have the night before. Removing the choice from the removing the choice diet...

Cookies & Cream this morning. Going to have a 3-shake day: I've been loving the bars but found they make me think about real food a lot more. Also they are creeping earlier into the day, so then I've done all my 'eating' by 3pm and am sad.

Have a challenge later in the week in that I have been Summoned By The Matriarch (the head aunt) who wants to take me out for lunch. Which is lovely, and very kind, but there's no way I'm going to get away with "I'll just drink this plastic ming, is that ok?". Pretty much every other family member I can stare down, but you don't mess with the Head Aunt. My thinking right now is that I'll fast for the rest of the day, and choose the least carby thing on the menu. After that there are no reasons to mess up in my diary for a very long time so.... OK.
 
Hi Kelpie - welcome to the boards and to the diet! And congratulations on a successful first week of losses! 7.5lb is definitely not to be sneezed at (I think I lost about 8lb and I was a little bit over your starting weight).

I've really enjoyed reading your diary. Probably going to be thinking of diet products as 'shoes' forever now, but I can live with that. I'm not the biggest fan of the shakes shoes, but my tastes tend to change depending on ... err ... mood? Shipping forecast? Mercury being in retrograde? I genuinely have no idea. But I think my mouth does like to chew something, so I tend to feel less psychologically hungry after a bar or a meal than I do after a shake. Although I much prefer crunchy shoes to chewy shoes. And I also pick on the spur of the moment, rather than ceremonially laying out my products for the day.

Oh, and I tend to think in stones because somehow "I need to lose 6 stone" feels a lot less overwhelming to my brain than "I need to lose literally hundreds of pounds."

Good luck with your head aunt (are you a character in a PG Wodehouse or Roald Dahl novel?) - I know this is super hard but my advice (yay, advice from a random stranger, just what everyone needs) would be to try to stick to plan if you possibly can. Obviously if you can't, you can't and this isn't meant to be a prophecy of doom or a guilt trip but, in general, it is so much better to stay on plan. I don't just mean in terms of losses, I mean physically and psychologically. Knocking yourself out of ketosis (especially having just got into it) is miserable and it's hard to predict (especially early on) what will do that because your body has just gone through a slightly traumatic experience ("help you used to feed me and now you are just pouring liquids into me what is haaaaaapening"). Also I really feel that mentally having a zero tolerance policy for plan deviation stands in good stead for sticking to the diet long term. I mean, obviously everyone is different but I had a couple of unsuccessful starts (and you might just be a way better person than me) and I realised it was because I was allowing myself little variations/deviations and so my mindset had become kind of ... almost like I was trying to trick the plan? Like, can I have [x] and still lose. Instead of just committing whole-heartedly to what I was doing.

I mean, obviously you know your Head Aunt and from the brief description you've given it doesn't sound like it's the best situation to stick to your guns. I presume if you tell her the truth she'll immediately go into tabloid "just eat less and exercise" judgemental mode. And you should never feel you have to explain/defend your choices, especially as pertain to our own damn body. But related to that latter point, I do believe that you should have the right to make a choice for yourself. She doesn't know what being morbidly obese like, I assume. If you want to make your life less miserable you should be allowed to do that. And not be shamed or challenged by it.

Although when I'm in a situation where I can't avoid people trying to give me food and I don't want to have to explain myself / open myself to judgement I claim to have a stomach upset. Works wonders.
 
castingnasturtiums said:
Hi Kelpie - welcome to the boards and to the diet! And congratulations on a successful first week of losses! 7.5lb is definitely not to be sneezed at (I think I lost about 8lb and I was a little bit over your starting weight).

I've really enjoyed reading your diary. Probably going to be thinking of diet products as 'shoes' forever now, but I can live with that. I'm not the biggest fan of the shakes shoes, but my tastes tend to change depending on ... err ... mood? Shipping forecast? Mercury being in retrograde? I genuinely have no idea. But I think my mouth does like to chew something, so I tend to feel less psychologically hungry after a bar or a meal than I do after a shake. Although I much prefer crunchy shoes to chewy shoes. And I also pick on the spur of the moment, rather than ceremonially laying out my products for the day.

Oh, and I tend to think in stones because somehow "I need to lose 6 stone" feels a lot less overwhelming to my brain than "I need to lose literally hundreds of pounds."

Good luck with your head aunt (are you a character in a PG Wodehouse or Roald Dahl novel?) - I know this is super hard but my advice (yay, advice from a random stranger, just what everyone needs) would be to try to stick to plan if you possibly can. Obviously if you can't, you can't and this isn't meant to be a prophecy of doom or a guilt trip but, in general, it is so much better to stay on plan. I don't just mean in terms of losses, I mean physically and psychologically. Knocking yourself out of ketosis (especially having just got into it) is miserable and it's hard to predict (especially early on) what will do that because your body has just gone through a slightly traumatic experience ("help you used to feed me and now you are just pouring liquids into me what is haaaaaapening"). Also I really feel that mentally having a zero tolerance policy for plan deviation stands in good stead for sticking to the diet long term. I mean, obviously everyone is different but I had a couple of unsuccessful starts (and you might just be a way better person than me) and I realised it was because I was allowing myself little variations/deviations and so my mindset had become kind of ... almost like I was trying to trick the plan? Like, can I have [x] and still lose. Instead of just committing whole-heartedly to what I was doing.

I mean, obviously you know your Head Aunt and from the brief description you've given it doesn't sound like it's the best situation to stick to your guns. I presume if you tell her the truth she'll immediately go into tabloid "just eat less and exercise" judgemental mode. And you should never feel you have to explain/defend your choices, especially as pertain to our own damn body. But related to that latter point, I do believe that you should have the right to make a choice for yourself. She doesn't know what being morbidly obese like, I assume. If you want to make your life less miserable you should be allowed to do that. And not be shamed or challenged by it.

Although when I'm in a situation where I can't avoid people trying to give me food and I don't want to have to explain myself / open myself to judgement I claim to have a stomach upset. Works wonders.
Click to expand...


Oh, goodness, this is such fantastic perspective, thank you for taking the time to write it up... Indeed, it's such a head-game that I don't want to trick myself out of it. I'm sitting here thinking through the possibilities of what might happen if I say, "Actually, is it ok if I just have coffee?" and she's not going to.... ARGUE... it'll just be awkward. And in the long run, I don't really mind if people are awkward. Ok! Thank you so much, that has pressed a wee button in my head as to what's possible with people.

I think I'm more of an Evelyn Waugh character, on reflection.

The shoe-regime continues apace. I was lucky to find a really empty stretch of time to start it in, so if it was hard, I could just stay in my PJs all day. Back into the swing of things now though, and pleased to find I can still get through busy days, like all day on my feet working today with a half-hour walk at either end, and a concert last night in a hot, sweaty room that was actually kinda bearable. According to an intensely scientific corner of the internet, headbanging burns 130+ calories an hour, too, so everything about that little excursion was fully virtuous.

Cross fingers for me with Auntie tomorrow.
 
a_kelpie said:
I think I'm more of an Evelyn Waugh character, on reflection.
Click to expand...

Well, now I'm super concerned for you. Does this mean you are intending to die tragically, either of war of catholicism?

In all seriousness, I'm glad my over-aggressive peopling policy was useful to you - and I hope things with Aunt Agatha went okay for you. I always feel like a bit of a dick when people are concerned about the social impact of being on plan and I'm always like "stick to it, tell everyone else to bugger off".
 
I have an alternative version of the auntie story 😀

I’m the auntie in my family........5 nephews, one niece

My adorable niece wants me to teach her to crochet, so she’s coming to lunch on Saturday.......but I’ve told her that she will have to share my frugal lunch, as I don’t allow naughty carbs and calories in my house!! 🤣🤣

She’s fine with that.....and I’m so looking forward to spending time with her ☺️
 
Lunch survived!

Casting, never stop the peopling policy... I think a lot of people (self definitely included) are here because they haven't sufficiently cultivated the inner voice that says those things, so it's really supportive to have someone else do it. Until their own inner voice grows.

Yes, I'm looking at some kind of tragic death, preferably in the rain so I can squint off into the middle distance, but not TOO much rain because I want to look refined and sophisticated and very jawline-y as I go. I love me some Waugh (to read: not as a person). Sword of Honour books probably at the top of my list, and I have a soft spot for Decline and Fall. Once moved into a flat in the middle of winter that had nothing in it apart from a sofa and a TV, and spent the first week watching the 1981 Brideshead. Theme music haunts my dreams.

Darcy, good luck with the crocheting! I hope I have a niece one day. Just one nephew at the moment, but he's adorable and I will always be happy to see him, even if he wants to stick to coffee (unlikely at 18 months, but he does have some weird tastes). Indeed, all my aunt really wanted was a big blether, doesn't matter if food happens or not.

So, weigh-in this morning, and I am 212.2lb, so 3.4 down from last week. Two weeks on plan, 11lb off in total. Yaaaaaaay. Chocolate shoes to celebrate. Got some meals coming in the post tomorrow (I love how they're listed as 'Meal Replacement Meals' on the Exante website, this tickles my sense of the absurd no end). Will be piteously asking for water volume/microwave time adjustments soon, no doubt.

Happy Friday, everyone.
 
Wow a 7.5lb loss in the first week AND starting to feel better. Encouraging truly as I am in the ditzy place atm! I get your looking at the bird feed - I am getting a bit jealous of my cats' food lately lol. There's also some conference going on in my building and have this massive spread of colours and smells. I look away and almost make a run through the area when I cannot avoid taking that route.
I emphatise completely with the emotional eating aspect - anything a bit stressful at work and the little tiny voice in my head goes 'you need a food reward'. I don't thinks so, tiny voice, shush now :)
Do you guys think being on the 800 rather than 600 will work re ketosis the same way?
 
Depends where the 800 cals is coming from. Also whether you are male, female, height, BMI, desired loss and speed of loss etc.

My view is, don’t put yourself through the beginning which is tough if you’re not going to truly do the diet. You’re just going to kid yourself and still suffer the feeling of deprivation with less of the weight loss reward that should go with it if done to the letter.

If you really want higher cals then have three packs (as they’re already high in carbs) and choose an egg or two to bring you up to 800.

Obviously the choice is ultimately yours but it’s so hard to watch people half follow the plan only to be disappointed with the weekly losses as well as feeling hard done by. Also, the sooner you get to 100% TS, the faster you are to cruising and the diet just becomes less important and life is easier.

Hope that all makes sense - feel free to ignore me :)
 
It does make sense. All VLCDs seem to focus on 6 to 800. I had chosen the 800 on sachets only just because that's what they did on the Newcastle study and the new Man Plan seems to be promoted for people of my BMI. I didn't find any papers comparing 6 to 800 alone though - hence wasnt sure if it will make a gross difference. I guess rule of thumb will be less in-more fat burning. So im pondering switching down to 600...maybe...
 
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