Working for my wedding - mix of TS & Flexi

Hi everyone,

This is my first time posting on MiniMins having been an active reader for years. I made the decision to give
Exante a go yesterday and definitely feel like it's a diet that needs support, so I decided to join.

I'll start with a little about me. My name's Charlotte, I'm a 29 year old living in Yorkshire. I've been actively trying to lose weight since January this year and have lost a stone in that time following a mostly high fat/low-carb diet and seeing a personal trainer.

The plan I'm currently on is great, and I can see it being the way I eat for the rest of my life. The problem is that the weight is coming off slowly and I'm getting married in three months.

In a bid to give myself a push before the wedding dress fitting, I looked into meal replacement diets and came across Exante. I've always said I would never do anything like this, but I'm feeling rather desperate and despondent with my current losses.

I used to be around 12 stone but piled 3 stone on after I lost my dad two years ago. I've never managed to get it off and feel like it's now or never. It's going to be hard enough getting married without my dad walking me down the aisle, without worrying about what I look like in my dress too! So I'm giving it a go :)

My order is arriving today but I'm away at a wedding Friday-Sunday so my first proper day will be Monday. In the meantime I may have a shake for breakfast and bar for lunch to get into the swing of things before then.

I'm currently 14st 3 and would like to get into the 12's again before I get married although appreciate that this is unlikely!

I do a minimum of three high intensity workouts a week which I love and it's important to me that I keep this up so my plan is to do flexi on these days so that I don't faint and TS on the other days. I'm not sure if that's good practice so please tell me if I'm doing that wrong.

I'll try and post my consumption every day and I'm hoping to use this to let off steam when the hunger pangs arrive. I have a massive appetite so am worried about the lack of food but I think it's worth a shot!

I'll be back to update in a few days - wish me luck! xxx
 
Hi there,

I have been on exante (TS) for just over a week but I actually did Cambridge years ago and the main reason was to lose weight for my wedding. I lost weight and it was definitely worth it, I felt great on the day. I didn't have the time to do anything else so it was a good solution.

Only bad thing i remember was I got pretty stressed about it all , so make sure you treat yourself (a lot - non food way of course). Whatever relaxes you make sure you plan that in your week, the three days of intensive exercise will help a lot with that though - I wasn't as motivated, I just aimed to walk three miles a day on top of what I usually did.

Good luck and stick with it!
 
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Thanks Whimsical Daisy, that's fantastic advice :) Especially regarding the stress. We're due to move house before we get married too so I can definately see some panicking in the future. Good to hear that it has worked for other brides too. I'm a bit like you were with time. I've defo been making good changes especially with exercise. It's taken me agest to get into the habit of exercising three times a week so I do think that's something I need to keep up, along with a walk every evening like you suggested. Fingers crossed it works for me!
 
So today is my unofficial first day on plan. I say unofficial because I'm heading to Birmingham for a wedding weekend away so won't be fully on plan until Monday.

For some reason I woke up at 4:30am and couldn't get back to sleep so I accepted defeat and got up at about 5:40 which wasn't in my plan for day 1! Was hoping to have my first product around 10am but I'm already starving at 6:30 so we'll see. For now I'm just trying to get a 750ml bottle of water down me in hopes that it will stave off the hunger! I'm self-employed so got up and did a few bits that needed finishing before I go away. Hoping to get everything done relatively early so I can go and get my nails done and spend the day pampering - hopefully it will distract me from the hunger!

My plan for the day is:

Breakfast (around 10am if I can hold off) - Strawberry shake (going to try a simple one first!)

Lunch (around 2pm) - Lemon bar

Dinner - I'm eating at a hotel with family this evening but will try and stick to high protein, low carb and a couple of G&T's.

I'm going to use the hotel gym for a workout Saturday morning too :)

Feeling a little apprehensive but ready to take action, so here goes!
 
Hope you had a good first day! and I hope you're having a lovely evening :)

I actually had a lemon bar for lunch as well, I love lemon desserts, not quite as good but not bad lol. I think my favourite bar so far is the chocolate caramel crunch, i really liked that.

Good luck for the weekend
 
Thanks Whimsical Daisy! I have a caramel crunch with my order so I'm looking forward to trying it :)

I'm back from my weekend away and the results were... mixed!

I had my shake and bar on Friday, then ended up not eating until around 9:30pm and having been up since 4:30, I was starving so ended up having a club sandwich.

The wedding day was ok as the meal was cold meats and salad. Drank quite a bit of wine but in general, it could have been worse. Then yesterday I had a McDonald's to stave off the hangover. So basically not on plan, but I knew today was my official starting day so I won't beat myself up.

The main thing is that I managed to last until 9:30pm on just a shake and a bar (and lots of water) so I think I'll be ok at managing the hunger. I'll make sure I eat my first product before I get so hungry that I can't see past something with bread in it!

Anyway, moving on...

Week 1, Day 1

Plan for today is:

Breakfast: Chocolate shake
Lunch: Caramel crunch bar
Tea: Will try the Exante spaghetti bolognese

I'm a bit apprehensive about the bolognese but think I best try it! I'll update later as to how I get on! To be honest it's so hot that I don't really want to eat a lot which is a bit of a blessing!

EDIT

So it's 6:30pm now and I'm finding this super hard. Not sure if it's the heat or just the sheer shock to my system but I'm absolutely starving and feel quite weak and headachey.

To help me out I'm moving to a Man Plan day just to try and stop myself from going crazy and binging this evening which I know could very well happen if I'm not careful! I'm being careful to choose low carb foods to make sure I don't damage my chances of getting into ketosis.

So the day in total will look a bit like this:

Breakfast: Chocolate shake (it was ok but I preferred the strawberry one)
Lunch: Lemon bar
Snack: Mango & passionfruit frappe
Tea - 100g chicken, 1 x egg, lettuce and cucumber (206kcal, 5g carbs)

I've also had 2ltrs of water and a Coke Zero.

Hoping having some 'real food' will help me to stay on track and that the man plan works for me. It's an exercise day tomorrow so will be eating real food tomorrow as well.
 
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Oh - I think you did absolutely the right thing. If the alternative is binging on carbs it's a no brainer really. Just take it one day at a time and adjust when necessary. I mean that's what we will have to do in "real life" i.e. after the diet has finished. Oh and I think you did pretty good at the weekend considering you were away at a wedding. If that was me I wouldn't have been able to list everything that I ate cause I would get sore hands from typing so much lol. Just remember it gets easier when you're in ketosis.
 
Thanks Whimiscal :) I definately feel like I did the right thing. The salad hit the spot and I wasn't hungry for the rest of the evening. I will be keeping track of how I get on and hope to reduce down to three products a day on none exercise days but will see how it goes! I didn't do too bad, luckily the wedding meal was quite healthy and they didn't have an evening do so there wasn't much bad stuff around! Still gained a few pounds though taking me a couple of pounds over my starting weight. That seems to have come off today though!
 
Week 1, Day 2

I've managed to hold my breakfast off until 9:30 today which is quite impressive for me! I've got a personal training session this evening so have adjusted my plan to eat before so that I don't faint in this heat which is genuinely a real worry for me today!

So the plan for today is:

Breakfast - Strawberry shake
Lunch - Caramel crunch bar
Snack (pre PT) - 100g chicken and an egg
Tea (post PT) - Exante spaghetti bolognaese

Will see how ravenous I feel after PT. If it's bad I'll maybe add some veg to the spaghetti bolognaese.

Plan to drink plenty of water too, I'm already 875ml down today. Here's to a successful day 2!
 
Hi Charlotte, how are you getting on with everything?

How is it going with your exercise? You are really inspiring me to get some sort of exercise plan started. I keep putting it off and I can always come up with an excuse but that has to stop now! I won't be able to do anything like what you're doing - not for a long while anyway.

How are your wedding plans coming along? You must be getting pretty excited about it all. Having something like that to look forward to is motivational but for me it was also a bit terrifying, there was absolutely no room for failure (well that's what I thought) Of course that wasn't true and in retrospect I can see that very clearly.

The first week is always pretty challenging and I hope it went well for you, good luck for the week ahead!
 
Hi Whimsical

Thank you for popping back! Fell off the diary waggon last week. All in all, it went well :) One of my bridesmaids was visiting from London to pick up her dress this weekend so I was a bit worried I would be derailed. I ate food, but tried to keep it low-carb and have managed a 5lb loss in week 1. I'm pretty happy with that considering I didn't have any exante products while my friend was here. I'm trying to keep it all on the down-low a bit as I'm sure most people expect me to fail and I don't want to give them the pleasure of being right!

The exercise is going well, I did three sessions last week and will do another this evening. That's so great to hear, I honestly feel so great and positive after I exercise (even if I don't during the exercise session!!) so I would 100% encourage you to start being more active :) I started with my PT in October and will admit it has taken me 7 months to get into the habit of doing relatively difficult workouts multiple times a week. But I knew if I tried to go all in at first it wouldn't stick. My advice would be to start small. I struggled a lot at the beginning because my fitness was terrible so I didn't push myself. I just upped my walking and did the odd low-impact gym class. Aqua aerobics was a saving grace in the early days. Then as the months went by I started to feel fitter and began pushing myself a bit more.

Yes, I do see what you mean about it being terrifying. I tried on my dress for the first time on Saturday. It looked lovely and was big (yay!) but it gave me that extra push to get a stone off by the time I have my proper fitting in August, really piling the pressure on myself now. It's all feeling very real now I must admit! We sat down to plan out all the outstanding tasks last night and there's a lot, so we will be very busy over the next few weeks! Hope everything is going well with you?

Going to try and stick to keeping my diary for the entirety of this week, if I could get another 5lbs off that would be amazing!
 
Week 2

So I'm back and determined to keep my week 2 diary! In week 1 I lost 5lbs. Which is pretty good considering I had a food weekend. Just shows if you make good food choices you can still achieve losses :)

I'm away for the night on Wednesday. We're going to Thorpe Park during the day, then to see Adele at Wembley and back to stay at Thorpe Park for another day of rides & fun on Thursday. I'll be taking shakes and bars with me but this could potentially mean eating a meal out. Will be trying my best to keep it low carb but will see what happens!

The plan for today:

Breakfast: I had a Toffee Caramel shake
Lunch: Lemon bar
Snack: Berries & Cherries shake
Tea: Chicken and egg salad

I'm heading to the gym this evening for a quick 40-minute cardio session so will definitely want to re-fuel when I get home. Depending on how many calories I burn at the gym I'll add some cheese / more chicken to my salad to make my calories up.

So here's to another successful week - I hope you're all smashing it!!
 
Congrats on the 5lbs loss - that is really fantastic especially if you went (slightly) off plan.

You sound crazy busy in a really good way. Thorpe Park, Adele, bridesmaid dresses and Wedding plans - I'm trying to work out if that would make the diet easier (no time to think) or harder (loads of temptations). I think as long as you stick in ketosis it's got to be easier. I've kind of put any social life on hold for the duration of the diet but I might need to rethink that, I think maybe your way sounds like more fun lol.

In my experience telling other people about a VLCD can be a real hit and a miss, Some people (sometimes the ones you least expect) can be amazingly supportive and others can be amazingly rude and try and catch you out - just my experience though. I haven't told anyone about this go on exante though - I just find it easier and if they turn around in a few months and are amazed at my (hopefully amazing) weight loss I'm just going to act all coy and say "yeah I did lose a few pounds" .

That's great about your dress being lovely, it's good you've already picked it out - you've got something to get you through the tough days.

Starting walking on Wednesday. Walkings the easiest exercise for me and when I did it before I felt fitter in a relatively short period of time. I have worked out three routes near my home (all between 3 and 3.5 miles) and I'm going to alternate them. I'll do that for a couple of weeks and then add something else in - maybe something to increase flexibility? I need to think about that. So every evening until the nights get darker that's where i'll be lol.

Well heres to tomorrow being a doozy!
 
Hi - how's everything going?
 
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