Minimize Me: 10 Diets to Lose 25 Lbs in 50 Days (9 page)

Monday 24th November to Friday 28th
November

Weight: 14 stone 3.5 lbs

The calorie-controlled diet is one of
the more widely-used and better-known diets. It’s popular because there are
absolutely no restrictions on what foods you can eat at all, as long as you
ensure that you stay under you daily limit. Even then, there is a little
flexibility whereby you can go slightly over one day as long as you make up for
it by staying under your limit the following day. It’s a diet I am familiar
with and, to be honest, fairly comfortable with, having been on it at least
five times in the past. People who know me may say that I’m a bit of a
control-freak, and they’d probably be right. Others have asked whether I suffer
from OCD and again, I can kind of see their point, so this diet should be
well-suited to me.

There is one particular frustration of
mine which tends to bring out the worst of both of the aforementioned
attributes, and that is poor timekeeping. I am meticulous about time, or to put
it more accurately, I am meticulous about being on time. Why has it suddenly
become acceptable to be late? Since when did "Let’s meet at 8" mean
"I’ll try my best to be in the vicinity by 8.15 and then, all going well
and with a bit of luck, I’ll come strolling in at twenty past with a cappuccino
in one hand and a rolled-up paper in the other"? I’ve often thought about
grabbing that paper and shoving it where the sun doesn’t shine but the OCD in
me is worried about ruffling the pages.

What makes lateness even more
frustrating for me is that I am always early. Without fail and without
question. So for me "Let’s meet at 8" becomes "If we’re meeting
at 8, I’d best leave by 6.30, and there’s a match on today, so the trains are
likely to be busy, so I’ll take an earlier train just in case. I won’t bother
drawing any money out en route as that will delay me, and even though I’ll
probably be early and would be appreciative of something warm to drink and something
decent to read, I definitely won’t stop and get a coffee or paper because I am
not an inconsiderate arsehole". It results in me arriving at 7.40, but
because the other person is so lax I end up waiting forty minutes instead of
twenty.

There are certain times when people just
can’t be late, like at a cinema or a football match. The film or game isn’t
going to wait for them, so suddenly we see a different side to them, as they
confidently stroll up with actual minutes to spare. For me, this is even more
frustrating as it’s simply proving that while they can be on time, they just
choose not to when meeting me! Nowadays, I just treat it as if it is a film or
a football game and I carry on regardless. There’ll be times when my friends
show up late for golf and I’m already on the seventh tee.

Calorie control is perfect for someone
like me as it removes all the uncertainty and ensures that everything is in
black and white. There are no grey areas whatsoever. Every single morsel of
food that you consume can be given a numerical value, and as long as you have
at the very least a pen and paper, that morsel can be tracked against a daily
total.

The formula is fairly simple. The lower
your daily total, the more weight you will lose. In health terms, low scores are
generally a good thing. Whether it is calorie consumption, body fat or even
cholesterol, the lower the score the better. I’ve always enjoyed sport, whether
it is playing or watching, and I’ll admit that at times I’ve been guilty of
being a little too competitive. Sports are all about scoring, whether it is
measured in points, goals, strikes or baskets – the higher the score the
better. It’s why I’ve never been a massive fan of golf. Why pay all of that
money and then spend the whole time trying to get round as quickly as possible,
using the fewest shots? Yes, I may always lose when I play golf, but I also
always get better value for money, so I ask you: who is the real winner? I use
the same strategy when out ten-pin bowling. While it does at least do the
honourable thing and reward the highest score, it once again punishes the
people who are good at it. Sure, you go ahead and get your strikes, people; I’m
happier going for spares, safe in the knowledge that I’m getting far better
value for money.

I’ve decided to use an app to track my
calories, mainly because I’m lazy. Using an app ensures that I don’t have to
carry a pen and paper everywhere I go and, thanks to technology, I don’t even
have to search or look up the food. All I need to do is aim the camera on my
phone at the barcode and it will automatically add the food to my food list for
the day. It can sometimes be difficult to spot the calories on the packaging of
some foods, so I have even found myself using the app to quickly check the
calories. As long as the barcode is visible, you don’t even have to pick the
item off the shelf – just scan and check. Be warned though – people will assume
you work in the shop and will inevitably ask you where the poppy seeds are.

Using an app also means that I can
easily set goals, and the best bit is that it will tell me what my daily target
should be. Of course you don’t need costly apps and fancy technology to find
out how many calories you should be consuming – you can easily find the
information you need on the internet. Be warned though, there is a bit of
science to it. As much as I love the NHS website for its sensible and practical
advice, making sense of what your daily calorie consumption should be is
certainly no walk in the park.

Check it out here –
http://www.nhs.uk/chq/pages/1126.aspx?categoryid=51

As with most of the other diets, I found
myself restricting what I ate in the morning in order to ‘save up’ calories for
later in the day. While this approach has clearly worked for me in terms of
shifting the weight, I know that it’s incredibly unhealthy and so I need to
ensure that I change my breakfast habits once this ridiculous challenge is
over. That said, I did have a little more than I usually would on the
calorie-controlled diet by allowing myself a piece of fruit and a healthy snack
bar. I’d usually wait as long as I could stand before devouring the bar and
washing it down with a hot cup of coffee (black of course – I don’t want to
waste those precious calories on milk) followed by either a banana or an apple.

The dates of the calorie-controlled diet
fell relatively kindly with the first day being a Monday and the last day being
a Friday. It meant that I could get into an established routine and not worry
about researching a new diet and making wholesale changes in the middle of the
working week. A lot of people actually diet in this way. They end up being very
careful during the week and then essentially take the weekend off. I don’t
think it’s a bad principle in truth, and I imagine it would work in a similar
way to the 5:2 diet. The important thing is that by being good for five days
and then doing what you want at the weekend, you are introducing an element of
control. Even if you don’t end up losing weight, you certainly wouldn’t put too
much on. Before the end of this book I need to find a way of ensuring that I
don’t get back into bad habits and then pile the weight back on. It would be
devastating to let all of that good work go to waste.

Lunches on the calorie-controlled diet
consisted of a combination of salads, sandwiches and jacket potatoes, each of
them recorded into the app on my phone. Every day after lunch I would check to
see how many calories I had left and then start to plan my evening meal. The
days when I had a jacket potato meant that I had fewer calories to play with,
so I simply adjusted my evening meal accordingly. I hadn’t managed to find time
to go food shopping at the start of the week, so I found myself making small
trips to the shops after work to pick up our food for that evening. The app
made it so easy because I could scan in the items as I shopped, and it meant
that I could make the appropriate choices, safe in the knowledge that I would
never go over my calorie limit. Well, almost never. On the Thursday, I did find
myself tucking into some biscuits that were left over from a gathering my wife
had hosted earlier in the day, and I went over my daily limit by 70 calories.
While it annoyed me at the time, it really wasn’t the end of the world, and I
simply made sure that I stayed under on the following day.

I didn’t feel hungry at all on the
calorie-controlled diet, even though I was having to restrict myself to only
1,500 calories a day, and I would go as far as to say that I actually enjoyed
it. It was the freedom of knowing that I could eat whatever I wanted and that I
was the one in charge. If I wanted to have dairy, I could. If I wanted caffeine
or chocolate, no problem. I made the choices from start to finish and it meant
for a far happier experience. Half of the battle with any diet is dealing with
the mental side of things, and as soon as you feel like you’re being deprived,
you get miserable, and when you get miserable all you want to do is eat the
things that you’re being deprived of. It’s a vicious circle.

On the Friday, I made a decision that we
would have a treat. My wife had passed her final OFSTED inspection, the last
piece of the puzzle that meant she was now a fully-qualified child-minder. I
was so pleased for her as she had worked so hard in the final few weeks in
order to ensure that she was fully prepared. Earlier on I talked about my
impeccable timekeeping, but the same can’t be said for my timing. I have a
history of making terrible decisions and always end up getting things wrong. If
I book a holiday, it will undoubtedly rain. Given a choice of queues, mine will
take the longest. If I buy raffle tickets, the people either side of me will be
guaranteed to win a prize. It’s why I’ve never bothered to invest money,
because I know full well that I would end up investing when the shares were at
their highest and lose a fortune as a result. I’m telling you all this to try
to explain why I ended up ordering a huge Indian takeaway just twelve hours
before my next weigh-in. I hope that the paragraph above goes some way to
explaining why I also then purchased and devoured a huge bar of Dairy Milk.

The following day I stepped on the
scales and was happy and relieved to be informed of a 2-lb weight loss. It was
a pleasant surprise as I didn’t feel like I had worked particularly hard to
achieve it, and of course the 2-lb loss meant that I had finally achieved my
goal of losing 25 lbs, with two diets and ten days to spare. I’ll admit that it
wasn’t quite the grand climax I had hoped for. In my mind I had pictured me
scrabbling around on the final few days trying anything I could to achieve
those extra few ounces to help me towards my goal. I was hoping that somehow
there might be a magical twist or a final reveal, but alas, it wasn’t to be.
It’s like a football team securing the league title with a few games to spare.
Sure, it’s a fantastic achievement, but it’s not quite the same as snatching
the title from your local rivals on the final day of the season is it?

Summary:

The calorie-controlled diet has better
flexibility than most diets and leaves you feeling like you’re in full control.
It’s the perfect diet if you feel like you can’t go without the odd luxury and
is a fantastic diet for control-freaks like me. The diet can be made even
easier if you decide to embrace technology, and I’ve proved that the odd
slip-up won’t derail things completely. Once again, I wouldn’t suggest that
this is a long-term solution to weight-loss and in fact my nutritionist, Louis,
discourages calorie-counting on the basis that people can easily become
obsessed. He says that a calorie is purely a unit of energy and so it is
actually far more important to know which food groups your calories are coming
from and whether you are balancing them correctly. He cites as an example the
fact that a Diet Coke has very few calories compared to an avocado, but which
should you be choosing for the sake of your health? Incidentally, I’ve booked a
holiday next year between the 5th and 12th of April, so if you’re thinking of
booking yours and are keen for good weather, you may want to steer clear of
those dates.

Starting Weight: 14 stone 3.5 lbs

Finishing Weight: 14 stone 1.5 lbs

Weight loss: 2 lbs

% of body weight lost: 1.0 %

Faffiness: 2/10

Difficulty: 2/10

Would I do it again? Yes

Total weight lost: 26.5 lbs