Day 20: Lunch

Cheating Again!!!

Today was the 75th Birthday of my grandmother-in-law, and we had thrown a surprise party for her.  My plan was to be good yesterday so that I could cheat today, but as you've seen from yesterday's posts, that didn't quite work out.  My plan was then to try to be good today, but that soon went to pot too!  Unfortunately, where I was helping out with organising on the day, I didn't diligently take snaps of everything that passed my lips, in fact hardly anything, but I'll try to give you an honest account!

Above is an example of the sort of thing that was in abundance and I can safely say I will have eaten around 10 of these mini treats.  I also had a glass of champagne and 2 pints of sparkling elderflower cordial, but the rest of the time stuck with cups of tea (it was a very hot day, 28 degrees centigrade, and it was non stop!).

There was also buffet food, which I ended up having for both lunch and tea.  I honestly can't tell you why there's no snaps of this, looking back I can't remember!  Must try harder next time.  They say with food diary logging, like the apps on your phone that track calories etc, that it's not the things you track that do the damage, it's the things you decide not to, as it gives you free reign.  This is the case here too, and there's less excuse as a little photo with your phone is quick and easy.

The buffet I had was mainly coronation chicken, sausages, some quiche and salad.  I did manage to steer clear of the breads and pastas.  I figured if I was going to be naughty, I wouldn't be wasting it on those foods,  I'd save it for the amazing puddings on offer!  Speaking of those, I think I probably had 3 bowls of Eton Mess!  If you haven't heard of it, it's a simple but delicious dish; meringue, strawberries and whipped double cream.

We'll see tomorrow what the damage is in terms of results!

Day 18: Breakfast

Scrambled eggs and roast gammon joint.

I'm almost entirely sure I took a photo of this, but cannot now find it uploaded at all.  I made the eggs in my parents microwave, and I realised how much better eggs are from the pan.  If you habitually use the microwave, I urge you to start making things in the pan and see how much better they taste.  This is true of many things, the things that come to mind most are scrambled eggs, porridge, and baked beans!  If you pushed me though there are probably several other things I can think of too.  Yes, it's more of a pain in the arse to wash up, but this has the added bonus of making you decide if you do really want that food!  We actually took the decision to give our microwave away to charity for health reasons.  I'm not 100% sure it's bad for your health, but I have read things either way; not so much from peer-reviewed scientific journals, but anecdotally from health literature.  When you couple the nicer tasting food with the potential risk it just made sense to us and I'm not sure we'll look back.

What was interesting about my visit to my parents was the fact that they have taken an interest in this project and that it is modifying their behaviour, even if it is only slightly.  To paint a picture, my parents are not the healthiest.  Both are sedentary, both used to be heavy smokers (Dad has now given up for a year), both have persistent niggling and serious health issues, and both have a relatively poor diet, due to my Mum's disinterest in cooking and their mutual interest in processed junk food!  I may well keep you posted with any progress on the parents front, they've certainly sat up and taken notice at the results, so we'll see!

Day 15: Snack

Handful of almonds.

No time for lunch again today.  This got me through without feeling too hungry.  

As I look back at this blog, I can't believe how many lunches I've missed!  This is not at all normal for me.  In fact everyone who knows me, knows me to be a pig when it comes to food.  I'm notorious for being able to polish off a lot, and to do it time and again.  Since I've changed to this more whole food and high protein and fat diet, my appetite is far more under control, which is great!  I'm not battling to eat less.

Progress Report!

So,

it has been two weeks.  I've been following as best I can, so it's time for an update and some clarifications.  My body measurements are:

Body fat:

• 17% (down from 19.3)

Weight:

• 79kg/12st6lbs/174lbs (down from 83kg/13st1lb/183lbs)

Waist: 

• 93cms/36 and a bit inches (down from 98cms/38 inches)

Some clarifications:

I said no calories from drink, yet I have been having cream in some coffee and tea, and I have had the occasional glass of red.  I'm trying not to get any other calories from drink, but tea and coffee is a step too far for me.  I just wouldn't be able to manage!  I don't feel like I need the caffeine high, I don't ever feel any effects from caffeine when I have it or when I have extended periods without.  It's just that I like the drinks.  They are also a very social thing, and when I'm meeting people and clients I think as a trainer sitting there with a cup of green tea is a bit of a social disconnect and gives people the impression of being a bit OTT.  Don't get me wrong it's the better thing to have and I do actually like it.  Half of my hot drink intake is very virtuous indeed, I've just chosen to stick with some tea and coffee intake.  I have the cream with them instead of milk as the sugar content is lower and therefore any potential insulin response is lower too, also it tastes nicer in my opinion.  Secondly, red wine.  I'm actually following Tim Ferris advice from the 4 Hour Body fairly blindly here.  He has done a lot of self experimentation and found the red wine didn't detriment his diet.  I'm not going mad with it, but if I find myself in a social situation I'm now choosing that over beers, spirits and white wine.

Final point:

All of this has been done with no exercise.  This has been on purpose to see what would happen and how I would feel.  I often hear the saying "it's 80% diet" being bandied about when it comes to weight loss, and I have to say I probably agree.  Doesn't matter how active you are if you're not controlling your blood sugar and your insulin activity.  That being said, being active is fun and it stops a raft of other problems, so I'm not diminishing its importance.

I am about to restart exercise and will be keeping an exercise journal that will mirror this nutrition blog.  It can be found at garethunderhill.blogspot.co.uk.  I hope to see you over there!

Day 14: Dinner

North African Squash & Chickpea Stew.

This is the start of a new idea for this project of mine.  I'm going to start sharing recipes I'm using and where I've got them from.  I'm a bit of a gadget geek and use technology a lot in my life to help me be productive and stay organised.  I decided I needed a bit of inspiration and we have a lot of cookery books in our house, most of which are under used.  The problem I find with cookery books is it's a lot of effort for general cooking to scour them for recipes that you want, can make with the ingredients you have and that won't take half a day to prepare.  I have started to photograph the recipe pages that work for this diet and that appeal to me.  I'll share them on here with you and they will be tagged recipes.  If it starts to get overwhelming in choice I'll start to add more specific tags.  For myself I'm using Evernote, which is a digital notebook of sorts.  I use it a lot!  I'm setting up a recipe notebook with specific tags for the type of food and ingredients so that I can search it by what I fancy or the ingredient that I want to use.  The other great thing about it is that it can store all sorts of formats; you can write notes, take pictures, record audio, or clip a web page.  I highly recommend doing it if you want to be successful at this (and many other things too!).

Day 11: Dinner

Roast lamb, new potatoes, broccoli, carrots, Yorkshire puddings, and stock.  Accompanied by a glass of red wine.

Out at my father-in-laws for a big family dinner.  I decided at the start of this project that I wouldn't be precious about it.  Nobody like that person who is a pain in the arse to feed and makes a point of letting everyone else know what's wrong with there diet!  That and the fact that Yorkshire puddings are one of my favourite things ever - my willpower couldn't take it!

Today was another day without lunch.  I'd been helping my father-in-law on a big clear up project and had been doing heavy lifting on a field in the middle of nowhere all day, truly brutal work.  I had drunk 3-4 litres of water and still felt slightly dehydrated as it had been a hot day, and I had taken a couple of handfuls of mixed nuts to try to keep me going, which it did just fine.

With dinner, I toyed with being good, but eventually gave in!  Although the rest of my day hadn't been a cheat at all, I decided I would make this my treat day and go all out, hence potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and fruit salad for pudding.  After that there was also some vanilla ice cream that wasn't pictured.  All in all very enjoyable!

Day 11: Breakfast

Scrambled eggs, cucumber, green beans, tomatoes and spring onions.

As much as I like this breakfast, I can see that I'm going to have to start searching for some viable alternatives.  I'm sure at some point soon I'm going to start craving something different!

Day 10: Dinner

O'Hagan's Sausages, sweet potato wedges, roasted peppers and broccoli.

I have an admission to make as well....  I actually had another sausage and a few more sweet potato wedges!  As you can tell from my post, I didn't manage to have any lunch today.  Just got too busy with work.  Pleasantly surprised at the fact that I managed to go through without feeling ravenously hungry.

Something that I've just realised is going to prove useful from this type of food diary being created is that it's quick and easy to review your food choices.  It's just struck me that I've eaten far too many sausages this week.  Will be making a concerted effort to reduce this, even though they are lovely!!

Cheat Day!!!!!!

Just weighed myself this morning, after having had my breakfast, which isn't ideal, but I am now 12st 7lbs, down from 13st 1lb.  That's 8lbs in five days!!!!  Next week I'll do a proper progress update with all my stats....

Day 4: Eating Out

Today was always going to be that bit harder as I had a business meeting in Bristol.  I had never been before so was keen to explore, but really wanted to stick to my intentions.  I've dabbled with foursquare before, but will use it everytime I eat out, so you can see where it was and if you want to join me on there, I'll be writing reviews and recommendations.  Lunch, was on a river boat restaurant called Spyglass, and I was very impressed!  Dinner was at Jamie's Italian in Clifton, and this is now a franchise of restaurants by famous chef Jamie Oliver.  Again, it was another lovely meal.  I was very happy, and I didn't break my diet!

The Diet: What, Why and How

So, what am I actually doing?  What are the rules and what can I eat?


As mentioned before, the key to this is actually just being more conscious of what we eat.  "Flash Dieting" is the process of stopping and considering what you're going to put in your mouth.  There's nothing quite like sharing it with the world to make you stop and reconsider!  The "what gets measured gets managed" cliché is what I'm leveraging here.  If you want to find out more about this the 4 Hour Body book and blog by Tim Ferriss is a great resource, and there's also a very interesting community called Quantified Self.


However, the devil is in the detail as they say, and most people want some basic instructions.  As I mentioned before the main battleground is that of refined carbohydrates and sugars.  My aim is to reduce these down to as little as possible, similar to an Atkins or Paleo diet approach and as recommended in books such as The Diet Delusion by Gary Taubes, Body by Science by Dr. Doug McGuff.  I'm taking some of the advice from 4 Hour Body as well as the amount of self-experimentation Tim has done is spectacular and pretty inspiring!


So here's my rules:

• No "white" carbs
• No grains
• No fruit
• No dairy
• No calories via drink
• One "cheat" day per week

"What's left?" I hear you ask...  My diet is primarily made up of:

• Meat and fish
• Lentils, beans and pulses
• Vegetables
• Nuts and seeds
• Herbs and spices
• Water, teas and coffee

"Why would you do that!?!"

Well, the aim is hormonal control.  Most people have heard of insulin and associate it with diabetes.  This hormone regulates blood sugar levels, and in short, when it needs to it will convert excess sugars to fat.  At the same time, it will lock down fat metabolism.  This means that when you are active (even in the gym on the cross-trainer in your "fat burning" zone!!) you will not use fat as an energy source as the body is trying to use up the excess sugar to power your activity.  If your aim is to lose weight, it simply won't happen with insulin active in your system!

The other things about this approach mean that your energy levels and vitality will be better regulated during the day, which is something most of us struggle with.  It breaks the cycle of eating refined carbs, feeling tired and hungry, eating more refined carbs and caffeine as a pick-me-up, so on and so forth.  This puts a lot of strain on your endocrine system and therefore your health.  Speaking of health, the ability to reduce your risk of diabetes, obesity and subsequent heart disease can only be a good thing, right?  Also, when you consider most people's food allergies they are related to higher concentration of sugars in processed foods.  Gluten intolerance?  Think refined white grains.  Lactose intolerance? Think pasteurised dairy products (people often find they can tolerate raw dairy, because the heating process used in pasteurisation degrades the milk proteins and increases the availability of the milk sugar "lactose").

In order to control insulin response it is worth considering two measures; glycaemic index/load (GI/GL) and Insulin Index (II).  These measures are of the speed with which foods affect blood sugar levels and the speed of insulin response respectively.  White carbs and grains are out due to their high GI/GL scores, whilst dairy is out because despite not scoring too highly on GI it is disproportionately high on the II scale.  Calories via drink are out as by the very nature of them being in liquid form they are easy to digest, and therefore are as above.  This applies to fruit juice particularly, which many people consider to be healthy.  The fact is that by juicing the fruit you remove all the fibre and leave mainly the fruit sugar fructose in particularly high concentrations.

Fructose is particularly bad for you as it is metabolised in much the same way as alcohol.  This puts tremendous strain on the liver, and some research suggests it can be responsible for liver cirrhosis just like alcohol.

Cheat day:

This is important!  Mainly for your sanity.  I don't know about you, but if I were to say I'm never going to eat a cake, bread or pancakes ever again, I'd be setting myself up to fail.  Never going to happen.  Having a cheat day once a week allows you to be good the majority of the time, but not deprive yourself of your favourite naughties entirely.  It also prevents your body going into a starvation mode and slowing your metabolism down.  This concept comes from the 4 Hour Body, which goes into more detail about it and is a great all round resource.  I agree with it entirely.  I will implement it, but possibly be a little more flexible.  If I have a particular social event on a day that isn't my designated cheat day, I'll swap it.  This isn't license to end up with 2, 3 or 4 cheat days a week on particularly social weeks though.  Stick to the plan as best you can and prioritise.  I'm not a fan of being precious or evangelical in a social setting, so do the best you can, and offset losses.  If it's unavoidable to have two cheat days in a week, then the following week don't have any.

That's the plan, let's see how it goes!  Questions and suggestions are welcome as always.

My thoughts on food

I've read about and studied nutrition over many years as part of my degree and work.  Up until recently I've found that what I learned either had little practical application or fell into the common sense category.  I could tell you a fair amount about the biochemistry of food metabolism, but for whatever reason it had never made me modify my eating habits for the better.  With hindsight, I have a nagging suspicion that I never truly believed in all that I was being taught.  I've read several books of late that have sparked my interest, ignited my passion and make total sense to me on every level.  These books are:

• The Great Cholesterol Con by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
• The Diet Delusion (UK)/Good Calories, Bad Calories (US) by Gary Taubes
• The 4 Hour Body by Timothy Ferriss

Some fairly sensationalist titles in there, but they are great reads; can get a little heavy, but only in parts, and all have been impeccably researched.  What they all have in common is the fact that they are derisory of the nutritional and medical advice that is mainstream at present, and of the system that has embodied it.

To cut a long story short, they emphasise the of psychology of eating and our relationship with food, and most importantly they discuss sugar.  I am utterly convinced, as are they, that sugar is the worst thing in our diet, not fat.  It is sugar that has been manipulated and increased most through the recent years of food processing, and it is sugar that is making us all fat.

All that being said, I love sugar in all its wonderful forms!  That's partly why I know it's so true.  Think about it, when you crave something what is it you crave?  It's certainly not a juicy steak or tuna mayo despite the fact that I love both those things.  For me it's usually cakes, biscuits or bread; foods that are highly processed and very high in easily digestible carbohydrates, or sugars for short.

This is the battleground for my healthy eating project.  I aim to be more conscious of what I eat and to commit to that behaviour in the long-term, hence the flash diet project.  I also aim to reduce my intake of processed foods and refined carbohydrates.  I will be following the dietary advice laid out in the books by Gary Taubes and Tim Ferriss.  I've had a go at this before, and was pleasantly surprised both by the results and the ease of continuation.  I can't honestly tell you when or why I drifted from it, I think it may have been Christmas, but that is why I need to tackle the psychology.

Wish me luck!  And share your stories, thoughts and questions with me.  The more the merrier as far as I'm concerned!

My starting place

As mentioned, I'll be updating my body measurements so that you (and I) can see how effective my behaviour change has been.  If you are thinking of doing this yourself, I recommend at the very least taking photos and circumferences.  If you can, take a measure of body fat percentage as well.  You can obviously save all this and track it yourself, you can do a blog like this, or bodybuilding.com has a fantastic tracking service called BodySpace.  Don't be put off by the name of the website, there are plenty of people on the site just looking for body transformation, be that increasing muscle or far more commonly, just losing weight.  It is a fantastic and large community and allows you to post photos, body stats, log goals and workouts and host a personal blog.  You can either click this link to be taken to the site or view my profile on it.


I am 32 years old and 5ft 10in.  I am averagely active, but that has just started going up again.


Here's my starting scores:

• Body Fat %: 19.3
• Weight: 83kg or 13st 1lb or 183lbs
• Waist: 96cm or 38"
• Chest: 103cm or 40.5"
• Upper Arms: 33cm or 13"
• Thighs: 62cm or 24"

My goals are:

• Body Fat %: 10
• Waist: 32"

The beginning

This is the start of my experimentation with "flash dieting".  I have been reading through various resources (which I will share later), and have seen it said that taking a photo of your food can be a more effective diet intervention than keeping a food journal.  There are two reasons for this; the first is that it's just less hassle and the second is that it is a process that takes place prior to the food being eaten.  This in itself makes the act of eating more conscious and therefore makes you consider the pros and cons of the box of Krispy Kremes you're about to devour before you actually do it!


I will be posting pictures of all the food to pass my lips as well as fortnightly body measurements in order to show my progress.  The point of this is primarily to help me keep on the straight and narrow, but also to be able to share my experiences and findings with others in order to be able to help them.  It should be said that I am a personal trainer and sport scientist, and that I am aiming to follow a specific diet and exercise regime.  The details of all my research, findings and thoughts can be found at my other blog called "The Rehabilitation of a Personal Trainer", which should hopefully be associated with this one!


It should also be said that despite being "in the industry", I'm the same as the next person.  I love food, both good and bad, I am constantly striving to be better at this and many other things and often feel I'm not managing that particularly well!  Knowing what you should be doing and actually doing it are two entirely different things.  I'm a Dad of three, trying to set up a new business and trying to finish off a masters degree, and when I struggle for energy it seems I eat like shit, despite knowing this is the worst thing for me.  I eat for pleasure, not for fuel, and I need to address the psychology of my eating behaviours.


Any comments, questions, things you think I should look at or flash diets that you are doing yourself, please let me know in the comments!  I look forward to sharing my journey with you....