What, no weigh in?

Indeed. Tuesday this week was the day after a food day, and although I didn't stuff my face or eat lots of rubbish, it was all fairly stodgy and there was quite a lot of bread eaten. I thought about weighing in on Wednesday morning instead but in the end decided not to. The reasoning was that as I was 19 stone 1 on the nose last week, weighing in and still seeing 19 stone something (which seemed a possibility after Monday's consumption) rather than 18 stone something would have been thoroughly irritating and may have triggered a protracted sulk.

So, here I am, now on week six of the protein waters and still pretty much sticking to it. Mind you, I ate an orange this evening rather than have one of the PWs. I was starving! I bought some casein protein on Monday in the BX and it just doesn't seem to satisfy me as much as the whey protein I've been using. I tried alternating Designer Whey and this Optimum Nutrition stuff but it hasn't really helped. It might just be a hungry time of month, although I am only around mid-cycle so I shouldn't yet be feeling too terribly hungry. I thoroughly enjoyed that orange, for what it's worth.

Himself is off work this week. We're supposed to be sorting out the garage but haven't done too much as of yet. There has been some stuff removed, but really only additional stuff that I'd put in there (a few bags of stuff out the old camper and a couple of rugs - we've clearly got a mouse problem in the garage!), a folding bed. I've put the bikes in the back garden under a tarpaulin for now to get them out the way. Plan is to make room then assemble the tool bench and bring the personally owned tools down from his work so they can be stored until we move. The problem is going to be making room.

Today I went to the DIY store and bought twenty packing boxes and more bubble wrap. I have three big rolls of bubble wrap now, the theory being you can never have too much bubble wrap. I'm thinking given all the blankets, quilts and clothes we have that I may go back to the BX and get some of the storage bags you vacuum all the air out of to make them much smaller, which will help cut down on the amount of space all of that takes up. Tomorrow I will likely start packing up the spare bedroom which has most of my stuff in it, as I know what's what in there and what can be kept and what thrown out.

When Himself goes back to work next week I can start on the living room - if I get the back room sorted out before then, I may start on the basement. Oh, that will be so much fun.

I'm feeling pretty good weight wise today. I hate the fact that it is such a slog to get the weight off, but there you go - realistically I've been losing at a pretty good rate over the last few weeks so I can't be too annoyed about it. And I have only got five weeks under my belt! It's odd that I should be feeling so bouncy about it because I had a bit of a splurge last night. Had a tuna Subway for lunch/dinner in late afternoon and had three or four pieces of dark chocolate Toblerone and a large (not huge) bag of Cheetos (Flaming Hot, thanks, if you're buying) over the course of about six hours in the evening. Very enjoyable!

I don't often eat that sort of thing, but I don't tend to deny myself if that's what I feel like eating. Tomorrow will be probably steak and salad for dinner; Sunday I think I will be making a Danish dish involving sliced pork belly, potatoes and parsley sauce. I'm going to have a big omelette with bacon, peppers, spinach, onion and mushroom for breakfast tomorrow. I can't bloody wait!

Four weeks of Alternate Daily Fasting

Today marks four weeks since I began the 1-Day Diet; if you're not aware of what that entails, it's quite simply eating one day and the next drinking seven to nine protein waters instead of taking in food.

I'm not due to weigh in until tomorrow morning, and today is a protein water (PW) day, so I will break down the losses I've recorded then. Unfortunately I didn't weigh myself before I started, but my estimate would be that I was around the twenty stone mark again.

While the author of the book, Jennifer Jolan, reckons that a typical loss over the first month for many with a lot of weight to lose is 20-35 pounds, I am not going to see anything like that rate of loss. I'm fairly certain of that; I'm expecting to find tomorrow morning that I am averaging around 2.5-3 lbs a week off. Of course, it depends on whether I am weighing in the morning after a PW day or a food day; after a PW day there appears to be at least a 3 lbs loss. After a food day, a little over a pound. I've really not been doing this for long enough to say with any certainty, though.

To be honest, even if it does settle down to giving me a one to two pound average loss each week, I will probably still continue on with it. It's easy, I'm not hungry on the PW days and I am finding that my appetite is less, I get fuller quicker and I am more likely to choose healthier options on food days than I was previously.

I suppose I've answered the question of whether or not I intend to continue on with the ADF long-term with my previous paragraph! Overall I'm very happy with it. I seem to be reasonably healthy, the change in shape is noticeable to others as well as to me, my clothes fit better and I have lost almost a dress size in just a month. I'd hope to lose at least a couple more stones between now and the end of August; if the average does settle to around two pounds a week that should be achievable. I have sixteen weeks left, so at two pounds a week that would be 32 pounds, or two stone four pounds. I was 19 stone 3 last Tuesday morning, so I think depending on what tomorrow's result is I could reasonably expect to hit 17 stone by the time we leave for Florida.

That will be the lightest I've weighed in almost eighteen months. Still a stone and a half over my lowest weight in years, but not an unfamiliar weight for me. I could well be back to my lowest weight by Christmas, if I can keep this going, you never know! That would be pretty amazing, though I am not really expecting it. All I can do is my best.

Wednesday Morning update

1.2 pounds lighter this morning, after a PW day yesterday. Happy with that.

Went shopping with the neighbour earlier. She's in her mid-80s and has a few mobility issues as a result, so I have been mowing the lawn for her for the last few years. As her pain issues are worsening of late, I also take her shopping from time to time. She can walk there using her late husband's wheeled walker, but the walk back after being on her feet for ninety minutes she finds very painful.

Picked up a couple of pairs of Capri pants as it was gloriously hot and sunny. The clouds immediately came over. I was unsure what size to get...I knew my 50s from last year were tight, and that the jeans I picked up in Aldi were a 52 and are getting baggy as I lose weight, but the 52s that were out of the packaging looked quite small. I picked up a pair of 54s and a pair of 52s, figuring I could always take them back if they didn't fit. The 54s fit okay; they're baggy round the waist but that's normal for me. On that basis I haven't tried the 52s, but I am fairly certain they won't go near me. Oh well, something else to slim into!

I forget to mention that I bought a dress yesterday. We had to go to the biggest supermarket to replace a kitchen item, and I saw a lovely geometric print black and white wrap dress. They didn't have a 52/54 but I felt that that might be a touch on the large side, so picked up a 48/50 (that's a UK 20-22). It very nearly fits perfectly, there's just a bit too much wodge left on my left hip. The dress drapes beautifully on the other side of my midsection, but seems to cling rather too lovingly to my left hip and the top of my left thigh. I reckon half a stone or so should see it fit fine, though. Another month, tops.

Anyway, just a quick update for now.

Weigh in Day!

Well, Auntie Flo is still hanging around, I've had two niggly migraines and yesterday was a food day that involved three scoops of ice cream from a proper ice cream place, 50 g of Whole Nut and two burgers in a giant bread bun along with four crispy cooked slices of pork belly, so I wasn't expecting great things.

1.2 lbs down.

That is really quite impressive, considering all of the above, so I'm happy!

Himself has just helped me make an Excel spreadsheet. This will show my weight, whether I've lost or gained, my current BMI and my target weight for the week if I am losing two pounds a week. I think Excel is far, far too complicated. But that's just me; it's uncomfortably like maths, algebra in particular. Add in the fact that I don't really understand how spreadsheets work and just know what I want them to do, and it is really rather a pain in the proverbial.

Obviously enough, today is a PW day. We went out to dinner tonight. He had two sausages, potato salad, bread and mustard. I had a bottle of still mineral water over lemon.

I cannot believe I sat there and watched him eat! And, of course, every time I open the fridge to get my cold water out for a PW or a drink, I am assailed by the smell of last night's left over burgers and pork belly. They will not survive the morning, tomorrow, I fear!

I'm going to check my weight tomorrow morning, too, see how it looks after a day on the PWs just to see if it really is working. I haven't seen the massive losses Jennifer Jolan promises - unless I lost 11 pounds my first week! That's assuming my recorded losses of 3.8 lbs and 1.2 lbs mean a possible 3.8 lbs off next week, that is to say, because that's the only way I am going to have lost 20 lbs. I don't think I had that kind of loss in my first week.

Anyway, the weight is dropping, so I am happy. I'm certainly prepared to stick with it for a while longer. I'd like to say until we go to Florida, but I make no promises.

The downside to sleeping like a teenager yesterday

...is the sleepless night that follows.

The upside to that, though, is that I had Himself out the door by 7 am and breakfast already well underway by the time he left. Said breakfast consisted of one sliced tomato, a handful of spinach, half a punnet of mushrooms, onion, bacon, one whole egg and a dollop of egg white and some low fat grated cheese. Two or three portions of veggies in one gorgeous omelette, devoured by 7.25. Lots of protein, too. That should keep me going for a fair while longer!

The sun was shining at dawn. It's still shining now. This means that later on today I can finally get the grass cut in our back garden and our lovely neighbour's garden, too. Then a quick nip round to the front to get the grass mown out there, too. I need to pay some attention to our box hedge out there as well, it seems to have an infestation of some kind of moth larvae and is looking very sorry for itself.

I'm planning a Greek salad for lunch, but realised that I forgot to buy cucumbers when I was shopping on Saturday. I've no spring onions, either. Fortunately, there's a very new greengrocers opened within a five minute walk from the house, so I shall walk over there later. That takes me past the outdoor swimming pool and I can check and see when it will open for the season at the same time. I don't think it can have opened yet as usually they trumpet it on the front page of the local magazine which is published weekly and pushed through the letterbox on a Friday.

I want to start walking again, too, if I can fit that in, as my legs are wobbly as anything and really need toning up. It's also good for my stress levels and my blood pressure, and besides, I love being out in the fresh air. Yes, gardening will do that, too, but I want to do some exercise of a more formal nature besides. Ten minutes to and from the shops isn't really cutting it on that front. I suppose the gardening on top will make up for it to a degree, but still....

Even had I managed to sleep last night, I was still needing to visit the bathroom every forty-five minutes or so till around 4 am. That's lessened now, happily, though I've downed half a litre of water already and am contemplating a coffee as I type. I am not completely caffeine free, but I do avoid it for the most part on a PW day. It should buck me up a little, too, I am starting to feel a touch sleepy.

I started a new crochet project yesterday afternoon - I've a pregnant friend who had her gender scan on Saturday and is having her second baby boy later in the year. Very exciting for her! I'm doubly pleased because before their first boy arrived they'd had two unsuccessful IVF attempts, then discovered they'd managed it on their own. And that turned out to be no fluke as they've done it again! Another friend of many years has also found herself expecting despite medical opinion that it was never going to happen, so it's been a grand few months on the baby front.

I shall be blogging about the crochet project on my other blog, later.

Happy Sunday!

Weekends are a little bit odd when you're following an Alternate Daily Fasting programme. One day every weekend involves eating no food whatsoever, so Himself is finding that he doesn't get a cooked breakfast one day of each weekend. I do make food for him, of course I do, and I would quite happily cook toast and bacon for him to eat in front of me, it doesn't actually bother me at all. 

Today, though, I had another niggling, lurking migraine that meant I slept for almost fourteen hours. I felt like a teenager again, and thanks to Flo I have the bad skin and the greasy hair to go with that feeling! The poor chap had to fend for himself first thing, so he made some microwave popcorn. He even fed the cats. I made him a couple of rounds of peanut butter sandwiches, then for dinner he just wanted macaroni and cheese. (Must put some more on the shopping list).

I haven't had time to down seven to nine protein waters, as I hadn't on Friday, so I've had six and doubled the amount of powder in the last one so technically that's the same as having seven. I have been to the loo so many times I'd put a racehorse to shame, and my rings are spinning around my fingers as a result. 

Still no Coke Zero - that's four days now, I think. Can't quite believe that, I thought that stuff was a permanent fixture in my life. There's about 36 cans sitting in the dining area, so I may drive over to Himself's work and give it to the guys in the shop, as at least two of them drink diet soda. (Excuse the Americanism). Not much point in having it in the house if it isn't going to get drunk, and it removes any temptation that there might be. Oddly enough, I haven't been craving it. I prefer water at the moment, usually with lime juice squeezed in (need some more squeezy lime juice, too!) 

Can't wait for weigh in on Tuesday. Not expecting to see a huge loss as tomorrow is a food day, so I may do a confirmation weigh in on Wednesday morning as well and see what the scales say then, too. I think I started this on April 15 or 16 so the month will be up a week Tuesday; of course I don't know how much I lost the first week, but it will be interesting to see how much I've managed to lose over the three weeks on from that. 19 stone 7.4 was the first recorded weight, 19 stone 4.2 the next, so I would love to see at least another six pounds gone by the time the month is up. 

I sat down and worked out the other night that I had 119 days or 17 weeks in which to lose 42 pounds, if I want to drop three stone and be 16 stone 4 by the end of August. That's about 2.5 pounds a week, which is really a lot to aim for, but if you don't aim high you get nowhere. Looking at it another way, it's equivalent to losing a hair over ten pounds a month for the next four months. I don't feel daunted by the thought of doing that, because I know fine well I managed to drop four stone from May 22 to November 1 three years ago when I started the previous WW plan. 

I think it's entirely possible; if I don't get there, at least I know that I was around 18 stone the last time my sister-in-law saw me, so if I am lighter than that by half a stone to a stone she may actually notice a difference. And who knows, the weight may even fall off quicker than I'm aiming for? (Pigs might fly, too, but remember, aim high!)

The 1-Day Diet - progress has been recorded

I can't quite remember whether I mentioned that, prior to starting the 1-Day Diet, I hadn't dared step on the scales and intended to go by the fit of two pairs of too-small Capri pants I have as to whether I'd lost weight or not?

Well. I didn't dare weigh myself before starting. I have two pairs of German size 50 Capri pants, one pair which I could wriggle into and almost fasten up and one pair which were nowhere near going up, let alone fastening. After two weeks, I can get into the pair I could almost fasten up, and indeed fasten them. I dare not sit down, but I can do up both buttons and the zip. The blue pair are still maybe three inches shy of fastening, but getting closer. There's definitely a fair bit less tummy to the fore and evidence of my waist reappearing.

I did weigh myself after the first week; as I started on a Monday morning, I weighed in the following Tuesday so as to record a full week of losses. Whatever I may have weighed when starting, I was 19 stone 7.4 lbs a week later. You may imagine, given that Jennifer Jolan reckons you can lose 20-35 pounds in your first month, that I was very probably close on 20 stone, if not a little more. This Tuesday I was 19 stone 4.2 lbs, a respectable but not jaw-dropping 3.2 pounds lighter.

I think I will try and do an Excel spreadsheet to record all this stuff. I'm pretty sure Himself can help me with that, he's rather good at that sort of thing. That way I can have a nice visual record of my progress. Yes, I think I will do that, after I have a shower.

I do realise I blogged about this earlier on, a little, but I don't remember putting it all in the one post, so...there you go.

Feeling empowered!

I've just cancelled my WeightWatchers Online subscription, and do you know what? I feel absolutely fine about it!

For those who may read this and who are unaware, WW UK has made a recent addition to the site blog system: any blog post by any member may be shared on Facebook or Twitter by anyone at all. I could copy, say, terrymurray's blogs to Facebook or Twitter and she mine, were we so inclined (we are not). Many, many members have complained about this to the WW team, and the constant refrain is 'We're working on it'.

Well, work away by all means, but you ain't getting any more of my money while you're working on it.

As for the weight loss, when I weighed in on Tuesday morning I'd lost 3.2 pounds. Not that much considering I've been following the 1-Day Diet and thus practising alternate daily fasting, but when you think that I was due a visit from Auntie Flo (she arrived yesterday morning, along with a migraine) which can mean a 7-9 pound gain, pretty damn good. We shall see what next Tuesday brings; it may be Wednesday when I record my weight as Monday this week was a PW day and Tuesday a food day; next week Monday will be a food day, so I may weigh more than I will on Wednesday after a PW day. If you see what I mean!

I will continue to blog here. I may not do so as often as on WW as I tend to forget about this site! Perhaps if I blog often enough I will eventually get an icon on my home page on Chrome to remind me. Ha ha.

Right, off to the WW site I go to do a quick 'ta ra then, I'm off' blog and redirect those who are interested this way!

Musings on weight gain triggers, and keeping weight loss going long-term

jaymary1's blog about a friend's granddaughter has led me to thinking about certain things that have been known to trigger weight gain for me. The psychology of it all is so...uncertain, I suppose. I wonder if us fatties in general have certain psychological traits in common?

All I can tell you is, that if someone had said to me 'You'll never fit into any of our wedding dresses, dear, you're far too large', no matter how well-meaning (or correct!) they may have been, I would have been devastated. And I'd have drowned that devastation under a mountain of crisps and chocolate and cake. In other words, it would in no way have been the kick up the derriere I needed to lose weight in order to perhaps fit into a wedding dress, it would have had the complete opposite effect.

Losing weight is such a personal journey, and we all come to it in our own time and in our own way. It has to be the right time for each of us - and it has to be our decision. That's very much my experience of it, anyway.

For over a year, I have been messing around, more often off a diet than on one. The weight has gone up - presently I'm three stone or so heavier than I was when I completely lost the plot after the awful plateau and gave up altogether, though I have been up and down within that period of time. I've been anywhere from 17 stone something to closing in on 20 stone, if not just above it (I possibly was two weeks ago, we shall see how much I've lost this week when I weigh in on Tuesday). But I've never had that impetus, that burning urge to get on and lose weight that I had at the outset.

Until something reached out and grabbed my attention. It seemed too simple, too easy, to be true, but on the face of it it has worked for other people. Interested, I gave it a try. Whether I lose lots of weight following the 1-Day Diet or not, I have at least finally been able to string together almost two weeks of following a plan.

So many of us have hit a plateau, lost lots of weight and just stuck. Some of it is about being at a weight where we are happy: we look normal, we can shop in normal people shops instead of shops for fatties; we move more easily, breathe more easily. Some of it is about the boredom and frustration that entails when you realise you have spent eighteen months to two years slogging away to get to this point, and there is still a long way to go, the weight loss has slowed right down or stopped altogether and it just isn't easy to carry on any more.

There's a feeling of resentment that you can't eat what you want to in the quantities you want to. Okay, ProPoints is supposed to mean you CAN do that, but even the restriction of pointing and tracking and having to be reasonably sensible becomes irksome. One day off track can be planned for, and when your head is in the right place having a blow out can actually be good for you: in point of fact, I used to advocate that very thing! Point is, if your head ISN'T in the right place, getting back to it the next day can seem like more trouble than it is worth.

You start thinking that another day or two won't hurt. Taking a little time off to relax and enjoy where you're at won't do any damage. Problem is, it's never just a little time. No matter how legitimate the reason, you fall off the wagon for longer than a week, say, you're pretty much stuffed. Good habits disappear, and before you know it you've regained a big chunk of what you'd sweated blood to lose.

This is where mixing it up becomes important. I am at the point now where my frustration with WW is such that I prefer to try something different. Perhaps if I'd tried something different a year or so ago, I'd be closing in on goal now, not looking at seven stone to lose. Then again, I wasn't in the right frame of mind to keep on losing, because I tried other things! I bought in to the hypnosis recordings, the think yourself slimmer hype, I tried SW, I tracked via calorie counting sites.

I couldn't sustain any of these alternatives, no more than I could continue to follow WW. I'd lost it, lost the drive to lose and continue losing. It had just...gone.

I'd been in the zone for so long, never doubting that I could get to goal. I was seen by some as being very likely to get to goal, I had the right mindset, I was psychologically ready to lose the excess weight and I was doing the right things to get to goal. Losing that spark, that drive, that headspace, was a huge shock.

If there were a magic bullet, a way to keep that weight loss magic, an easy way, wouldn't it be wonderful? That is the secret, I think, for those of us with many stones to lose.

While I appreciate the efforts WW has made to rejig ProPoints, there's something about it that for me just plain does not work. What, I don't know. I can't analyse that sufficiently. Yes, it works for lots of you. Congratulations. However, I lost most of my weight on the previous plan. I've actually never followed a WW plan that worked less well for me than ProPoints! What is with that, anyway?

I suspect that the secret to the 1-Day Diet lies in that it is very much like having the ability to Wendy. (If you are new to the concept, you eat less one day and more the next - you could carry points over to the next day, you see, or later in the week, whereas now you would have to do that with your weeklies). Time was, if you fancied a treat, you either saved for it or you splurged and then made up for it over the next few days. Because you could only splurge or save 12 old points, you were less likely to over-indulge, and naughty treats were just that, treats.

ProPoints doesn't work like that, to me. It encourages the daily consumption of treats, rather than teaching you to treat them as occasional things. You have X number of daily points that you MUST eat, and the weeklies are hived off for you out of the total amount of points you have for the week. I dislike this. I can't see it in the same light as before - I used to think it was much more flexible, but actually I think it isn't, in a way.

I can't undereat one day and have more the next; I can only have my usual dailies, which I must eat and use weeklies if I choose. 49 weeklies equals 7 extra dailies or save them for one big splurge or have more one day than another. I think that gives less sensible flexibility and encourages over-consumption of cr@p.

The idea of fruit being free is another bad thing. If you have two bananas, an apple and an orange and some grapes, you're talking about 450 calories or thereabouts - roughly 11 ProPoints if you were accounting for them, assuming a basic value of 40 cals per PP. Do that every day and you've eaten an extra 3,150 calories - that's almost enough to gain a pound, or prevent loss of a pound.

When I had to count points for fruit I'd have one, at most two, pieces a day. I ate far more vegetables and salad stuff instead. Fruit leads to insulin spikes, it's a source of concentrated sugar and your body responds just as it would to any other form of sugar. Glycaemic index based diets probably work because they balance sugar intake and insulin response; Atkins and South Beach do it by reducing carbs right down, with Atkins banning all fruit initially and discouraging high intake later on.

Anyway. Just some thoughts about various things that have been wandering around my brain for the last few months!

Hello, Blog, how have you been? Best get caught up, eh?

Well! Where to begin, where to begin....

I suppose, given that this is primarily a blog about my weight loss, I should start there.

Haven't weighed myself in months. This time last year, I'd gone up from the low 16s to the low 18s and was wandering up and down between 17 stone 12 and 18 stone 4. I did indeed come down with the lurgy after my last post and was sick for almost a month. Actually last year was pretty grim as it started with flu and ended with bronchitis in late November (which I had again in March of this year!) Anyway, while I was sick I didn't bother with pointing and tracking at all, and just kind of slid out of the habit. And so the weight went on. And went on. And went on.

At one point I saw 19 stone 10 on the scales. I got it back to the high 18s but then wobbled up and down past 19 stone.

In August last year, I decided enough was enough and started exercising my ass off again. I was out walking every day, anywhere from 3 miles to 7 or 8 miles, depending on how much time I had and how I was feeling.  I did an 11 km walk in early September in a little over two and a quarter hours, which I was very pleased with, especially as it was in Heidelberg and took us up and down some hills.

And then, on September 17 last year, my husband had a stroke. It was sudden and out of the blue and very frightening, but he's still here and pretty much back to normal. There's some residual difficulty with movement on the left side but that is getting better all the time; he's still having therapy four times a week and that helps, though he does grumble about it and at times can't see the point in it as it often leaves him feeling sore. He's back at work full time after four months off and a phased return over two and a half months and looking forward to retiring in August.

Anyway, he was in a local hospital for two and a half weeks immediately afterwards, and then spent another six weeks in a rehab clinic a half-hour drive away. Nursing levels on hospital wards at charity-funded hospitals in Germany are on a par with NHS wards in the UK, it appears, so I was spending ten to twelve hours a day, every day, at the hospital with him. I took on the bulk of his personal care and made sure he ate and drank enough besides. I ate a lot of canteen food - salads some days, sandwiches on others, occasionally a cooked dinner at lunchtime if I fancied something on the menu and got down there in time. There was chocolate from the shop or a vending machine, or a cake in mid-afternoon some days if I was flagging; often it was an excuse to get away from the ward for even five minutes.

The rehab clinic was much different in some ways. The food was very good, similar to the hospital though the salads weren't as good (who'd have thought it!). The problem really was the cakes. Oh my word, the cakes. Lots of cakes, different cakes, fantastic cakes. I had cake most afternoons, in fact. Sometimes I would have a nice big dinner and then have a cake at tea time with my husband. The food on the ward wasn't so good...German hospital food is grand if you're used to how Germans eat, but if you don't enjoy cold meat and hard rolls for breakfast and tea and oddly sauced stews or unidentifiable lumps of meat with funny kinds of pasta or mashed potato, you're out of luck. So there was a fair amount of 'let's go to the café and share a pizza or grab a couple of pretzels and a cake'.

Before he went into hospital, my last recorded weight was 18 stone 4. I saw 19 stone 10 when he came home. As I say, I haven't really weighed myself much since then (I'd been 19 stone 10 earlier in the year, too!)

What I can say is that I have gone up two dress sizes if not quite three. I've not been exercising and I haven't been following WW in ages. I had a brief flirtation with Slimming World last year but that only lasted two or three weeks. It was a faff, really, and I hate faffing with anything.

So! Why am I blogging about weight loss again? Well, I'm not following WW or SW, but I have for the past week been following Jennifer Jolan's 1 Day Diet. For those who do not know of it, it's a more extreme form of intermittent fasting (you've likely heard of 5:2 and so on) which involves no food on alternate days. Instead, you drink seven to nine protein waters over the course of the day, 90 minutes to 150 minutes apart. You add half a scoop of protein powder to ten ounces or so of water (450 mls or so) and drink it. That's it. No coffee, no diet Coke or other diet drinks. If you get thirsty between PWs, you can drink black tea or green tea sweetened with a little Stevia if you wish. No caffeine, though.

It's reckoned that you can drop twenty to thirty-five pounds in the first month, depending on how much weight you have to lose. It's fast, it's easy, and drinking the PWs is meant to retain lean muscle tissue while you lose fat. On the days when you don't drink the PWs, you eat whatever you like, though Jolan suggests that you eat sensibly. If you want chocolate or chips or burgers, eat them, just not every food day and not to excess. Moderation is key. You don't have to count calories, follow a particular weight loss plan in conjunction with the PWs, or exercise, but you will likely lose a little more if you do.

Does it work? Well, it will be a week tomorrow. This is my fourth day of PWs, having started on Monday, and I can see a difference in the appearance of my tummy already, and feel a definite difference in the tightness of my snuggest pair of jeans. I decided that weighing myself at this point would do nothing but make me miserable, so I am going by how my clothes fit. My aim is to get back into my US 16s at the moment. As I couldn't fit comfortably into my US 20 jeans after Christmas, that's some way off. Or is it? *g* We shall see. I have two pairs of Capri pants that I want to be able to wear when the weather gets really hot. They are both German size 50s. I am currently wearing a pair of German size 52 jeans which are the snug pair, and have a couple of pairs of UK 24s which are too big but don't quite fall off me without a belt. Or didn't, that's changing over the course of the week. I can almost fasten one pair of the Capris; the other pair don't even meet across my tummy or go all the way over my bum, so as you can see the range in size even across one size varies wildly. I reckon the bigger of the two should fit by the end of the month, pretty comfortably, if not before then. When I can get into the smaller of the two, I shall be quite delighted.

Hopefully both pairs will be too big for me by the end of August and I will be wearing my smallest clothes again, as I have lots of warm weather tops and shorter pants (though no short shorts as I still hated my legs). You see, we'll be moving to Florida then. Permanently. I'm about halfway through the US Visa application process; almost ready to move on to part two. I had my medical on Thursday and the vaccinations I was missing on Friday (which involved lots of Valium and Emla cream and co-operation from nursing staff at the clinic in Frankfurt and my doctor's surgery. I am very lucky that both are sympathetic to those of us with phobias).

In the meantime, I have a house and garage full of stuff to go through. The movers will pack everything, but it all needs going through and stuff we don't need or want needs getting rid of. Husband is talking about hiring a trailer and hauling off the junk to the tip, which will be a huge help. I need to take photos of the stuff in the attic and basement as it is not all ours and send those along. Lots to be done, but it will get done. It has to, now!

I think that that gets us just about up to date. I may decide to weigh myself in the morning, I don't know. I think I'd rather wait until I am back in my smallest clothes as then the news is likely to be better than it is at the moment! Mostly though the scales have done nothing other than play with my head since August 2011.