Diet Coke!

After reading in the papers about how Diet Coke doesn't actually help people to lose weight. I thought I'd ask the people on the Weight Watchers Mens Board what their views were. The general concensus seems to be that Diet Coke probably doesn't really help, some people found that they still felt hungry after drinking it with a meal (as I often do).

Now, I don't drink tea or coffee, so I've been drinking about 6 cans of Diet Code a day for as many years as I can remember, so the stories about the harm that the Aspartame (artificial sweetener), that it contains, can do are quite worrying. I've also been having trouble sleeping recently, which I have put down to an excess of caffiene. Because of my sleep worries, I recently switched to the caffiene free variety, but 2 days later (after no caffiene  at all) I sufered from a terrible headache that lasted all day! After reading up on caffiene, I came to the conclusion that this was caused by the withdrawal symptoms! following this I've embarked on a gradual switch to caffiene free DC by alternating the 2 varieties (making sure that I don't have any caffiene after 18:00).

After all of the above, I've decided that I really should stop drinking Diet Coke altogether, so I now plan to complete the switch to caffiene free as soon as I can and then find alternative refreshing drinks, such as freshly squeezed orange juice (0 ProPoints apparently), water, various cordials etc.

The other thing people have said is that, if there really is no alternative to a fizzy drink, I'm probably better of having a normal coke and accounting for the points! Obviously it wouldn't be good to have 6 cans of normal coke a day as that would be 24 ProPoints, or breakfast AND lunch!

Incidentally, I do seem to be sleeping a little better since reducing my caffiene intake. I woke up at 05:45 this morning, which is really quite late for me!

The Easy Bit! - Part 3

Thanks to a weightwatchers member, I found out how to reset my weight data, so everything now starts as of today.

My starting weight is: 21st 0lb

My first goal is to lose 5% of my starting weight, which will take me down to 19st 13.3lb.

The Easy Bit! - Part 2

After our meal out (which was very pleasant, by the way) I did some more scientific calculations and found that I was almost correct with my Breakfast and Lunch points, but a little out with the points for the meal (this was caused by the fact that I wasn't expecting to have a desert). In the end it worked out at 66 Points, with my daily allowance being 57. This means that I strayed into the weekly bonus points zone! This is not too much of a problem as my first weigh in was this morning, so the weekly bonus points are reset.

Anyway, the result of the Weigh-in is that I weigh 21st 0lb, so I've lost a pound already after just 1 day! I have reset my starting weight to 21st 0lb as it is effectively a validated weight. The bad news, if I can call it that, is that my daily points allowance hase gone down from 57 to 56!

Today should be a more realistic indicator of what I'm eating on a normal day, as we're not dining out.

Anyway, I'd just like to take this opportinity to thank everyone who responded to my first post for their encouragement. This is going to be a long, tough voyage, but I managed to give up smoking nearly 10 years ago (after smoking for about 25 years), so hopefully I'll be able to apply that willpower to this. Actually I think losing weight is much harder than giving up smoking - I gave up smoking loads of times, but I've only ever managed to lose weight once!

The Easy Bit!

I've done the easy bit! Yesterday I signed up to Weight Watchers Online. I guessed my weight as it's been fairly stable for the last few weeks, and decided that my Weigh In day will be Tuesday.  This may have been a mistake as I should have started with correct weights and set the weigh-in to be the following week (it'll probably screw up the statistics a bit).

I entered some guestimates of what I'd eaten & drank so far during the day and also guessed at what I was likely to be eating this evening and it looked as though I was going to be within my ProPoints target by about 4 points, which is amazing because I went out to dinner last night! (only a Carvery, nothing really special!).

Now the hard bit is about to start - "Free the Thin Bloke Inside me". I know he's there - I caught a glimpse of him about 20 years ago when I got down to about 15st 5lb, I'm now 21st 1lb!

My first target is the usual 5% loss (20st 0.3lb) which will take me back to what I was before Christmas.

I'm really looking forward to meeting up with the Thin Bloke again, I thought he was pretty cool.

Wish me luck!