The End of Week 5

What can I say? I've done no exercise and I've been cheating. I've gained, unsurprisingly.
We decided to stop eating and to go back onto sole source until we're at goal. Except it's harder to not eat the second time around. I keep nibbling on crap. Veggie sausage roll yesterday before I went to watch a show, followed by veggie sausages IN 2 buttered rolls once I got home again.
Anyway, my stats:
My starting weight: 193.6lbs
My current weight: 174.0lbs
My loss for week 1: -8.4lbs
My loss for week 2: -6.6lbs
My loss for week 3: -2.0lbs
My loss for week 4: -3.0lbs
My loss for week 5: +0.4lbs
Total loss: 19.6lbs
Current BMI: 28.

What frustrates me is that I managed to get down to 172.2lbs and I've eaten 1.8lbs. I know I can get that off if I can just GET MY HEAD BACK INTO THE GAME! I've eaten a little something today so I guess I just have to see if I can do better tomorrow.
Wish me luck :(

The end of week 4

Day 28. Week 4 is over.
I'm now off work for 12 weeks so I can focus on my goal!
I haven't stuck exclusively to plan. Our diet counsellor came yesterday and weighed us. I was a few pounds up from where I thought I was, but I had been drinking tea and coffee all day. I was pleasantly surprised this morning when I weighed myself and discovered that I've dropped below 174, where I've been stuck for most of this week, despite raiding the freezer and cooking the meat-free burgers that we had leftover. The calories in the burgers (we had 2 each)weren't a worry, but the sodium was, so I was expecting a slight water gain this morning. I am pleased, but I'm planning on being more careful. No more burgers. I have a dentist appointment later and on my way home, I'll be buying mushrooms and veggies for dinner tonight (we decided to start eating after our counsellor advised us that it wouldn't affect our losses, and it would make it easier for us.

I dug out my severely neglected Lateral Thigh Trainer yesterday, and plan to start using that alongside the vibration plate. I also found out and charged the Slendertone system that I brought a few years back and then threw into a box. I'll see if I can remember how it works and then will see if I can use it while I'm using the LTT. Or I'll electrocute myself and fall off the LTT and do myself an injury.
Anyway, on to the losses:
My starting weight: 193.6lbs
My current weight: 173.6lbs
My loss for week 1: 8.4lbs
My loss for week 2: 6.6lbs
My loss for week 3: 2.0lbs
My loss for week 4: 3lbs
Total loss: 20lbs
Current BMI: 28.

I am quite pleased with how my progress is going. My counsellor said that my loss is quite obvious. I'm just a little under 1/3rd of my way there and I have no plans to quit any time soon!

The End of Week 3

Today marks the end of week 3. I'm not going to lie; it's been harder than I'd thought. Being back at work and having my train equipment weighing me down in the snow has made the week a nightmare. Even counting down the days hasn't helped.
I think that the worst thing about driving a train and doing this diet is that nobody realises that smells travel. If I drive beneath certain stations that serve hot food, I suddenly get hit in the face by the smell of hot toast, or pasties...etc. And the passengers are worse! I've had people sitting behind me at lunchtime (and by that, I mean sitting behind the cab door) eating a box of chicken and chips smothered in vinegar. It doesn't matter that I don't eat chicken - I defy anybody who hasn't eaten for three weeks to not respond to that smell.
Yesterday I travelled home on the cushions (sitting in with the passengers) and a smart young man sat opposite me and proceeded to eat the freshly made sandwich he had obviously just brought from a deli. I could smell that the bread was freshly cooked and sliced, that the butter had melted slightly on the warm bread and that the salad was freshly prepared. There was another smell that I think was ham, but I've never been a fan of the stuff, so I didn't focus on that. The smell made me so hungry that I started to get stomach cramps and I travelled home absolutely miserable.
When I got home, I went straight into the freezer for a pack of Quorn pieces that have been ignored in there since before we went vegan. I was so hungry that I quickly defrosted them and threw them into a pan to cook, then divided them between my house mate and myself, then scarfed them down. BIG mistake. I've become intolerant to egg and I spent the rest of the evening feeling incredibly sick. I'd have gone to the bathroom to assist it out again, but to deal with the bunged up feeling that this diet brings, I'd taken 2 laxatives ad didn't want to have them exit too. All in all, a very unpleasant evening and I've woken this morning feeling very heavy and sick.

And now, onto my loss for week 3. I usually fail to lose a lot when I'm on early shifts at work. I've been waking up between 6-7am after failing to have an early night and the scales have seemed to stay in one position. They've moved slight towards the end of this week, but not by much.

My starting weight: 193.6lbs
My current weight: 176.6lbs
My loss for week 1: 8.4lbs
My loss for week 2: 6.6lbs
My loss for week 3: 2.0lbs
Total loss: 17lbs
Current BMI: 28.1

The words 'Can do better' springs to mind.
I have 3 more days of work and then I'll have 12 weeks to see this plan pay off. I should be in a smaller uniform before I return to work.

One thing that slightly concerns me: My house mate, Helen, is almost at her healthy BMI of 25 and will have to move up to the 810 plan, introducing food. I still have to lose 26.6lbs before I reach BMI 25. It has been pure torture, smelling food, while I've been at work, and I can't imagine it will be any less so having food smells in the house.
Also, as a lovely Xmas/birthday gift, she has booked us to spend a few days over my birthday in February in Vienna. But If I still haven't reached BMI 25 by then, do I eat anyway? I can't imagine that walking through a beautiful city won't leave me absolutely famished and half dead if I don't. But I am concerned about how to order the type of food that Helen and I will be allowed to eat. I don't particularly want to throw caution to the wind for a few days because I find it so hard to stay on this diet once food is introduced. I guess I shall just have to wait and see what happens.

Week Two Ends

I'm pleased to say that I'm still going strong. Getting through week one is usually when I fail, as seen when I first started this blog.
I went back to work yesterday. It was absolute murder smelling all of the food that people brought onto my train, but I got through. I spent my meal break in the managers office, chatting to other drivers as I drank my second shake.
The hardest part of yesterday was actually the fact that I chose to take the quick train home instead of the one that takes me forty minutes and drops me outside of my house. It snowed heavily while I was working, and I struggled on the snow that had been walked on all day and was nothing more than a slippery mass - I dread to think how bad it is to walk on today after freezing overnight! I felt as though I'd completed a huge work out once I finally reached my house.
I had meant to have four shakes to get me through yesterday, but I was so tired after my third shake that I went to bed shortly after eight pm and slept through until eight this morning.
Anyway, Week Two is now over. I have lost exactly 15lbs and am so pleased with my progress.

My starting weight: 193.6lbs
My current weight: 178.6lbs
My loss for week 1: 8.4lbs
My loss for week 2: 6.6lbs

Forget the pound of flesh

Mine and my house mate's diet counsellor came to see us on Wednesday and brought with her a grotesque looking diet aid that I'd requested: a pound of fat. It's made of plastic, but is the exact size, weight and look of a pound of fat. My housemate and I have decided to keep it in the fridge so that we always see it when we get the filtered water from the fridge for the shakes. Plus, it'll stop the cats from destroying it.

She also brought other good news with her - while I've had to shell out for new bathroom scales, hers showed us that ours are adding a few extra pounds to our weight. And when she measured us, she showed me that despite not sticking to a healthy regime since the last time she measured us (on the 9th of January last year), I've managed to lose inches all over somehow - up to 4 inches in some places!

In other news, I've realised that mine and my house mate's weight loss is going to start differing shortly. She is merely pounds away from being within a healthy BMI of 25, while I still have to lose roughly 2 stone (sorry for those of you who use metric, but I've always used Imperial and am stubbornly sticking to it) before I reach that milestone. This means that while I am sticking to shakes, she has no choice but to start eating on the 800 plan. It won't be anything excessive, thankfully - I won't be smelling bread or cake - but she will be cooking vegetables for herself. I'm currently not hungry (thank you, Ketosis), but I have no idea how I'll react when I smell food in the house.
This is when I start testing just how much I want to be thin!

Week One ends

It has been 7 days since I first posted on this side of the year, so I'll coincide with the dieting group I am joined to on Facebook. The group moderator decided that rather than having our weighing week Mon-Sun, he would start it from the day that the 1st fell on, so our dieting week is Tues-Mon.


My starting weight: 193.6lbs
My current weight: 185.2lbs
My loss for week 1: 8.4lbs

I know that this loss is mostly water, but I'm fairly positive that I'm now in ketosis, which means that the next losses I record will be body fat loss.

Because I developed a granny ass the last time I did this diet, I am also using a vibration plate alongside the diet. My losses since I started using the vibration plate on Friday, have decreased, meaning that I have lost mere ounces instead of pounds over the last few days, but I'm not overly concerned by the numbers on the scale if the tape measure is getting looser.

My Cambridge Weight Plan Counsellor will be coming to see my housemate and I on Wednesday. She will be bringing with her something that I can look at and hold when my losses feel insignificant over the next few months: something that looks and weighs exactly the same as 1lb of body fat! I might keep it in the kitchen. I remember seeing one when I was with my old counsellor, Iris, back in 2008, and thinking that it was the ugliest thing I had ever seen and that just the sight of it would keep me from eating. While the urge to eat is currently gone, I would like to make sure that it doesn't show it's ugly head anytime soon.
Of course, I will be eating soon. I realise that when I return to work next week, I can't do so with nothing in my system (just standing suddenly last night had me collapsing back into my armchair, thinking I was about to pass out, which is clearly not a good thing to happen to a train driver). From Sunday, my housemate and I shall be reintroducing a very small amount of food back into the diet: likely baked mushroom and steamed vegetables.
I will not fail this time.

Day 4

So far, so good. My housemate and I brought two jars each on Wednesday and I filled one of mine with 67 pebbles. I've so far moved 6 pebbles across to my second jar. I've also removed the old ticker from the bottom of the page and replaced it with a new ticker and chart. I have my determined head on. I refuse to carry this excess 62lbs any longer. My body aches from carrying it. I don't want to look in the mirror any longer and hate what I see.
I am going to weigh 9 stone by the summer.
I want to wear a bikini in the summer!

Pebbles in a jar

67.6lbs to lose. I'm planning on buying 67 glass pebbles and 2 jars. I'll transfer a pebble from a full jar to another empty jar for each pound I lose. Sole source starts today.

Page 1 of a 365 page blank book

Well I did say that I'd fall off the diet and skulk into silence. I saw a picture yesterday that I posted to my Facebook, which I thought was appropriate to today.

Day 1 of the new plan

We ate the last of the food we'd brought for the 1000 plan last night. That makes it sound as though we had a huge blow out, but we both consumed just a little over 900 calories for the entire day - it was very disappointing if we were under the false impression that we'd have pie and chips for dinner.
Anyway, today marks the start of the 810 plan. My house mate and I will consume our three shakes throughout the day and then when I get home from work (at around midnight) tonight I'll have a plate of tofu and vegetables to look forward to. I can't pretend to be excited about it, but its better than what we've been eating so I shan't complain.
So here's to doing this thing properly and (more importantly) keeping on plan *raises coffee mug*

Bye bye 1000, hello 810

After a short discussion with my house mate this morning, we made the decision to ditch the 1000 plan and to go onto the 810 plan instead. After we've eaten the food we'd brought for the 1000 plan. Our decision to do so was based on one simple thing; neither of us can be bothered to eat breakfast and drinking a shake is quicker and easier than weighing cereal, bolting it and then washing the bowl at 2.30am. If truth be told, we find it easier to do this diet with the food option taken out than to suffer the monotony of the same food for such an extended period of time - I can handle the two weeks when moving up the plan, but not months of rotating porridge, with muesli, with shredded wheat.
So, the next few months will be fun. Three shakes (we've so far only managed to get two down our throats per day, or even just one, which is really crap). No more Coke, bread rolls, fruit juice, snack pots or tinned soup. Joy.

And now for our allowed foods:
Protein
350g Steamed Tofu
80g red lentils, dried
225g Chickpeas, canned, drained
80g Chickpeas, dried weight
70g Soya beans, dried weight

Plus three tablespoons of any of the following:
Vegetables
Asparagus
Broccoli
Cabbage (inc pickled)
Cauliflower
Celeriac
Pak choi
Courgette
Cucumber
Fennel
Green Peppers
Green salad leaves
Kale
Leeks
Marrow
Mushroom
Red radishes
Spinach
Spring onions
Watercress

It now falls to me to come up with an interesting way to combine these items. I have never used most of these items in my cooking. And my favourite way of marinating tofu (with Tamari) is not allowed because of its salt content, which sucks. It used to be so much easier when we used to eat meat, eggs and cottage cheese. Oh well. I guess that it shouldn't hurt too much to eat the pre-marinated tofu until I've found a decent way to marinate the other stuff and find an interesting thing to do with the lentils, chickpeas and soya beans. If we could eat chilli and onion, I'd happily make lentil soup.
Well I'm not going to worry about it now; tonight is not the time to look up recipes. I can worry about that tomorrow.

The Past Success, turned Failure Story

I think it might be important for anybody who read my first post and saw that I'd admitted to being successful on the Cambridge Weight Plan before, to understand why I am back at stage 1 all over again. Actually, people probably won't give a flying f*ck, but I'm going to put it here if only to remind myself not to do it again. Back in September 2008, my house mate and I started (after many false starts) the plan on Sole Source. I stayed on this part of the plan for 10 weeks until I lost over 40lbs and reached a healthy BMI. I remember how important it was that my house mate and I be allowed to enjoy Christmas. I remember that we'd talked to our CDW councillor and we moved onto the 810 plan for two weeks, then the 1000 plan, and the 1200 plan, each for two weeks. We only managed a few days of 1500 before Christmas, but it didn't matter because we were still losing weight! We managed to be healthy over Christmas. We should have been happy with ourselves, but I wanted to lose more weight - I wanted to reach my lowest healthy weight and I was still about a stone and a half away from that. After Christmas we consumed all of the stuff we'd brought for the holiday and had a last hurrah (the last blow out meal) before the restart. Except we failed to get back into the habit of limiting our food intake. A pattern quickly emerged where we'd decide to restart the diet and have a last hurrah before failing to get back on the wagon. It seemed to take no time at all to regain everything, although my house mate has managed to keep 20lbs off from her original starting weight. I'm back at my largest with a vengeance. We thought that going vegan would help us to lose weight, but apparently replacing meat with meat replacements and cheese with soya cheese isn't the way to do it - who knew? We also discovered a lot of food that is actually vegan, and we found some places that made vegan cake! It's amazing how I can walk past chocolate bars, sweets and all manner of foods that I used to love, with my nose turned up, simply because it isn't vegan. I wish there was the same urge with foods that aren't healthy.
Anyway, understand that this diet isn't about just giving up cake - this diet is about giving up everything but protein and vegetables. My food addiction is bread and potatoes; I absolutely love them. I don't need to butter my bread roll and eat them with a filling - I am happier having it completely plain. And I love jacket potatoes (HUGE ones that have been in the oven for hours so that the skin is really thick and hard to eat, but even better for it, and the flesh is fluffy and mixed with huge amounts of margarine) or mash (mixed with just margarine and not milk so that it tastes coarse on the tongue). I haven't eaten potatoes in 12 days. I have, however, eaten bread rolls. Bread rolls are my comfort food, even though I know that they're against the plan. When I did this diet before, I didn't eat bread. I didn't even have milk in my coffee (I am currently taking soya milk). I can't remember what week it was, but the one thing I fantasised about was a plain and simple apple. All I wanted to do was flick my tongue against the skin of a juicy, sweet apple, and then feel my teeth break the surface as the juice erupted over my tongue. I wouldn't eat an apple until I reached the 1000 plan, but it was something I started fantasising about quite early on.
I also didn't touch alcohol. I had my first drink on Christmas Day. I missed being able to enjoy a drink when I came home from work, or when I socialised (which wasn't often thanks to my job). I haven't drunk in 12 days - I don't miss it, surprisingly.

I looked at the information for the plans for the first time this evening. I am actually really surprised to find that I'm remembering doing the diet all wrong. The 1000 plan incorporates 2 Cambridge meal replacements, to be drunk alongside a normal-ish breakfast and lunch, followed by a healthy dinner. I think I've been doing a very, very bad version of the 810 plan. A shake for breakfast, one for lunch and then food in the evening, washed down with a litre of fruit juice. I'm gong to have to sit down with my house mate and re-evaluate what we're doing. It might be a good idea to call our diet counsellor for advice too. I'll worry about it in the morning.

Originally entitled 'The Beginning'

This is day 11 of my Cambridge Weight Plan diet. I'll admit, I'm not exactly sticking rigorously to plan - I've been eating foods that are definitely not in the plan, but am so far 8lbs down so can't complain too much. The last time I did this diet with any measure of success, I was a meat eating station assistant back in 2008. I was on Sole Source, which meant that I'd replaced all of my meals with shakes, the total of which brought my calorie count to a little over 400 per day. I'd arrange for my colleagues to do any of the jobs that didn't involve standing stationary on a gate line and as I was always surrounded by colleagues, it didn't matter if my cottage cheese brain was unable to come up with the name of a street that I sent passengers down all of the time. This time, I am a vegan train driver. I can't afford to have (vegan) cottage cheese brain because if the unthinkable happens, I need to not be sitting there in a blind panic unable to remember the safety procedures. Plus my equipment bag is heavy and the walk from the depot with that bag is a killer when I've been eating - I dread to think how bad it would be if I were empty. The foods I've been eating vary from a Holland & Barrett vegan sausage roll I took to my nans place (so she wouldn't harass me to go make a sandwich with the very vegan unfriendly contents of her fridge) to the plain bread roll and Uncle Ben's Chilli snack pot I ate when I got home from work at 02.40 this morning. The picture at the top is what I currently look like (in my wonderful work uniform - I know; it's THAT sexy, but do try to not fall over yourselves). I knew I was big and lumpy, and that my breasts resemble great sacks attached to my chest, but I didn't realise just how truly awful it was until I asked a colleague to take these photos for me. Just the kick start I needed to keep myself focused.

I'm publishing this here because I figure that it's all very well creating a blog in the Cambridge weight plan forum, where I'm surrounded by like-minded people who are used to people falling off the wagon and disappearing into the nether. Having this here means that I can't hide. It also means that I don't have to go hunting for my personal journal thread in a forum filled with hundreds of journals. A friend of mine has a lot of weight to lose, and he very bravely asked people to sponsor him; when he reaches goal, his charity is going to be flooded because this chap has so many people behind him, willing him to succeed. I uploaded my original success picture and he's promised that he will donate £25 to the charity of my choice (St Clare Hospice in Hastingwood) when I reach my goal. I started at 198.6lbs and my preliminary goal is 126lbs (I'm planning on getting a stone under my eventual goal weight so I can use that as a cushion when I finally come off the plan). Well, I think that's all for now. Enjoy a picture of me from when I managed to get slim before.