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

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!

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.