6 April 2022
Since my last post on 13 March, I’ve dropped a further 2.3kg or 5lb. That’s good, but my rate of change has definitely slowed down, and I’m behind my milestones and targets (that were calculated against my earlier rate of change.) Having said that, the visual evidence (the mirror) is that I look considerably thinner.
In my daily diary, I’ve been pondering plateau effects and reaching natural equilibrium points, but a more honest reason for the slower change is that I relaxed after hitting my primary target, and my food intake – particularly snacks – has increased, albeit that my exercise rate has been nudging up.
According to the NHS website, I should be aiming to lose another 4.6kg and also keeping my daily calorie intake at the lower end of 2015-2590kcal. In fact I want to lose more than 4.6kg to get myself comfortably into the ‘normal’ range for my height and age, and therefore I want to treat 2015kcal as a daily maximum. To be clear, the resultant changes aren’t necessarily ‘permanent’ (though some will be) but goal-driven.
As an example of where I’m focusing, my breakfast/brunch has standardised around a banana, an apple, a couple of chopped dates, some chia seeds and some crushed walnuts, all bound in natural yogurt. I also have one or two mugs of coffee and an orange. This calculates out at around 600kcal, the largest element of which is the yogurt. The obvious thing to do is to cut the amount of yogurt and remove the apple to eat as a snack later in the day. Even so, there are a lot of natural sugars in this breakfast so an alternative is called for.
One alternative I quite like is a tray-bake for breakfast. If I bake 2 Cumberland sausages, a tomato, a portobello mushroom and an egg, then, with the orange and the coffee, that calculates out at around 450kcal. Substitute Linda McCartney veggie sausages for the meat ones and that drops to 240-290kcal or thereabouts. The Linda McCartney sausages are ‘processed’ food, but also add protein into the breakfast. If I have a sachet of miso soup and a cuppa at lunch, I leave myself a lot of leeway for my evening meal while still staying below a daily 2000kcal (a large red wine is around 150kcal.) It also means that, averaged over a week, there’s plenty of room for variety and rewards.
I mentioned upping my exercise rate. This has meant, and continues to mean, lengthy stretches on the exercise bike and starting the couch-to-5k programme. There is a long way to go with the latter, but it has at least begun and I reckon I currently jog a cumulative 1.5k on a 5k fast walk. I’m taking it relatively easy to avoid injury.
The upshot is that, even allowing for the exercise building muscle mass, I ought to be into my ‘normal’ weight range in mid-late May, all things being equal. Varying my breakfasts means that my blood glucose levels should stay ‘normal’ as well.
Incidentally, even though I am no longer T-2 Diabetic, the fact that I was in the T-2D range last year pushed up my travel insurance for our trip to the US in August/September. Direct Line, who we’ve used a lot in the past, wanted to exclude any linked health issues from the insurance at all, so we went with someone else.
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