I thought it was high time I blogged again on my progress. Both on the 5:2 diet and on alcohol consumption.
So I can confidently report that the 5:2 diet does indeed work and I have now lost a stone (14 pounds) in weight. Yes, yes, yes *does happy dance around kitchen*. I am very pleased to put it mildly and that puts me firmly at over half way to my goal.
It has not been easy. Well that is simplifying a little actually. So let me expand on that.
In my last post I wrote that I would cut down my fast days to 300 calories, as per the recommendation on the 5:2 website forums. Since I don’t think on most days I need 2,000 calories, given that I have a desk job, then roughly a quarter of my intake would be more like 300.
This appeared to be the right thing to do and I started to steadily lose a pound a week. But there is more to it than that.
I also said that I was ‘probably’ making up the calories in alcohol on the off days, or non-fast days. I had a good long hard look at myself and decided that enough was enough. I had managed to stay off the booze for 2 whole years previously and felt great about it and then when I started drinking again, I did so thinking I could control it and only drink on ‘special occasions’. It turns out I can’t. I realised that in my case, I don’t control alcohol at all and it had to go.
So I gave up again on the 24th March and I haven’t looked back. I didn’t want to slip up again, so I got the new behaviour reinforced with some NLP sessions. This stands for Neuro-linguistic programming and the simplest way I can explain it is re-wiring your brain. It has worked for me and I can’t even eat a desert with alcohol in it any more. I ate some Tiramisu the other day forgetting it had a substantial amount of alcohol in it and I almost spat it out at the dinner table. I managed to control myself as I was at my in-laws at the time and it wouldn’t have been seemly. As soon as I even think ‘a drink might be nice’ my subconscious mind screams ‘it’s poison’ at me. I feel like I couldn’t touch a drop even if I wanted to. This makes me want to dance for joy.
So these 2 factors have influenced the effectiveness of the 5:2 diet enormously and I am steadily losing a pound a week. The fast days are tough though. On some of them I really struggle to concentrate at work. I can concentrate but it is just much more difficult. If I fast on a day off or a weekend, I can get to the afternoon before starting to get really hungry, but at work, clearly my brain is crying out for something to power itself on. So I think I am going to have to employ some new strategies to continue on and lose the further 10 pounds I’d like to lose. I find it hard when I get to this point to keep going. My body seems to be happy at around 140 pounds and no matter how hard I tell it I want to be 130 that subconcious mind is pretty canny at getting me off track. I am determined not to yo-yo back up again this time though. This year Ibiza awaits.
