Back on the wagon... again

I am back on the dieting wagon. Having fallen off somewhere last year when the Tony Ferguson diet made me so tired I couldn't get out of bed for a week, I had been meaning to get back on it for ages. But I had lots of excuses.

"After my trip to New Zealand."

But then I was changing jobs and it was too stressful.

"Once I write the conference paper."

But then it was Christmas.

"After Christmas."

But then it was the beginning of the year and I was crazy busy with my study project.

"After Information Online."

This was the one I was sure about - if all else fails, after the conference. I would DEFINITELY go to Weight Watchers as soon as I got back from Sydney.

But I've been soooo busy with work, trying to see friends, do washing, have a relationship, and all of that stuff that I just didn't do it. And I was a bit leery of going back to Weight Watchers as I have so much more to lose than last time I was on WW. I'd already lost a lot by then due to a change in meds, and I was doing it with my flatmate and good friend, who was a great support. Also I've been having a few potential food allergy/intolerance issues that I wanted to sort out.

So I got the details of a great dietician my friend sees, and made an appointment. That was a few weeks ago, when I was crazy busy with work, relationship, friends etc.

And then on Sunday my boyfriend and I broke up.

On Tuesday after buying a box of chocolate chip cookies from KMart (you know the ones, Decadent - and boy are they!) and a litre of milk and deciding to devour them to drown my sorrow, I went to my pre-scheduled dietician appointment. And wham, bam, thank you ma'am I've ended up on a diet.

It actually makes sense to me to go on it now - although concerned friends have tweeted things like:

noooo! You can't start a diet this week. That's crazy talk!

f*^#{ the diet u need chocolate at times like this go have some

however I really feel like it's a good time. I've wanted to do it for... well over a year, and now I'm in a job I love and have a stable home life (and am not in a relationship) I can put the time into it.

So. Wagon. You are my bitch.

The why and wherefore

Thanks to everyone who has sent me messages, tweets, comments etc regarding my having to quit Tony Ferguson due to the carbohydrate-deprived exhaustion.

A lot of the comments and such have wondered why I'm dieting to begin with - or questioned my methods. If you read my introductory post you'll get some of the idea as to why I'm on this weight loss journey, but here I'd like to respond to some of the comments and queries directly.

First, some pictorial evidence. Here is me, prior to going overseas just over four years ago. I had managed to get off medication, and I'd been on Weight Watchers the year before and gotten back down to my pre-meds weight. My BMI at this point was 25 - I was at the top of my healthy weight range for my height. This is about the skinniest I get - at least since I was in high school. Without meds, this is about where I sit, or a bit bigger. But I'd never gotten above a BMI of about 27 before the meds.

And here I am a few months ago, with a BMI of at least 33 (with the gorgeous @katykat). I'm now down to 32, a few kilos lighter than I am on the left. But I still have 20kg to lose to get back to the above.

Now I really appreciate what some of you have said - things like that I look good how I am, that I don't need to lose weight. But the fact is - I am not just overweight, I am obese. I am in danger of developing type 2 diabetes if I don't get back to a healthy weight, and other illnesses.

I must admit that it worries me more that people are accepting of my size than if I was being called a fatty-boomba in the street. Granted, I don't want to be publicly abused, and it would likely make me cry, but it would be closer than the truth than saying it's OK for me to be this big. Because the fact is: it's not. It's not healthy. I'm not happy. It's not "me".

And I don't want it to be my friends either - not because I don't want fat friends: because I don't want unhealthy friends. I have a good friend who is currently trying to lose 70kg: she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes prior to her 30th birthday, and she's realised how important it is for her health. And I believe she can do it. She's doing it with Weight Watchers, and I believe I'll join her next week.

I remember when I put on weight the last time I was put on meds. I was babysitting for some kid that I didn't know that well, and he said to me "Your tummy is bigger than your boobies" - that was a wake-up call.

I don't want to be super skinny. I'm never going to be a size 8, or a 6, or a zero or whatever the anorexic models are. I have curves - even in the top picture you can see that I am a woman, not a stick-figure. But I do want to be healthy, and I do want to look good - to myself.

Carbs are my friend

Thanks to everyone for the comments and tweets and such regarding the kicking of Tony Ferguson to the kerb. Don't feel 100% but feel like my energy is returning thanks to TOAST but have a doctor's appt in a little while as apparently Glandular Fever is doing the rounds at my university so I'll need a blood test to ensure that that's not my problem. Please God let that not be my problem. I SUCK at being sick. That is, I'm damn good at it, in that I get 150% sicker than everyone else, take three times as long to get better, and get every illness under the sun when my immune system is down.

I've gotta tell ya, sleeping for the best part of a week isn't all it's cracked up to be. I'm starting to feel slightly normal again, but I'm still quite tired. Add on top of that the stress that I always feel when I'm sick, the guilt for missing work, and worries about money (I have no idea if I have enough sick leave to cover this week, but I doubt it) and I end up feeling like crap again.

Plus while I'm back on the carbs I don't want to put on all the weight I've lost. I have to be careful. *sigh* I really wish I hadn't taken that medication last year and put on 15kgs in 6 weeks. It really f'd up my body. And it didn't even work. Poo.

Sometimes, you gotta quit

I've been in bed for two days. Which is why I have no idea what's been going on in the blogging or tweeting world, at least for the last 24 hours. Yesterday I kind of kept up, but today I slept for fifteen hours straight and haven't had the energy to read a blog or a tweet. Yep, it's bad.

Problem is, I have no idea what's wrong. I don't have a blocked nose or a sore throat. I don't have a sore tummy, apart from some issues on Monday night that lasted for only about half an hour. I have been feeling a bit down, as blogged about earlier in the week, but nothing so bad to be considered in-bed-for-days worthy. No-one died, I'm not having a depressive episode. I'm headachey but it's not one of my "humdinger" (neurologist's term) migraines. I'm just really fucking exhausted and can barely walk around the house.

The lovely virtual librarian pinged me about something else and I confessed my utter desolation at what the hell was happening to me, and how I really want to just have enough energy to go back to work. She convinced me to stop the Tony Ferguson diet, as the lack of energy seems to have really come on since I started it. Lack of carbs and all of that. So I'm quitting. Tonight I'm going to have the bolognese that I cooked a couple of nights ago with some pasta, and start eating carbs again. I'm still going to watch what I eat - but no more meal replacements, and no more low-carb diets. I remember years ago being told by a dietitian that my blood type is a carbohydrate blood type, whereas my Mum's was protein - so when hungry Mum goes for protein, but I need carbs.

So hopefully this will help, and next week I'll try and go to WeightWatchers, and continue the weight loss journey in a new direction.

Update: just spoke to someone at the Chemist and they said extreme exhaustion can be a side-effect of the TF diet, as the ketosis can have that effect on a (small minority) of people. Nice to be special :-P

KER-PLUNK!

That's the sound of me falling off the wagon last night.

It started innocently enough. I'd had a pretty shitty day and after losing only half a kilo (yes yes I know I should be happy with that but I wasn't ok?) I made a vege-packed bolognese sauce (thx to virtual librarian for the tip about grated zucchini - you're right, I totally didn't notice it) and ate it with some notatoes (yes, you read that right, it's fake potatoes, made of cauliflower).

I was pretty full afterwards, but in that "I'm full but want chocolate" kind of way that happens when you're down. So I had a diet jelly. That just didn't cut it. So I had a diet ice cream. That was pretty good, but not quite chocolatey enough. So I had a Lindt ball - I ate it very slowly, basically sucking the chocolate off. Surely that will satisfy my craving?

No. So I had another one. Then another. Then they were gone. So I had some white cooking chocolate my stepmum had in the fridge (I'm housesitting). That was yum but not chocolatey enough so I had some weird chocolate cake thing she had in the pantry. By this time I felt a bit sick and wasn't enjoying any of it, so I had a hot shower and went to bed with my shame.

About half way through this binge I stopped enjoying the food - and because the TF diet requires that you stay in ketosis I know that now it will take another few days for me to get back there - falling off the wagon is a very bad thing on this very restrictive diet, and I may not lose any weight this week. In fact, I may put some on because of my bad mood.

So I am seriously considering switching to WeightWatchers in the very near future. I still want to see how I go until I get to Canberra for the wedding - just under two weeks to go - but it's a lot harder than I thought, especially if my mood isn't good, or stable, or whatever.

Mondayitis

I have had an extraordinarily crappy day. Mondayitis doesn't even come close to describing how bad I have felt. I don't work on Mondays, but I usually have a pretty full day - I have appointments, run errands, see friends. Today I barely made it out of bed, and when I did, I climbed back in. I didn't even have the energy to watch TV, let alone read.

I had an ALIA teleconference this afternoon, which I had a) forgotten about (thanks Andrew for the reminder email) and b) had nothing really to contribute to. Luckily my team had lots of ideas to contribute to the brainstorming session. At yoga, I could barely summon up the energy to hold a pose for more than about three seconds. Normally I get energy from both of these things, but today I feel like it's all I can do just to hold the seams of myself together.

I weighed in - Monday's weigh day - at the chemist this evening and I've only lost half a kilo this week. Perhaps it would sound better if I said I'd lost a pound. At least that's a whole measure. I know that's still an acceptable amount to lose, but I really wanted to be losing around the kilo on this meal replacement diet, which I consider to be more hard-core than others I've previously been on. Plus, my doctor said she'd expect me to lose 12kg in 12 weeks - which is a kilo a week. But I have eaten more (good) fats and sometimes protein than they recommend - plus I have ignored the caffeine rule - so perhaps that's a factor. I don't know if I can go super hard core again though, it's not an easy diet. I wonder if by the end of June I won't have switched over to Weight Watchers, which is more flexible food wise and I'd likely be pulling similar numbers.

I'm not a maths genius: I'm obsessed

Any fellow dieters/people obsessed with their weight out there will likely resonate with this story.

So today I was in a lift. It was a small lift, there were lots of people (at an unconference) trying to get into it. I think there were about seven of us in the lift, and the doors didn't close. It was because one of the guys had his foot too close to the door, not because we were over the weight limit in the lift, but someone made a comment about the weight to people ratio. The sign on the lift says "750kg or 11 persons" or similar. I made the comment that we would only fit 11 people in the lift if everyone weighed 62.5kgs or thereabouts. I totally pulled this figure out of my arse, and it was a rough (inaccurate) estimate. But everyone looked at me in awe, as if I was some kind of Good Will Hunting in heels, and one guy goes "Did you just figure that out in your HEAD?"

I kept mum, because the truth is that I make guesstimations based on weight and size all the time. It's part and parcel of dieting, or possibly just being a girl. I don't know, I've done it for so long. Whenever I'm in a lift I do the math and figure out what they think the average person should weigh, then think about how many kgs I am over that. Massochistic, possibly. Inevitable, definitely. When I watch my weight I become particularly obsessed - is this T-shirt a bit looser today, are my cheekbones more prominent, how does the size of my arm compare to that random girl's - it's undoubtedly a bit crazy, but it's part of how I get through it, and stay on track.

And I haven't eaten a carbohydrate in almost two weeks.

To caffeinate or not to caffeinate? A librarianing investigation

On my first week of Tony Ferguson, I stuck to the diet pretty strictly. Apart from a couple of days where I had four cups, I stuck to the maximum of three cups of tea a day (preferring that to one cup of coffee or five cups of green tea), and just barely managed to survive without coffee.

This week, however, when I went to the chemist to weigh in I asked the TF consultant why caffeine was restricted on the diet. She answered in a less-than-convincing way that it is because caffeine decreases your metabolism. She explained this with hand movements that swirled around her stomach region and there were a lot of "ums" punctuating the explanation, so I was left unconvinced. She was also about 12. I immediately went out and bought a small skinny cappuccino.

That was Monday, and I have now had a coffee every day bar Thursday this week. Which, coincidentally, is the only day I haven't had a TF "munch" bar for lunch, which, while filling(ish), is very dry. So this, on the left, is what my in-a-rush lunch is. And I have already had my three cups of tea for the day.

So obviously I don't believe this whole thing about caffeine slowing down your metabolism. I've done what every good librarian does first and Googled, read some stuff on Wikipedia, did some database searching (yay for working in an academic library!), and have pretty much ascertained that caffeine increases (not decreases) your metabolism, at least in the short term, but has little or no effect on weight loss. A lot of weight loss pills include caffeine but there's no conclusive evidence that it makes any difference whatsoever. Also, there are a lot of idiots on the teh interwebs.

Most of the stuff on the web is hearsay and companies spruiking their own wares - apparently on the Atkins diet (another ketosis-based weight loss program, but they get BACON! Jealous!) they say you shouldn't drink coffee - you should get your caffeine from their own product instead - from a discussion list:
Atkins prefers people get their caffeine from ATKINS ACCEL rather than from coffee...I think the rea$on$ $peak for themselve$.

I'd be interested to hear other's opinions too - and if you can find any hard research that shows whether caffeine has any actual effect on metabolism, dieting, etc, let me know. Everything I found on WoK and ScienceDirect was WAY over my head.

The story so far...

I've been all aTwitter about my new diet regime over the last week, which is the Tony Ferguson meal-replacement diet. I went from eating pretty much whatever I wanted - which was a fair amount of pizza, donuts, chocolate and hot chips - to a shake (with fibre) for breakfast, a salad with meat for lunch, and a salad (after a couple of false starts with soup - which I confirmed that I DESPISE) for dinner with a shake for dessert. Add in a couple of serves of fruit and maybe some nuts during the day, some diet jelly if I am really jonesing out, and you have a very different diet to the one I had a week ago. Which is possibly why I lost 2.5kgs in a week. Yay for me!

I've had a pretty wacky relationship with my size and food over the last 7 or so years - pretty much since I started needing medication for a chronic health issue. I've had two separate periods where medication has stacked - and I mean 15-20kg stacked - on the weight in a very short amount of time (try 6 weeks last year) which has resulted in a much more yo-yo-ing body shape than I ever had before. I used to be pretty slender, not really skinny, or at least I didn't think so - but then I was young, what the fuck did I know! I thought I was fat in year 12 and I now realise I was borderline underweight, at a size 8-10.

Generally I used to sit around about a size 12 - sometimes skinnier, sometimes a bit bigger. I threw away my size 8s as a "never gonna happen" when I was about 22.

When I was 24, the first time I put on 20kg I was a skinny size 12, almost a 10, and I ballooned up to a 16 in about 3 months. I lost 10kg of it easily when I came off meds a year or so later, and then I lost the other 10kg on Weight Watchers and became a Lifetime Member. And I gotta tell ya, I looked Hott. Paris Hilton style, back to the skinny 10-12. But then I took off for the UK, got the obligatory Heathrow Injection of about 5-7kg, and was back to being about normal - around a size 12-14.

I scooted back to Australia and moved from my native sunny Brisbane to the more naturally stodgy (food wise anyways) Melbourne, and put on a few more kilos, probably partly due to the Italian food (pasta! yum!) and partly because I found my two years there relatively hard. (Food is my friend!) Near the end of my time there I was put on another medication that made me balloon out and I zoomed from a 14 up to an 18 in six weeks - thanks for that, Doc!

I'm now back in sunny BrisVegas, a lot happier and healthier, and ready to tackle the challenge of losing the 25kgs that has accumulated since my svelte days. I will post photos as evidentiary proof as I go along, both to motivate myself and because words get boring.

Oh, and as I'm a librarian (but this blog will not really be focussed on libraries) I'll be participating in the 30 blog posts in 30 days challenge.