Week 3 on 5:2 and things seemed to be going OK. I was really determined to lose weight having stayed the same the week before, so I tried to be good and stick within my calorie limit. I took a deep breath and got on the scales (then exhaled quickly — might make me heavier) — I had stayed EXACTLY the same. Well, actually, I had lost 0.2lbs, which I was going to take, thank you very much. So two weeks of staying the same... Was it finally time to accept that the fast diet was too slow for me? (Oh my GOD, how Carrie Bradshaw was that?? Shame.)
Hmm… I wasn't quite ready to give it up, so I decided to peruse the last few weeks on MFP and see what differed from week to week… Quite a lot, it turned out.
Week 1 = 671 calories over weekly target
Week 2 = 1653 calories over weekly target
Week 3 = 1869 calories over weekly target
Week 4 = 2215 UNDER weekly target, but oh wait, that's because I didn't even log what I had eaten over Saturday and Sunday…
I also realised I hadn't run at all in Week 4… Suddenly, the reason for staying the same the past two weeks was blatantly obvious. RIGHT. Week 5 needed to be different. I had to stick to a daily limit, not go over my 500 calories on a fast day and get back running. I think I was feeling a little down that week (for no apparent reason), but unless I was going to cut out eating altogether (ha, fat chance), depression was not going to shrink my jean size.
So Week 5 commenced. I stuck to all my rules, went running, upped my protein and even cut down carbs. After my first fast day in the week, I weighed myself, filled with excitement about all the good changes I had made…
STILL THE EXACT SAME FUCKING WEIGHT. Cunting hell — fuck this stupid diet! I was getting quite annoyed now. I didn't know how much more I could tweak the bloody thing. I ranted to Blog Mate, who tried to bring me some comfort with kind words like "it's probably just lady time weight", or "you WILL lose this week, I promise" and "just stick with it — it took time to put on, so it will take time to come off…". But I was having none of it. I was feeling fed up and just wanted to eat EVERYTHING. But I didn't. I figured I would at least wait until weigh day, and then cry in a heap on the floor. So after my second fast day, I got on the scales.…
LOST A MOTHERFUCKING POUND! BOO-YA!
I was so chuffed. It was a clear, whole pound and meant I'd lost just shy of half a stone in 5 weeks. This made me happy. So happy that I went out for a long run in the searing midday heat — not one of my smartest moves, but I did a frickin' good job, despite still sweating several hours later. So after all this positivity, the best thing to do was to be good over the weekend and try and maintain that superb feeling, right? Wrong. SO WRONG.
I play a gig in Colchester every year and all my friends always come up to watch, but they are mainly there for the excellent barbecue food and delicious cakes. And I happily join in. At the end of the day, 5:2 is supposed to enable you to have an evening of food and wine without freaking out, so I was not going to try and diet. However, I did want to try and listen to my stomach so that I wouldn't look like I had eaten the whole barbecue stock by the time I got on stage, desperately pushing my tum in with my bass.
My food schedule (seriously, can I ever hope to be thin?) was burger, veggie food, hot dog, cake. But I didn't fancy the hot dog come the evening, so I skipped it — yey me! I had a very dry piece of coconut cake later — I probably shouldn't have finished it, but it was there. We got back home in the early hours of the morning, and at about 2am sitting in bed, I thought I would tally everything up. FUCK. ME. OK, I thought I deserved a massive pat on the back for skipping the hot dog, but buggery fuck — I should have skipped A LOT more!
I forgot I had eaten a bit of pasta before we had left — 273 calories.
I had also had a cup of tea and some Mini Max cereal for breakfast — 167 calories.
It had slipped my mind, but when we stopped for petrol on the way up, I bought a packet of Scampi Fries and had a McDonald's Iced Mocha - 437 calories.
I had also drunk 3 glasses of apple juice and a Pimms — 492 calories.
And even whilst I was entering all of these into MFP, I was eating crisps from a big, bottomless bag — 550 calories. (Incidentally, Big Bottomless Bag will end up being my nickname if I don't stop gorging.)
Grand total? 3500 calories for the day.
And there you have it — what happens if I am not counting every single thing that goes in my giant gob. Actually, I was ready to go "Look blog readers, I didn't even eat much and this is how calories are mean to me", but then I realised that this IS a big list of food! But I'm just saying: it's easy to eat way more than you should, especially when none of it is very nutritious.
The next day my boyfriend lost a bet (he thought Andy Murray wouldn't win the tennis — and he is Scottish!!) so he had to buy dinner. Dinner was a double pepperoni pizza with salad, garlic bread and Fanta Zero… Let's just call it a weekend of fun eh? I didn't eat my share of pizza because I was full, nor did I eat my Cornetto for dessert, so I must have been really fucking full.
This morning, I could barely walk because I was so bloated and uncomfortable. Honestly, I looked about 5 months pregnant — it actually scared me. A bit of peppermint tea sorted it out and, truth be told, I am very glad to be fasting today. I have a Morrisons soup for lunch and turkey and vegetables with Old El Paso Smokey Fajita seasoning for dinner — it's my new favourite meal.
So I am going to stick with this diet. I just need to accept sometimes things might move slowly. As long as I don't put on any weight, it means things are going in the right direction. It feels sustainable. Yes, it has required more tweaking than Dr Mosley might have suggested, but that's not the end of the world really. It still feels like a realistic way to lose this weight, and I actually feel dead nice at the moment :-)
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