Week 7 : NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NOT BEFORE THE WEDDING!

Yup, you guessed it — I put on weight this week. 

Not 0.5lb… not 1lb… not even 1.5lbs. TWO WHOLE POUNDS! Shame on me. And my big mouth. And everything that went in my big mouth. 

Now, I should be more sad about this. I once put on half a pound at WW and cried all the way home. I'm not joking. I was at least 25, and I came home and cried under my duvet, and refused to come out for dinner — and I NEVER do that. But that's because I had been so good. This time, I'm not sure I can feel quite so virtuous.

I try to make notes in the week so I have something useful/interesting to write in my blog (hard to imagine, but true), so I went back to see what I had written at the start of the week.

1. "ANNOYED AT RUINING MY FAST, SO I RUIN IT FURTHER STILL."
Well, I think we can all see this is classic sabotage. I've fucked the diet, so may as well fuck it up good and proper. It seems that old habits die hard… I think this particular reference was to me eating a chocolate rich tea on my fast day — which is bad enough — but then going back to eat another one. Then another. Then a cracker. This was worse because I had nodded off on my bed, woke up, ate biscuits and went back to bed. What is wrong with me?? Like there aren't enough weird reasons that make me eat without me having to add 'feeling sleepy after waking abruptly from a nap' to the list. Fucking hell.

2. "NEED TO GET USED TO JUST FEELING THE HUNGER, NOT EAT THEN IMMEDIATELY SLEEP."
Ah yes, I know what this is about. In general, my fast day involves keeping myself busy during the day, coming home, cooking my meal and then just going to bed. Like that's all my body could possibly handle. RID-IC-U-LARSE. My fat body could easily handle a few days work and some exercise before it genuinely stopped being able to function properly on no food at all. I can talk to my bf. I can watch TV. I can do something. Just because I can't eat any more food doesn't mean life isn't worth living and I should just go to bed at 9.30pm. 

3. "DRINK MORE WATER."
When I started fasting, I was dead good about drinking water, but now I am incredibly slack. And I think my skin is suffering because of it to be honest (I'm growing a massive spot as I type this.) So more water — we all know that. I have been saying this shit for weeks/months/years.

So those were my notes. I am a tad annoyed that I put on weight (especially before this wedding on Saturday), but it's my own fault, not the diet's. In fact, this diet has been great and as yet, I haven't really got any complaints! It's been a busy July and every weekend has involved an event that required a) lining one's stomach with stodge, b) drinking copious amounts of alcohol, c) eating a drunken snack and d) recovery food the next day. It's not an excuse, but it does make it harder to be more mindful on the weekend. Also, I had loads of cupcakes left over from my friend's birthday which were pretty calorific, but I just couldn't throw them away. All that eating was going to catch up with me at some point…

But some good news — I have been a bit more careful with portion sizes. I got halfway through my dinner the other evening when I thought "I am comfortable, so I need to stop eating any more of this" — so I did. Yey me! Was my stomach shrinking? Was I finally understanding that I need to eat less? Or was it the fact that I had eaten half a bag of low fat popcorn whilst the pasta was cooking? We will never know.

Also, I went to dinner with the girls and left food. ACTUALLY LEFT FOOD THAT I HAD PAID FOR, ON MY PLATE. I never do that. It was really delicious, but I was quite stuffed. Annoyingly, the waiter left our plates in front of us for AGES, and by the time he eventually took them away, I was peckish and probably could have finished it. BUT, I had already placed my napkin like a tiny little shroud over the leftovers, so it would not have been cool to start eating cold rice and kebab from underneath. My friends wouldn't have judged though — they have seen a lot, including an occasion where me and one of them had eaten so much food at a restaurant that we had to get back to her flat and lie on the cold, wooden floor for at least 15 minutes, just groaning and rubbing our stomachs. Her flatmate then came in, popped my friend's WW Points Calculator artistically between us and took a photo. I don't think Facebook was invented then — THANK GOD.

Week 1 : BOOM! Lost 3.5lbs

Thankfully, it appears 5:2 is working. I am fucking chuffed, obviously, but like I said, the first week of a diet always has pretty good results because you end up pissing a lot. So let's not get too excited, as the tough part is sticking to it beyond week 2...

So, what did I eat? I have to say, knowing you can eat what you want is incredibly weird. I still don't entirely trust it, so I have been keeping track of my daily food allowance on myfitnesspal. I know, I know — it kinda defeats the purpose a little, but there are several good reasons for this. The first is that when it comes to food, I am programmed to think in Weight Watchers points. For EVERYTHING. Daim bar = 4 points. Wagon Wheelie = 2 points. French Fries from a multipack = 2. Bubblegum split ice lolly = 1 point. Wow… I am desperately trying to think of a food that is not loaded with sugar or salt and I'm getting nothing. Absolutely nothing. Except broccoli = 0 points… So now that I'm not on WW, I need to familiarise myself with nutritional values of food products, because otherwise it's very easy to stuff yourself. Which I have done a bit this week. 

Myfitnesspal has given me 1320 calories a day to use up. This seems like a lot. There are a lot of foods that I used to avoid on WW, because they were just too many points from my daily allowance. Which meant you ate a lot of salad because you had to, when really you wanted to punch that salad right in its stupid face. But now I get to look at actual values of food, rather than the values WW has assigned to them, which is proving interesting. Although the diet just advises to stay within a woman's 2000 daily calories, I know my body enough to realise that I need to stay in the lower end of that. 

However, I've still managed to eat a lot of nice things things this week. I've had a meat pizza, cheese twists, paella, chocolate biscuits, an apple doughnut, mum's yummy pasta, KFC and Twiglets. And a hot dog (I'm fucking pushing it, aren't I?) Not bad going. But there are a few things I have learnt along the way. 

Lesson 1 : You don't need to go mental.   

KFC day was bad and indulgent and I really didn't feel good after eating it. Not because it wasn't tasty (it was gooooood!), but because I ate too much of it, mainly because of my mantra, "if you are going to fuck up your diet, fuck it up good and proper". This is wrong and stupid and not how you are supposed to approach this way of eating. Also, after seeing how many calories were in what I had eaten, I realised that it was just needless gorging. Bad, bad, bad.

Lesson 2 : If you're not hungry, don't eat.

I suddenly had an obsession with eating Twiglets one afternoon. So I went to a shop that sold Twiglets, bought a big bag of Twiglets, and then pretty much ate all the Twiglets. I was still very full of Twiglets by dinner, but I still ate dinner THAT I DID NOT NEED, EVEN AFTER ALL THOSE TWIGLETS. One thing this diet teaches you is that it will take quite a long time for people in the western world to even start wasting away. For most of us, missing a meal wont leave us feeling weak, or lead to us having a drop in blood sugar level, or even make us feel tired. If you are not hungry, don't just eat for the sake of it.

Lesson 3 : Don't get obsessed with Twiglets.

Lesson 4 : Do not treat yourself to a 5-pack of doughnuts after your exercise class has been cancelled. 

Yup — I'm afraid this happened. I went all kitted out in my gym gear to a class, only to find out it wasn't on. So then I went to Morrisons where I spotted a reduced pack of apple doughnuts for 35p. I was fucked off the class wasn't on, and that I was now wearing white slouch socks in public when I hadn't even been working out, leaving me feeling like a massive impostering twat. And before I knew it, I was in my kitchen with with a bagful of shopping, topped with sugary doughnuts. The good news is that I only ate one devious doughnut. My boyfriend ate two (drunk), but alas, the others have gone in the bin. I really hate waste, but I couldn't justify spending 400 calories on two doughnuts just so they wouldn't get chucked. So, for one night only, I managed to hang up my hat as a human dustbin. Baby steps, baby steps…


But what about my fast days? Well, they were really, well… doable, actually. 

Day 1 Fast : First thing I ate was at 1.30pm, and it was a one-egg omelette with salad. I have to admit, this was not a great meal idea on my part. 

Omelette of oppression.

I seriously don't know how I managed to waste 200 calories on this watery meal, but it's no wonder I was fucking ravenous when I got home. Which led to me devouring a LOT of cashew nuts, taking me to 650 calories instead of 500 — ARGH! Dinner was a Chinese-style soup. My aunt excitedly asked me for the recipe for this — you should have seen her face when I told her it was just a turkey stir fry that I added water to. God, that sounds grim. Again, it was filling but not very interesting. I'm *so* glad I made enough to have it again on my next fast day…

Day 2 Fast : Right. Did NOT want another cashew nut situation. So I made a really nice tuna salad with a whole can of tuna, salad leaves, tomatoes, cucumber capers and a bit of balsamic dressing. I ate it at about 2.30pm and it was really, really tasty. RESULT. Same flipping soup for dinner (along with some diet Fanta and 8 grapes) but spent a respectable 510 calories, with fewer headaches too.

For next week, I would like to have better fast day meals, eat less crap and just get on with it really. I think the 'treating food differently' bit has yet to kick in, but I'm hoping it will get there. It might have even started already — when we went out for the hot dogs, I opted for the 2 potato latkes as a side instead of the very large portions of chips, which i totally LOVE. That's an improvement, right? 

Let's just say yes. 

The Fast Diet
Start weight : 11st 12lbs
Week 1 : 11st 8.5lbs