I've lost around 16lb now. This is still less than I had hoped for but not bad at 2lb per week (was hoping to lose 3lb on the occasional week). On the plus side, I can now see my body changing shape and I have dropped a size in jeans. I am thinking that maybe the weight loss is not so dramatic because I am working out and building muscle as I lose fat. To be honest, my shape and how I feel is more important to me than my actual weight anyway. I use my weight only as a guide to my progress.
I can feel my body getting stronger during my workouts too. Its not always easy to guage because the workouts change every couple of weeks to stop my body adjusting to them, but I have increased weights and reps on many of the exercises and I know I am doing some things that I wouldnt have been able to do at the begining. I thought my knees would be my biggest problem as they have been poor for years but I am suprised to find that actually my shoulders are giving me the most pain. I find myself making lots of noises during the upper body workouts (and lots of expletives!). It doesnt seem to be having any long term damaging effects on my joints though and I remain positive that if I can strenghten the joints I will get less pain eventually.
Diet wise I am loving the foods I am eating and am never hungry. I am aiming for around 1750-1800 kcals per day although on some days over 350 of those calories are from alcohol and on saturdays over 1000 of the calories are from cider :-) Today was a no alcohol day and I ate the following:
Bowl of Cheerios
2 Ryvita with 2 thin slices of edam
Homemade beef soup with 2 wholemeal slices of bread
small handfull of almonds
clementine
Banana
small handfull of raisins
turkey meatloaf with potatoes
small low cal cereal bar
3 mugs of low cal hot chocolate
(unlimited tea and water)
Romary conley's magazine is a great source of recipes too.
On saturday by comparison I eat closer to 2000 kcals (otherwise I would have no nutrition, only cider!) This is an example of a saturday's food:
2 slices wholemeal toast with scrambled egg made from 1 whole egg and 1 egg white & mushrooms
2 wholemeal toast with marmite
banana
cod in parsley sauce with pasta and broccoli & peas
approx 7 half pints of cider (thats 7 halves not 7 and a half)
The other good news is that as I build more muscle, my metabolism will get faster and I will either a. lose more weight or b. be able to eat more calories without gaining.
So in summary, its all good so far. we are going to France next week though and there will be astronimical amounts of good food to be eaten. My plan is to be a little bit careful but also to enjoy the lovely food on offer. Life is for living after all. Also starting to think about christmas and how to handle that :-/
