The Background Growl ...

So, it's been a week since I started doing Weightwatchers properly, and what have I learned? Well, first of all, their e-source service is fine if you always have access to a switched-on PC. If not, then if you're anything like me (deeply lazy and not wanting to faff about with paper and calculators) you'll be powering up the laptop every time you want to record anything more than a Rich Tea. And the temptation to then while away an idle hour surfing the web is something I've always found hard to resist ...! Why Weightwatchers clients in the States have access to a mobile phone app while we British customers are restricted to the (iPhone Safari browser unfriendly) WW.co.uk website is a bit of mystery to me. It's not like WW is a charity or anything - I pay them £20 a month. And for nearly a quarter of a grand a year, I certainly think the phrase "we got an app for that!" isn't too much to ask for.

And the second thing I've learned is this: dieting does not necessarily mean your life no longer revolves around food. At the moment anyway, my pleasure in gluttony has been replaced by the (much more uncommon) thrill of losing weight. But I'm aware that this novelty could very soon wear off. Then there's this odd contradiction: whether dieting or morbidly obese with an over-eating problem, both ways of life lead to you constantly thinking about food.

So how do I stop this? Well, of course, it's a very healthy thing to be wondering about which vegetables to cook, planning future meals and menus, and point and calorie-counting everything. But there's a touch of the "Poacher Turned Gamekeeper" about it all (two food references in that one phrase, I notice!) and sometimes I'd just like to just be free of the whole damn business. I don't smoke, so I don't think about cigarettes. I drink about four pints a year, so I effectively don't think about alcohol much either.

Could I have a similar relationship with food? Well, for a start, let me say I realise I'm lucky to have any kind of choice in the matter at all: most of the human race can only dream of the quantities I (and you) consume every day. But an ability to enjoy the good things about food (a nice meal in a restaurant once in a while, for example) without diving into excess would see me halfway along the road back to full health.

Most importantly of all I want to finally silence the strange, all-permeating empty growl of hunger that swells within me from time to time. It's the sound (and feel) of an empty stomach - usually when no empty stomach is actually there. And it has slowly grown inside me again this week. After seven days of sticking to Weightwatchers, this growl is still not at a fairly high level, but I have an awful feeling that healthy homecooked meals will not placate it forever! And over the last two days especially it has just become very noticeably restless.

Maybe I'm just down today, and a short sharp shock of carbs will do the trick (I have, after all, "saved" weightwatchers points this week so far, for a later splurge at some point). We shall see.

My next WW meeting is on Wednesday. See you then!

Postcard from the edge and back

After some gentle encouragement from Deirdre (see photograph), I have finally decided to step up to the plate and add another post to the blog.

Things have changed for me a lot in the eighteen months since I last wrote on here - or rather, they've come full circle. I was bouncing along quite happily in 2009 until, in mid-June, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. After that, it felt like I effectively ceased to exist for a few months.

From July until September, my blood sugars were regularly over 30mmoh/l (a lot of the time, my testing kit gave up and just said "HI" - which is fine as a friendly greeting, but useless as a diagnostic tool) and I had all the classic symptoms: tiredness, thirst and perma-weeing. By November though, thanks to the wonder that is Metformin 500mg and some informed dietary choices (brown rice and pasta and no chocolate or orange juice at all for three months), I was beginning to get some equilibrium back. Just in time, in fact, for me to then get Swine Flu just after Hallowe'en.

Now, I know what you're thinking - "swine flu"? He means "man flu"! And yes, swine flu was a hypochondriac's dream last year; and I'm not 100% sure that I definitely had it. But what I did have floored me for over a month, deeply concerned my GP, and involved Tamiflu tablets being delivered to our doorstep late at night from a hospital van, while the driver phoned us up and said "Don't come out until I've driven away!" (Thankfully, when I did venture out to pick up my pills, no red cross had actually been painted on the front door - but it was a bloody scary experience!) So I'll have none of your "man flu" nonsense, thank you very much!

As you can imagine, I started 2010 feeling like a dishrag that had been rung out and hung out on the line in a force nine gale. I was diagnosed as anaemic for a while too, and was guzzling iron tablets (mmm ... they taste of keys ... ) for about three months to try and get some equilibrium back in the bloods. But thankfully, by mid-summer, it seemed as if my health problems (or at least the ones that aren't underlying) were finally ironing themselves out. A week's family holiday in Tuscany was a bit of a shock to the system - trailing slowly around with my DVT-caused limp, 27 stones in weight, guzzling water tablets all day, hating the heat, and feeling like a burden to Deirdre and the rest of her family - but it also proved to be (hopefully) a springboard to better days.

I have started looking to the future, rather than just the underside of my duvet - and it is (just slightly) starting to look brighter. I've embarked upon a creative writing evening class at Strathclyde University and (as of August 2010) rejoined Weightwatchers.

I was actually intending this post to be a description of today's meeting. Last week I didn't go, following a bad case of gout, but the week before I weighed 27 stones on the nose. Today, I weigh 26 stones 8: a drop of 6 pounds. One more pound and I would have got another silver star (although sadly my first one was wiped out by me putting on three and a half pounds the following week!)

But, I think I should leave Weightwatchers for next week. I go regularly every Wednesday morning (I am the only man in a group of twenty women, which to be honest suits me fine) and will hope to report back every Wednesday afternoon from now. Expect full transcripts of discussions on the different ways to cook vegetables, held in community halls in faded Clyde coast seaside towns at ten o'clock on a weekday morning!

Isn't that, alone, worth coming back for?

.

Welcome home...

TGI's post coming soon... but tonight I worked late. John's at uni tonight and I'd agreed to make tea. Got home at 8.45, all ready to start chopping onions and throwing tomato puree around, and found... plates and cutlery all set, and dinner waiting in the fridge... wholemeal pasta and bolognese sauce with Quorn mince :-)

Why I'm not doing WeightWatchers but my boyfriend is

We're losing weight as a couple, but John is doing WeightWatchers and I'm currently using Myfitnesspal. By using different systems, we've already added another complication and haven't made it as easy as we could have done.

So why are we doing it this way?

Well, we're not joined at the hip. We're each responsible for our own food choices and our own logging. When we both did WeightWatchers, I had a tendency to take over and log for both of us, which did nothing to help John pay attention to what he was eating. So when John decided to go back to WeightWatchers a few weeks ago, I had already moved on to myfitnesspal.com and I chose to carry on with that.

Here's how WeightWatchers and Myfitnesspal stack up against each other:

	WeightWatchers	Myfitnesspal.com
Cost	£19.99/month (as of Oct 2010)	Free, ad-supported.
Food database	UK based. Nutritionist verified Can add your own foods but these are not shared with other users.	Mix of US and UK foods. Some verified entries but most are user-shared. Many are duplicated, making it harder to choose correctly.
Tracking units	Units – WW’s proprietary system, not compatible with any other system.	Calories, fat grams etc. Compatible with the nutrition data on most foods and recipes. Sodium is counted in the US style (in mg not g) so you have to watch this when entering foods.
Tracking methods	Online Paper tracker No mobile application	Online Mobile apps (Android, iPhone)
Support	Leader Groups Online community Handbook Magazine (cost extra) Books (cost extra)	Online community, ability to write blogs. Links to Facebook and twitter so your friends away from myfitnesspal can support you.

How did we come to our different choices? For John, the dealbreaker with WeightWatchers is the support from the group. He said to me today: 'The group makes me feel less isolated. It gives a structure to my week.' He also said that most men he knows don't care about dieting so this is the one place where he can go to talk about dieting issues. And yes, there are a couple of men at the local WeightWatchers though as usual the groups are mostly women. You definitely don't get that kind of face to face support with a purely online system.

For me, the dealbreaker is easy and quick mobile tracking. WeightWatchers still does not provide any way of using their online tracker on a mobile device which is annoying since Weightwatchers charges fees and is also ad-supported, so they should be able to afford to offer this service. And the US Weight Watchers site has had mobile options for years. So I have tried various mobile programs over the years, and for now have settled on myfitnesspal. It's free as well, which is a major consideration. Almost £40 per month between us is just too much.

John is getting increasingly frustrated with not being able to update his food tracker on the go. He feels that firing up the laptop each time eats up hours as he's always tempted to keep surfing afterwards. But he'd hate to lose the support of the group so I think we'll be sticking with our different systems for the foreseeable. Lets see how we do.  

Tomorrow we're going to TGI Friday's for a friend's birthday. It's notoriously difficult to get healthy options there and they don't publish the calorie count of their dishes, so my next post will be a review of TGI's and a rundown of any nutrition info I manage to get out of them :-)

Deirdre's food diary for Saturday 23 October 2010

A slightly better day today:

Calories: 1548, Carbs: 172, Fat: 65, Protein: 58, Sugar: 43, Fiber 22

 

And how is John doing? Well he's doing WW and he tracked 42 WW points. His allowance is 40. I think that's great but he says he's a bit shocked as he thought he was well under his limit. See how the wrong foods sneak up on you? Happens to me every day. But I'm very glad he's tracking at all. Most days he doesn't and it doesn't take a genius to realise that's not going to work.

 

So, John is doing WW points and I'm doing calories. That does complicate losing weight as a couple. Tomorrow: Weight Watchers and why I'm not doing it.

Deirdre's food diary for Friday 22 October 2010

Not so good yesterday... having a Killie pie for dinner maybe wasn't the best idea, mainly cos I don't know how many calories are in them - I'm sure it must be lower than a Scotch pie - anyone any idea?

Totals	1,906	290	64	51	107	17
Your Daily Goal	1,410	194	47	53	28	16
Remaining	-496	-96	-17	2	-79	-1
	Calories	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Sugar	Fiber

   

My food diary for Thursday October 21, 2010

Just the stats for today:

Calories: 1592, Carbs: 162, Fat: 87, Protein: 40, Sugar: 39, Fiber: 21

I fought Gregg's... and I won!

There's something to be said for accountability... on the way to work I pass not one but three branches of Gregg's... I was cold and hungry but the thought that someone somewhere might actually read this helped me step away from the sausage, bean & cheese melt... and I know that at least one person has read this other than me now so there's a bit less tumbleweed round here too :-)

Having said all that, I have checked my weight and my backsliding has caused me to put on three pounds. But still, yesterday and today are heading back in the right direction.

My food diary for Wednesday October 20, 2010

www.myfitnesspal.com

Calories: 1747, Carbs: 186, Fat: 58, Protein: 65, Sugar: 38, Fiber: 24

Not brilliant but definitely on the right track:-)

Backsliding and yo-yoing (by D).

Most blogs don't last three months... in my experience, nor do most diets :-/

OK, lets get back in the saddle and take stock. I stopped blogging, and made a couple of stabs at calorie counting, but so far haven't sustained it. My highest weight actually increased at one point to 15 stone. The moment was captured for posterity on this online diabetes risk assessement tool for Diabetes UK - you should take it! You should be able to spot me - the "short, round" one. I've lost about half a stone since then but I'm still heavier than my last post eighteen months ago.

So, yo-yo dieting - does it exist? Have I slowed my metabolism down by years of dieting? How did this happen? How did I suddenly turn from an average, size 12 pear into a morbidly obese apple? The bulk of my excess weight went on suddenly, in the space of a year, ten years ago. The last stone of it, in dribs and drabs. I scare myself sometimes wondering if there's another reason for it other than overeating, underexercising and getting older, but for now, I'm telling myself that there's no point looking into any other cause till I can stick to the calorie counting for long enough to tell me if that's the problem.

So, yo-yo dieting. Not being able to stick with calorie counting for more than a week. Don't have answers for either of those problems. But I'm going to try, yet again. Wish me luck. I want to stay accountable so I've made my food diary on myfitnesspal.com public, and I will try and post it here daily - here's what I had today.