The walls come tumbling down

Things are getting on top of me. I'm feeling squeezed. I've lost another pound and half.

Apologies from both of us for the lack of blogging this week, but our house-building programme (which is grand way of saying we are getting an extension, rather than creating a New Town from scratch or anything) has been consuming most of our time.

Whether this has stopped us consuming other things, it is difficult to say ... I hope that a combination of exhaustion, physical exercise (packing boxes, mostly) and having something else to think about other than food for a change may mean that I will continue to lose weight during the downward run to Christmas without (a) really noticing it or (b) really trying. I have lost weight in this way before, but usually only because I've been very ill. As I said a couple of months ago, the trick is to lose the weight that death's door brings, without actually being anywhere near it!

... So if you don't hear much for either of us over the next few weeks - have no fear. We will return! We shall get on with building a new bedroom and downstairs loo, and you can get on with preparing for Christmas. Shall we all meet here on the evening of the 24th and do some carol singing, perhaps?

In the mean time, to get you in the mood, here's a picture of a puppy in a Santa hat:

Here's what we've each lost so far, in lard form!

Yes, John's had a small gain this week, but we've still lost ten pounds each, and here's what that looks like. It was bloody heavy as well. I might well find that like John, I've had a small gain too (too chicken to get on the scales till Saturday morning), but at least we can now be very grateful that the above is still in the supermarket and no longer on our backsides. Yay us!

Beyond the Dreams of Licourice

... So: one and a half pounds on.

Bugger!

I'm unsure as to what I did wrong as everything was religiously pointed, but I'm going to wait and give the system another week and see if the weight starts going in the right direction again. Other people at the meeting had lost 3, 4 or 5 (and someone at another meeting in the local area had apparently lost 13) pounds all in one week. Such dramatic weighloss seems beyond the dreams of avarice (or should that be licourice?) at the moment!

I stayed for the meeting again and this week a second "going over"of the basics of Pro-Points seemed to sink in more. It is, as our leader said, a big sea change - not so much for me, but for people who were on the old points system for years and years and thought they could portion and point just by looking at something - and everything still needs to settle down. Even the "Weightwatchers" magazine is still based around the old version of the Points system (apart from copies sold at the meetings, which have both) and the full roll out isn't until January - when the Weightwatchers lines grow long with those who overindulged in front of "Doctor Who" and "It's a Wonderful Life" during the festivities!


Anyway, this is all getting a bit technical. I just wanted to say that Deirdre and I were both very touched and pleased with the messages of support and good wishes that were posted to both this blog and our Facebooks after Monday night's Panorama. And as you can see from some of the various comments posted below some of our previous posts, many people have many different ways of achieving a weighloss goal.

In fact, there seems to be as many ways of losing weight as there are overweight people. And I do wonder if the reason for this is that total abstincence - the ultimate aim in most other addiction battles - is simply not an option with weightloss. "I haven't had a drink in five years" means you are tackling your alcoholism. "I haven't eaten for five years" means you are talking via a ouija board. The impossibility of food cold turkey (but not cold turkey food), means that all kinds measures and restrictions and diets fill the gap.

And talking of filling gaps, I'm off to have my lunch. Properly Propointed, of course!

Against the Buffers (we're on iPlayer)

Our appearance on Panorama is now "live" on BBC iPlayer, for viewers in the UK, for the next seven days. In fact, it seems it's on the site for a whole year - the internet never lets you forget ...

Deirdre and I can be seen at various points throughout the programme, making sandwiches, talking and updating this very blog.

We actually had a bit of a post-mortem last night after broadcast, and were a bit unsure whether we'd done the right thing in appearing - but the programme seemed well-balanced and I hope we came across well. Sadly, they mispelled Deirdre's surname and replaced me with Frankie Boyle, but apart from that ...

Anyway, back to life, back to reality tomorrow: the first full week of the new Weightwatchers regime.

Panoramadingdong

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w4dsy

If all goes to plan, Deirdre and I should feature at some point in this week's "Panorama", to be broadcast on BBC1 at 8.30PM on Monday 15th November. We were interviewed by Shelley Jofre last week about our weightloss blog and proposals to tax fatty foods (Deirdre and I had opposing views on this!)

If you have the right set-up - and the stomach for it! - you can even watch us in glorious HD.

Once the programme has aired, hopefully we'll both do posts about our experiences.

To B-52 or not B-52?

So, this is my first post-meeting day on the new Weightwatchers regime - and lunchtime brought about a rather strange glitch in my on-line tracker ...

A Morrison's "Eat Smart" Chicken Arabiatta ready meal isn't listed automatically, but after entering all the nutritional information required to calculate the Propoint value of the meal (including this new thing called "fibre") the eSource program calculated the total as:


I went a bit wobbly at this. My daily allocation is 71 Propoints, and to waste such a huge proportion on one nice (but hardly Michelin star level) plastic tray of pasta, chicken and spicy tomato was really quite upsetting! So, I entered the information again. Tap-tap-tap. And again I got:


By now, I was looking at the little nutritional information panel on the side of the ready meal with a lot of resentment. 'Right,' I thought, 'clearly the supermarkets are lying to us. Only 3 percent fat. Eat Smart, Eat Healthily. It's all bollocks - and I'm never going near any of their products again.' And to just make tripley sure, I tried to calculate the points a third time and still got the same answer:


Now, what made me try a fourth time, I have no idea (except maybe a tiny suspicioun that I had done something wrong somewhere) but this time - to my massive, massive relief - the total I got was:

which is far more manageable and means I can put away the celery and the tap water for another night. But it just goes to show that when taking on a new dieting system like this, mistakes can occur in your calculations. I wonder how many other people who have started the Weightwatchers Propoint plan this week are having problems? And remember, this is using the on-line calculator, not the whirly-wheel thing in the back of the information pack I spoke about yesterday.

If anyone else is reading this and doing the "new" Weightwatchers, here is a quick photo of the nutritional information on the Arabiatta pack. See if you can calculate the Propoints (either on paper, with a WW calculator, or using the e-source program) and see if you come up with 12 or 52!

We're all in this together! :-))

The Weightwatchers new regime is unveiled

... Listen. Do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell?

Let me whisper in your ear: Weighwatchers have changed their points system, seemingly for the first time in fifteen years. No longer is it based around saturated fat, but instead it looks at fibre and takes into account the energy your body uses to consume food. The example our Group Leader used this morning was that of a lamb chop - you "count" or "point" the larger part of the chop, but the small tapering boney bit is what is used by the body to process the rest of it, so you don't count that.

As I looked around the group, I could see this was causing a lot of scratched heads, and the small "counter wheel" at the back of our new Weightwatchers pack for calculating these new "Pro-points" only made things more complicated. For me, having the eSource (which allows you to key things straight into the website, and it calculates the new points automatically) is really coming into its own with this new regime. And not having to faff about with something that looks like Vic Reeves's "Wheel of Justice" but made by Anthea Turner on "Blue Peter" is going to be a bonus!



For more info on the problems of calculating Pro-Points with the new wheel, have a look at the current discussions on both the weightwatchers.co.uk forum and the mighty Mumset (lurkers can browse both without registering).

Now if only we could get UK Weighwatchers smart phone app for the new system, I would be really rather happy this week!

Oh, and finally, some great news on the weightloss front: I lost another 4 pounds! This now means I now weigh 26 stone 3 pounds (or 166.5 kilograms, as we say in the 21st century) and every week the seat belt in our car is getting just that little bit looser. This also means I got my first proper "silver seven" star on my Weightwatchers card (and on the website) this morning.



It's the first time I've got a silver star since 2005 (and before that, 1983 in class 5A) and I'm actually quite excited! My weightloss was so dramatic this week that I actually got a warning message that it was too fast and sudden (the ideal weightloss is 2lb a week) - but I do think that I have the leeway to lose a little faster than most, as long as it's only for a few weeks.

I wonder what next Wednesday will bring ...?

Is there anything low-calorie at TGI Fridays?

It turns out that there are at least a couple of options that might not be exactly low-calorie, but they're not going to bust the diet. I promised aaages ago that I would post in more detail about how we got on at TGIs. Flu intervened and I haven't blogged for more than a week, but John has been blogging away while I've been coughing away...

Anyway, on Monday 25th October we went to TGIs in Glasgow for a friend's birthday. None of the menus online or in the restaurant had any calorie information at all, and the restaurant manager didn't have any details either. So we just tried to play safe - and found it is just possible to eat without busting the diet at TGIs, although the choice was rather limited.

I chose a steak with no sauce, a house salad with dressing on the side, and fries. John chose the grilled chicken in Jack Daniels glaze with cheesey mash and seasoned veg.

The seasoned veg seemed to have butter on them, so I think those and the cheesey mash were probably quite high-fat options. The chicken seemed quite reasonable, as it only had a little glaze on it, and the rest was served on the side.

The steak was 21 days matured, tender and flavoursome and was great without a sauce. The salad was amazing. Just fresh greens, peppers and tomatoes with a little pot of vinaigrette on the side. I ate it without dressing as it really didn't need it - it was the freshest tastiest restaurant salad I can remember having ever.

Now I did try and look up calorie values for all these things on myfitnesspal and Sparkpeople, but this is where these kind of crowdsourced apps fall down. There was such a jumble of conflicting information that it really wasn't helpful. According to myfitnesspal, the salad was 265 calories and the fries 150, which doesn't seem right as that salad couldn't have had more than 30 cals without dressing. And although the fries were a reasonably small portion, they must have had more than 150 cals. I allowed 250 in my tracker.

We must have chosen wisely because we both lost that week - I lost two pounds and John, four.

On the Tuesday, I emailed TGIs head office to see if they could shed any light on the calories. Unsurprisingly they couldn't, which is sad, especially since most other large chains manage it fine. Now, I don't know if I'm being a bit paranoid here, but there was one line in the reply I got that seemed to be an ignorant assumption about my choices:

"we would encourage all our customers to make choices that best suit them, for example swapping fries for Salad or Vegetables, not having a sauce or cheese and so on"

Well, I did choose a salad - and sometimes, a restaurant portion of fries can be a better choice than glazed  vegetables or cheesey mash which could have been hiding any amount of butter and fat. For example, a small portion of McDonald's fries is 230 cals. But, if TGIs had been able to tell me the calorie counts for their menus, I would have known for sure, wouldn't I?

Next post: the 'fat tax' - the Government is proposing to add a 'fat tax' to high-fat and high-sugar foods. Me and John seem to be in disagreement about whether this is a good idea. Let us know what you think in the comments!

Between Fantasy and Reality

Today was Weightwatchers day! (Opens envelope. Camera sweeps over a lot of anxious-looking different weightloss options) And I lost half a pound! (Half a pound bursts into tears. All the other options, particularly those above three pounds or more, smile through gritted teeth) ...

Half a pound. Well, I suppose it's better than nothing, and it's "in the right direction", but I can't help be given pause for thought. This is what usually happens at Weighwatchers for me - bobbing around the 26-27 stone mark, without any real downward descent to the hideously magical "20 Stone, Just Like I Was in 2004" landmark. I didn't take my water tablets this morning before going, so I'm trying to justify this to myself as being a bit of fluid retention, but I'm not really convincing myself of that argument. I also think, well I was at "TGI Fridays" last week, maybe that added something, even though I was careful with my points ... but again, I'm not sure.

I stayed for the meeting this week, as I did last week. Hearing the other members talk about their experiences is both salient and thought-provoking. I can see myself following their routes and rules to weightloss and making significant in-roads myself. The trouble is, almost immediately my mind wanders to ridiculous images of me being able to run athletically or to stop taking my pills or to even just be one of the fitter members of my own peer group, and I have to reign in the fantasies before I start imagining "The Chariots of Fire" music and the sand and the wind in my hair. The reality of the situation is, there is a lot about my weightloss that I just don't understand. Hearing skelf-like women recount how they previous used to consume 120 points worth of food and drink regularly on a Saturday, or two packets of McCoys in a bun and a Snickers bar for their lunch every work day, it did make me wonder why they aren't a 27-stone man with gout, diabetes and a full beard too. Maybe they didn't spent most nights for four years consuming King Nan kebabs and full-fat Coke, admittedly - but the disparity between what one person eats and another, and the resultant weigh gain, is something which bugs. And the sentence "it's my metabolism" bugs me ever more. So it's a Catch-22!

This afternoon, I have my first diabetic check for three months, with the hot-and-cold nurse that can sometimes be the tersest human being in Scotland (which is against some fair competition, believe me). But that is the reality of the my situation: I need to get thinner, or my ambitions (being a writer, buying a villa in Tuscany, and still being around for the next return of Halley's Comet) will crumble to dust (along with me).

I need to find some way of turning these idle, seemingly-unachievable dreams of being fit and healthy into active, achievable goals.

D'yer wanna be a spaceman?