Weigh-in progress

Just a quick update on our progress - we weighed ourselves again first thing. My weight is still the same as it was last time I tracked it on Myfitnesspal.com, that is 14 st 2lb. So I lost four pounds from evening to morning. It makes sense that I wouldn't have put any weight on, as my clothes don't feel any tighter. Always weigh yourself at the same time of day! John's weight was 27 stone. He's put on six pounds in one month, since before his last trip to hospital. I can hear him getting up from his lunchtime sleep (because the heart failure causes fatigue, he sleeps for up to four hours in the middle of the day). Then we're off to start walking it off. Lets see how far we get and how many rests John needs to take.

The Twelve Weighs of Christmas

My weightloss has hit a snag these last few weeks... fluid retention. Despite adhering to the diet, I gained four pounds two weeks ago, lost three and a half pounds last week, and then gained another five when I was weighed at Weightwatchers yesterday. This is yo-yoing of the worst kind, and to have it happen just before Christmas (and after months of reasonably careful eating) seems a bit unfair. But who do I blame? Is there a god of dieting? Is Dionysus still in business, looking down and laughing?


Sadly, the only way to cope with fluid retention is a regime of socially-inconvenient water tablets (which I'm on anyway; I've just increased my dose for 160mg to 200mg) and fluid restriction. This should be 1500ml a day, which is the rough equivalent of 4 cans of cola and a tiny cup of tea. At the moment, I'm aiming for 2000ml, working slowly down to 1500ml as I can - but it isn't easy.

Restricting food and restricting fluid at the same time is particularly tortuous; the last time I managed it successfully, I was in hospital, and it was a tremendous shock to the system. Eventually after around two weeks, I settled down and got used to my restricted fluids - but those initial fourteen days were very, very difficult. Going back to 1500ml now is something that fills me with dread, if I'm honest - which is why I'm trying to cut in down incrementally. But, if at least some of my weight gain is purely fluid, it should be worth it in the long-run: when I left hospital I had lost nearly two stone in two weeks...

What I intend to do over the Christmas holidays is weigh myself with the same scales every day, at the same time, after taking my water tablets at the same time, and see if it fluctuates. I've decided to call this "The Twelve Weighs of Christmas" (if nothing else, because it gives this post a snappy title) and any drastic fluctuations in weight should give me an idea of just how bad my fluid retention is...

Anyway, Christmas...

... come round fast this year, hasn't it?

For those desiring weight loss, this time of year can seem a bit of a poisoned chalice. What is it actually for if you can't indulge and revel when the nights are at their shortest? The need for a midwinter celebration is common through many cultures and many religions. So how does a dieter cope? How do you avoid putting on another half stone while still joining in the week-long party?

Many people at my Weightwatchers meetings are either (a) just going to take "a week off", or (b) try to use "lighter" alternatives in their Christmas meals (pigs-in-blankets with lean bacon, steamed rather than roasted veg, sparrow rather than turkey, etc.) At first glance, the latter might seem the better option, but only - and it's a big "only" - if you can cope with the extra preparation and the (let's be honest) distinct possibility of culinary disappointment on December 25th.

For me, I intend to be good ... but not that good. I shall weigh myself every day (scout's honour) and try and restrict my fluids to 2 litres. As a diabetic, chocolates and sugary puddings and alcohol are all something I instinctively avoid, so that's an area of indulgence which thankfully is easily shut for me. But other things - genuine indulgences, particularly snacks and eating out - may prove far more resistant. Although whether their pull will be any stronger over the next week than over a dull weekend in February is yet to be seen!

Anyway - a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all our readers from the Quarter-Ton Couple! Have a good one, and we hope to see you all here again in the New Year: with fresh gym kits, blank weight trackers, sharp pencils and even sharper resolutions!

X

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!

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 ...?

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?

.

Is it safe to eat...?

First - a quick update. We both had a bad result at weigh-in on Monday. I put on two pounds. Current weight 14 stone 2 pounds. J was very down before we even went in and almost decided to drive home and come and get me afterwards. But he stuck with it, stayed for the talk and has thrown himself into cooking and meal planning this week. Which brings me to... the freezer is full of frozen vegetables, some of which J regards with some suspicion. Packages of frozen mushrooms in particular. I've been expecting them to turn up at breakfast or in spag bol, but so far, they've stayed in the bottom drawer. So, I found this gem of a site which will hopefully convince him that they're safe:

http://www.stilltasty.com

So our poor mushrooms might not be as tasty as when they were first picked, but they should be pefectly safe. Except... they were wild mushrooms picked from the park outside our house, which also makes him suspicious. Time to get him to read this:



This was a staple in our house since my grandfather used to take us out looking for mushrooms and brambles back in the seventies. It might be an Italian-influenced thing - see this profile of Elish Angiolini (scroll down to see her list of interests!). I can particularly recommend the Collins Gem edition - it's pocket sized for taking on long walks. And you probably know the score - if you buy it from this link we get about 30p towards my Weight Watchers fees...

Wish us luck for Monday.