Meals - Week 10.5

Hey good morning, i'm hiding in the world of blogs today, I've had my favourite breakfast, granola and strawberry yogurt, a fresh coffee is steaming away on my desk, i can feel the Friday vibe in the air all over the factory as my coworkers always seem to get a bit chirpier as the weekend crawls into view, quicker to say 'good morning' and have a certain spring in their step, the sun is out and table mountain looks as majestic as always...

And this morning i am extra chirpy (sickening isn't it) because i just weighed myself, i'm not going to kiss and tell just yet as I only report my weight once a month and also the weekend is here, so once the family breakfasts, lunches, nibbles in the afternoon are a fading memory i will weigh myself on Monday to see if the reading today was in fact accurate and my weight has regulated...

It is still blowing my mind that weight can be lost at similar rates to the media promoted, body beautiful, celebrity endorsed fad diets if the time honored tradition of reducing calories, eating smaller portions more often with a balanced diet of carbs, proteins and fats is followed.  As a serial lo carb dieter i always thought lo cal would be too mathematically difficult to follow and maintain, this is proving at the moment to be wrong, sure though there is maybe an argument that i am so big and have lots to lose that any diet plan at this stage couldn't fail to work and there is a possibility as i get closer to my goal weight of 85kg (on that day the heavens will open and a beautiful rainbow will descend unto me, toned and in my speedo, heraldic music will play and unicorns will whisk me away to the land of green ginger...), i digress, yes as i get closer to my goal weight there is an argument for hitting a plateau and i will experience the same frustrations as everyone else in Normalville and start living off cardboard, cloth and cabbage to get the last few grams off?

However my counter argument is that my main goal is not the weight loss, anyone can lose weight in a number of funky ways no my main goal is that magical place called Maintenance, when i get the weight down and the baggy Cantona is indeed baggy i want the new me to continue to be wear the baggy Cantona for many years to come, I could not in the past manage to maintain a lo carb for life attitude for more than 8 months at a time, for me it always gets a bit boring missing out on carbs for any extended period after goal weight, but i could very well see myself maintaining a diet of 2100 +/- 10% calories for life, for that i get a hearty diverse breakfast, a morning snack, lunch plus a snack, an afternoon snack, a dinner plus dessert of sorts and still have room for a midnight feast (for 'feast' read bran flakes with lo fat milk), i know this to be true and all you have to do is read through my first month of daily meal posts to see the range of foods i meticulously blogged about, the vast diversity of those meals and snacks fills me with confidence that when i do land at maintenance i'll be able to hang around for a very long time without temptation getting the better of me, in fact i just counted the items in my food diary to date an there are 340 different items i have eaten over the past 10 weeks in various combinations so for me surely maintenance will be breeze.

And so i go on, i am honestly not trying to preach, in fact i detest that type of dieter, the one who asks if you are on a diet and when you answer yes they say 'me too' and spend the rest of the conversation trying to convince you that their way is the best way and you are doing it all wrong, and so and so said this and studies have found this.... mer... at dinner a couple of weeks ago i was sat with a good friend of mine who is following a shake driven, protein powered, i am putting on weight but it is muscle type diet, the sort of diet that sponsors American Major League soccer teams say in Los Angeles to be more precise, a couple sat at another table announced they were lo carbing, banting, they came over and joined us, all 4 of us were in the honeymoon period of of our diets of choice and so pumped about the paths we had each chosen, a debate fired up with all off us throwing advice at each other, questions were raised and accusations dealt out and i took a moment and stepped back from the ensuing diet fest AGM and thought 'all 4 of us are overweight, each one of us has found a way to kick off the weight loss, for us the obese it doesn't matter at this stage of each of our respective journeys who is right and who is wrong, maintenance can wait, and reaching maintenance is a huge out of this world goal achieved in itself, the most important thing to remember is everyone around this table has taken a choice to become healthier and as i full well know how difficult a decision that is to make whatever works for you works for you'.

I will follow that sentiment up with this though, although i stand by my thoughts that evening i still and believe them to be true a food addict can only maintain their goal weight by switching to a well balanced, calorie controlled, portion size conscious way of eating when they get there...

Have a lovely weekend chubbers... x