FLD Ressurection. The Second Coming.
The Fat Loss Diary is back. I wrote the first ‘Ressurection’ article over a month ago but wasn’t fat enough to pay much heed to it. I was disgusted at my expanding equator, but not quite disgusted enough to do anything about it. Then came Christmas festivities and with them, all the calories needed to tip me over the edge. I got fat enough to take action, and committed enough to write about it. Today is Monday 20th January. This is the first entry.
I weighed myself on Saturday. The numbers confirmed what I’d suspected, I ate way too much over Christmas, and my weight has shot up. It’s 75kg. I’d already decided to go back to the Newcastle diet, or some variation of it. You can find it in the book Life Without Diabetes by Roy Taylor.
A few years ago I used it to drop from 82kg to 70kg in 2 months. Those two months encompassed Easter, Eid, and a week-long holiday in Switzerland. All three of those events featured unbound gluttony on my part. Nonetheless, the weight came off and has largely stayed off for the last three years. The Newcastle Diet works better than anything else I’ve tried. It’s so effective that it lets me half arse every other diet I try, it’s my trusted safety net. Strictly speaking, it involves the consumption of three meal replacement drinks a day, and a salad in the evening to provide roughage and fibre. Each meal replacement drink contains 200 calories. So the overall calorie consumption is less than 1000 a day. I didn't stick strictly to the diet when I used it, but the difference it made was astonishing. I lost so much weight that my neighbour of over 20 years didn’t recognize me. I had no concern about damage to my health as the diet was designed by an actual practicing doctor and one of the world’s leading experts on diabetes. His expertise trumps the cries of the supplement industry that insists I will lose muscle and suffer all sorts of devastating consequences if I’m not consuming enormous amounts of protein. During my 8 weeks on meal replacements drinks I became stronger on most exercises in the gym.
Last week I visited Holland and Barrat to purchase a milkshake mixer, one of the ones with a little steel whisk ball inside that you can shake around. They didn’t have any so I purchased one on Amazon. The meal replacement drinks I used previously (one from the selection recommended by Roy Taylor) are no longer available in my local supermarket, but I found them online, and they arrived last night. Before opting for the shakeable drink mixer, I’d seen an upside-down blender in Pro Cook for £29.99. I considered buying it to smooth my way back into the 'milkshake diet' but it wouldn’t have worked. There was no way I’d be willing to take it into work every day. So the portable, manual, shake mixer won. It costs a 10th of what the upside-down blender would have and is far easier to wash. Convenience is important. Make your routines easy to stick to and you’re more likely to succeed.
By Sunday evening I was ready to get started. I had what I needed and I knew what I had to do. Three milkshakes a day, and a small salad or meal (that’s what I did last time) in the evening.
Currently, it’s Monday, 9:22 am, and I’ve not had my morning shake. I’ve been awake for just over three hours. I decided to skip breakfast. I had a long coffee. I don’t take sugar. My first meal will be at lunchtime, it's a grilled chicken breast sandwich with fried onions, mustard, a pinch of salt, and a dash of Tabasco. Most of that chicken breast ended up in the cat’s bowl. I sliced off just enough to cover the bread. I stuffed myself on the weekend and I’ve skipped breakfast before. The core of the Newcastle diet is a huge reduction in calories. I’ll eat my sandwich, I'll probably have a 130-calorie latte, and I’ll have a 200-calorie meal replacement shake tonight. That’s it. As I type these words I feel a slight nudge of hunger. When I first tried this, the hunger was intense for the first day, then it either disappeared, didn’t bother me, or no longer made it into my awareness. I’d steeled myself by recalling instances of people who go on hunger strikes and reassuring myself that hunger wasn’t going to kill me.
It’s 11:19 am and I’ve just bought my latte from the cafe at work. I wasn’t hungry, but this is part of a ritual. My sister works in the same building as me, and we meet here at approximately 11 am each day. Usually, we both eat a muffin as well. But there’s no room for muffins on my fat loss journey today. The staff tempted me with a muffin, the chocolate, lemon, and berry are all particularly delicious. But I declined and felt good about it.
At 1:50 pm I ate my sandwich at my desk to free up more time during my lunch break. The first hunger that stuck came half an hour later, as I was walking to the shops. My sister bought pineapple tarts for my daughters. I’ve been thinking about trying one, but everything I eat is going to slow down my fat loss. I still don’t feel hungry. Let me stop and pay attention to my body. Nothing. I still feel fine.
Its 6:10 pm. When I get home I have to cook for my wife and children. That’s almost guaranteed to make me hungry. I can still have a meal replacement milkshake. Along with a coffee and some water or squash, that will get me to midnight
I’m finally typing this on my laptop at 21:55. I want to do some reading, and my mandatory five minutes of novel writing before I go to bed. I also want to go for a run, that’s one of my weekly tasks. But I’m well aware I have to be awake in eight hours. I usually sleep for six hours.
What was for supper? I made a pot of rice, warmed up some kidney bean curry for my vegetarian wife, and made chicken stir fry in hoisin and garlic sauce for my daughters. The chicken smelt delicious. I know the kidney beans are delicious because I tried them yesterday.
What about those pineapple tarts? They’re very tart, and very sweet. I know because I had one instead of my meal replacement drink. It contained 260 calories. My wife told me the food was boring. I removed myself from her vicinity, went to the the kitchen and started cleaning up. Whilst I was in there I had a cup of full-fat milk. It’s only 2% fat, so going for the semi-skimmed or skimmed seems entirely pointless. It ruins the taste and takes away a lot of the nutrients.
At the end of my first day on the Newcastle diet, my failproof vehicle for fat loss, I’ve not consumed a single meal replacement drink, and I’ve not had my salad. So, I did it all wrong. But I haven’t failed. The point is to cut calories, and the trick is to eat less.
I already feel slimmer.
I’m going to skip breakfast again tomorrow. For lunch I’ll have lamb curry, kidney beans (I love kidney beans) and boiled rice. In the evening I’ll have a meal replacement shake. That’s the plan, let's see what actually happens.
