Battling the Blubber

If you're overweight or in one of the next obesity classes up, there must be an imbalance in your eating habits. It's probably crept up over time, not realising that you were putting a little more on your plate, the extra snacks that turned into a habit, even finishing the kids' leftovers after dinner. Maybe you started drinking more, or you stopped exercising. Perhaps you also quit smoking and transferred your oral fixation onto food instead.  When you begin a diet much of the time, you feel some deprivation. You're not just eating what you should be; you're eating  EVEN  less. I'm switching things up this time. I'm eating what would be reasonable for a person of my size, weight and activity - Okay, perhaps I'm  underestimating the activity level  a little. NB  -  Diets that claim you can "eat as much as you want" don't help you get back to what should be standard for your body. They maintain the over-stretched stomach and don

How active are you? Can you answer this honestly, without padding it with extras you assume will constitute a higher activity level than you  actually  achieve?  You might think that being a parent of an energetic pre-schooler would keep you active, but the sad truth is that it doesn't. What about all the washing, cleaning, cooking, laundry, and playtime? It doesn't account for much besides the average daily movement. You need to  ACTIVELY  increase your activity levels for it to make any difference to your estimated calorie intake. Doing active things that are part of your daily routine is normal. Otherwise, we could quantify every trip to the kitchen to make a drink or walk to the bathroom as part of our regular exercise. This is not the case. TDEE vs BMR The  calorie calculator  that I use on my weight loss journey is from the 5:2 Fast diet website. It's one of the better ones for accuracy and tweaking for activity, and weight down to 0.1kg. When I input my

Another Restart - with added health issues Photo by  i yunmai  on  Unsplash It looks like I'm starting again, this time even heavier than before. Nth time, the charm? 107.5kg It's not quite the heaviest I have ever been, but it's not far off. My heaviest was 110kg* I am worried about my health.  Since quitting breastfeeding at nearly two years, no hormonal birth control, and no major changes to my diet, I have gained a significant amount of weight that I can't account for with calories in/out. In addition, it has ALL gone to my belly. I am not joking. I wear the same bra size; I wear the same trousers (the waist won't fasten if there's no elastic) but I have turned into a barrel. Even at my heaviest, I maintained a consistent 1-2 dress-size disparity between hips & waist and 2-3 between bust & waist, i.e. my waist was always around two dress-sizes smaller than my bust and hips. I have a sneaking suspicion (more than a suspici

Okay, I'm two weeks in and two kilos down. This is good What is not good is that I haven't managed a single fast day yet. I am weak. Although not in all respects. After some research and some genuine dissecting of my life and how I feel I have decided to go gluten-free. I have not made this decision lightly or stupidly, in the hope that it will somehow make me lose weight, like some people. I have been feeling depressed (initially attributed to PPD, post-partum depression), I have been feeling perpetually bloated and uncomfortable, even though I've been trying to reduce portion sizes and calorie counting I have not managed to lose an ounce. I have also been extremely tired, even though my hubby has been taking night-time baby care so that we could wean him off all night boob-feasting If they all have a common cause, then the prime suspect is my thyroid and it's hormonal function. Hence rejecting gluten, in addition to increasing iron, selenium (Brazil nu

I'll admit I'm weak now and get it out of the way. I did not fast yesterday.  I had very good intentions, but they are often blasted to tiny little pieces in the face of toddler determination. I was doing well, 11:00 came around and I was still just on fluids (for reference the small boy had been up since 05:30), and it was snack-before-nap-time. He chose an apple. He took one bite out of it and handed me the other one from the fruit bowl. He then refused to eat his apple if I wasn't eating mine. And he's a smart one, he knows the difference between fake eating and real eating, he would inspect my apple after every bite before taking a bite of his own. Failure one doesn't seem so bad. In the grand and cosmic scheme of dieting I could have snacked on something much less healthy and more calorie-laden. Unfortunately, that is just where it started to go downhill like an avalanche. The reason I tend toward fluid only fasts is because I like eat