Diaries of a Dieter

What to do when you don't have any scales?

2012-03-14T05:03:00.001+00:00

Whenever I am on a diet I can become a little manic. There is the calorie counting, investigating all the nutritional benefits of any given food, looking into the digestive system and different food groups. I am always trying to find a clue to find an easy way to lose weight. But the worse thing I do is constantly weigh myself. I often moved the scales around the bathroom to find the spot which would show my lowest weight!

Thingfs are different now. I have been in the Philippines for the last three months and haven't got around to buying any scales so I can only guess my weight. Some days I feel heavy, some days not so heavy. As I have mentined before my diet revolves around mosrtly rice and noodles so it is not completely ideal, though I do try to eat fruit as much as I can. A friend of mine grows pineapples so I do manage to get some occasionally.

Exercise is the best way to keep losing weight in my experience. I do swim most days and last week I climbed the 3,003 steps of Linabo Peak. It was torture on my body but I am sure I managed to burn up many calories.
So despite my weakness for beer and chips, I still have managed to keep my weight down while I am here. But I think more by luck but I will keep trying.

Bye for now.

Another day another diet idea

2012-03-02T06:34:00.000+00:00

You know what its like when youb have weight problems. Some days are good, some days are bad. And most of the bad days are played in the head.

Life is always full of temptation and I believe the saying goes , "idle hands make for the devils playground", or something like that.

Towards the end of last year I was doing manual work. My days were spent lugging around washing machines, cookers, fidges and freezers. It kept me busy and helped me burn up the calories. Unfortunately my work at the moment is writing a number of blogs and calling people to change their energy and phone suppliers.

I tend to have a lot of time on my hands and life as it is, always full of temptations. In my neighbourhood there are a number of bakeries selling some very nice cakes and pastries. I am only human:-)

So at the moment I am trying my best to limit myself from those things that I feel makes me fat. I still have my noodles everyday which is around 270 calories but has 18% fat. But hey we all need our vices. I even had a bowl of my egg fried rice this morning, probably a little fattening;-(

For the rest of the day I will eat fruit, bananas and if I can find some decent mango's then I will. Where I live you can always get bananas, they sell them down the market by the hundreds. They also sell some other fruit that I don't quite know. Sometimes I don't feel so brave by trying new fruits but maybe this week!

I try to go swimming everyday, and although I am not a very good swimmer, I manage to get some decent exercise. So I am burning a good amount of calories by exercise on top of what I sweat here. The temperature is never below 22 here and during the day is usually around 30 and is very humid.

I still don't have any bathroom scales so I have no idea what my weight is, I am hoping I am still under 100 kilos, I only have the mirror as my guide.

So I keep trying and evryday is a battle with temptatiopn but we keep trying.

Its been a while

2012-02-27T10:32:00.000+00:00

When I started this blog I intended to do a daily update! Well I am just lazy. Looking at my last post here I see my weight was 114 Kgs. I Am happy to say that my weight is now around 99kg although it has been a little lower.

I am currently in the Philippines and i don't have any scales, although i did weigh myself at my doctors a few days ago.

I am finding it tough to keep the weight down here as i live on rice and lots of fried vegetables. It is probably time to pin myself down to a proper dietary regime but there are so many culinary temptations here and everyone seems to eat many times a day a here.

Well I shall keep you updated and I promise it wont be so long.

Eighteenth July

2010-07-18T09:04:00.000+01:00

First of all today my weight was 114.6 KG (252.6 Pounds). A little up on yesterday but yesterdays's was well down on the day before so within the margins of my expectations. As far as what I ate. Not all that much, my usual 3 or 4 cups of coffee with 2 sugars and semi skimmed milk. A cup of soup out of the packet, tomato and herb. I also had an orange which I had after taking a multi vitamin tablet and some colon care fibre. For my children I made a bacon, sausage and egg pie coupled with a potato pie. I had a small amount myself, given that the potato is loaded with cheese, maybe not a good idea along with all the fat from the bacon and sausage and the very much buttered pastry. However my portionn was the smallest using on a small bowl. So that was about all for yesterday.

So for today I am hoping to not have anything substantail to eat until 6pm. I may have a piece of fruit during the day and maybe a cup of soup to keep me going. I would like to get out to ride my bike but I have had quite a bad cold over the last few days, so I will have to hold that for a few days longer.

It has always struck me that as succesful as my diets have been over the years, there are always people telling me I am doing it wrong. That may be so, but I am always being told by people who have hardly been successful themselves when trying to lose weight. My problem has never been losing weight as I can lose it quickly, it is keeping it off. I know I need to make permanent changes to my eating habits if I want to make sure I don't put any weight back on.

So I hope I can get my weight down a little from today when I do my daily weighing ritual tomorrow. See you then.

Hello and welcome

2010-07-17T21:01:00.000+01:00

Hello there, I thought I would start this blog, if not to talk to likeminded people out there, then to out my thoughts down without boring everyone. I suppose I am no different to anyone else in a similar situation. I am overweight and I struggle to go too long without thinking about food. In fact most of time I spend depriving my body of food, it cant be healthy. I always think that pleasing yourself must have some psychological benefit.

So my story goes back to when I was about 18. As a youngster I always had a healthy appestite, but I never put weight on. People often said my legs must be hollow. However, this all changed when I first got my driving license. Instead of walking the several miles a day I needed to go to work or the shops and getting on and off of buses, I got lazy and drove everywhere. I had daily burgers and chips and whatever lese was going so the weight started to come on. Not much to start with, I was probably about 65-70 kilos (142-154 pounds) at 18 which became 75-80 kilos (165-176 pounds) at 21.

A comment from my family which was harmless at the time had started me on the road to weight awareness and since then I have never been able to keep my weight stable. I have moments of healthy eating follwed by binges of junk food, followed by extreme withdrawal completely.

At 25 I weighed around 90 KG (198 pounds), at thirty around 105 KG (231 pounds), at 35 115 KG (253 pounds) and earlier this year at 40 years old I weigheds in at 125 KG (275 pounds).

So no matter what I have tried to do I have got progressively heavier as I have got older. I have tried all the shakes, pills, diets and gyms, spending a fortune at the same time. Recently I did one of those heart age tests and mine came out at 53 years old. I personally am worried that time is passing me by and I need to make life changing decisions with regard my diet. I have to just say no to all those foods that have caused me to put weight on. It is not easy as everyone around wants to encvourage you to eat the wrong things, not deliberately of course, but it still happens. The question is how do you get around it. You cant just not have a social life and deny yourself pleasures like a monk.

So at the begining of June I started a new diet. I began on 125 Kilos (275 pounds) and as of this morning I was 114 kilos (251 pounds). I purchased a bike a few weeks ago and so I am cycling for a few miles at least once a week so I hope the longer I exercise the stronger I will become and the easier it will be for me to cycle and get fit.

My dietary regime is nothing special. I dont really eat any mneakls but have small snacks and the occasional bowl of cuscous and salads. I eat soup everyday and try to eat fruit as well. I will record here everything I am eating and give you an aupdate on my weight.

I hope you find this interesting or useful.