Quarter-ton couple

John Milne, 6 March 1974 - 2 October 2011

2014-02-04T23:59:00.000+00:00

I have been putting off writing this for so long, but it has to be done. I was right to be worried about John. He died in October 2011, two months after the previous post was written, following an infection. I could not face writing this at the time, it was too painful. But John deserves this closure, for this blog not to be left hanging. And so do the readers of this blog, because there are still around a hundred of those a month, after all this time, and a couple of days ago I had a message from someone wanting to know how we are doing.

I felt (and still do) feel a failure because despite early success, we did not manage to achieve lasting weight loss and most importantly, John did not beat his illness.

Maybe it's best if I leave on this information: the funeral director told us that at the time John died a third of his body weight was excess fluid, caused by his illness.

Fat tax...again? Yawn.

2011-08-26T07:40:00.001+01:00

This old chestnut is on the bbc news. AGAIN. Somebody apparently wants this to happen, very much, cos it keeps on coming back. Who I wonder? Anyway, long time no post, but lots of news. I'm still losing, but John isn't. I'm worried about him.

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Weigh-in progress

2011-04-25T13:42:00.001+01:00

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.

Lost and found

2011-04-25T00:21:00.000+01:00

Well, John said we might be off-radar for a while and I certainly have been. For me, the last four months have been spent either working on the house, working at my day job, or sleeping. I weighed myself tonight, and I'm four pounds heavier than I was in January - I'll weigh myself again tomorrow morning for a more accurate reading, but as we're normally up to 3lb lighter in the mornings, I reckon I've got off lightly, as it were. I can't say the same for John. He's not been tracking regularly, and the weight seems to have crept on. Maybe up to 12 pounds of it has just crept on. That's just a phrase we use, isn't it? 'Just crept on'. When I weigh myself properly tomorrow I might find some weight has 'just crept on' me as well. That's what happens when we don't log everything we eat, when we estimate that portion of cereal, eat six slices of toast but log four, and so the list goes on. It's not helped at all that he's been ill in hospital again twice. Six months ago he could walk 200 yards - just - before having to stop for a rest. Now he can't walk across the room. How is he going to get any exercise in this state? And if he doesn't exercise, how is he going to lose weight? And if he doesn't lose weight, his heart will get even worse. Forgive me if I'm feeling a bit down about all this.

John's been nagging me to blog more. Warning - whine coming up (with a more optomistic bit at the end!). I'll let you into a secret. Over the last few months, I have occasionally felt - gasp- RESENTFUL! of John, sitting on his backside at my Mum's with nothing much to do but write and go to his creative writing class. I've been working particularly long hours the last few months, finding my day job particularly stressful, and the rest of the time has been spent sanding, painting, cleaning, lugging boxes out of the garage, and so on. But obviously, John's situation is not one he would have wished for. And not one I'd wish on myself. Time to snap myself out of that one.

Because now the end is in sight! I'm sitting in my lovely new living room with lime green and white walls (thanks to my friends who came and helped paint), and the rug we bought months ago is now on the floor, and we have a massive new kitchen/diner ready to cook lovely healthy meals in. And I've started writing again! I've decided I really must start earning some money from writing - that's been my ambition since I was a child and I owe it to my six year old self to try. So after looking at a lot of options, some of which pay peanuts, I'm trying out Hubpages. Remember a few months ago I said I was going to post a review of the Weight Watchers iPhone app? I've written it, but decided to post it on Hubpages and link to it from here, rather posting it directly here. Hubpages has millions of readers and scores very well on Google searches, so I can get my writing seen by more people. Please go and have a look!

And please cross your fingers for our proper weigh-in tomorrow. I think a small gain for each of us would probably be the best result - it would show us that we can't get away with letting things slip!

I Fell Off My Bike (Again)

2011-03-20T20:41:00.001+00:00

I was back in hospital on Friday night, suffering from atrial fibrillation. Looks like I'll be taking it easy for a while - but I'll still be keeping an eye on my weight!

I Fell Off My Bike ...!

2011-03-17T19:36:00.006+00:00

Or at least, that's what it felt like.

Many, many apologies for not having being on the blog for seven weeks.

As of late January I started to suffer from strange heart rhythms and palpatations and began to feel truly awful. By mid-February, I took my unpleasantly thumping chest to my local A&E for examination. It turns out I had (or rather have) pneumonia. For the last month I have been battling with the two main symptoms - bouts of palpatations (including entire days of atrial fibrillation) and bouts of breathlessness. The heart rhythms are particularly difficult to deal with - imagine the feelings of an hungry stomach, the gurgling and the emptiness, but transposed twelve inches further north.

As I write, on March 17th (happy Guinness day, by the way!) I am feeling better than I have done since I first became ill, and I'm hoping this will continue. But I'm taking it one day at a time.

I haven't been to Weightwatchers for a month, but was thankful when I last went there to see that my initial bout of illness helped me lose four pounds in a week. I really do have a different relationship with food when I'm feverish like that. In my semi-lucid state, it was even mildly entertaining to see how my interest in food diminished. I suspect at such times, though, it doesn't go below normal levels - it just returns to normal levels!
But there is something wonderfully unshackled about suddenly not having to think quite so much about food, and to get by on a yoghurt or a bowl of soup or half a normal plateful ... it felt like a little bit of freedom, despite the fever.

So ... now I'm back, what now? Well, I start tracking my food again, rejoin Weightwatchers, get fitter, and get back on the bike. Deirdre has been marvellous this month, slowly preparing our new home for habitation with paintbrush in hand, and many of my friends and family have gone far above and beyond the call of duty to help me get fit, and help our house get fit for purpose. Thank you all.
Also, and finally, a thank you to member of staff at my local hospital who took me aside a few weeks ago and asked "Do you right a blog?" (she recognised the Frankie-Boyle-but-happy fizog from the top of this page). Her encouragement and kind words were genuinely affecting - as she said herself, you don't often get feedback in "the real world".

Anyway, I'd better go. I think this is me back for good. I shall poke Deirdre with sticks and try to get her to write something soon.

In the Gripper Lunchtime

2011-01-28T08:47:00.003+00:00

I've slipped back into bad habits in the last couple of weeks. No, not two-kebabs-a-night-and-a-crate-of-Coke habits, thankfully – but things are beginning to worry me nontheless.

In short: it's lunchtime. How do YOU cope with it? I have breakfast (Special K and toast) at around 8AM, to coincide with taking my heart pills, but by the time 1PM comes (or even worse 2PM) my body is rebelling. Little lights are going off inside my head. And I start behaving like John Mills in “Ice Cold in Alex”. I know some of this can be blamed on my diabetes, but the urge to gorge is overpowering some lunchtimes. So … I have started eating “diet” ready meals again. Three for a fiver, so that's three lunches with tweleve collective minutes cooking time – result!

Of course, there's the worry about the salt content, the fats and the sat fat. We all know supermarkets can parade words like “DIET” in huge letter on a packet that – on investigation – are actually nothing of the sort. But a nice hot microwaveable plastic tray keeps my cravings for sweets and crisps at bay all afternoon. Now, that's got to be a good thing. Hasn't it? Being bullied by your belly at lunchtime is a discomfiting experience - like having Gripper Stebson in your colon.

I really wish I'd kept a food diary back in 2004 (when I was 128kg, 40 kilos less than I am now) to check what I was eating then, particularly at lunchtime. Was it a sandwich and crisps? Soup and pudding? A biscuit and a ten mile hike … I honestly can't remember. But whatever it was, seemed to work – even if only for a short time.

Above is a photo of Deirdre and me at the Glasgow Transport Museum in January 2004, seven years ago. The change in me is quite remarkable in that time: especially when it seems like all my other friends have physically stayed pretty much the same in the last half-decade or so. Maybe a few more grey hairs, but no more pounds or kilos.

I feel a lot of sympathy for Tommy Sheridan at the moment. He too must be looking back at early 2004 and thinking … if only I'd done things different afterwards …

Light relief

2011-01-04T22:16:00.000+00:00

First of all, we’re relieved to find that we have not put any weight on over Christmas – I’ve lost two pounds and John has stayed steady – no mean feat considering he’s battling with water retention. He went to the opticians yesterday and apparently even his eyeballs are retaining fluid. But he’s back on the points, and delighted that finally WeightWatchers have released an iPhone app (which is actually very good). I’ve been playing with it too and I’ll post more (with screen grabs) tomorrow!

The Twelve Weighs of Christmas

2010-12-23T13:13:00.011+00:00

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

The Fat Tax and what I think of it...

2010-12-05T20:09:00.000+00:00

A good couple of weeks since we were on Panorama, I thought it was about time I posted how I felt about the whole thing. It's still a 'live' issue - yesterday the Independent led on the news that the UK government are veering away from taxes and price controls on cigarettes, alcohol and fatty foods. Nudges rather than pushes.

I did think it was a bit wierd Panorama devoting a whole programme to something that the Health Secretary had already said would not happen, but there you go, they asked for my opinion and I gave it. And here it is: I'm agin it.

I believe a Fat Tax would disadvantage people on low incomes, who spend proportionately more of their income on food. This year, we're all feeling the pinch. Many people with jobs are finding that their salaries are frozen, people on benefits are facing cuts and unemployment is rising. VAT is going up in January to 20%, and you'd be surprised how many high fat and high sugar food items are subject to VAT. Since the costs of these foods are already going up, why increase them even more, and cause even more hardship?

As for John, well he agrees with a fat tax. He feels that anything that can reduce the amount of crap people eat is going to be a help. He does agree with me that there need to be more healthy options in the shops though. In our local shops in our town, it's very hard to buy fruit and veg. They do have little 'Scottish Government' sponsored stands but often they're empty. I remember one occasion John was in hospital on fluid restrictions. He was not allowed drinks but was allowed fruit. Could I buy any in our town? I'd have had to go to the out of town supermarkets. So I had to go into Glasgow to buy him satsumas, strawberries, grapes and all the juicy fresh fruit he was badly craving. I could have bought any amount of chocolate, bisuits, sweets, salty snacks and crisps. But not anything healthy. I don't think he really wanted a solitary brown banana or some potatoes, which is all the shops seemed to have.

So if they are going to increase the cost of fatty foods there should be a subsidy on healthy foods, and they should make sure that healthy foods are always available in shops. Large areas of cities and towns have no ready access to a supermarket, and many people (like me) don't drive so can't easily get to a supermarket.

I am not even convinced that increasing the price of fatty foods is going to help someone like me buy less of them. When I have a craving for chocolate, I have a craving, and very little is going to get between me and that bar of chocolate.

In fact, I found out during the filming just how much extra I'd be willing to pay, when reporter Shelley Jofri held up a packet of Maltesers and said 'Just how much would these have to cost before you would think twice about buying them? Shamefully, I realised they'd have to cost up to £4 before I'd even think of not buying them. No wonder I'm fourteen stone!

But the filming tought me that my willpower these days is a different beast than it used to be. The Panorama team put us in front of a table covered with food - it was like that bit where Gillian McKeith puts her victims in front of a table groaning with lard and takeaways. There was Burger King (greasy and cold), pizzas, ready meals, crisps, chocolate, and my nemesis - a tub of Ben & Jerry's. It all came flooding back. I held this stupid tub of ice-cream in my hand and found myself describing it as my 'gateway' and telling the nation how I used to tramp for miles to every corner shop within two miles of my house to get my supply. I'd have had to have walked a lot further than that to burn off the calories in a tub of that stuff - no wonder I ended up putting on three stone in a year! Thank god they didn't put that bit in.

It did feel a little bit ridiculous looking at food and talking about being addicted to it. I have the most respect for the struggles people have with drugs, alcohol and cigarettes. Food's an odd one because you have to continue having a relationhip with it. You can't give it up altogether. While some people decide that there are some foods they just can't ever have again, others go for the 'harm minimisation' and try and eat in moderation. I'm in that camp myself. Last time I had a tub of Ben & Jerry's in the house, I ate it in 250cal portions, not all at once, and it stayed in the freezer for weeks. That's a fairly good sign of 'recovery'. My daily food is a budget, and I don't want to spend that much of it on ice cream when I could eat something that would leave me feeling more full afterwards.

So I still eat my Ben & Jerry's, I'm just not stupid about it any more.

The walls come tumbling down

2010-11-28T12:14:00.004+00:00

Things are getting on top of me. I'm feeling squeezed. I've lost another pound and half.

Apologies from both of us for the lack of blogging this week, but our house-building programme (which is grand way of saying we are getting an extension, rather than creating a New Town from scratch or anything) has been consuming most of our time.

Whether this has stopped us consuming other things, it is difficult to say ... I hope that a combination of exhaustion, physical exercise (packing boxes, mostly) and having something else to think about other than food for a change may mean that I will continue to lose weight during the downward run to Christmas without (a) really noticing it or (b) really trying. I have lost weight in this way before, but usually only because I've been very ill. As I said a couple of months ago, the trick is to lose the weight that death's door brings, without actually being anywhere near it!

... So if you don't hear much for either of us over the next few weeks - have no fear. We will return! We shall get on with building a new bedroom and downstairs loo, and you can get on with preparing for Christmas. Shall we all meet here on the evening of the 24th and do some carol singing, perhaps?

In the mean time, to get you in the mood, here's a picture of a puppy in a Santa hat:

Here's what we've each lost so far, in lard form!

2010-11-17T15:08:00.000+00:00

Yes, John's had a small gain this week, but we've still lost ten pounds each, and here's what that looks like. It was bloody heavy as well. I might well find that like John, I've had a small gain too (too chicken to get on the scales till Saturday morning), but at least we can now be very grateful that the above is still in the supermarket and no longer on our backsides. Yay us!

Beyond the Dreams of Licourice

2010-11-17T11:28:00.013+00:00

... 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!

Against the Buffers (we're on iPlayer)

2010-11-16T08:04:00.014+00:00

Our appearance on Panorama is now "live" on BBC iPlayer, for viewers in the UK, for the next seven days. In fact, it seems it's on the site for a whole year - the internet never lets you forget ...

Deirdre and I can be seen at various points throughout the programme, making sandwiches, talking and updating this very blog.

We actually had a bit of a post-mortem last night after broadcast, and were a bit unsure whether we'd done the right thing in appearing - but the programme seemed well-balanced and I hope we came across well. Sadly, they mispelled Deirdre's surname and replaced me with Frankie Boyle, but apart from that ...

Anyway, back to life, back to reality tomorrow: the first full week of the new Weightwatchers regime.

Panoramadingdong

2010-11-13T10:41:00.002+00:00

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w4dsy

If all goes to plan, Deirdre and I should feature at some point in this week's "Panorama", to be broadcast on BBC1 at 8.30PM on Monday 15th November. We were interviewed by Shelley Jofre last week about our weightloss blog and proposals to tax fatty foods (Deirdre and I had opposing views on this!)

If you have the right set-up - and the stomach for it! - you can even watch us in glorious HD.

Once the programme has aired, hopefully we'll both do posts about our experiences.

To B-52 or not B-52?

2010-11-11T17:45:00.011+00:00

So, this is my first post-meeting day on the new Weightwatchers regime - and lunchtime brought about a rather strange glitch in my on-line tracker ...

A Morrison's "Eat Smart" Chicken Arabiatta ready meal isn't listed automatically, but after entering all the nutritional information required to calculate the Propoint value of the meal (including this new thing called "fibre") the eSource program calculated the total as:

I went a bit wobbly at this. My daily allocation is 71 Propoints, and to waste such a huge proportion on one nice (but hardly Michelin star level) plastic tray of pasta, chicken and spicy tomato was really quite upsetting! So, I entered the information again. Tap-tap-tap. And again I got:

By now, I was looking at the little nutritional information panel on the side of the ready meal with a lot of resentment. 'Right,' I thought, 'clearly the supermarkets are lying to us. Only 3 percent fat. Eat Smart, Eat Healthily. It's all bollocks - and I'm never going near any of their products again.' And to just make tripley sure, I tried to calculate the points a third time and still got the same answer:

Now, what made me try a fourth time, I have no idea (except maybe a tiny suspicioun that I had done something wrong somewhere) but this time - to my massive, massive relief - the total I got was:

which is far more manageable and means I can put away the celery and the tap water for another night. But it just goes to show that when taking on a new dieting system like this, mistakes can occur in your calculations. I wonder how many other people who have started the Weightwatchers Propoint plan this week are having problems? And remember, this is using the on-line calculator, not the whirly-wheel thing in the back of the information pack I spoke about yesterday.

If anyone else is reading this and doing the "new" Weightwatchers, here is a quick photo of the nutritional information on the Arabiatta pack. See if you can calculate the Propoints (either on paper, with a WW calculator, or using the e-source program) and see if you come up with 12 or 52!

We're all in this together! :-))

The Weightwatchers new regime is unveiled

2010-11-10T14:30:00.009+00:00

... 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 ...?

Is there anything low-calorie at TGI Fridays?

2010-11-09T20:20:00.002+00:00

It turns out that there are at least a couple of options that might not be exactly low-calorie, but they're not going to bust the diet. I promised aaages ago that I would post in more detail about how we got on at TGIs. Flu intervened and I haven't blogged for more than a week, but John has been blogging away while I've been coughing away...

Anyway, on Monday 25th October we went to TGIs in Glasgow for a friend's birthday. None of the menus online or in the restaurant had any calorie information at all, and the restaurant manager didn't have any details either. So we just tried to play safe - and found it is just possible to eat without busting the diet at TGIs, although the choice was rather limited.

I chose a steak with no sauce, a house salad with dressing on the side, and fries. John chose the grilled chicken in Jack Daniels glaze with cheesey mash and seasoned veg.

The seasoned veg seemed to have butter on them, so I think those and the cheesey mash were probably quite high-fat options. The chicken seemed quite reasonable, as it only had a little glaze on it, and the rest was served on the side.

The steak was 21 days matured, tender and flavoursome and was great without a sauce. The salad was amazing. Just fresh greens, peppers and tomatoes with a little pot of vinaigrette on the side. I ate it without dressing as it really didn't need it - it was the freshest tastiest restaurant salad I can remember having ever.

Now I did try and look up calorie values for all these things on myfitnesspal and Sparkpeople, but this is where these kind of crowdsourced apps fall down. There was such a jumble of conflicting information that it really wasn't helpful. According to myfitnesspal, the salad was 265 calories and the fries 150, which doesn't seem right as that salad couldn't have had more than 30 cals without dressing. And although the fries were a reasonably small portion, they must have had more than 150 cals. I allowed 250 in my tracker.

We must have chosen wisely because we both lost that week - I lost two pounds and John, four.

On the Tuesday, I emailed TGIs head office to see if they could shed any light on the calories. Unsurprisingly they couldn't, which is sad, especially since most other large chains manage it fine. Now, I don't know if I'm being a bit paranoid here, but there was one line in the reply I got that seemed to be an ignorant assumption about my choices:

"we would encourage all our customers to make choices that best suit them, for example swapping fries for Salad or Vegetables, not having a sauce or cheese and so on"

Well, I did choose a salad - and sometimes, a restaurant portion of fries can be a better choice than glazed vegetables or cheesey mash which could have been hiding any amount of butter and fat. For example, a small portion of McDonald's fries is 230 cals. But, if TGIs had been able to tell me the calorie counts for their menus, I would have known for sure, wouldn't I?

Next post: the 'fat tax' - the Government is proposing to add a 'fat tax' to high-fat and high-sugar foods. Me and John seem to be in disagreement about whether this is a good idea. Let us know what you think in the comments!

Between Fantasy and Reality

2010-11-03T11:06:00.007+00:00

Today was Weightwatchers day! (Opens envelope. Camera sweeps over a lot of anxious-looking different weightloss options) And I lost half a pound! (Half a pound bursts into tears. All the other options, particularly those above three pounds or more, smile through gritted teeth) ...

Half a pound. Well, I suppose it's better than nothing, and it's "in the right direction", but I can't help be given pause for thought. This is what usually happens at Weighwatchers for me - bobbing around the 26-27 stone mark, without any real downward descent to the hideously magical "20 Stone, Just Like I Was in 2004" landmark. I didn't take my water tablets this morning before going, so I'm trying to justify this to myself as being a bit of fluid retention, but I'm not really convincing myself of that argument. I also think, well I was at "TGI Fridays" last week, maybe that added something, even though I was careful with my points ... but again, I'm not sure.

I stayed for the meeting this week, as I did last week. Hearing the other members talk about their experiences is both salient and thought-provoking. I can see myself following their routes and rules to weightloss and making significant in-roads myself. The trouble is, almost immediately my mind wanders to ridiculous images of me being able to run athletically or to stop taking my pills or to even just be one of the fitter members of my own peer group, and I have to reign in the fantasies before I start imagining "The Chariots of Fire" music and the sand and the wind in my hair. The reality of the situation is, there is a lot about my weightloss that I just don't understand. Hearing skelf-like women recount how they previous used to consume 120 points worth of food and drink regularly on a Saturday, or two packets of McCoys in a bun and a Snickers bar for their lunch every work day, it did make me wonder why they aren't a 27-stone man with gout, diabetes and a full beard too. Maybe they didn't spent most nights for four years consuming King Nan kebabs and full-fat Coke, admittedly - but the disparity between what one person eats and another, and the resultant weigh gain, is something which bugs. And the sentence "it's my metabolism" bugs me ever more. So it's a Catch-22!

This afternoon, I have my first diabetic check for three months, with the hot-and-cold nurse that can sometimes be the tersest human being in Scotland (which is against some fair competition, believe me). But that is the reality of the my situation: I need to get thinner, or my ambitions (being a writer, buying a villa in Tuscany, and still being around for the next return of Halley's Comet) will crumble to dust (along with me).

I need to find some way of turning these idle, seemingly-unachievable dreams of being fit and healthy into active, achievable goals.

D'yer wanna be a spaceman?

The Background Growl ...

2010-10-30T14:43:00.008+01:00

So, it's been a week since I started doing Weightwatchers properly, and what have I learned? Well, first of all, their e-source service is fine if you always have access to a switched-on PC. If not, then if you're anything like me (deeply lazy and not wanting to faff about with paper and calculators) you'll be powering up the laptop every time you want to record anything more than a Rich Tea. And the temptation to then while away an idle hour surfing the web is something I've always found hard to resist ...! Why Weightwatchers clients in the States have access to a mobile phone app while we British customers are restricted to the (iPhone Safari browser unfriendly) WW.co.uk website is a bit of mystery to me. It's not like WW is a charity or anything - I pay them £20 a month. And for nearly a quarter of a grand a year, I certainly think the phrase "we got an app for that!" isn't too much to ask for.

And the second thing I've learned is this: dieting does not necessarily mean your life no longer revolves around food. At the moment anyway, my pleasure in gluttony has been replaced by the (much more uncommon) thrill of losing weight. But I'm aware that this novelty could very soon wear off. Then there's this odd contradiction: whether dieting or morbidly obese with an over-eating problem, both ways of life lead to you constantly thinking about food.

So how do I stop this? Well, of course, it's a very healthy thing to be wondering about which vegetables to cook, planning future meals and menus, and point and calorie-counting everything. But there's a touch of the "Poacher Turned Gamekeeper" about it all (two food references in that one phrase, I notice!) and sometimes I'd just like to just be free of the whole damn business. I don't smoke, so I don't think about cigarettes. I drink about four pints a year, so I effectively don't think about alcohol much either.

Could I have a similar relationship with food? Well, for a start, let me say I realise I'm lucky to have any kind of choice in the matter at all: most of the human race can only dream of the quantities I (and you) consume every day. But an ability to enjoy the good things about food (a nice meal in a restaurant once in a while, for example) without diving into excess would see me halfway along the road back to full health.

Most importantly of all I want to finally silence the strange, all-permeating empty growl of hunger that swells within me from time to time. It's the sound (and feel) of an empty stomach - usually when no empty stomach is actually there. And it has slowly grown inside me again this week. After seven days of sticking to Weightwatchers, this growl is still not at a fairly high level, but I have an awful feeling that healthy homecooked meals will not placate it forever! And over the last two days especially it has just become very noticeably restless.

Maybe I'm just down today, and a short sharp shock of carbs will do the trick (I have, after all, "saved" weightwatchers points this week so far, for a later splurge at some point). We shall see.

My next WW meeting is on Wednesday. See you then!

Postcard from the edge and back

2010-10-27T11:23:00.012+01:00

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?

Welcome home...

2010-10-26T21:28:00.000+01:00

TGI's post coming soon... but tonight I worked late. John's at uni tonight and I'd agreed to make tea. Got home at 8.45, all ready to start chopping onions and throwing tomato puree around, and found... plates and cutlery all set, and dinner waiting in the fridge... wholemeal pasta and bolognese sauce with Quorn mince :-)

Why I'm not doing WeightWatchers but my boyfriend is

2010-10-24T15:40:00.000+01:00

We're losing weight as a couple, but John is doing WeightWatchers and I'm currently using Myfitnesspal. By using different systems, we've already added another complication and haven't made it as easy as we could have done.

So why are we doing it this way?

Well, we're not joined at the hip. We're each responsible for our own food choices and our own logging. When we both did WeightWatchers, I had a tendency to take over and log for both of us, which did nothing to help John pay attention to what he was eating. So when John decided to go back to WeightWatchers a few weeks ago, I had already moved on to myfitnesspal.com and I chose to carry on with that.

Here's how WeightWatchers and Myfitnesspal stack up against each other:

	WeightWatchers	Myfitnesspal.com
Cost	£19.99/month (as of Oct 2010)	Free, ad-supported.
Food database	UK based. Nutritionist verified Can add your own foods but these are not shared with other users.	Mix of US and UK foods. Some verified entries but most are user-shared. Many are duplicated, making it harder to choose correctly.
Tracking units	Units – WW’s proprietary system, not compatible with any other system.	Calories, fat grams etc. Compatible with the nutrition data on most foods and recipes. Sodium is counted in the US style (in mg not g) so you have to watch this when entering foods.
Tracking methods	Online Paper tracker No mobile application	Online Mobile apps (Android, iPhone)
Support	Leader Groups Online community Handbook Magazine (cost extra) Books (cost extra)	Online community, ability to write blogs. Links to Facebook and twitter so your friends away from myfitnesspal can support you.

How did we come to our different choices? For John, the dealbreaker with WeightWatchers is the support from the group. He said to me today: 'The group makes me feel less isolated. It gives a structure to my week.' He also said that most men he knows don't care about dieting so this is the one place where he can go to talk about dieting issues. And yes, there are a couple of men at the local WeightWatchers though as usual the groups are mostly women. You definitely don't get that kind of face to face support with a purely online system.

For me, the dealbreaker is easy and quick mobile tracking. WeightWatchers still does not provide any way of using their online tracker on a mobile device which is annoying since Weightwatchers charges fees and is also ad-supported, so they should be able to afford to offer this service. And the US Weight Watchers site has had mobile options for years. So I have tried various mobile programs over the years, and for now have settled on myfitnesspal. It's free as well, which is a major consideration. Almost £40 per month between us is just too much.

John is getting increasingly frustrated with not being able to update his food tracker on the go. He feels that firing up the laptop each time eats up hours as he's always tempted to keep surfing afterwards. But he'd hate to lose the support of the group so I think we'll be sticking with our different systems for the foreseeable. Lets see how we do.

Tomorrow we're going to TGI Friday's for a friend's birthday. It's notoriously difficult to get healthy options there and they don't publish the calorie count of their dishes, so my next post will be a review of TGI's and a rundown of any nutrition info I manage to get out of them :-)

Deirdre's food diary for Saturday 23 October 2010

2010-10-23T21:43:00.000+01:00

A slightly better day today:

Calories: 1548, Carbs: 172, Fat: 65, Protein: 58, Sugar: 43, Fiber 22

And how is John doing? Well he's doing WW and he tracked 42 WW points. His allowance is 40. I think that's great but he says he's a bit shocked as he thought he was well under his limit. See how the wrong foods sneak up on you? Happens to me every day. But I'm very glad he's tracking at all. Most days he doesn't and it doesn't take a genius to realise that's not going to work.

So, John is doing WW points and I'm doing calories. That does complicate losing weight as a couple. Tomorrow: Weight Watchers and why I'm not doing it.

Deirdre's food diary for Friday 22 October 2010

2010-10-23T21:02:00.000+01:00

Not so good yesterday... having a Killie pie for dinner maybe wasn't the best idea, mainly cos I don't know how many calories are in them - I'm sure it must be lower than a Scotch pie - anyone any idea?

Totals	1,906	290	64	51	107	17
Your Daily Goal	1,410	194	47	53	28	16
Remaining	-496	-96	-17	2	-79	-1
	Calories	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Sugar	Fiber