I’m just over two weeks into my new diet and it’s going well. Tweeting my food diary is working for me; I’ve already lost half a stone (8 lbs / 3.6 kg) – but expect to lose 1.5 lbs on average in future, as I did in 2008.

I am eating a lot of vegetables – I have restarted my order of weekly boxes of organic fruit and veg from Abel & Cole.

I have been surprised how easy it has been. Frank set up my food info spreadsheet on a lap-top in the kitchen so that I can calculate calories before I sit down to eat.

I’ve not had any biscuits or cakes and realised that, when I did eat them daily, I wanted them more. I eat a lot of fruit instead and hot chocolate with sweeteners when I fancy something really sweet (which hasn’t been often since the first week).

I’ve only been hungry a couple of times and not eaten, when it was after ten at night.

I look forward to being able to get back into my skirts and dresses!

Last month, my brother asked my advice on getting Frank a box of American “sweet goodies”. I asked for mint fudge-dipped Oreos and things with caramel or peanuts but no Twinkies and no obvious junk food.

This is what Frank he got. I laid it out on our kitchen table when we got back from mum’s on the 28th Dec.

Frank is going to take all the stuff in the basket to work but that still leaves an awful lot of yummy things, such as peanut butter M&Ms, Butter Fingers and the mint fudge-dipped Oreos.

I looked at it, realising that if I had ANY of it, I’d not be able to control how much I had and that “just one piece” would very soon spiral out of control.

I resolved not to have any of it at all and tweeted: Why wait for 1 Jan to start my diet! Target: lose 45lbs / 20.5kg by June. I will tweet my food diary.

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision but I have stuck to it. I am now three days in to proper dieting.

When I started the Food Confessional, I didn’t know whether anyone would be reading it; I had to imagine that there were people reading and judging, or else it wouldn’t have worked for me.

However, I know how many followers I have on Twitter – many are people I know who do read my tweets.

Tweeting my food diary is effective for me.

Hurray, it’s …. OK, it’s not actually only 400 calories for the meal. But at under 600 with plentiful parmesan, it fits within my “small lunch, big dinner” planning system.

I added random chopped veg which I fried with the onions in the oil (left over from stirfry) and chopped up mushrooms to bulk it out and add flavour.

It tastes nice and is really thick!

Weight: 2115 grams
Calories: 2772 calories

1.3 calories per gram

This made for a large serving – as much as I’d eat not on a diet. If I needed to keep calories under 500, I think that’d be pretty easy to do just by cutting down the spaghetti and leaving it with extra sauce.

Now, if only I could justify some garlic bread….

Lunch was chaos. I defrosted a Pork Thai Curry of 290 calories which has been sitting in the freezer for, uh, quite some time. It was horrid. I don’t know if my curry making skills have increased tremendously (thanks also to my experimentation with the great Indian spices that you two have introduced me to) or freezing totally ruined this dish, but it was foul. I ate a few mouthfuls, thinking I should just force it down and have something nice for dinner. Then I decided that was silly and defrosted the bean dish instead and ate that.

At the supermarket, I noticed they had a spaghetti bolognese readymeal that was only 410 calories. I don’t know if that’s doable at home with fresh ingredients but I decided to try. Mine is heavy on the mushrooms to bulk it out and keep the calories down. I’ll post the calorie count when I’m sure I’m not going to add anything else.

Current weight: 81 kilos, down 1.5 from the beginning of the month. I don’t think I’m going to make 80 before the guests come, though :(

We have company arriving Thursday so I’m not sticking to this but I thought I may as well work on my calorie counting while I can.

Paola’s post made me realise that I’ve been quietly avoiding the fact that my diet season should have already begun.

I decided I was going to make myself crazy trying to lose weight over the summer so the goal was to have a good time and not be stupid about food intake.

I succeeded at the former.

I have been weighing myself intermittently to see how I was getting on, with a firm goal of NOT putting back all the weight I lost. It was very visible when I hit 80 kilos – I could absolutely see the curves of my face change back to “fat”. Unfortunately, this was right in the middle of things and so I simply ignored it and promised myself that in October I’d be strict again.

It’s October and I’m being strict again. I went up from 79 kilos to 82.5 kilos (yesterday weighed in at 82 but I’m using the higher number) and I do not want to let it set!

For the moment, I am just going to focus on getting back under 80. Then I’ll see what’s going on in my life and work out how strict I need to be re: calorie counting etc. I need to get a portrait photograph done of my face so that’s pretty motivating for losing weight. I’d like to get into the habit of regular weigh-ins as a general rule too – as it makes me fess up to what I’ve been doing!

Sylvia’s Weight Chart:

Edit: I just noticed this post was missing. I must have accidentally left it as a draft. I’m publishing it for the original date it was meant for which means it’ll come in out of order. Sorry about that!

Noel, wanna join us here as a food confessor? If so, read da roolz.

I started a new diet the day after my radiotherapy ended, which was 18 consecutive (week)days. I knew that the end of radiotherapy would mean a big change.

Although I am taking pills daily for hormone therapy, the end of radiotherapy would mark the end of having somewhere to go where people were gentle and kind to me, and where I had a steady stream of people to chat to in the waiting room.

After nine months of treatment for breast cancer, this new diet is my new hobby. :-)

My Weight Chart:

Weight-gain during chemotherapy

I put on a stone (14 lbs / 6.4kg) during chemotherapy. I had six three-weekly sessions.

Chemo buggers up one’s appetite; you just don’t feel like eating, instead you feel the opposite.

I quickly found that carbs (bread, crisps, bran flakes) alleviated the nausea in the first week and so I was eating bread and crisps several times a day. I also bought yummy food to entice myself to eat. Once I started eating, I could eat okay. It was just bringing myself to eat that was hard.

The post-chemo nausea wore off after 7-10 days but I’d still have loads of bread, crisps and whatnot in the house. And so I ate it. That’s how I put on weight.

On being bigger

I had been putting on weight since I stopped calorie-counting (Nov 2009, I think) but May-August this year was the biggest gain.

As I got bigger this year, I wasn’t happy with the changes; it became an effort to cross my legs, I couldn’t keep up with Frank when we went out (he walks fast) and I was bursting out of my ‘thin’ clothes. I ended up buying larger second-hand blouses and trousers on eBay, just to be comfortable.

I really noticed how big I got when I had my (first ever) bra fitting before radiotherapy. I was disgusted with the massiveness of my body seen in 270 degrees of mirrors! And, during radiotherapy, I cringed when I saw a reflection of myself wobble as the nurses adjusted my position.

The plan

I have continued to photograph and write down what I eat since the start of 2008, the year I lost 70 lbs (31.8kg). (Gosh, that amount still surprises me.) I started the diet last Thursday (it’s now Monday) and I have made good progress.

My approach is:

• Only eat when I’m hungry
• Have one portion of carbs (bread, rice, pasta) a day (100-200 cals)
• Don’t wait to get so hungry that I feel like breaking my diet
• Try to savour every mouthful
• Eat on small (side) plates and with a teaspoon when possible
• A second portion is allowed but wait 10 mins
• Have a piece of fruit of low-calorie hot chocolate when I crave something sweet

The lack of carbs (bread) means that I get hungry after a couple of hours but that’s okay if I just have a plate of veg or a snack of Crackerbreads.

I’ll post weekly weigh-ins.

The silly season has already begun. We went out for drinks every night last week until last night. Friends invited us to watch the game in the pub with them and I just could not face another night out nor another drink.

This is when I end up putting the weight on. I really, really need to be careful. I will be furious if I put the weight back on that I lost.

Drawing a line in the sand here:

Sylvia’s Weight Chart:

I really can’t diet under the circumstances but I can make sensible choices about what I eat. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to maintain my weight at this point – I just need to not be stupid about it.

I’m at 79 kilos now and I’m staying there!

Today we had another two portions of the chili con carne. I remembered to take a photograph:

I used up the spare calories by adding a teaspoon of sour cream.

I drank two glasses of Cranberry Juice Drink Light for medicinal reasons. I might drink another. The entire carton is 80 calories so that’s the maximum I could have (and I don’t *care* as long as I feel better :P).

I was a bit worried about making my sweet-and-sour sauce for the stir-fry but then decided I was being silly and I should just count it up and then work out if it should be banned afterwards.

It wasn’t as calorific as I expected – sometimes I forget that a little sugar goes a long way:

* This is a total guess but they were all simmered in the liquid and then removed so it should be a minimum of calories. Like chicken broth isn’t anything like the calories found in a whole chicken

I mixed all the ingredients and then simmered it back down to 250ml when strained – making the final mixture 0.75 calories per ml.

EDIT: D’oh – I didn’t count the tablespoon of oil that I fried the meat and veg in! So not quite as good as I thought.

894.5954 calories in food and 80 in drink is still under a thousand calories just over one thousand calories. I’m amazed I don’t feel hungry!

I made a big batch of chili con carne because I’m been craving it lately. I reduced the amount of meat and beans and increased the tomato and added peppers. I used stewing beef which I cut into small squares to give the impression of having more.

Total weight: 2500g

Calories per gram: 0.9344

Portion:
470g chili: 439 calories
10g cheese: 27 calories

Total: 466 calories

Short-changed! I could have had another spoonful!

I asked the butcher to debone a leg of lamb for me and then I cut these chunks from the thickest piece. I expect to get three or four meals for the two of us from this leg. I seasoned the lamb pieces with salt and a cinnamony Ras el Hanout I bought when we went to Morocco. I used two skewers per person to make it look like more. I didn’t put any fat on the meat, instead I greased the grill with a piece of fat. Unfortunately, the combination of that and trimming all the fat off of the lamb meant it tasted a bit tough. But it was a filling meal and seemed plentiful.

2 portions:

I wonder how much difference a teaspoon of olive oil would have made to the lamb? At 70 calories, it’d push the total right up to the limit but might be worth it.