My new weight-loss diary. (Now with pics!)

DailyGeek said:
It's £66 a week, including the two hour counselling session. I was well put off by the price at first, but i've found a lot of comfort from the community forums that it actually works, and when i work out how much i spend on food and drink anyway, i'll probably be better off by quite a bit...
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You were spending more than £240 on yourself a month for food and drink?
shocking :/
 
Jazz said:
Good luck with that mate, just started cutting down on food and doing exercise myself and so far so good.

Think that diet sounds too extreme for me, maybe I'm wrong but a healthy diet and some hard exercise is what I always thought is the best way to lose fat and improve health. Lost 1.5kg last week and if I keep going at a similar rate hopefully before the end of the year I'll have reached my target of losing 15kg.
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Good on you :) keep it up!

We all have different motivators, if you read the blog, you'll learn a little more about me and why i've chosen this approach. 1lb here and there a week isn't enough to motivate me to stick to something, but 3-4 stone over 8 weeks certainly is. Like I say, I appreciate its different and shocking to some people, but i've researched it well, and well - I'm motivated enough to stick to it, so it will work. Positive thinking :)
 
You're going to be so hungry. On a day to day level you'll probably feel very tired and slow. I think if you want to lose weight bad enough you should be able to stick to a diet and get down the gym. By going on this program you are handing over control to someone else, and I think that's probably why you feel it's better for you. For me, it seems like you're taking the easy way out, the one that requires less effort. This attitude probably explains how you got to be the weight you are.
 
msm722 said:
You're going to be so hungry. On a day to day level you'll probably feel very tired and slow. I think if you want to lose weight bad enough you should be able to stick to a diet and get down the gym. By going on this program you are handing over control to someone else, and I think that's probably why you feel it's better for you. For me, it seems like you're taking the easy way out, the one that requires less effort. This attitude probably explains how you got to be the weight you are.
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less physical effort maybe, but mentally it will be much harder imo!
 
My sister did this lighter life and did lose a load of weight, She hated it, You litterally cannot eat or drink anything other than the meal replacment stuff they give you and Water, Imagine at family party's and stuff you would not be able to enjoy yourself at all, Also it is a change of lifestyle as you do eventually start introducing foods into your diet this will still mean you cannot deviate from the required foods, If you deviate from this then it can put you back loads.

My sister has really good will power but ended up not being very happy so stopped doing it and then ended up puting the weight on and then some, She is now on the slimming world diet and doing very well.
 
DailyGeek said:
Good on you :) keep it up!

We all have different motivators, if you read the blog, you'll learn a little more about me and why i've chosen this approach. 1lb here and there a week isn't enough to motivate me to stick to something, but 3-4 stone over 8 weeks certainly is. Like I say, I appreciate its different and shocking to some people, but i've researched it well, and well - I'm motivated enough to stick to it, so it will work. Positive thinking :)
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Thanks, fair enough I suppose and to be quite honest I can definitely see why you are taking this approach, personally myself have been quite tempted because I'm a bit impatient as well but I just can't get my head around whether these diets are healthy. Also am a bit old fashioned in some ways and think hard work over a long period of time will work out better because I know with some diets if you go off them you can gain the weight back rather quickly.

Anyways good luck and well done for making the decision to stop with the junk food and sort your health out.
 
6lbs to a stone a week (even initially) is far too much to try and set as a goal. You will end up getting despondent when you get on the scale and see you haven't lost what you wanted to. Something like this is a long haul and will take months, the quicker you lose it the quicker you will put it back on.

(PS: I can talk because I lost over 6 stone a few years ago. Took me 6 months. I put half of it back on in a period after that and then lost it again. I have been through the ups and downs of dieting and at the end of the day its a complete lifestyle change you need, mindset and all. Just my 2p. Best of luck to you mate!)
 
I'm in the process of doing something similar (check the sports arena forum for my Vdiet thread) however it's costing me, well, next to nothing compared to what you're paying.

My mom did the Lighter Life, though, so I do know about it. It is very extreme. Mentally it will be harder than, say, V diet, because you can't eat *anything*. If you read my blog you will again see how I struggled with that. I've lost nearly a stone in 3 weeks (mostly fat, maybe a bit of muscle).

In my opinion, this diet is perhaps too extreme. I understand the method behind it (the shakes etc), but ~500 cals is shockingly low, especially when that few calories is not necessary for the weight loss you want. Keto diet, V diet, GI diet, South Beach, hell even Weight Watchers at least allow you a bit of food, and don't restrict you to the calories a 6mth old baby would have.

If you lack self control with eating, what do you think that this diet will give you that you didn't have before? I'm not being harsh, just trying to save you a bit of money and show you that these diets are not 'easier' than alternatives.
 
Also (and this is in another post because I would like this question answered); are you able to do any cardiovascular routines or weight training? No offence, but if you intend to lose 7stone you will no longer look fat, just skin and bone (with hanging off skin, maybe?!). You need to change your lifestyle too. Otherwise you will yo-yo with weight.

Though I cant imagine doing cardio work will be healthy on such a calorie deficit.
 
cardio would be horrific on a diet with that little calories. I think its for people who do nothing all day, i mean come on, the BMR for a normal person will be 3x this!
 
Best of luck with it mate.. In a similar situation myself, but I chose instead to change the way I eat, and start exercise. Nothing too strenuous, just go for an hours walk most evenings and ive recently started TaijiQuan classes, which at the moment are hard as hell because of my weight, but its going the right way, 2 stone off and counting :)

I have to say that I dont agree with diets like this. Not trying to knock you because the fact you want to change yourself is a very very good thing. But do you want to be eating these food pack things for the rest of your life?

Without changing your lifestyle, and changing what you eat, if you ever find youself in the situation (like a holiday) where it isnt realistic to be able to eat food packs or something then you could easilly slide back into old habbits. I have done a few diets in the past and they havent worked for me. I lost nearly 5 stone on the atkins diet and put it back on because of a weekend away making bad choices triggering some epic feeding frenzy :(

My advice is to take this new impetus you have to change your life, and just make some easy adjustments to your routines. Eat healthier, dont cut out everything you enjoy but maybe limit it to 1 or 2 days a week.. Start exercising, and there are it seems, loads of people here who can give you advice with this :)

Ive lost my weight at a couple of pounds a week now, and its still coming off. You need to think about your whole life, not just a short term goal of dropping a crap load of weight fast and not thinking about what happens afterwards.
 
Morba said:
cardio would be horrific on a diet with that little calories. I think its for people who do nothing all day, i mean come on, the BMR for a normal person will be 3x this!
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I reckon that my 'skin and bone' comment is correct then. I feel like I'm in the wrong to suggest that this diet is wrong due to the one i'm on, however this is even more extreme!

~500 cals is dangerously low. BMR is 2500 ish for the stats he provided. I understand the method of this, but this can't be good, even short term! :p
 
I agree, he will lose a lot of natural muscle mass (he will need to to hit 12 stone), so when the weight is lost the skin will still look flabby - skinny fat (is that the right term?)
 
Morba said:
Its not too far from being like the vdiet, just much more extreme tbh.
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Its completely removed from being the vdiet. Firstly 14grams of fat is terrible, the brain is largely fat, you will feel like crap without eating any fat.

One of the key things with ketogenic diets is its muscle sparing, keeps you in fat burning mode 24-7 without burning muscle when you switch between carbs and fat. Not losing muscle is the key to long term weight loss and at 500calories a day a large portion of the weight loss will be muscle. Which will do two things, once off the diet your resting metabolic rate will be far lower than before, meaning if you slip back into the old way of eating you'll be eating same calories with your body burning far far less, thats what leads to most people gaining weight as soon as they are off a diet.

Dropping past the 1k calorie limit is also where body slips into starvation mode, when your body will do everything to keep fat and will eat muscle first.

I mean, good luck to you, often when having a much higher body fat percentage you will lose fat easier than if you have a BF% of say 15%. An extreme diet to get you going isn't necessarily bad and I totally agree that it certainly can't be worse than staying at such an unhealthy weight. But the problem is you could be setting yourself up for a fall and thats certainly worth remembering. Almost any diet, low carb, low fat, low calorie, low food, low something else... you tend to drop total food intake so even a low fat diet has lower carbs than you'd usually eat. This is where the insane first week drops tend to come from, water weight, every gram of carb stored stores 4grams of water with it. As your carb stores deplete, which they do on any diet really, you will and do lose a lot of weight very quickly.

Its incredibly frustrating for anyone losing weight to lose4-6lbs a week for 2 weeks, then watch the weight loss slow down to 0.5-3lbs a week. The way to deal and cope with it is this, know it will happen, expect it to happen and don't be suprised. Its probably(complete guess but probably right) the number one cause for people dropping diets.


The biggest issue I see is you won't lose 7 stone in a month, you need a decent diet to run through for the entire course of your weight loss and theres little reason to go extreme then switch to something less extreme. THe muscle loss you'll experience in the extreme month will slow down progress in subsequent months, which is why the extreme/fad diets tend to fail long term.

So far i'm just over 3 months into a keto diet with the odd carb up day, I've lost around 3-3.5stone at the moment and its been a slow month for various reasons. Going to be another bad month, having simple surgery on my toes(2) tomorrow morning for ingrown toenails, which will be a bit of a pain in the behind for the next few weeks :(
 
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