Halk's Corpulence Reduction Regime

I'm fat and it's time to deal with it before it kills me.

I've put on weight gradually over the past few years. I could blame giving up smoking and several serious operations/medical problems. However it's due to me overeating/eating the wrong things.

My intention is to lose my excess weight and come down to a safe, healthy weight.

I'm going to do it by decreasing the amount of calories I consume, and increasing the amount of calories I burn.

I happen to live 4.5 miles from my work, so I'm going to be walking home every day. This will significantly increase the amount of calories I've burned each day to the point where I'll be able to have an appetising diet as opposed to a depressing one.

I'm going to start this on Monday, and I'm in the run up to it. I had thought to wait until I had my cupboards cleaned of bad foods, but it seemed like procrastination. So I'm gearing up for it as best as I can.

My diet will consist of something similar to...

Breakfast 2 boiled/poached eggs on 2 slices of medium wholemeal toast with a bit of light olive oil spread

Snack 200g greek yoghurt with a teaspoon of low sugar jam

Lunch One sandwich, with boiled chicken, a little light mayo and salad - or similar. 500ml of home made vegetable soup.

Snack 2 pieces of fruit

Dinner Some kind of meat, and (usually) 2 vegetables, one of which will be high in carbs Edit : And another 500ml of veg soup

Evening snack A single half covered digestive biscuit. Glasses of water!

This thread is for my benefit first of all. It'd be nice if other people got some kind of benefit from it, but it's not the main objective.

I'm going to try to document my meals here so that people can see them.

Importantly - my diet is not in any way perfect. Nor is it intended to be. I could cut out more carbs, I could cut down the calories. If I do there is no way I'd stick to the diet. I won't thank anyone for advice along these lines.

Starting Weight : Will edit (when I get the scales that were supposed to come today!) Something like 19 to 19 1/2 stones
Starting Embarrassing Picture : Will post this at the latest 3 months after I start. For the sake of my own vanity I'm not going to post it right now.

I will be eating what's in my home. There's nothing horrendously bad here, but there are some less than ideal things. I won't throw food out so I'll eat it in place of super healthy stuff. I'm also going to continue to eat things like chicken in breadcrumbs. Yes, I know they're not ideal, but I don' have the will to cook for 10 hours a week. I'll already be cooking for 5 or so hours a week, that's plenty.

My aim is for about 2,500 calories in a day. I will be burning more than this.

My biggest problem is hunger pains which I get at night... glasses of water can only go so far, but I'll see how it goes.

I'll update this thread shortly with tonights meal which will be broadly the way things will continue. And again tomorrow when I make the cauldron of vegetable soup.

I'm going to simply put anyone on ignore who comes trolling or taking the thread off topic. I can be easily distracted and get into arguments, and it will do me no good to have it happen in this thread.

I also considered putting this in La Cuisine, but it's hardly *great* food and this is where people seem to come to become ex-fat *******s.

Great thread title.

There won't be any trolling, we run a tight ship

Good luck

Good for you and well done for doing something about it.

Are you wanting advice or just somewhere to share your experience with? Other than walking will you be doing any other forms of exercise?

I'm not after advice at the moment, I understand (at least broadly) how nutrition works. There was a thread in GD which stemmed off from a discussion on Phate's weight loss and that gave me the last of the inspiration I needed to get a push on. I'm going to give it a shot for a month and see if there's an effect on my weight. At present this is what I see as striking a balance between what's attainable and what's effective. If I find that the balance isn't met then I'll need to adjust. So if I find I'm not losing weight then I'll reduce my intake - hopefully by then I'll be 'used' to eating a bit better than I do now, so it won't be a massive cut.

I do have an exercise bike, sadly I'm able to use it far less often than I'd like - I have skin problems which I won't go into. I have just changed medication with my doctor, and things are improving there, so with luck I'll be able to do get on the bike like I used to. My health problems as you might expect are made worse by being fat!

It's my hope that as things progress I become able to do more. Perhaps walking to work as well as back. Perhaps getting on the bike for half an hour every day. What I'm intending eating is more than many people eat in a day who aren't following any diet, so I'm also holding out a hope that my appetite shrinks.

So here's the penultimate non-diet meal.

2 small turnips, 1 medium sized potato, half a small onion, a red bell pepper and a breaded pork steak. The turnips were going soft, the pepper was going wrinkly, I have more onions than I need and the pork steak had been in the freezer for a month.

Cooked too much vegetables - when I start I'll do it in batches, that way I can take a proper amount for a meal each time, and if I go over the top I can just keep it for a few days.

The pork steak thing isn't good for me in any way, I won't get these again! 400 calories for the meat in a meal isn't great - but I had it in the freezer so it needed eaten.


Peeled.

Diced.

Oof. Not healthy eating!

Om nom. Nom.

The meal, however, did taste pretty great.

The Halk said:

My biggest problem is hunger pains which I get at night... glasses of water can only go so far, but I'll see how it goes.

Click to expand...

I cannot recommend LeanGains / lower meal frequency / fewer but larger meals enough.

I hated eating little and often.

Jimbo Mahoney said:

I cannot recommend LeanGains / lower meal frequency / fewer but larger meals enough.

I hated eating little and often.

Click to expand...

Well, I've been trying to get used to what I'm going to be eating - to reasonable success.

If I don't have breakfast then I'm not at my best. However I wonder if the breakfast makes me hungry thing is due to sugar spikes - a lot of breakfast cereal is loaded with sugar/high GI stuff. Part of what I understand about Atkins is that eating carbs will make you hungry for carbs.

The meals I'm going to have will be a reasonable 3 meals a day, with a small amount extra between them, what people would consider to be a normal diet I think.

Good luck: admitting something has gone wrong is one of the most important parts of weight loss!

The Halk said:

Snip

Click to expand...

I know how you feel mate, after getting out the army I have put on a few pounds. Actually going on a diet, well not a diet, just changing eating habits and what I eat and getting out on the push bike as much as possible.

How will you be burning more than 2500kcals a day?
You don't sound very active and your current exercise plan is a grand total of walking to work.

Morba said:

How will you be burning more than 2500kcals a day?

Click to expand...

At ~266 lb in bodyweight, 2500 cals is a decent (if even possibly on the low side) starting point for him.

Walking 4.5 miles a day at 266lbs will be in the region of 600 - 700 calories.

It might burn a lot the first few times but his body will adjust quickly to something like walking. Also the OP doesn't sound very active in general, so wont be burning many kcals a day as standard.

Also it's quite a big step to make, can't see it being a daily activity straight away as it will be harsh on the feet, legs and probably back for a while. Then we have to remember that this is Britain, not many dry days lately which will inevitably become a factor.

Morba said:

It might burn a lot the first few times but his body will adjust quickly to something like walking. Also the OP doesn't sound very active in general, so wont be burning many kcals a day as standard.

Also it's quite a big step to make, can't see it being a daily activity straight away as it will be harsh on the feet, legs and probably back for a while. Then we have to remember that this is Britain, not many dry days lately which will inevitably become a factor.

Click to expand...

It'll continue to burn calories - it may tail off a little, but it'll still burn a significant amount. One thing I do need to do is ensure that I don't walk at a leisurely pace, which is not something I'd do naturally anyway. As far as not being active in general, that's right.

I'll do as much as I can for the walking, I've already done it a few times, and yes my feet and legs do hurt, however I should get used to it. I've went and had my gait looked at and bought an appropriate pair of cross trainers which should also help. If I have to start off by walking halfway home for a few weeks or if I have to do it Mon-Wed only then I'll just have to live with that.

Finally if you think 2500 calories is too much and I'm not active enough then perhaps you are right. However it's a significant amount less calories than I'm eating now, and a significant amount more active than I am now. Any less food and I don't see it being possible, and any more activity and I don't see it being possible.

The Halk said:

Finally if you think 2500 calories is too much and I'm not active enough then perhaps you are right. However it's a significant amount less calories than I'm eating now, and a significant amount more active than I am now. Any less food and I don't see it being possible, and any more activity and I don't see it being possible.

Click to expand...

It sounds reasonable to me. I'm half your weight almost exactly and currently cutting, so I'm consuming about 1300 calories a day for a 1/2lb to 1 lb per week loss. I have a sedentary job and lift weights twice a week and do no cardio. I find cardio time inefficient and potentially hunger-inducing, so I avoid it when cutting. I might do it when bulking, but only if I feel like it (I'm not a fan of cardio - any more than a 30 minute jog and I'm bored senseless!).

The most important thing is that the calories are adjusted weekly depending on what the scales are telling you.

e.g. If I'm consuming 1300 calories a day and not losing weight, then I need to lower the calories the following week - maybe 10% - and reassess.

Jimbo Mahoney said:

It sounds reasonable to me. I'm half your weight almost exactly and currently cutting, so I'm consuming about 1300 calories a day for a 1/2lb to 1 lb per week loss. I have a sedentary job and lift weights twice a week and do no cardio. I find cardio time inefficient and potentially hunger-inducing, so I avoid it when cutting. I might do it when bulking, but only if I feel like it (I'm not a fan of cardio - any more than a 30 minute jog and I'm bored senseless!).

The most important thing is that the calories are adjusted weekly depending on what the scales are telling you.

e.g. If I'm consuming 1300 calories a day and not losing weight, then I need to lower the calories the following week - maybe 10% - and reassess.

Click to expand...

I agree there however I think one week is too short a period. When I dieted before (using Atkins) my weight would drop suddenly one week to the next, or barely change depending on how much water I had in me and when I last, erm, created soil.

I'm intending weighing myself every 2 weeks.

Agree. I weigh myself weekly but tend to consider an average over two weeks.

So, I said I'd put up pictures of the vegetable soup, which I'll be eating a fair amount of.

Here's the raw ingredients. Some carrots, some onions, some potatoes, some turnips (I prefer using swedes, although we still call that turnip), I normally use 4 knorr chicken cubes but I've ran out - so it's ham cubes. There's a chicken thigh and a leg there. A handful of pearl barley and a handful of split red lentils. The family recipe uses split peas but I prefer not to.

First step is to boil the chicken thigh and leg for an hour. I normally use a chicken leg quarter or two, but there were none in stock so I'm on to these now.

While that's boiling for an hour I grate and cube the vegetables. It's very important not to blend them. If you're going to blend you may as well open a tin of soup instead.

It is a lot of work with the vegetables, but the soup will only taste good if you do it.
Once the chicken has boiled for an hour I take it out and pull the meat from it. I'm not especially careful as I don't mind if a small amount of meat remains in the soup.

As you can see there's not a lot of meat comes out - enough for 3 sandwiches usually.

I put the bones and skin back in and boil for another 30 minutes at a higher temperature, before chucking everything in the pot togethr - I'll post another pic when I do that.

So, yesterday I threw the soup together and it looked like this...

I brought it to the boil and simmered it for 3 hours. And then another 2 today. I'm bringing it back to the boil and I'll have a bowl for my dinner.

This is my main course this evening. Have you seen a poorer looking parsnip? The carrot and parsnip will be sliced and boiled. The potato is getting mashed.

I coated the chicken breast fillet lightly in the garlic oil paste stuff, and then put on rosemary and thyme. I've no idea in the slightest I've used too much or too little spices. I'll find out when it's cooked!

That looks so good! Wish i could try it with you lol

Well, as usual the soup isn't at it's best the first day. It'll taste better tomorrow and assuming it's at it's peak I'll stick it into the beakers then. However it's still better than any soup I've ever had in a restaurant or out of a tin.



The meal itself was good too. I put lots of pepper in the mashed potatoes - I'd have said before today that there's no such thing as too much black pepper. I pushed the limit today.. still tasted good. The carrots and parsnips were meh, but they're there to bulk it up without adding too many calories. The chicken was surprisingly tasty, especially considering it was my first attempt. I think I'll need to do some research into other herbs that I could use so that there's plenty of variety. I'd also like to be able to use other meat other than chicken.



Today is still day 0 though, tomorrow is when it officially starts. I am however feeling pretty full after that meal, and it's as tasty as I could ask for. I just hope over the course of 2 weeks I lose weight.