Team UK- Northern Numpties vs Southern Softies Weekly Result

ahhhrrrgggghhh i maintained
soo peeved im doing so good at the gym gone from walking to running in 3 weeks (havent ran for over 10years) and upped my workout already and keping my calories down in limits and i m not seeing the rewards for my efforts its so defeating but i guess i gotta keep at it and wil show on the scale at some point xxx

I've just had a squizz at your food diary, and I think your body will be well and truly in starvation mode, you've cut back on your calories so much, especially while getting yourself back to running....




I don't know if it's helpful, but I thought I might as well let people know what I'm doing, as so far it seems to be working, better than anything I've tried in the last 20 years! I still can't believe I've gone from 16st 1.5lbs on 10th Jan to 14st 12.5 on 16th Feb whilst eating real food!

In terms of exercise, I'm doing nothing but walking the dog 4 or 5 days a week at the moment, because I walked downhill too fast 3 weeks ago and did my knee in. I'm intending to start resistance stuff soon. I usually go ballroom and latin dancing for an hour once a week, but think week 1 of Strictly, not week 10!

I've not eaten less than 1150 calories more than 7 times since I started on 10th Jan. I've only had less than 1000 once (because I truly wasn't hungry). I've set my goal at 2lbs a week (which is 1200 cals), but I've been over my calories plenty of times (I'm averaging 1400 to 1500 a day). I'm eating when I'm hungry, even if it means going over, because I reckon hunger is a sure fire way of telling that your body thinks it's starving, and I don't want it to think that. (BTW I mean true hunger here- the empty stomach rumbling one, not the ravenous pain in the throat carbohydrate craving which I always used to think was hunger). I guess the end result looks much like some people's deliberate zig-zagging of calorie intake.

I'm going to gradually increase my cardio exercise, but I've decided to go carefully as I've injured myself plenty of times trying to do too much too soon, and it ends up holding me back in the long run. I certainly won't be decreasing my calories when my exercise levels increase, but I'll carry on listening to my body, eating healthy food most of the time but not worrying about the odd chocolate cookie or belgian bun, and eating when I'm hungry. My diary is open, and I swear it's truthful! Even if I shut it down towards the end of the day when I'm under calories and end up eating buttered toast before bed, I go back and put it down next day at the latest. At the end of the day, this is another experiment to see what works for me in terms of weight loss, and the diary is data. If the data is inaccurate, I won't be able to draw useful conclusions. OK, I'll shut up now, before I start sounding even more like a geeky scientist!

Anyway- this is what is currently working for me.

Ros x