Diet Day 008

As always, the day starts with a weigh in, and the numbers haven’t budged. I’m still 85 kilos, which is good. It’s lower than where I started and I expect it to go down again soon. At least a little.

My calorie budget for the day is, as ever, 1,600, which is vanishingly tiny in comparison with what I eat when I'm not dieting. When I'm not counting, I can easily eat double that, or more. But not today.

My breakfast today was bread, cheese, and coffee, which all in all had 280 calories in it. It's a pretty filling combination, and not too big a hit to the calorie budget. It's a breakfast I might even have if I wasn't dieting. After breakfast I was left with 1,320 calories to play with. So far, this is all the same as yesterday, and yesterday - by accident - there was a huge gap, of like eight hours, between me having breakfast and having something to eat in the evening. It worked very well, and I only ended up eating about 1,400 calories instead of my budget of 1,600. With a monumental success like that under my belt, I couldn't help wondering if I shouldn't do the same today. Maybe a mini-fast between breakfast and evening is a good idea. I might well try making it a regular part of my diet practice.

To distract myself, I lost myself in my work, ignoring the few hunger pangs that came, and went hours and hours without eating.

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A Message from the Author


If you are constantly losing the mental battle to steer clear of junk food, then the Mindset Diet may be for you. This is a whole new mindset. This book is packed with insights and tips to help you manage your weight and stay away from patterns of eating that promote weight gain. This is a back to basics approach, where you count your calories every day, but the latest insights into the psychology of appetite are combined to give you the best possible chance of losing weight.

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I was so pleased with my mini-fast – yes that’s what I’m calling it – that I had a beer to reward myself (175 calories), bringing my budget down to 1,240 calories.

My meal was something I invented myself, spaghetti and hummus with peas. The spaghetti was 400 calories, 50 calories for the peas, and 150 calories for the hummus, makes 600 calories of garlicky, ugly looking, but delicious food. And that leaves my budget at 560 calories. At least I thought it was an invention of mine, but when I Google it, it turns out that thousands of other people have had the same idea.

Anyway, to celebrate having so many calories left at the end of the day, I started a Netflix binge. While I watched, I had a chocolate chip cookie at 100 calories, taking me down to 500 calories left in my budget. And then I had a few more nice things. Why not? I had the calories in my budget. I had a half bag of Lays (a bowl full, at 250 calories) leaving me 250 calories. Then I had two more cookies (100 calories each) which left me 50 calories. A little bread, and I was exactly at my target of 1,600, give or take.

To end, just a reminder that the best way to support this blog is to buy one of my books. Simply go over to Amazon, or Kobo and get one.