Diet Day 012

Yes, yes, yes, I weighed myself in the morning and I was 84 kilos in weight. After what felt like an eternuty on the plateau of 85 kilos it is nice to have my dieting efforts validated and see some actual, honest-to-god weight loss going on.

Just the night before, those dangerous, "why should I even bother denying myself nice things to eat if I'm just going to stay heavier than I want anyway," kind of thoughts were creeping into the back of my mind, but they have been well and truly banished now.

Okay, enough celebrating and it is down to business with the day's dieting. As always, my budget for the day was 1,600 calories, which I know from long experience is a number low enough to bring results for me.

I was already feeling medium intensity hunger pangs before I even got up, so I decided that today was not going to be one of those days where I skipped breakfast. Instead, I had two tiny Italian-style slices of toast, which are much smaller than the ones I grew up with in the UK. They have 60 calories in each (120 calories in total). I chopped up some cheese to put on top (bad vegan, bad vegan) for another 100 calories, and had some milky coffee at 60 calories (with soy milk, good vegan, good vegan). That made a total calorie intake of 280 for the morning because I did not intend to eat again until I got back home after work, and I knew I had better stick to that because there was talk of ordering pizza that night and nothing will fork up a diet quicker than ordering pizza.

Deducting the 280 from my budget left me 1,320 calories for the day that was unfolding in front of me. I felt worried about the threat of pizza, but confident I could deal with it after the ego boost of actually losing some weight.

My next test was popping into the supermarket on the way to work to pick up a few things. I had to get that done without picking up any of the disastrous things displayed so invitingly in that den of tempting treats. I had to buy diet coke and a couple of beers, but avoid buying any Mon Cheri (which are displayed at eye height in a red shiny packet at checkout, and are vegan). Doing the shopping on the way to work, so soon after breakfast meant I wasn't even tempted.

I got to work early and ended up sitting in the staff room with nothing to do for half an hour. In that situation, I usually have a little bottle of diet coke and a snack, like a square of focaccia. My lizard brain suddenly went into overdrive, wondering where my snack and my drink were. I felt an attack of hunger pangs and I kept involuntarily glancing at my pigeon hole, which often has some candies and a couple of bottles of coke in it. Thankfully it was empty, and thankfully there are no vending machines at the school, so I got through being alone in the staff room, at the mercy of the urgings of my always ravenous lizard brain, pretty much okay.

I didn't end up having that pizza but I did something almost as bad. I went to the pub. I had two pints of beer for 550 calories. That would have left 820 calories in my budget, but I also ordered a veggieburger and fries. That could easily have had 800 calories in it, or even more, so I was done for the day, but it was good, sitting in the Devil's Forest in Venice, drinking six dollar beers and eating a very ordinary pub burger.

Let's hope that having that veggieburger in my guts isn't going to make problems at my weigh-in tomorrow morning. I want to stay down at 84kilos, not bounce back up to 85.