Diet Day 002

Diet Day 002 - Fri 03 Jan 2020

My weight this morning was 86 Kilos. I was obviously pleased to see myself weighing one whole kilo less than yesterday, but I had a lot of coffee between weigh-ins, and some alcohol, so I also know it is most likely just water weight and could easily come back.

For breakfast I had a small pastry for 184 calories. My daily budget is 1,600 which experience tells me gives me fairly rapid weight loss, so I had 1,416 calories left. I had a drink too but it was only diet coke, not orange juice or anything with calories in it.

I also had the good idea of brushing my teeth as soon as I had choked my sweet little pastry down. By cleaning my teeth I was psychologically telling my body that breakfast was over and not to expect any more food for a good long while. I'm on holiday from work at the moment, so I just went straight back to bed. If I'm sleeping, I can't be eating.

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Going back to bed might sound extreme, but I wanted my second diet day to be as successful as my first, so was setting myself up for a win.

Later, when sitting down at the computer to work, I got myself a coffee, and studied the label on the carton of soy milk while I waited for the water to boil. My calculations made me think the milky coffee was about 50 calories, so that left 1,366. Two drinks and a pastry and my calorie budget was already severely dented. It was worrying, but I know I had hit difficult dieting targets before and I was confident I would not end up eating over 1,600 calories that day.

I took my coffee to the computer, sat down, and... This is milky and filling... This is milky and filling... I told myself over and over as I drank the coffee. It is surprising how effective even rudimentary self-hypnosis like this can be.

A couple of hours later, unsurprisingly after just a coffee and a pastry, hunger pangs started to very gently come to my attention. They weren't bad and so I decided to just tough it out, even though visions of slices of toast were almost literally dancing in front of my eyes. But at 60 calories a slice, just for the bread, no way. Hunger pangs are the dieter's friend I reminded myself, and continued hammering away at the keyboard.

Later in the day came spaghetti. That's 350 calories for the noodles, but there were a few more calories than that. There was another 70 calories for the sauce, some 20 calories for Parmesan cheese, and 100 calories for a big side salad with plenty of dressing. That makes 540 calories in total for that meal, leaving 820 calories.

Supper was three slices of toast, at 90 calories each (with topping) so 270 calories all together, and a glass of wine for another 100 calories, making 370, all in. That left 450 calories for me to play with before bedtime, when the great calorie counter in the sky resets back to zero.

But I didn't manage to get to sleep right away. I watched some TV, in fact I watched Dracula, which was not good. You can read my gripes about it here. I ate half a bag of supermarket popcorn as I watched, with 250 calories in them, and washed it down with 50 calories of juice, leaving 150 calories.

I could have stopped there, but instead I had two more slices of toast, but I'm not going to beat myself up because I kept the topping thin, and so that took me to zero calories but, importantly, did not bust my budget.

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