Maintaining weight by eating doughnuts

Long time no blog.

There is a reason for that, of course. After giving the food diary a rest, I wanted to really give the whole thing a rest to see how I got on without having the Saturday morning weigh-in sword of Damocles hanging over me.

Could I maintain my weight without keeping a diary of my calories and without getting on the scales every Saturday morning? As the graph shows, yes, I pretty much could.

Nine months into the diet

It's been about 9 months since I started this diet, and I'm about 10 pounds lighter than I was at the start, pretty much right on where I wanted to be. Yes, I've been a bit lighter than that, but I think I actually look better now.

For one thing, I've started exercising a bit more again, so my muscle mass has probably added a pound or two over where I could have been. And that's fine too. As I've said before, this isn't a competition to see how light I can get, it's about having a diet that works for me, allows me to enjoy a particular lifestyle, and means I look alright in the mirror.

Yes, More bicep and shoulder muscle would be nice, but the pectorals are mostly acceptable and I've maintained my six-pack for a few months on the trot, so I'm happy with that.

Losing weight through doughnuts

Generally, the easier things are, the more inclined we are to do them, and the more likely we are to keep doing them. So, for me, I wanted this diet to be as easy as possible.

I don't want to have to scan barcodes of foods into an app, don't really want to weigh everything out and spend every mealtime doing maths. I'd rather have that time to do something fun thank you very much.

Having spent a few months keeping the food diary at the beginning of the diet, I have a reasonable idea of how many calories are in most of the foods I eat regularly. And that's all I need to know.

If I go out for dinner, I don't worry about how many calories I'm eating (and drinking!), I just eat, drink, relax and enjoy.

And I think that makes me better company.

I can do that, because I know I don't eat like that every day, not even every week, and I know that this is a marathon and not a sprint.

That's why I don't like daily calorie targets: they put you under too much pressure. A weekly or even a monthly calorie target makes much more sense. They make sure you stay on track for losing weight, but they take the pressure off and give you the flexibility to enjoy a night out without worrying that you've ruined your diet.

For perhaps the last two months, my Monday to Friday diet has been mostly doughnut based. Five Sainsbury's jam doughnuts at about 11.30 am provide the bulk of my daily calories (ca. 1150). Adding in a couple of ham sandwiches, some cherry tomatoes or celery (and the ever-present multi-vitamin!) and perhaps a chicken breast or an omelette takes me to somewhere around 1800 - 1900 calories for the day.

Take off say 500 calories for my 10,000 steps, and that's a respectable net calorie intake for 5 days of the week, letting me go a little bit wild at the weekend and have a few bottles of wine and a cheesecake or two.

And to those of you who say (or have been told) that you can't lose weight eating five doughnuts a day, I assure you that you can.

The evidence is plotted above.

The food diary takes a holiday

If you take a look at the graph below, you'll see that a couple of Saturdays ago, day 103, I'd put some weight on. Not only that, I'd put weight on for two weeks on the trot. Not what I'd intended.

Yes, there had been some work dinners - as well as the usual weekend binges - but I wasn't happy with it. It was time for a bit of a change.

So, for the last two weeks, you'll notice there has been no food diary: I have stopped keeping one. I've done this for a few reasons, despite the fact that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that keeping a food diary is one of the easiest things to do to help you lose weight.

Why keep a food diary

Simply, just to keep an eye on how many calories you've swallowed each day. If you put in fewer than you use, you'll lose weight, so knowing how many you've put in is a key part of the weight-loss equation.

If you keep a food diary for a while, you do start to get a feel for how many calories are contained within certain foods - particularly if you keep eating the same things again and again as I do. I'm certainly a creature of habit.

Once you've got the caloric values of a core of ingredients stored in your head, it's relatively straightforward to cook yourself a quick meal, and know about how many calories are in there. It's even easier if you use the rounding up to the nearest fifty method.

A quick example:

Slice of buttered toast: 150 kcal
A large egg: 100 kcal
Two back bacon medallions: 100 kcal
Two slices of ham: 50 kcal
Large glass of wine: 250 kcal
Slice of black pudding/lorne sausage/fruit pudding/haggis: 200 kcal
Milk in 2 cups of tea: 50 kcal
1x Sainsbury's jam doughnut: 250 kcal
1x buttered Scottish morning roll: 150 kcal

With that simple list, you're empowered to create myriad combinations of breakfasts, brunches, snacks, lunches, light dinners, very heavy dinners, and more, quickly, easily and without having to worry about doing lots of sums each time.

It just makes things very easy and, by always having a running total of what you're eating, you know when you're getting close to your daily calorie limit and, if you go over it, by how much you need to adjust the number for tomorrow to keep the week on track.

So why am I not keeping a food diary?

Firstly, because I'm sure it makes a lot of this blog very boring. Let's be honest, you know what I eat by now - mostly doughnuts - and I think, well, I hope at least, that I've made the point that you can lose weight week on week by eating mostly doughnuts, even if you have a Big Mac or a can of Dr. Pepper.

Just keep the calorie total under what you burn.

Secondly, it's also very boring to write. I have to keep a note on my phone, then type it up each day, all while trying to get the children dressed, fed, cleaned, teeth brushed and cleaned again. Keeping this food diary - keeping it public at least - was just an annoying part of my morning routine.

The other reason - and perhaps the main reason - was that I think I just needed to shake things up a bit. I'd put on weight for a couple of weeks, yes there were reasons, but perhaps the food diary was giving me a false sense of security. The running total said I was under my limit, so I ate something else to take me up to my limit.

That strategy is fine, but it doesn't leave you with sufficient headroom when you do end up having a couple of work meals out in the same week.

So, for the last two weeks the food diary has gone. And I've lost weight for both of those weeks. I'm nearly back down to where I was before I went to France.

I'm still counting calories, but I'm just having a quick think about it in the morning, roughly planning the day and not thinking about it after that. For the majority of work days, the plan has been 1 bag of 5 doughnuts (1150 kcal) or cookies (1100 kcal) for late morning, then some ham sandwiches (150 kcal each) to take me up to around 2000 calories for the day. Perhaps 2250 if I'm going to be walking a lot.

Quick, easy and, so far it seems, effective.

Back to life, back to reality

If you look at the last few points on the graph, you'll see a story. This is the story of my work and social life.

As I have little in the way of social life, it's basically my work life, which over the past couple of weeks, has involved way above my average number of nights out during the working week.

If you've seen any representative weeks of my food diary, you'll perhaps know that I'm big on the weekend binging. My Saturday and Sunday food and drink binges are my release; a 500 calorie a day (or more) celebration of all that is tasty and indulgent, washed down with some of the (relatively cheap, but still good) finest New Zealand Sauvignon Blancs that Tesco can offer for under £6.50 a bottle. Generally Wairau Cove.

Although, that said, I've been enjoying Lidl's £5.49 Gavi recently...

So, with the weekend being based around enjoying the sweet rewards of as many calories as I can afford, the working week is where I do my dieting and lose my weight, ready to start the next weekend a pound or two lighter than the last one and do it all over again.

Of course, if you then end up eating and drinking out on those weekdays as well, it's game over.

All work and no play...

And so, I have to report - you can see it on the graph - two consecutive Saturdays of putting on weight. And a good few pounds at that.

The most recent Saturday wasn't helped by the fact that I had a gig with the band on the Friday night. I'd been pretty good with the diet on the Friday, and had enough calories left for four pints to come in under 2500.

In the end, I had five. And a kebab on the way back to the night bus.

Then a couple of glasses of wine and four slices of cheese on toast when I got home.

And a couple of Jaffa Cake bars.

It was perhaps not surprising that I was a bit heavier than I had been the previous Saturday. Of course, as I got home at about 1.30 am, a lot of that food was still inside me by the time I stepped on the scales, so the 11 stone 11 pounds figure was perhaps not representative.

After the usual weekend binge though, Monday's weigh in of 11 stone 12 pounds possible was.

I'm trying (when I remember) to record a mid-week weight these days as well; Tuesday or Wednesday. Today's figure: 11 stone 10 pounds. I will take that. There was a meeting after work yesterday, but I left before the pizza made it out of the box.

I feel this week needs to be a good week. It would be nice to weigh in on Saturday at 11 st 9 lbs or a bit lower. I was 11,10 this morning, so I'm on track, but I am out - for dinner - after work on Thursday, so focus needs to be maintained.

As long as I don't do anything stupid this week, I should be fine. I'm back on the bag of doughnuts or cookies for lunch, and everything seems to be working.

Bring on Saturday morning...

The honeymoon is over

I think I may have become complacent.

Following this diet, I have lost nearly a stone. Then I enjoyed what some French restaurants and a Premier Inn buffet breakfast had to offer and put lots of that back on again. Then I lost most of that. Now I've put a bit more on.

Being realistic, my weight is always going to fluctuate. Eating (and drinking) is my coping mechanism. It is my indulgence. It is my release. The idea of my weight (or anyone's really) getting to one particular value and remaining there indefinitely - ruler flat - is unlikely.

In Updike's fantastic book Roger's Version, Roger's wife Esther has a weight maintenance strategy: she weighs herself each morning and if she's over 100 pounds, "she eats nothing but celery and carrots until she's back to exactly one oh oh".

That is not me.

Part of me would like to say - in my defence - that there have been diet blog experimental factors at play over the last couple of weeks (which have proven both fruitful and interesting, stay tuned for a future post), but, really, I'm just making excuses.

The truth is, over the last couple of weeks, I've not really been on it.

With this incredibly simple diet, losing weight has been so thoroughly easy. I've not really had to change what I eat; I've not had to join anything; I've not had to sign up to anything; I've not replaced what I eat with expensive pre-packaged 'nutritionally-balanced, macro-synergised' meals. I've just used my brain, added things up, and lost the pounds.

If you saw my post about my pedometer, you might have seen that I suggested some pros and some potential cons about counting your steps when trying to lose weight. It would appear I have fallen foul to some of those cons Again, useful experimental data (stay tuned yet again...), but, the fact of the matter is - for the first time since I wasn't on a pre-determined 'diet holiday', I weighed more this Saturday morning than I did last Saturday morning.

Yes, I still weigh a good few pounds less than when I started, but that wasn't in the grand plan. Today was supposed to herald the dawn of a new era - or at least a week in which I lose weight - but I've blown that as well.

The issue is really a matter of there only being 7 days in a week. As I've grown accustomed to my weekend blowout, I have a weekend blowout. The problem last week - and it's a problem again this week - is that I then have more than one weekday with major nights out, with dinners and the concomitant several beers.

In previous weeks, I've had the two day weekend blowout, but that's more than compensated for my the next five good diet days. Last week and this week, there's been a weekend blowout, plus two additional weekday blowouts. This leaves me with a week comprised of four blowout days, with only three diet days left to not just make up for those, but to then do the job of the week-on-week weight loss.

With the best will in the world, that's not really likely to happen.

So, to the future. Let's just see how it goes. These two weeks are not representative of my lifestyle. If I accept that I'll put weight on, I can do that with the knowledge that, when my normal schedule comes back around, I'll lose it again.

And - and I know I've said this before, often - that's what the diet is for. It's not a competition to try and lose weight and never put any on again ever. My diet lets me put weight on, and to be sufficiently ahead of the curve that I can put on a couple of pounds one week, look in the mirror, and still see a set of abdominal muscles. That's what it's for.

Counting steps for weight loss

A few weeks ago, my wife got me a pedometer. A little Jawbone Up Move.

It's a pretty simple little thing, though I'm sure it can do more than I use it for, but it's raison d'etre is counting steps, so that's how I use it.

The thing is though, does that actually help with my diet?

Does counting steps help you lose weight?

That one is difficult to answer. I certainly think it has helped me, but it may not help you. It also has the potential to be a dangerously sharp double-edged sword...

Let's start by revisiting the thermodynamic diet fundamentals: the change in your weight is driven by the utilisable energy that you take in (I say utilisable as if you consumed 1 gallon of petrol, you wouldn't really get the use of those  31,500 calories, you'd probably just die), the energy you use to do work, and the energy that ends up as heat.

It follows, then, that the more work you do, the more energy gets used to do that (and more going as heat) and the more weight you'll lose (assuming you don't compensate by increasing what you eat).

So how does the pedometer fit in? Well, a quick search of the literature shows a good few studies that show that pedometer use can help with weight loss. Of course, a pedometer is just a tool, so it can't help you lose weight any more than a trowel or a treadmill; the important thing is how you use it...

How can a pedometer help you lose weight?

For me, it's mostly because I'm quite competitive with myself. I don't like failing at things. Even if those things are as completely arbitrary as walking 10,000 steps a day, if I have a way of tracking how many I've done, I'll want to do it.

And then do more.

A couple of weeks ago, it got to nearly bedtime and I was still comfortably shy of the 10,000. So I ran on the spot until I got there. It took about 15m, and I could feel the heart rate rising. All of that exercise - limited though it was - was something I wouldn't have done if I didn't have a pedometer.

The other benefit is that it provides a more tangible way of compensating for the occasional indulgence. Each step is supposed to use up about 0.05 calories. That makes 10,000 steps 500 calories, and 2000 calories is about 100 calories.

So, if you're usually going for 10,000 calories a day and you fancy a Cadbury's Crunchie, turn that 10,000 into 14,000 and you've paid for it.

Why a pedometer might not help you lose weight

Well, let's come back to that whole 10,000 steps being about 500 calories thing again. On the surface, that's all good, but how you account for it in your daily calorie target. Let's say you're an average man with a daily target of 2500 calories. You get a pedometer and walk 10,000 steps and think "great, that's 500 calories, I can have an extra 2 pints of bitter".

Well, you probably can't, as that 2500 calorie figure probably includes a good few thousand steps as part of your average daily activity already. If you then claim more calories for those 10,000 steps, you might be claiming them twice.

For me though, the biggest problem is all the extra steps above the 10,000. I'm finding that I'm now considering those as extra calories I can eat.

Before I had the pedometer, I considered my calorie allowance to perhaps be a bit higher, but I wouldn't even consider any exercise as allowing me to eat more. If I did more exercise, that was just a bonus that led to even more weight loss. Now though, I'm finding myself saying "well, I can have that pudding and I'll just walk an extra x steps"; some of which I may well have walked anyway.

It's a bit of a balancing act, but some of the data is interesting - more on that in a week or two - and it's quite nice to know that, in the 6 weeks or so I've had it, I've walked over half a million steps.

Quite a humbling figure...

Day 90 - 5250 calories

Breakfast
Milk (50)
Shortbread (650)
Almond croissant (350)

Lunch
Hake with vegetables (500)
Cheeseboard (1000)
Wine (450)
Afternoon tea cakes (500)

Dinner
Beer (300)
Wine (300)
Chicken and vegetable stir fry (300)
2x slices toast (200)
2x slices toast and jam (400)
Jaffa cake bar (100)
Glass of port (150)

Exercise
45m walking

Day 91 - 2800 calories

Breakfast
Leftover Weetabix (50)
5x double chocolate cookies (1100)

Lunch
Chicken curry (300)

Dinner
Venison burger and garlic mushrooms (250)
Beer (200)
Toast (100)
4x slices bread and jam (800)

Exercise
2x 1.5m planks
80m walking

Day 92 - 1950 calories

Breakfast
Ham (100)
5x double chocolate cookies (1100)

Lunch
Chicken curry (500)

Dinner
Bacon sandwich (250)

Exercise
2x 1.5m plank
2x 30 press ups
90m walking

Day 93 - 2600 calories

Breakfast
Ham sandwich (200)

Lunch
5x jam doughnuts (1150)

Dinner
Chicken curry (500)
3x pints beer (750)

Exercise
75m walking

Day 94 - 3450 calories

Breakfast and lunch
5x ham sandwich (600)

Dinner
3x pints beer (750)
Wine (400)
Steak and chips (1000)
Brownie (700)

Exercise
75m walking

Day 95 - 3100 calories

Breakfast
Cake (300)
Milk (100)

Lunch
Burger, bun, bacon, mushrooms and salad (700)

Dinner
Tuna and veggies (400)
Wine (800)
Cake (300)
Shreddies (500)

Exercise
60m walking

Daily weight variation on the diet - part II

I've been trying to weigh myself first thing on a Saturday morning. As soon as I get up and have my first pee of the day, it's time to get on the scales. That's the routine, and I keep that consistent from week to week.

I always weigh myself first thing on a Saturday and that is the gold standard weight.

If you look at the graph though, you may notice a few more points on there recently. Well, those were just motivational; something to help me stay focussed and get back on track after the various dieting holiday binges.

However, the fact remains, it's Saturday first thing that counts.

Okay, so, you get the picture, the Saturday first thing weight is the one I care about, but why? Simply because I need to have a fixed point of reference that tells me how much weight I've lost in a week. This diet is all about the long-term, but without short-term goals and progress updates, how will I know how I'm doing? There needs to be some short-term monitoring to make the long-term bit happen.

A week seemed like a good compromise. It's a long enough period of time to have a binge eating/drinking day (or two), but leave sufficient days to make up for that, but not so long that things can really get away from me and leave me with little chance of recovery (diet holidays excluded of course!).

Daily, or even every couple of days seemed just too frequent for me, the weight could end up just popping up after a binge, then down, and I'd end up obsessing over the little details.

So, that covers the whole weekly thing, but why is the time of day so important?

How much does your weight change during the day?

Yours? I don't know, but I can find out how much my weight changes during the day. And I did. Every day for seven days, I weighed myself four times a day: waking, just before leaving for work, when I got home from work, and just before bed. On Saturday and Sunday, the just before leaving for work and getting home from work times were substituted for after breakfast and after dinner.

I recorded the results, and plotted this graph:

Wow, looks like there's quite a lot of variation there, doesn't it? On Saturday, certainly, that's a rise of a good few pounds. No doubt the result of drinking many, many cups of coffee, possibly after being dehydrated following wine the night before?

A good diet day on Friday though, if somewhat unsatisfying.

With the exception of those two days, while there are some changes let's put them in perspective. For starters, look at the y axis. It doesn't start at 0. Whenever you see a graph, always check the axes first, having a y axis that doesn't start at 0 is one of the easiest ways to mislead your audience and make changes look more striking than they may actually be.

Let's look again after starting that axis at 0:

Not quite as striking now, is it? That Saturday was a 3900 calorie day, so you might expect my weight to increase throughout the day. Thursday was a 4050 calorie day, so that covers that big rise.

The Friday was a 300 calorie day: 50 calories of milk with my morning coffee, and 250 calories of wine in the evening, so you'd expect my weight to come down during the day.

Generally, then, if I eat a 'normal' amount, I weigh one or two pounds more at the end of the day than I do when I first get up. When you consider the amount of food and liquid that goes into me over the course of a day, that's not really much of a change in percentage terms. However, when you're talking about trying to lose a pound or two a week, that variation becomes a significant source of noise.

Hence the common point of reference: the Saturday morning weigh-in.

Day 84 - 750 calories

Breakfast
Cereal bar (150)

Lunch
Chorizo slices (250)

Dinner
Ham sandwich (150)
Beer (200)

Exercise
90m walking
2x 2.25m planks

Day 85 - 4950 calories

Breakfast
3x ham sandwich (400)

Lunch
Mixed grill (1400)
3 pints beer (750)
Brownie and ice cream (1000)
Almond croissant (350)

Dinner
Chicken and bacon pasta (350)
Sticky toffee pudding and cream (700)

Exercise
90m walking
2.25m plank

Day 86 - 2300 calories

Breakfast
Leftover toast (100)

Lunch
Triple chicken sandwich (650)

Dinner
Wine (850)
Venison burger (150)
Mushrooms (50)
Pasta (500)

Exercise
2x 2.25m planks
90m walking

Day 87 - 3000 calories

Breakfast
Toast (200)
Leftover Weetabix (50)

Lunch
Curry (1250)
3x pints beer (750)

Dinner
Toast (100)
Leftover pizza (100)
Ice cream (250)
Beer (300)

Exercise
2.25m plank
60m walking

Day 88 - 2650 calories

Breakfast
Leftover toast and Weetabix (100)
Ham sandwich (150)
Slice of Rocky Road (500)

Lunch
Venison burger and mushrooms (200)
Cheese sandwich (150)
2x Jaffa Cake bars (200)

Dinner
Beer (300)
Venison burger and mushrooms (200) 
2x Jaffa Cake bars (200)
Wine (650)

Exercise
60m walking

Day 89 - 3900 calories

Breakfast
3x slices toast (300)
Milk (50)
2x slices toast and jam (400)
2x hot cross buns (500)

Lunch
Chicken and vegetable stir fry (250)
Slice of cake (200)
9x Jaffa Cake bars (900)

Dinner
2x beers (600)
Chicken curry, rice and naan (500)
Toast and jam (200)

Exercise
2x 2.25m plank
45m walking

The recovery continues, but how...?

This week has been a bit of a mixed bag so far. I was really pleased with Saturday. Getting through a Saturday on under 3000 calories was massive for me. Saturdays are usually my highest calorie day thanks to huge amounts of snacking and lots of wine and beer, so I should have been set up well for the week.

The curse of the macaroon

 

Sunday, well, it really wouldn't have been that bad; but then came mum's baking.

We went 'round to say hello and have a quick afternoon tea, and she'd been baking. In particular, she'd been baking her amazingly fantastic macaroons, spectacularly light and tasty; half-dipped in chocolate. Superb.

Now, my brother was there and, currently dieting himself, had been through the ingredients and worked out that there were only about 90 calories in each one. Amazing. Unfortunately, if you eat more than a dozen, all those 90s add up. Throw in a few wee bite-size muffins, and you're up to a real number.

Other than that, the rest of the day was okay and, even including the baking binge, the weekend's total left the daily budget for the rest of the week looking quite achievable to hit a daily average of 2300 calories.

All to play for.

Where has the weight gone?

 

A good question.

If you look at the graph, you can see that I've lost about the same amount of weight in a week and a bit or so, as I did in the first two months of the diet. How can that have happened?

Well, the first thing is that the night before that fateful 'weigh-in of huge weight-gain', I had three very large bottles of Corona, so I was probably very nicely hydrated for the next morning, so that first weight was perhaps not a fair representation of what I actually weighed.

Add to that the fact that I was probably more stuffed with glycogen than I had been for a while and you might get another pound or two. Hell, maybe even three if you're feeling generous. Still, I wouldn't have expected to lose that much weight.

Homeostasis and marginal gains

 

The body is pretty good and maintaining equilibrium; certainly, it has processes that work hard to try to maintain equilibrium. This is a fairly large topic by itself, and one that will get its own post at some point, but let's just say "adaptive thermogenesis". Basically, the body tries to regulate its energy reserves by altering that whole ATP Synthase efficiency thing and changing the amount of heat you produce.

In an overly-simplified nutshell, if you eat lots and lots and lots, your body becomes less efficient and you burn more calories as heat, if you eat less and less and your fat stores get depleted, you get more efficient and fewer of those protons are wasted spinning those enzymes without making ATP and you don't generate as much heat, saving those calories you ate for chemical energy.

Could my binging have increased my levels of uncoupling proteins and made me highly inefficient, making it easier to get through those calories when I went back to restricting them again?

Without having done any gene or protein expression analysis, I don't know. What I do know, is that I ate lots of calories and I put on weight, I ate fewer calories - fewer than I should have used in the day - and I started to lose it again.

And that's good enough for me.

There have been a couple of other little changes as well. For one, I stopped having milk in my morning coffees. Switching to Nescafe Azera, which is quite a tasty brew for an instant coffee, has meant I can have my morning instant black. Not something I've been able to do with instant coffees before.

Yes, I should just get the cafetiere out, but I just can't be bothered on a school day. Sure, that saves maybe 100-150 calories a day, but scale that up to ten days, that's getting up for 1500 calories saved - not far off half a pound's worth.

I've also been counting my steps recently - another post in itself to follow later. Now, I'm not expecting this to make a huge difference to things, but - combined with my self-competitive nature, it will have made some.

Yesterday, I found myself running on the spot while I made my breakfast, just to get the steps up. I did it properly as well, I could feel the heart rate go up. When I got to the bus stop, I looked at the next bus due display and saw I had five minutes before my bus was due. Rather than stand there I walked on to the next stop. Then past it and on to the next again one.

By the time I sat down on the bus to go to work, I was already at 4000 steps. Not too bad. I did the same in the evening as well.

Hopefully over the course of the scale of weeks, all these little details will start to make a difference. The issue with this week is that, as it is going so well, there's always that temptation to say you've achieved what you wanted to for the week and write off a couple of days.

Let's try not to to that this time, I'll just enjoy myself properly on Saturday.

Day 80 - 2600 calories

Breakfast
Toast (100)
Bacon sandwich (300)
Mr Kipling Almond Slices (900)

Lunch
3x ham sandwich (400)
Chorizo (250)

Dinner
Salmon (450)
Wine (200)

Exercise
50m walking

Day 81 - 5150 calories

You know what I said above about achieving a goal so writing days off? Well, just yeah...

Breakfast
Toast (100)
5x cookies (1100)

Lunch
3x ham sandwiches (400)
Little cupcake (200)

Dinner
Toast (300)
Bottle of wine (700)
Bacon sandwich (250)
2x Bounty sandwiches (750)
4x cereal bars (600)
3 portions of Weetabix with milk and raisins (750)

Exercise
75m walking

Day 82 - 7200 calories
(It's okay, this is part of an experiment for a future post...)

Breakfast
Diluted fruit juice (50)
Almond croissant (350)
2x Jaffa cake bar (200)

Lunch
Scrambled eggs on toast (300)
Black pudding and lorne sausage (800)
2x Almond croissant (700)

Dinner
4x fruit scone (1100)
Turkey tacos (800)
Ice cream (400)
Cheesecake (400)
Toblerone triangle (100)
Wine (200)
Peanuts (300)
5x 710ml bottles Corona (1500)

Exercise
60m walking

Day 83 - 2900 calories

Breakfast
Milk (100)
Toblerone Alp (100)

Lunch
Ham sandwich (150)
Peanuts (800)
Toast (250)
Cheese (50)
Cake (300)

Dinner
Chicken pie (550)
Wine (300)
Jaffa cake bar (300)

Exercise
45m walking