For that reason, there are no food diary entries for that whole long weekend, and I didn't bother checking my weight so there's a bit of a gap in the graph.
Although I was taking a diet holiday, I still had a bit of a target: by the time of the next weigh-in, I wanted to be pretty much back at the weight I was at the previous weigh-in, two weeks' earlier. I managed to make that happen, with a couple of ounces in hand, and my handy weekly-daily-calorie budget spreadsheet was quite useful in making that happen.
Losing the holiday weight with a Google sheet
I had written off four days - Thursday to Sunday - for the diet break. During those four days, much pizza, lasagne, Thai takeaway, ice-cream sundaes and associated other tasty things were consumed and very much enjoyed. All of which washed down with a fairly reasonable amount of beer and wine.
As I wasn't counting any calories, I really didn't know how much over my budget I'd been, which obviously makes calculating what your new budget needs to be to balance that out pretty tricky. Realising that, I just decided to apply a bit of common sense for Monday to Friday, picking a respectable number of 2200 calories a day.
I reasoned that by the time I'd rounded up the calories on each item, and walked a bit, that 2200 a day would get me there or thereabouts by the time Saturday morning came around. Having indulged for four days, Monday came in at a nice round 1000 calories: I had plenty of energy stores ripe for the picking, so I just wasn't that hungry. Easy.
Not only was that a good start to the week, when I plugged that into the spreadsheet, coming through Monday 1200 calories under budget meant I had those 1200 to add to the following days' allowance. Seeing the daily allowance cell change to an even richer green was a nice psychological boost actually: it just made me feel like things were going to be easy.
The rest of the week was fairly uneventful. I didn't feel the need to have any particularly super-low calorie days, I just ate a sensible amount and ended up keeping the daily calorie intake under that 2200 each day, with the exception of Friday, where I pushed the envelope to 2300 calories by drinking a bottle of wine.
By the time I went to bed on Friday, my average daily calorie intake for the working week was 1860, comfortably under the initial 2200 target I'd set. When I got on the scales on Saturday, I was 160 lbs and 2 oz, 2 oz. down on 2 weeks' earlier.
Holiday weight lost.
And that was it. No silly fad things, no having to spend all evening in the gym every day, no 'expert' plan to follow, just picking a number that felt about right, and eating a number of calories each day that was smaller than that.
Day 55 - 2850 calories
Breakfast
Milk (100)
2x slices toast (300)
Weetabix (150)
Mini hot cross bun (150)
Lunch
Bread (200)
Lentil Soup (300)
Protein bar (200)
Dinner
Chicken, rice and vegetables (400)
Beer (200)
Cheese and pickle sandwich (250)
Chocolate (600)
Exercise
60 press ups
25 crunches
30m walking
Day 56 - 1750 calories
Breakfast
Milk (100)
Toast (100)
Lunch
5x double chocolate cookies (1100)
Ham sandwich (250)
Dinner
Venison burger (200)
Exercise
2x 25 crunches
3x sets dips
100 press ups
45m walking
Day 57 - 1600 calories
Breakfast
Milk (100)
Muffin (300)
Toast and scrambled egg leftovers (150)
Lunch
Chicken breast with tomatoes, peppers, chilis and rice (450)
Snack
2x Ham sandwich (300)
Dinner
Venison burger with vegetables (300)
Exercise
70m walking
Day 58 - 2350 calories
Breakfast
Milk (100)
Muffin (300)
Ham sandwich (150)
Lunch
Chicken breast with tomatoes, peppers, chilis and rice (450)
Dinner
Chorizo slices (250)
Ham sandwich (150)
A few beers (950)
Exercise
100 press ups
5x sets dips
30 crunches
80m walking
Day 59 - 2050 calories
Breakfast
Milk (200)
5x double chocolate cookies (1100)
Lunch
Chicken breast with tomatoes, peppers, chilis and rice (450)
Dinner
2x scrambled eggs on toast (300)
Exercise
85 sit ups
3x sets bicep curls
45m walking
No comments:
Post a Comment