Diet week ending 22.09.19

Was going well until last Thursday when the slight cough I had developed on Tuesday progressed into another bout of the 'flu. So I decided to give up on the fast day in the afternoon and had some dinner and snacks. Then from Friday to Sunday I was fairly sick, so I did less walking than usual and also ate 'ad libitum' - which for me means have three healthy meals but then also snacking on some confectionery and/or chocolate. So the weekly daily average for week 38 ended up close to maintenance caloric intake, despite the week including a day and a half-day of fasting.

Daily averages:

This week I've been feeling a lot better, with the cough slowly clearing up. And although I ate three meals on Monday and Tuesday, I've at least slowly cut back on the snacking. Today I'm planning on sticking to my usual 'non fasting' daily food plan (no snacks/junk food) and might do a light workout in the gym on the way home.

Tomorrow is normally scheduled as being a day of fasting (every Tue/Thu is my plan until I get down to my ideal/healthy BMI), but as I've still got a slight cough I'll instead have a normal lunch and a light dinner tomorrow rather than fasting.

I'm taking the boys up to our hobby farm this coming weekend, and DS2 will be staying at the farm with my parents next week (the first week on his school holiday). My mum usually cooks large dinners while we're visiting, so I'll have to resist the urge to overeat (and also avoid having any snacks while I'm there, or during the four hour drives there and back).

Next week (assuming my cough has cleared up completely by then) I'll get back to fasting every Tue/Thu and going to the gym on the way home from work on Mon/Wed. I also need to try to increase my daily step count to the recommended minimum (10,000/day) and start doing a 5BX exercise session every the evenings before showering. The 5BX routine starts out incredibly easy, so its simply a matter of building this into my nightly routine until it becomes a habit again.

My long term weight chart shows how my weight has been slowly going higher over the past twenty years, despite many periods of a year or two where I've managed to reduce my weight by 5-10 kg before putting it all on again. My weight when I finished high school was 78kg (a BMI at the top end of the 'healthy' range) and was already in the 80s (overweight) by the time I graduated uni, so I definitely have a tendency to overeat and/or snack on junk food whenever I'm not consciously keeping track of what I eat. You'll notice that I've generally been recording my weight while its been going down, but then it has (generally) gone up while I wasn't monitoring it. There are a couple of periods where my weight has been increasing despite recording it regularly - which is a case of where I had 'good intentions' but didn't actually get around to changing my behaviour. (For me, keeping a food diary is a necessary but not sufficient condition to actually reduce my weight!).

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