On hunger...

We’re now going into our fourth week of fast days, the results are pretty encouraging and I will post them soon but I thought today I’d share my thoughts around hunger pangs. Before I do that, here’s what we’re eating this week. Is it wrong that I’m quite enjoying the challenge of coming up with meals for our fast days?

Today:

2 hard-boiled eggs

150g filet mignon with a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and asparagus spears

Tomorrow:

Grapefruit

Chicken satays with a Thai style salad. The satays recipe is from here:http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/blogs/vitamin-g/2014/08/chicken-satay-low-calorie-reci  though I have had to drastically tweak it (reducing the chicken from 2lb to 300 grams, making the coconut milk a light brand and slightly reducing the amount of it) to get it to work. I have no idea how they worked the original out at 220 calories per person! The Thai salad will be 100 g carrot, 1 cucumber 150g mango (all Julienned) with a dressing of tsp sesame oil, tsp rice vinegar and tbsp of fish sauce.

So on hunger...

Hunger is okay

One of the interesting points that the Fast Diet book makes is that that all other diets promise ‘you won’t be hungry’, but actually being hungry is okay. I think we need to break down ‘okay’ here because the fact that being hungry is ‘okay’ is one of the things I’ve been focusing on whilst feeling hungry.

First off, ‘okay’ doesn’t mean ‘good’, this is not a pro-ana blog and I’m not sitting here telling myself that the hungrier I am the better I am and whilst I’m at it, it would be better to be hungry seven days of the week because hunger is good, or however those though patterns work.

Most importantly to me ‘okay’ means not harmful; I’m not damaging myself by allowing myself to be hungry for a few hours a day, a couple of days a week. Normally discomfort means that your body is trying to get you to do something; thirsty, drink, hot, move to somewhere cooler, cold, put on a jumper, getting cramps, move. I’m viewing short periods of fasting as akin to going for a run or doing a hot yoga class, uncomfortable but because you know (because of the research out there) that it’s good for you rather than bad for you, you ignore your body’s signals.

Lastly, ‘okay’ means not unbearable rather than ‘as-wonderful-as-a-hot-fudge-sundae’; it is uncomfortable but I can deal. To continue to compare it to running or hot yoga, running is uncomfortable for me, but if I notice a persistent pain somewhere as I’m running, I stop (in fact I continuously scan my body for pain whilst running hoping against hope to find some unusual pain, but rarely have any luck, I’m really not one of life’s runners). Hot yoga is uncomfortable at points, but when I feel nauseous or dizzy, I take a rest, if it persisted despite resting I would leave the room. Likewise being hungry is fine, but if I start to feel faint, I’ll call off the day’s fast (luckily this hasn’t happened to me yet.

Hunger pangs pass

This is a bit of a revelation to me. When you’re hungry, you’re hungry for a bit, and then it goes away. I read somewhere (on a blog I think) that each hunger pang is your body unlocking some fat to use as energy, when the hunger pang passes you’re body has unlocked that stored energy and that’s what you’re running on. This probably has no basis in science, but I’ve still found it a very helpful way to think of it. Thinks *so hungry now, that’s a bit of fat making a useful contribution rather than hanging around my abdomen and stopping my jeans from doing up*.

3Ways of dealing with hunger pangs

Knowing that hunger isn’t damaging me, and fantasising that it represents a bit of fat self-destructing has mostly helped me be okay with just being hungry. However these are some specific things I do on fast days:

Make sure I have something to do at lunch time. I find that I’m hungry because it’s lunch time rather than because I’m hungry so I’ve been finding other things to do. I might buy a herbal tea and sit out reading my book of the weather’s nice, or go to the mall to pick up something fun (I bought a Goa guidebook and some new gym socks last week), today I have some errands to run, just at the pharmacy and the cash point, but it’ll get me out of the office.

Drink water and herbal teas, If I’m hungry I’ll go and make a herbal tea and find that it really helps, I make sure that I have some nice ones on my desk (sometimes going to buy more is my lunchtime trip, see above).

Keeping busy, this one is key and is one of the reasons why I’m so glad I’ve found exercise options for both fast days now. I also like planning non-food related treats; this can be going shopping to buy something nice, a hot bath, a new novel, a new page of a colouring book whatever, it’s nice to have something other than your next meal to look forward to.

So those are my thoughts on fasting and being hungry, I’d be grateful for any tips if anyone reading this is fasting too.

Excercising whilst fasting, how did it go?

If you read my blog on Sunday (and if not, why not?) you'll know that I was planning on planning on doing more exercise on my fast days this week. Here's how it went:

Sunday:

•  0900, red grapefruit

• 1900, 10 minutes X trainer and 60 minutes personal training, mostly resistance with some cardio chucked in there
• 2040, sweet potato rosti with fried egg and some herbed ricotta

The personal trainer didn't disapprove, I didn't faint and I was in far too much pain to be bored! Got an appointment for the same time next week - success!

Monday:

• 0900, red grapefruit
• 1900, 60 minute Vinyassa flow class
• 2030, sticky chicken with mango couscous

Having been fine in the morning I was pretty stiff from personal training (read, moaning as I got out of the car, pleading with people not to make me laugh and really, really trying to suppress sneezes) by 1900. I toddle along to yoga anyway and realised how many muscles each of the poses I normally do without thinking actually uses or stretches. Back-bending, ow, cobra, ow, vinyassa, don’t mind admitting I was on my knees for the first two or three. As these things do it had eased off by the end, thankfully before we got to camel pose or wheel!

Tuesday:

• 0630, run
• 0930, smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel (delicious)

Epic fail. I’d actually decided on Monday night that getting up to go for a run on Tuesday morning wasn’t going to be a plan. The last couple of weeks I’ve tried to convince myself I’ll get up early to run on Tuesday, slept really badly (possibly because I know I have to get up early) and taken that as a legit excuse for not getting up. This week I decided to cut some of those middle steps and had a blissful eight hours dead to the world.

I think the lesson learned is that if exercise is to compete with sleep as a thing that I do in the mornings I have to either have an appointment/lesson booked so someone is waiting for me, or really enjoy the exercise, or preferably both. This is why I manage to get up to ride every Thursday, without any problems, used to manage morning yoga classes and even used to be able to run in the morning when I was doing triathlon training and my coach was waiting but resolutions of ‘I’m going to get up early and go for a run/gym session’ fail every time. 

I clearly have an inner koala bear; if you’ll excuse me I’m off to go cuddle it.

I need a Mr Motivator...

There’s no two ways about it, I’m definitely feeling gently discouraged this morning. The scales have not been kind the last few days and although I’m still showing a solid downward trend on weight my body fat percentage trend is nowhere near as clear cut and I’m starting to wonder if I’m losing fat on fast days only to steadily regain over the following week, and repeat ad nauseum.

Anyway, soldiering on with the aim of looking thin in my bridesmaid’s dress in June and a lesser goal of not being mistaken for a dugong on the beach in Goa (and of course good health etc) this week I’m going to add some exercise to the mix.

The Fast Diet Book says that you can exercise on fast days, and anecdotal evidence even suggests that some people get a better work out whilst fasting. So far I’ve been doing yoga in the evening of my second fast day (Mondays) but it’s a fairly gentle 60 minute Vinyassa class with a teacher who gives classes in someone’s garden in the village and I haven’t been doing anything on either Sunday or exercising on Tuesday before breaking my fast. 

On Sundays I find it’s difficult to motivate myself anyway and where I would normally book a class or plan something specific to force my own hand I find myself quite looking forward to my evening meal on fast days (this is an enormous understatement)and I don’t want to be getting home at 2030 or later to start cooking. So last week I collared one of the instructors in the gym in the village and booked a personal training session for this evening at 1900.

My concerns at this point are:

• He’s going to be enormously disapproving of fasting, or at least of trying to combine exercise and fasting
• I’m going to faint
• I’m going to find it really boring

On the food side I will be having a grapefruit for breakfast both fast mornings this week as I’ve gone for slightly higher calorie dinners. Tonight (after personal training eek!) I’ll be having a sweet potato rosti with a fried egg and herbed Ricotta (150 g sweet potato, 1 ½ tsp olive oil, 1 egg, ¼ cup of ricotta with fresh herbs, 359 calories). Tomorrow night is mango and chicken couscous: http://www.bbcgoodfoodme.com/recipes/3002/sticky-chicken-with-mango-couscous?GEO_REDIRECTED=true#.VqR0iVKVAt8

 

On Monday I’ll go to yoga again, and Tuesday I will force myself out of bed to go for a run before breaking my fast… Updates to follow later in the week :-)

Wellington regrets and why hangovers and fasting are not good bedfellows

It’s all a learning experience isn’t it? What I’ve learnt today is that it’s a mistake to drink too much the night before a fast day. Not only did the fact I’d consumed two days’ worth of calories in beef Wellington, chicken liver parfait and raspberry jelly make for incredibly depressing reading on the scales this morning, but the red wine I used to wash it down has made me feel somewhat less than in the pink, and I can’t eat anything to make me feel better (quavers, bacon butty, cheese toastie).

The food was delicious though, and the company good. Here are the recipes if you want to do an incredibly retro dinner party:

• http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/nov/29/how-make-perfect-chicken-liver-pate
• http://www.bbcgoodfoodme.com/recipes/beef-wellington#.VptC41KVAt8 served with roast new potatoes and grilled asparagus
• http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/nov/29/how-make-perfect-chicken-liver-pate

However all good things (weekends, eating opportunities) come to an end and we’re back in a working week and two fast days to kick it off. I lost 1.5% body fat and 1.1 kg over my last two fast days so I’m pretty excited, and hopeful it’ll repair some of the beef Wellington inflicted ravages.

My eggs worked so well last week that I’m having them for breakfast on both days this week: two medium eggs, two tablespoons of cottage cheese and a pinch of garlic salt, scrambled in the microwave. Delicious and exactly 200 calories.

For dinner tonight we are having baked spaghetti squash with goats’ cheese, pesto and balsamic vinegar. This is a vastly calorie-reduced version of a meal we had for dinner once a week in my younger, care-free, I-can-eat-whatever-I-want days (and as a side note why did I not appreciate that properly?). The fully loaded version is a bag of fresh pasta (fusilli is my favourite), ½ a boursin, a glass of white wine, half a jar of pesto, some grated parmesan and a dash of balsamic vinegar, we called this ‘quick pasta’ as it takes 10 minutes to make (cook the pasta, drain, add the rest of the ingredients to the pan and stir on the heat for another two or three minutes until the cheese has melted). It is also absolutely delicious but at 800 calories (I worked it out when the realisation I could no longer eat whatever I wanted started to dawn on me) it’s a very occasional treat these days. The calorifically slashed version is two cups of baked spaghetti squash (teased free of its skin) with 50g goats chess, 1.5 tablespoons of pesto and a splash of balsamic vinegar. It comes in at around 300 calories and I have high expectations that it will still be pretty tasty.*

Tomorrow night we will be having tenderloin (150g per person) with balsamic vinegar and braised leeks. I had steak with balsamic vinegar in Florence when we were doing our Italy tour a few years ago and it was delicious. I doubt the balsamic I managed to buy in Waitrose in Dubai is as good as the one at the restaurant in Florence but I think it’s worth a try as a béarnaise definitely bursts the calorie budget. The steaks are cuts I saved from the tenderloin for last night’s beef Wellington. The braised leeks’ recipe looks delicious (http://www.bbcgoodfoodme.com/recipes/237604/tender-braised-leeks?GEO_REDIRECTED=true#.VptgZlKVAt8) and in fact will be slightly lower in calories as I will be omitting the olives. And all for 300 calories :-).

More details on actual diet effects to follow in the next few weeks as we're coming up to a trip away which will require bikini wearing...

* Confusingly the fully loaded pasta ingredients are for two people and the spaghetti squash is for one.