Monday, January 22, 2007

Week 101

1lb loss!

It's not been an easy week, but I have managed to stay on top of the cravings.

Always for me, the problem is stopping eating once I start. By far and away my greatest ally (beyond my wife, that is) is fruit & herbal tea. I'm a fan of the red fruit (strawberry, blackcurrent, raspberry etc) ones, with my favourite being blackberry. I can't stand perppermint or camomile, which is what everyone seems to have in their cupboards if I visit them and ask if they have anything without caffeine.

I boil the kettle and pour the water over a blackberry teabag just before I sit down to eat, so it's ready to drink straight after breakfast, at the end of lunch, after my dinner and in the middle of the evening after I've had an apple if I really need to snack.

This works well on a several of levels for me.

1. It delays the amount of time before I can put food back in my mouth, thereby allowing my brain to catch up with my stomach and realise it's eaten

2. It washes away any food bits left in the mouth that are continuing to trigger the cravings

3. As time has gone on, it has become a ritual of ceasing to eat. The more often I do it, the stronger it reinforces the signal to stop.

I should stress that these are "herbal infusions" and not flavoured teas, if you go looking for them in the supermarket.


Starting Weight: 19st 9lb – 275lbs
Current Weight: 12st 12.8lb – 180.8lbs
Body fat: 24.3%
Total Weight Loss: 94.2lbs

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good job this week a very respecatble weight loss. You seem to have re-newed resolve and to lose weight. I like the herbal infusion idea - ill give it a try.

Anonymous said...

Hurray, Kim! Back on the bandwagon!

Between lots of exercise and a short round of tummy troubles, I lost 4 lbs last week. Of couse it wasn't real... my actual loss turned out to be 1.5 lbs. That's okay - I'll take it!

I like using teas too. Coffee seems to be an eating trigger for me. Fine in the morning to trigger breakfast, but not good the rest of the day!

Kim Ayres said...

Weight-trimmer - well it was always part of the plan once we got past Feastmas.

Sayre - 1.5 is good :)

Anonymous said...

I like the idea of a ritual to stop eating. I hadn't thought of it as such, but gum may serve that purpose for me, though I'll have to try the herbel infusion tea as well.

Kim Ayres said...

Arlene - I can see how gum would work.