DAY 4 Sunday 24.3.2013

Any weight-loss aside, I am alredy being won-over by the changes in my behaviour. I now feel connected to my own body in a way that I didn't even realize was missing. Before, like everyone else, my focus was on food - now it is my stomach, because continual focus on the tummy scale leads you to do so. Furthermore I visualize it as a stretchy tennis-ball, so that's the volume any meal, once chewed into a paste, has to fit into. For a start this causes you to chew your food up thoroughly, so what you do eat will fit in. This causes you to eat consciously - you can't just eat while focusing on something else.

Another thing I like is that no-one's really noticed any change. Though there's something of a revolution going on internally, to the casual observer, I'm doing all the same things - eating the same stuff at the same time. I'm not "on a diet" - the change is in how I'm eating it, and how much. Of course it helps that I'm the housekeeper, so I serve the food, so no-one's noticing that my portions are radically different. Because I'm eating less but taking longer to eat it, the time taken is the same as previous. It helps a lot when those around you feel like you're the same, as subconsciously that's comforting.

Yesterday's consunption

6 squares dark choc - tummy scale change 4-6
2 slices toast - 4-7
Quarterpound burger egg & chips + slice of cake 4-6
Slice of cake 4-6
Handful of peanuts 5-6

Poo, though still regular, is quite hard work!

Here's a fascinating fact - take your weight in pounds, multiply it by 16 and that's roughly what you need to stay at that weight. At my start weight of 217 lbs, that's 3472 calories a day, to stay at that weight. Though I'm not counting calories, I must be consuming less than that, which means the body must have to make up the difference from its fat store, reducing it by that shortfall.

1lb of stored fat is an energy reserve of 4000 calories. If on day 1 I consumed 2000 calories, that's a shortfall 1472 calories that had to be taken out of the fat store, roughly a third of a pound!

If I kept consuming 2000 calories per day, eventually my body weight would stabilise at one sixteenth of that in pounds, i.e. 125 lbs or roughly 9 stone! Cool huh?