Choosing a diet

Technically, my diet began on 18th of August 2019. I may tell you later what my starting weight was... right now, when I look at the number, I'm still a little dismayed that it took a ridiculous and annoying ad campaign to really prod me into action.

There are, of course, lots of diets – keto, intermittent fasting, Weight Watchers. There are fad diets where you only eat one kind of food over a period of time, like grapefruit or cabbage soup. But there’s only one diet that’s ever really worked for me – and that’s calorie control. I’m limiting myself to 1800 calories a day. I know that I burn around 2600 if I’m sitting around the house – closer to 4200 on a working day. As long as I eat fewer calories than I burn, I’ll lose weight.

So, everything I eat during the day is entered into an app that adds up how many calories I'm having. It's a bit more complex than that – but I'll fill in the details later.

While Weight Watchers and Slimming World are calorie-controlled diets too, there are several things I prefer about counting my own:

It’s also vital to measure and record what you eat.

My first update wasn’t very optimistic – I didn’t lose any weight in the first two weeks. In fact, I put a couple of pounds on. The truth is, my slow start was down to estimating my calorific intake instead of directly documenting and calculating it. I switched to that method and I’ve now lost 3lbs. I’m back on track.

As for the campaign – that has yet to start in earnest. I tweeted my story two weeks ago, copying in Cancer Research UK and Anomaly. There was no response. I think it’s a case where they might believe that if they stay quiet, I’ll go away.

I’m not going anywhere.

In my next update I’ll talk a bit about what I’m doing to manage my hypoglycaemia as I diet.