Day 24 – Cruise PP

Morning weigh in: 96.3kgs

Daily LOSS: 0.8kgs /1.76lbs
Total loss: 3.6kgs /7.92lbs

Watercheck:  2.7l – tea, coffee, low cal cordial and 1.5l of water

Breakfast

• Mug of tea
• 3 microwaved eggs
• Oatbran porridge with cinnamon

Morning snack

• two breasts worth of chicken nuggety bites

Lunch

• Tesco roast chicken – mostly leg, some bits of breast.

Dinner

• Surf & Turf – a sirloin steak and a lightly smoked salmon steak. NOM!
• Fromage frais with sweetener & a little cocoa

Exercise

• 20 min cycle to and from work
• 30 min walk around the Meadows
• 10 lunges each leg
• 24 squats (every day, these get easier, and I go deeper and deeper into the squat. Today I could feel the grass on my bum, I was going so low!)

THANKYOU, Scales of Woe. It’s about time. Perhaps I should start calling you Scales of Indifference, cause there’s no joy quite yet.  Go have a chat with Moonday’s scales, they know how to treat a girl … I think, however, that a battery change later, and we’re back on track. I didn’t weigh myself on J’s scales – that’d have been too much of a tease, because I know they’ll have me in the 95s by now.

Today was a seriously hard day for carb cravings. I had to help prepare for, and then clean up after a big meeting at work, and this included arranging biscuits (ie cookies) on a plate, and packing away chocolate brownies into a tupperware container afterwards. God, it was torture. I actually feel physically tight in my chest when I think about all that sugar – I’m such a sweet tooth, and about the only place I get any sweet from these days is my porridge and my fromage frais.

So you can imagine why I had a minor freak out this afternoon when I realised that we’d run out of Fromage Frais. NO SWEET FIX?!? EEEEK!! You can’t get it anywhere near where I live, and I don’t have my full drivers licence yet. J very kindly agreed to drive out to one of the big Tescos on the outskirts of town, and I stocked up on 8 LARGE TUBS of fromage frais. J started laughing from about the point where I put the fourth one in the basket. He’s used to my brand of crazy by now, bless his little heart.

I get through about 400ml of fromage frais per day (if I have an left) so I go through it pretty quickly. But I absolutely loves it, and I’m convinced that it really helps with the losses. Any day that I’ve missed it out in the last week, I’ve been up on the scales (even on perfect days.) The experiment continues.

Also – I’d forgotten how much I lurve salmon. I shall have to have more. 🙂

Day One – Attack

Morning weigh in: 99.8kg <<<—- MY NEW STARTING WEIGHT (eek!)

Watercheck 2.5l – water and diet coke. Plus half a bottle of champagne

Breakfast

• 3 microwaved eggs
• oatbran porridge with sweetener & cinnamon

Morning snack

• 1 low-carb gluten free sausage
• Stick of low fat cheese from Tesco

Lunch

• 4 mini quiches (with ham as the crust)
• 3 low-carb gluten free sausages
• Fat free fromage frais with sweetener

Afternoon snack

• The meaty innards of some leftover sandwiches – slices of ham, chicken and beef.

Dinner (it was in a pub, so it was the lowest carb option I could find – ie no carbs. But quite fatty, unfortunately.)

• Breast of chicken
• A fried egg
• 2 rashers of bacon with the fat cut off

Post dinner snack (on arriving home)

• Fat free fromage frais with liquid sweetener and lemon essence – lovely and cheesecakey!

Exercise

• 25 mins cycling to and from work
• 10 min brisk walk

An auspicious start. I’m feeling good about things this time.  It feels particularly good to have my lovely Lauren back on board with me! She was always so good at doing Dukan, and her recipes (and photos of her recipes!) are second to none. Go check her out! 🙂

Lunch could not have come too soon today. I was STARVING!! 😦 I should have brought more snacky things with me, like chicken breast pieces or ham. More of that tomorrow, I think. Time to bring back the tower of tupperware…

I met someone out at a pub for dinner, and managed to sweet talk the bartender into giving me an egg & bacon chicken breast burger, but leave out the bun and fries and salad. He was surly about it, but did it all the same.  I wasn’t sure whether I can trust myself yet with chips on a plate, not after the last 6 months…

I know you might be looking at my watercheck and tsk tsking about the champers, but it was compulsory.  Our solicitor finalised the paperwork on the house purchase today (ie the “missives are concluded”) and so we’re officially going to be homeowners come September 23rd!! It’s all terribly exciting. J and I had agreed that once the missives were concluded, we were going to share a bottle of champagne in celebration. After all the drama and drawn out mortgage applications, we deserve it! 😉

A note about sweeteners

Lauren, this one’s as much for you as for anyone else – I saw you mention spoonfuls of sweetener so I thought I’d let you know what I found out while you were in Japan! 🙂 xx

I’ve been reading lots about sweetener lately, and I thought I’d share my findings, as I understand them.  DISCLAIMER – I’m not a scientist, so be sure to do your own research before following my lead! 🙂

There are many different types of sweetener – aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, sorbitol, acesulfame k, erythritol, xylitol – the list goes on.

The ones that end with “-tol” are generally what’s known as “sugar alcohols” – they’re made from a sugar base, and have the same amount of carbs in them but a lower amount of absorbable carbs (that’s my understanding, anyway.) They affect everyone differently, so some people’s bodies will get kicked out of ketosis with them.

I could go on and on about about sugar alcohols – but wikipedia says it so much better.

All of these sweeteners also react differently to heat. Most, if you put them in cooking, will break down and lose their sweetness – they have no “heat stability”.  Some are what’s known as “heat stable” – ie they are perfect for baking! The number one heat stable sweetener in my book is sucralose.  Sucralose is 600 times as sweet as sugar, twice as sweet as saccharin, and 3.3 times as sweet as aspartame. So it’s pretty hefty stuff.  You can find it in things like Splenda.

However, there’s an issue with sucralose (and a lot of other “tabletop” sweeteners) – in order to make them “spoon for spoon” as sweet as sugar, they have to bulk them out with a bulking agent.  Most of the time, they’ll use Dextrose or Maltodextrin. The problem with these bulking agents is that, according to wikipedia, they are “easily digestible, being absorbed as rapidly as glucose.”

So, ok.  You’ve got your sucralose.  It’s super sweet, so you only need a tiny bit, and it doesn’t kick you out of ketosis. But to help you measure it with a teaspoon like you’re accustomed to, they bulk it up with a bulking agent that has the same effect on your body as sugar!!!!

What the hell?

“What’s the solution?” I hear you ask.

Simples!

Get yourself either some sucralose in tablet form (ie splenda tablets, but make sure it’s Sucralose) and crush it up for you cooking, or get it in liquid form – my new favorite.

I hopped on eBay the other day and ordered myself a tiny little eyedropper of liquid sucralose – all you need is one drop in your coffee.  I put it in my porridge before it goes thick for perfect mixed-ness – and because it’s heat stable, it won’t break down and lose its sweetness on the stove or in the oven.

But get rid of your spoon-for-spoon, because it’s pretty much just as bad as sugar if you’re watching your carbs.