Firstly, let me assure you, I love food. My whole world revolves around food. I have cook books and foodie magazines next to my bed and I read them every night before I go to sleep. When I wake up in the mornings I’m excited by the foods I’ll be creating during the day. I’ll be thinking about what’s for dinner while I’m eating breakfast and lunch. Even after dinner when I’m stuffed full, I’ll still find room for desert. Dieting has never been a part of my vocabulary, hence the 82kg of human mass I’m dragging around these days. If I don’t do something drastic, I will soon be as wide as I am tall.
The day before day 1: This is the diet I’ve chosen for us. I reckon that being able to eat a little something every hour is doable. http://www.eatfitmagazine.com/lose-12kg-of-fat-in-4-weeks/ The link doesn't work anymore so I've put it under "more..." for you.
Day 1: It was tough getting out of bed. I could feel Dan sulking under the covers next to me. The morning is cold; there will be no hot cup of sweet, milky tea to warm us into the day and we finally emerged at 9.30am. Feeling sorry for ourselves, we went to our separate computers and scrolled in boredom while we sipped on our first cups of organic green tea. In my opinion, green tea should only be consumed with yum cha.
Exercise! It’s important to exercise goddamit! Dan has a huge crush on Adriene. You know the type, girl next door who’s kinda funny and super cute in her gravity defying yoga/active wear. She also has a dog, which I’m assuming is small and fluffy and very cute too. One hour is a really long time to devote to one’s self in the day. I have so much to do! But, I gritted my teeth and groaned my way through a not too gruelling yoga session with Adriene and by the end of it, I felt awesome… alive… and really, really hungry. 30 days of yoga to go with 30 days of dieting. Lucky we are our own bosses because not much work is going on.
I went to the shops to buy all of the ingredients we are allowed to eat over the next 10 days. The beautiful thing was I only had to go to the fruit and vege section and down one isle (the quinoa isle). Shopping took all of about 8 mins.
But, we grow our food. Why can’t I just go to the vege section in my garden? Because I’m not allowed to eat my greens until day 21 and the crazy thing is the broccoli is going to go to seed before we get the chance to eat it so then I’ll have to buy some. We picked what we could and took it to the markets to sell so at least our customers got to eat some beautiful organic broccoli.
I’ve already miss-read the instructions. “Plan for the following day creating two meals every night – this is crucial. Divide these up so that they fit into an 8-10 centimeter diameter dinner plate. Now separate the meals in 12 portions using 12 small containers that hold no more than 200ml.” Do you have any idea how small an 8-10cm plate is? My bread and butter plates are bigger than this. It must be a typo. Surely they mean inches. My dinner plates are 10inches wide. So I’ve made my mind up that this is the case. Where I went wrong was thinking a 200ml container is the same as 200g. So, 200g x 12 portions = 2.4kg of food per day. It is 4pm and there is no way we could possibly eat more food. Eating 200g of salad stuff every hour is very time consuming and I feel great but I’ve got shit to do! I suppose I’d better re-evaluate our eating situation….
5 o’clock = wine or beer o’clock in our house. I’m keeping myself busy by cooking, not for me, for the masses. Dan is wandering around aimlessly, he can’t concentrate on his school work and all of a sudden it all feels way too hard. A hot shower helps and I put cooking off for another day. I made a meal of roasted beetroot and carrots with quinoa and other random salady stuff. I have to admit; I cheated and added cumin and coriander to the frypan when I sautéed yet more carrots and beets. Not sure why the only flavourings allowed in this diet are ginger, garlic, dried chilli and salt and pepper.
Mel 82kg
Dan 90kg
Day 2: I create.
What? What do I create? Well, not very much as it turns out. I spent the day pinning for pork chops while I consumed salad. The decision has been made that we have to eat kimchee, sauerkraut and Indian lime pickles as well as having drinks of komucha and a spoonful of our homemade soy yoghurt every so often helps to make things a bit more palatable too. The probiotics must be maintained at all cost, boy howdy! The most difficult thing for me is finding the time to eat every hour and, the lack of pork chops. Did I create? As I was making pasta I contemplated the lack of creating in my life; at what point had I stopped painting, knitting, writing? Hey look! I’m writing again. (Insert smiley face here)
Mel 80kg
Dan 90kg
Day 3: I embrace.
We scowled and groaned as Adriene smiled at us with her perfect teeth and perfect skin and perfect little pert butt. Fuck you Adriene!
Mushroom, blue cheese and silverbeet ravioli had to be made today. I licked some beautiful Comboyne Culture Lindsay Blue off my finger and sucked back a sob. OMG! I love cheese so much!
I embrace quinoa…
Actually, that’s a lie. Quinoa tastes like dirt from under a tree that a dog has been peeing on but if you put enough lemon, ginger and garlic on it, well, I embrace new ways of consuming quinoa.
I embraced my poor miserable husband who’s having a hard time with this. His look is both stern and sorrowful at the same time. He can’t concentrate on his school work. A small handful of dates and nuts seemed to placate him for a while. Energy is at an all-time low. I’m guessing the lack of carbs, sugar and beer are all part of that.
Mel 79kg
Dan 89kg
Day 4: Look look look! It’s working! Work today so no Adriene. Ha! Spending the day at Rudi’s Meats, smelling giant chilli cheese kransky sizzling on a hot grill, watching people eating said giant kransky on a soft roll with onion and sweet curry sauce… We made it! If anything was going to break us, it was going to be a chilli cheese kransky roll. Feeling pretty chuffed with myself at the moment.
Chicken cacciatore ravioli was on my list of things to make today. The smell of chicken cooking with tomatoes, black olives and herbs in the oven drove us quite insane. I will admit, I sucked the brine off a couple of olive seeds and tasting the end result of the cacciatore was a must. You just can’t possibly sell something you’ve never tasted. And it was delicious.
Dinner consisted of a stew (but don’t tell Dan it was stew; Dan hates stew) of carrots, zucchini, silverbeet and lots of ginger, garlic and chilli cooked in a vegetable stock I’d made a few weeks ago. Even with the quinoa it was ok.
Mel 78kg
Dan 88kg
Still Day 4: Dan bought me a cookbook from the Real Food Markets in Port Macquarie for our 9th year anniversary. It’s the Revive Café Cookbook “Delicious and healthy meals from Auckland’s healthy food haven” by Jeremy Dixon. And I have to admit, I did kind of ask for it. The pictures are so shiny and healthy looking and I figured, yep, we need this in our life. After trying a few of the recipes we decided that the book really sucked and it was put on the shelf with other cookbooks we tend not to look at, like Higher Taste. Now, after an introduction to quinoa and odd tasting food that doesn’t revolve around bacon and cheese and mashed potatoes, I reckon I might give it another crack. It’ll probably come in handy for the next leg of our journey.
Day 8: I weighed myself on Saturday (Day 6) before heading off to work – 75kg!! The smell of bacon and sausages cooking at the markets made me hungry and sad sometimes but I ploughed through and ate salad and apple and cups of green tea. Then again on Sunday when our marquee is next door to Paul, the coffee guy who makes amazing ham, cheese and tomato Turkish bread sandwiches and we can smell the vege curry cooking in the distance. Awwwgeez… Just writing about it, as I throw down yet another green tea, is breaking my heart. The good news is Dan has stopped getting dizzy like he used to after too many coffees at the markets.
I cheated last night and put a spoon of soy sauce with a vege stir fry. I just needed a different flavour and it was good. We’ve also bought some organic miso paste so I’ve been making a soup with carrots, spinach, miso and dulse flakes for late afternoon when the days turn cold and our energy wears thin.
We’ve missed a couple of days with Adriene but she is doing an ab workout today, which will be great. Only 2 days till we can eat meat again and then we can do something more physical. In order to ride our push bikes, we have to drive to the end of the dirt road and our internet is bloody hopeless so it’s off to the library to get some get fit dvds. Maybe we’ll do that today. Better get cracking.
Mel 74kg
Dan 87kg
Day 10:
I have a cold sore. Nobody ever said detoxing was elegant. In case you don’t know, cold sore creams do not work. Generally a cold sore will run its course in its own feral way but you can help it to heal and stop it from hurting by dabbing it with warm salty water every time you think about it. Eating lots of greens helps too but that’s not allowed until day 21.
Mel 74kg
Dan 85
Day 12: The building phase
Even though we’ve kind of maintained our diet, we’ve lost track of where we are with Adriene because we’ve been so busy with work and our internet has been down. We had to go to the library and do a sneaky download or two. I think we’re only up to day 8. The ab workout was great so I think I’ll go back to that one every so often too. My weight stagnated at 74kg for a few days and I attribute that to not exercising even though Dan’s kept going down. And… we started eating red meat again. Dan cooked a couple of 100g steaks over the fire for lunch and he spent the rest of the day smelling like smoked meat. Nomnomnomnom! At first the steak didn’t seem like a viable serving. Dan sliced it and tossed it with ponzu sauce over cauliflower couscous and veges, which made it heaps better. Because we’ve been so busy with work we’ve had to rely on eating lots of fruit and nuts during the day with a couple of small (200ml) salads thrown in. Being able to eat eggs again is amazing too! But our evening meat meal has doubled in size; 400-500ml is still 1/3 of what we would normally consume every night so we’re doing ok. Its Friday, day 12 and time to check out a dvd I borrowed from the library - Fat Burning Dance Party with Jennifer Galardi.
Last night we made some testers for our Prawn and White Bean Ravioli. We’ve put heaps of Granny Mel’s Smoked Garlic Jalapeno & Anchovy Sauce into the mix and wrapped them with our free range egg pasta before putting them into the freezer. The prawns are a combination of cooked whole and chopped, and uncooked whole and chopped. The test is to see how the prawns taste after the ravioli has been frozen then boiled. Looking forward to a very naughty but necessary lunch.
Mel 73kg
Dan 85kg
Day 22:
During the red meat eating phase of our diet our weight basically stayed the same. We were working 14hr days and finding the time to eat every hour was almost impossible. We generally had a bigish (about 400-500ml) breakfast of fried mushrooms, capsicum, onion, spinach and egg then fruit smoothies, fruit and nuts. I was bored with eating almonds so I bought some Budjah mixes, which went down a treat. Then we’d eat a smallish meat and vege meal, usually, kangaroo, beef or lamb at night. We did our first farts in 11 days, which says a whole lot so we tried to consume more probiotics with our meals.
Dear Father, It has been 10 days since my last confession…
On day 20 we ate McDonalds. In the morning I had driven to a market in Gloucester (1.5hrs away), drove home at 12pm, unpacked the car, re-loaded the car and trailer and headed towards the Central Coast which is 3.5hrs away. There was no way we could carry on without the consumption of foreign substances. The burger alone was the biggest meal we’ve eaten in 20 days and it was delicious!
Later that night (day 20), we ate a pub meal; Dan had a chicken schnitty and I had a bowl of mashed potatoes, veges and gravy. And we drank beer…. mmmmm beeeeeer!
Sunday, day 21 was spent serving customers and trying to shovel food in as we went. Luckily I’d packed fruit, kombuchas and salad but we didn’t get a chance to eat the salad until around 3pm. I was starving and woozy too. Being at a food and wine festival and surrounded by an array of smoking meats and Vietnamese street food was tough. Watching people walk past with plates of dim sims and meaty goodness was tougher. We indulged in some bbq pork bites when everything slowed down around 3.30pm and they were pretty good. Normally we would have spent close to $100 on taster plates so luckily we had no time to even scratch ourselves let alone leave our stall.
On our way home we bought seafood laksa and honey king prawns with fried rice.
And what does it all amount to? Today I feel sluggish and stodgy. Our weight has gone up; this is how to gain 2 kg in 2 days. 18 days till Azza & Mishka’s wedding and I’m not feeling very sexy.
Mel 75kg
Dan 85kg
Day 21: The stripping phase
We’re just going to pretend that the last 2 days never happened. Today is the new official day 21 on the diet calendar so now we can go back to drinking green tea, no snacks allowed at all - chicken, fish and only green vegetables are to enter our bellies. Part of this phase is drinking a shot glass of apple cider vinegar every 2 hours. Looks like I’d better empty the car and go to the shops for some supplies.
Later that day: OMFG! Apple cider vinegar is so bloody awful. It tore through our stomachs like a scene from Alien. This does not feel like a good idea so we’re committing ourselves to drinking and eating more probiotics, which are more gentle (and I’m guessing better) for our tummies.
Fat Burning Dance Party with Jennifer Galardi is the dumbest fit video I’ve ever tried and I’m actually missing Adriene.
Day 27:
It’s a full moon and I got my periods. Normally this is a recipe for disaster and Dan runs for the hills as my hormones and I rant and rage, and I carry on like a bloody banana for the week before and during such frightful events. The crazy thing is we didn’t even see this one coming, I just woke up and there she was, no fuss or fruitless over exaggerations of the female psyche needed thank you very much. After a life time of being at war with my body and mind, Peace finally reigns within our humble lands.
I managed to strip down to 72kg. That’s 10kg of fat and sugar gone. Amazing! People are commenting about my now noticeable weight loss and I feel great.
I’m having a dress made to wear to Azza & Mishka’s wedding and I’m using the left over fabric of my wedding dress. My waist has dropped from 102cm to 97cm, which isn’t ideal but it’s a start. Need to do more exercise.
Our favourite dvd from the library is Charlotte’s 3min Belly Buster. I actually got it because lazy me thought, “3 mins, I can do 3 mins”, but it actually consists of warm up, cool down and 12 x 3min hard core thai bo type exercises. Love it!
Mel 72kg
Dan 84kg
Day 31:
Yep, it has been 30 days and I just couldn’t get down to 69kg like I wanted. We actually fluctuated between 72 – 75kg, which was depressing but I can look back on every high weight day and I know exactly what I ate or drank the day before. Bread, beer and wine have snuck their way back into our diets. We gave up eating 200ml every hour but have still managed to keep our meals smaller and we eat lots of snacks like fruit and nuts.
Our yoga mats arrived. They have taken pride of place next to the ab circle pro, which also never gets used, in our bathroom. At least it LOOKS like we’re exercising.
10 days until the wedding. I’m going to keep going with my own form of healthy eating:
NO PROCESSED FOODS!
NO BREAD (except the occasional slice of sourdough)
NO SUGAR – use RAW HONEY (not that horrible stuff from the supermarkets)
NO CHEESE or BUTTER (use avocado as butter on the bread you shouldn’t be eating)
NO BACON….sob!
SAY YES TO:
LOTS OF FRUIT, LOTS OF FRESH VEGES, LOTS OF PROBIOTICS (like kombucha, kimchi, sauerkraut and yoghurts), LOTS OF GINGER, GARLIC, CHILLI AND LEMON JUICE, LOTS OF FRESH HERBS, LOTS OF WATER!!!!
Wake up: cup of tea, green or otherwise.
Next hour: smoothie with probiotic yogurt, coconut water, bananas and raspberries. Or just eat a bloody banana.
Exercise
Next hour: Veges or salad with 1 egg, boiled, fried, scrambled or poached. Maybe sourdough bread with avocado. Kimchi or slaw on the side.
Next hour: 1 apple
Lunch: 100g cold fish or chook & salad maybe with quinoa, maybe not.
Next hour: 1 pear or almond and date snacks
Dinner: 200g steak, chook or fish with lots of salad or veges and kimchi or slaw on the side.
Desert: ½ apple or pear
Snacks: Almonds, dates or Budjah Mix.
1 glass of wine
Mel 71kg
Dan….
Even though he has dropped a couple of notches in his belt, Dan has lost interest in weighing himself.
The aftermath of Azza & Mishka’s wedding:
What a great day! Ok, we ate heaps, we drank heaps and we danced heaps. My dress didn’t exactly turn out as I imagined and it made me look and feel square shaped. I’ll have the style changed a bit before my Mum’s birthday in December. Two months! Let’s see if I can knock those extra kilos off in that time.
Even though we still need to exercise more, the important thing is we've changed our eating habits.
But all that can wait until tomorrow, she says as she wipes the bacon grease off her lips.
Mel 75kg
The day before day 1: This is the diet I’ve chosen for us. I reckon that being able to eat a little something every hour is doable. http://www.eatfitmagazine.com/lose-12kg-of-fat-in-4-weeks/ The link doesn't work anymore so I've put it under "more..." for you.
Day 1: It was tough getting out of bed. I could feel Dan sulking under the covers next to me. The morning is cold; there will be no hot cup of sweet, milky tea to warm us into the day and we finally emerged at 9.30am. Feeling sorry for ourselves, we went to our separate computers and scrolled in boredom while we sipped on our first cups of organic green tea. In my opinion, green tea should only be consumed with yum cha.
Exercise! It’s important to exercise goddamit! Dan has a huge crush on Adriene. You know the type, girl next door who’s kinda funny and super cute in her gravity defying yoga/active wear. She also has a dog, which I’m assuming is small and fluffy and very cute too. One hour is a really long time to devote to one’s self in the day. I have so much to do! But, I gritted my teeth and groaned my way through a not too gruelling yoga session with Adriene and by the end of it, I felt awesome… alive… and really, really hungry. 30 days of yoga to go with 30 days of dieting. Lucky we are our own bosses because not much work is going on.
I went to the shops to buy all of the ingredients we are allowed to eat over the next 10 days. The beautiful thing was I only had to go to the fruit and vege section and down one isle (the quinoa isle). Shopping took all of about 8 mins.
But, we grow our food. Why can’t I just go to the vege section in my garden? Because I’m not allowed to eat my greens until day 21 and the crazy thing is the broccoli is going to go to seed before we get the chance to eat it so then I’ll have to buy some. We picked what we could and took it to the markets to sell so at least our customers got to eat some beautiful organic broccoli.
I’ve already miss-read the instructions. “Plan for the following day creating two meals every night – this is crucial. Divide these up so that they fit into an 8-10 centimeter diameter dinner plate. Now separate the meals in 12 portions using 12 small containers that hold no more than 200ml.” Do you have any idea how small an 8-10cm plate is? My bread and butter plates are bigger than this. It must be a typo. Surely they mean inches. My dinner plates are 10inches wide. So I’ve made my mind up that this is the case. Where I went wrong was thinking a 200ml container is the same as 200g. So, 200g x 12 portions = 2.4kg of food per day. It is 4pm and there is no way we could possibly eat more food. Eating 200g of salad stuff every hour is very time consuming and I feel great but I’ve got shit to do! I suppose I’d better re-evaluate our eating situation….
5 o’clock = wine or beer o’clock in our house. I’m keeping myself busy by cooking, not for me, for the masses. Dan is wandering around aimlessly, he can’t concentrate on his school work and all of a sudden it all feels way too hard. A hot shower helps and I put cooking off for another day. I made a meal of roasted beetroot and carrots with quinoa and other random salady stuff. I have to admit; I cheated and added cumin and coriander to the frypan when I sautéed yet more carrots and beets. Not sure why the only flavourings allowed in this diet are ginger, garlic, dried chilli and salt and pepper.
Mel 82kg
Dan 90kg
Day 2: I create.
What? What do I create? Well, not very much as it turns out. I spent the day pinning for pork chops while I consumed salad. The decision has been made that we have to eat kimchee, sauerkraut and Indian lime pickles as well as having drinks of komucha and a spoonful of our homemade soy yoghurt every so often helps to make things a bit more palatable too. The probiotics must be maintained at all cost, boy howdy! The most difficult thing for me is finding the time to eat every hour and, the lack of pork chops. Did I create? As I was making pasta I contemplated the lack of creating in my life; at what point had I stopped painting, knitting, writing? Hey look! I’m writing again. (Insert smiley face here)
Mel 80kg
Dan 90kg
Day 3: I embrace.
We scowled and groaned as Adriene smiled at us with her perfect teeth and perfect skin and perfect little pert butt. Fuck you Adriene!
Mushroom, blue cheese and silverbeet ravioli had to be made today. I licked some beautiful Comboyne Culture Lindsay Blue off my finger and sucked back a sob. OMG! I love cheese so much!
I embrace quinoa…
Actually, that’s a lie. Quinoa tastes like dirt from under a tree that a dog has been peeing on but if you put enough lemon, ginger and garlic on it, well, I embrace new ways of consuming quinoa.
I embraced my poor miserable husband who’s having a hard time with this. His look is both stern and sorrowful at the same time. He can’t concentrate on his school work. A small handful of dates and nuts seemed to placate him for a while. Energy is at an all-time low. I’m guessing the lack of carbs, sugar and beer are all part of that.
Mel 79kg
Dan 89kg
Day 4: Look look look! It’s working! Work today so no Adriene. Ha! Spending the day at Rudi’s Meats, smelling giant chilli cheese kransky sizzling on a hot grill, watching people eating said giant kransky on a soft roll with onion and sweet curry sauce… We made it! If anything was going to break us, it was going to be a chilli cheese kransky roll. Feeling pretty chuffed with myself at the moment.
Chicken cacciatore ravioli was on my list of things to make today. The smell of chicken cooking with tomatoes, black olives and herbs in the oven drove us quite insane. I will admit, I sucked the brine off a couple of olive seeds and tasting the end result of the cacciatore was a must. You just can’t possibly sell something you’ve never tasted. And it was delicious.
Dinner consisted of a stew (but don’t tell Dan it was stew; Dan hates stew) of carrots, zucchini, silverbeet and lots of ginger, garlic and chilli cooked in a vegetable stock I’d made a few weeks ago. Even with the quinoa it was ok.
Mel 78kg
Dan 88kg
Still Day 4: Dan bought me a cookbook from the Real Food Markets in Port Macquarie for our 9th year anniversary. It’s the Revive Café Cookbook “Delicious and healthy meals from Auckland’s healthy food haven” by Jeremy Dixon. And I have to admit, I did kind of ask for it. The pictures are so shiny and healthy looking and I figured, yep, we need this in our life. After trying a few of the recipes we decided that the book really sucked and it was put on the shelf with other cookbooks we tend not to look at, like Higher Taste. Now, after an introduction to quinoa and odd tasting food that doesn’t revolve around bacon and cheese and mashed potatoes, I reckon I might give it another crack. It’ll probably come in handy for the next leg of our journey.
Day 8: I weighed myself on Saturday (Day 6) before heading off to work – 75kg!! The smell of bacon and sausages cooking at the markets made me hungry and sad sometimes but I ploughed through and ate salad and apple and cups of green tea. Then again on Sunday when our marquee is next door to Paul, the coffee guy who makes amazing ham, cheese and tomato Turkish bread sandwiches and we can smell the vege curry cooking in the distance. Awwwgeez… Just writing about it, as I throw down yet another green tea, is breaking my heart. The good news is Dan has stopped getting dizzy like he used to after too many coffees at the markets.
I cheated last night and put a spoon of soy sauce with a vege stir fry. I just needed a different flavour and it was good. We’ve also bought some organic miso paste so I’ve been making a soup with carrots, spinach, miso and dulse flakes for late afternoon when the days turn cold and our energy wears thin.
We’ve missed a couple of days with Adriene but she is doing an ab workout today, which will be great. Only 2 days till we can eat meat again and then we can do something more physical. In order to ride our push bikes, we have to drive to the end of the dirt road and our internet is bloody hopeless so it’s off to the library to get some get fit dvds. Maybe we’ll do that today. Better get cracking.
Mel 74kg
Dan 87kg
Day 10:
I have a cold sore. Nobody ever said detoxing was elegant. In case you don’t know, cold sore creams do not work. Generally a cold sore will run its course in its own feral way but you can help it to heal and stop it from hurting by dabbing it with warm salty water every time you think about it. Eating lots of greens helps too but that’s not allowed until day 21.
Mel 74kg
Dan 85
Day 12: The building phase
Even though we’ve kind of maintained our diet, we’ve lost track of where we are with Adriene because we’ve been so busy with work and our internet has been down. We had to go to the library and do a sneaky download or two. I think we’re only up to day 8. The ab workout was great so I think I’ll go back to that one every so often too. My weight stagnated at 74kg for a few days and I attribute that to not exercising even though Dan’s kept going down. And… we started eating red meat again. Dan cooked a couple of 100g steaks over the fire for lunch and he spent the rest of the day smelling like smoked meat. Nomnomnomnom! At first the steak didn’t seem like a viable serving. Dan sliced it and tossed it with ponzu sauce over cauliflower couscous and veges, which made it heaps better. Because we’ve been so busy with work we’ve had to rely on eating lots of fruit and nuts during the day with a couple of small (200ml) salads thrown in. Being able to eat eggs again is amazing too! But our evening meat meal has doubled in size; 400-500ml is still 1/3 of what we would normally consume every night so we’re doing ok. Its Friday, day 12 and time to check out a dvd I borrowed from the library - Fat Burning Dance Party with Jennifer Galardi.
Last night we made some testers for our Prawn and White Bean Ravioli. We’ve put heaps of Granny Mel’s Smoked Garlic Jalapeno & Anchovy Sauce into the mix and wrapped them with our free range egg pasta before putting them into the freezer. The prawns are a combination of cooked whole and chopped, and uncooked whole and chopped. The test is to see how the prawns taste after the ravioli has been frozen then boiled. Looking forward to a very naughty but necessary lunch.
Mel 73kg
Dan 85kg
Day 22:
During the red meat eating phase of our diet our weight basically stayed the same. We were working 14hr days and finding the time to eat every hour was almost impossible. We generally had a bigish (about 400-500ml) breakfast of fried mushrooms, capsicum, onion, spinach and egg then fruit smoothies, fruit and nuts. I was bored with eating almonds so I bought some Budjah mixes, which went down a treat. Then we’d eat a smallish meat and vege meal, usually, kangaroo, beef or lamb at night. We did our first farts in 11 days, which says a whole lot so we tried to consume more probiotics with our meals.
Dear Father, It has been 10 days since my last confession…
On day 20 we ate McDonalds. In the morning I had driven to a market in Gloucester (1.5hrs away), drove home at 12pm, unpacked the car, re-loaded the car and trailer and headed towards the Central Coast which is 3.5hrs away. There was no way we could carry on without the consumption of foreign substances. The burger alone was the biggest meal we’ve eaten in 20 days and it was delicious!
Later that night (day 20), we ate a pub meal; Dan had a chicken schnitty and I had a bowl of mashed potatoes, veges and gravy. And we drank beer…. mmmmm beeeeeer!
Sunday, day 21 was spent serving customers and trying to shovel food in as we went. Luckily I’d packed fruit, kombuchas and salad but we didn’t get a chance to eat the salad until around 3pm. I was starving and woozy too. Being at a food and wine festival and surrounded by an array of smoking meats and Vietnamese street food was tough. Watching people walk past with plates of dim sims and meaty goodness was tougher. We indulged in some bbq pork bites when everything slowed down around 3.30pm and they were pretty good. Normally we would have spent close to $100 on taster plates so luckily we had no time to even scratch ourselves let alone leave our stall.
On our way home we bought seafood laksa and honey king prawns with fried rice.
And what does it all amount to? Today I feel sluggish and stodgy. Our weight has gone up; this is how to gain 2 kg in 2 days. 18 days till Azza & Mishka’s wedding and I’m not feeling very sexy.
Mel 75kg
Dan 85kg
Day 21: The stripping phase
We’re just going to pretend that the last 2 days never happened. Today is the new official day 21 on the diet calendar so now we can go back to drinking green tea, no snacks allowed at all - chicken, fish and only green vegetables are to enter our bellies. Part of this phase is drinking a shot glass of apple cider vinegar every 2 hours. Looks like I’d better empty the car and go to the shops for some supplies.
Later that day: OMFG! Apple cider vinegar is so bloody awful. It tore through our stomachs like a scene from Alien. This does not feel like a good idea so we’re committing ourselves to drinking and eating more probiotics, which are more gentle (and I’m guessing better) for our tummies.
Fat Burning Dance Party with Jennifer Galardi is the dumbest fit video I’ve ever tried and I’m actually missing Adriene.
Day 27:
It’s a full moon and I got my periods. Normally this is a recipe for disaster and Dan runs for the hills as my hormones and I rant and rage, and I carry on like a bloody banana for the week before and during such frightful events. The crazy thing is we didn’t even see this one coming, I just woke up and there she was, no fuss or fruitless over exaggerations of the female psyche needed thank you very much. After a life time of being at war with my body and mind, Peace finally reigns within our humble lands.
I managed to strip down to 72kg. That’s 10kg of fat and sugar gone. Amazing! People are commenting about my now noticeable weight loss and I feel great.
I’m having a dress made to wear to Azza & Mishka’s wedding and I’m using the left over fabric of my wedding dress. My waist has dropped from 102cm to 97cm, which isn’t ideal but it’s a start. Need to do more exercise.
Our favourite dvd from the library is Charlotte’s 3min Belly Buster. I actually got it because lazy me thought, “3 mins, I can do 3 mins”, but it actually consists of warm up, cool down and 12 x 3min hard core thai bo type exercises. Love it!
Mel 72kg
Dan 84kg
Day 31:
Yep, it has been 30 days and I just couldn’t get down to 69kg like I wanted. We actually fluctuated between 72 – 75kg, which was depressing but I can look back on every high weight day and I know exactly what I ate or drank the day before. Bread, beer and wine have snuck their way back into our diets. We gave up eating 200ml every hour but have still managed to keep our meals smaller and we eat lots of snacks like fruit and nuts.
Our yoga mats arrived. They have taken pride of place next to the ab circle pro, which also never gets used, in our bathroom. At least it LOOKS like we’re exercising.
10 days until the wedding. I’m going to keep going with my own form of healthy eating:
NO PROCESSED FOODS!
NO BREAD (except the occasional slice of sourdough)
NO SUGAR – use RAW HONEY (not that horrible stuff from the supermarkets)
NO CHEESE or BUTTER (use avocado as butter on the bread you shouldn’t be eating)
NO BACON….sob!
SAY YES TO:
LOTS OF FRUIT, LOTS OF FRESH VEGES, LOTS OF PROBIOTICS (like kombucha, kimchi, sauerkraut and yoghurts), LOTS OF GINGER, GARLIC, CHILLI AND LEMON JUICE, LOTS OF FRESH HERBS, LOTS OF WATER!!!!
Wake up: cup of tea, green or otherwise.
Next hour: smoothie with probiotic yogurt, coconut water, bananas and raspberries. Or just eat a bloody banana.
Exercise
Next hour: Veges or salad with 1 egg, boiled, fried, scrambled or poached. Maybe sourdough bread with avocado. Kimchi or slaw on the side.
Next hour: 1 apple
Lunch: 100g cold fish or chook & salad maybe with quinoa, maybe not.
Next hour: 1 pear or almond and date snacks
Dinner: 200g steak, chook or fish with lots of salad or veges and kimchi or slaw on the side.
Desert: ½ apple or pear
Snacks: Almonds, dates or Budjah Mix.
1 glass of wine
Mel 71kg
Dan….
Even though he has dropped a couple of notches in his belt, Dan has lost interest in weighing himself.
The aftermath of Azza & Mishka’s wedding:
What a great day! Ok, we ate heaps, we drank heaps and we danced heaps. My dress didn’t exactly turn out as I imagined and it made me look and feel square shaped. I’ll have the style changed a bit before my Mum’s birthday in December. Two months! Let’s see if I can knock those extra kilos off in that time.
Even though we still need to exercise more, the important thing is we've changed our eating habits.
But all that can wait until tomorrow, she says as she wipes the bacon grease off her lips.
Mel 75kg
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