This blog post is about how I lost over stone of weight in under a month. To be precise, I lost 1st 0.6lb (6.6kg/14.6 pounds) in twenty-four days.
Please note: I’m on water pills for a health issue, which might have contributed to the weight loss. However, as you will read, I made a series of changes to my diet and increased exercise.
Warning: This isn’t a ‘how to’ guide! I’m just documenting what I did to lose weight fast. I’m not providing any recommendations. I don’t think I ate enough protein during this period.
Introduction
My weight had slowly increased and I decided to lose some weight quickly. I’m fed up of how weight is affecting my health and other areas of my life. I’ve spent a lot of time editing this blog post, trying to share my thoughts and what I experienced. This blog post isn’t the end of my weight loss journey and I will blog again shortly, including detailing changes I made.
In the meantime, I hope you find this blog post about twenty-four days interesting.
The conversation with a nurse practitioner
I’m sat in a room at my local doctor’s surgery, having a chat with a helpful and supportive nurse practitioner. She has raised the topic of weight loss and discusses a three tier weight loss program. At this stage, I had already started to lose some weight. I politely listen, provide feedback and decline. I hoped I wasn’t making a mistake…
Medication
As I mentioned in the ‘please note’ section above, I am taking water pills each day for a health issue, along with other medication. These tablets might have helped with the weight loss, but I don’t really know.
My girlfriend
Losing weight would have been a lot tougher without the support of my wonderful girlfriend. Whilst I’m losing weight, she isn’t being unhealthy, snacking on biscuits, eating toast with jam, whilst I sit there looking on. Instead my girlfriend is also on a weight loss journey, just not as extreme as mine. We eat similar meals, but the portions are different and often I’m missing an item.
During my efforts to lose weight, I’m thinking a lot about food. Having the support of my girlfriend and her not indulging in our favourite unhealthy foods, whilst I look on, has been a huge help.
The changes to my diet
My girlfriend and I had recently become vegans, having been vegetarians for many years. My portion control for a long time had been out of control, especially with respect to how active I was. However I’m mindful of salt and sugar intake and rarely drink alcohol. I wasn’t snacking on sweets to begin with, but I was eating a lot of biscuits, crisps with large meals.
A while ago I read a blog post by Tim Ferriss about a ‘slow-carb diet’, which mentioned taking a day off per week. Shortly after reading the blog post I tried it out and had some success, but later faltered and put the weight back on. When we decided to lose weight this time, we decided to again remove some carbs, but we decided not to be as extreme.
I decided to reduce my portion sizes with a focus on reducing my carbohydrates. At the weekends my girlfriend and I enjoy a bit of variety and increase our portion sizes a bit. The variety helped keep us on track! I’m not saying we’ve not faltered at times, but nothing extreme and having easy to make meals and each other’s support, really helped us get through the tough periods.
Already due to being on an incredibly tight food budget, we keep meals Monday to Friday mostly the same. This enables us to focus on cost per meal, such as making a batch of vegan chilli to last four to five days for lunchtime meals. At the weekends we mix it up a bit with more variety, which again helps us get through the other five days.
So during five days of the week I was eating a bowl of cereal with soya milk for breakfast. It took a while to get used to the soya milk, but now I don’t mind it. Then at lunch, I ate a vegan chilli with a small salad, but no rice. I really like red onions!
In the evenings during those five days I had the choice of two similar meals. Either a vegan sausage baguette/sandwich with a salad or a jacket potato with sausages. Sometimes instead of the sausages I would eat vegan burgers. As a treat sometimes we added a vegan cheese slice, with vegan moyo and a sauce, usually spicy, but more often it was just a sauce.
Bread wise it would be either two pieces of toast or a quarter of a French baguette. The salad always had a light salad dress. The salad was kept simple, so it was quick to make to help keep on track with the healthy eating. As you can see, I’m eating red onions again! We don’t buy the monster large onions, but smaller ones in bulk to help save on money. Oh dear, looks like I burnt the toast! I think that bread was from a discounted loaf that I cut up one evening. We purchased different types of bread, to again help with variety. I used to eat four slices of bread at a time before the weight loss!
I will admit during the period I’m writing about and still today as my weight loss continues, I think about food a lot. I’m not just thinking about food I wish I could eat, but also thinking forward to meals at weekends and looking forward to my next meal.
I was prepared to change my eating habits if I felt I needed to eat more based on my activity that day. If I had felt faint or if I had been struggling with energy, I would have eaten something. but I rarely snacked. A few times I ate a handful of cereal, but for me that was about hunger, nothing else.
Exercising
I will admit I could have done more exercise during the twenty-four days. I did start walking more, and splitting up outdoor tasks, so that my activities were spread out more during a week. I quite enjoy looking around charity shops, but more often that not, it was visits to the supermarket, appointments and other tasks.
During this period I found it easier to walk for longer during the evenings, despite the chilly weather in the UK at the time. I made sure I wrapped up warmly.
Monitoring
I decided to monitor my weight every few days and record the data in a spreadsheet, along with other statistics I was interesting in monitoring, such as blood pressure and exercise. The monitoring every so often was a very important part of my weight loss efforts and I was able to gauge more closely how the diet and exercise affected my weight.
A few times I weighed myself the next day, but that could cause stress if I didn’t like the result. If I wasn’t happy with my weight that day I would be thinking about it too much, and I’m grateful for my wonderful girlfriend’s support. It would have been easy to give up due to not feeling I had achieved enough, but I’m glad I stuck at it.
I didn’t realise how much I was walking per week until I started monitoring. It turns out during the twenty-four days I was typically walking 3-6 hours per week, but this was definitely an area for improvement.
What now?
I still want to lose two more stone quite quickly and then slow down my weight loss for at least another two stone. I’m about to implement some more changes to my life, so the next month’s weight loss efforts will be slightly different. I will continue to blog about my weight loss efforts and I hope you follow my journey.
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