A bit of mixing and matching

I have recently successfully applied for a new role at work which means for the first time in my illustrious career, I will actually be line managing staff.  I have successfully avoided this for nearly fourteen years, so this is quite a big deal for me.  It seems to me to be a disgustingly grown-up type thing to do (NB: I may be turning forty next year but I am still waiting to feel like an adult and suspect that it may never happen).

Anyway, I’ve had a very busy few weeks: first there was the preparing for the interview and then doing the intervew and then afterwards the worrying about the outcome of the interview which obviously all took up quite a lot of time.  And then when said outcome was revealed there was the slight panic that I have a lot of work to try and wrap up in a relatively short period.  So the little time in the day that I used to carve out for blogging seemed to disappear. 

Anyway, it always seem slightly self important to explain one’s absence from the Blogosphere, as if people out there were genuinely wondering why I hadn’t posted a meal plan or a vaguely food / diet relate ramble, so I will drop the subject without further ado.

The fact that I am moving to this now role on the 3 June (it is more a symbolic than an actual move since my new desk will be located about two rows away from my current desk) has got me all excited for a Fresh Start.  All perennial dieters love a Fresh Start.  Mondays, of course, are Fresh Starts on a miniature scale.  The first of a month is also a Fresh Start and I get especially excited when the first of a month falls on a Monday because it is a Fresh Start Squared.  A new job sits outside of these and yet it is still a lovely opportunity to Draw A Line. 

I’m just trying to work out at the moment what this Fresh Start will look like so that I can take full advantage of the opportunity and the explanation of my new plan is rather convoluted, so bear with.

I realised the other day that if I had lost a mere half a pound most weeks since I started blogging, then, even allowing for, say, a couple of pounds the other way at Christmas and over the summer I would be over ten stone lighter.  I never needed to be over ten stone lighter so, in fact, I would be at goal and maintaining.  And yet, along the way, half a pound would have felt so puny and insignificant.

To lose half a pound, you have to create a rough calorie deficit of 1,750.  If you spread that over weekdays alone, that’s just 350 calories a day!  350 calories is nothing!  With this in mind, I started thinking – what about if I just tried to shave a small amount off my calorie intake from Monday – Friday with an aim of just drifting down by half a pound a week, but doing it in such a way that was genuinely sustainable, would genuinely have a minimal impact on my life.  And this is the combination of techniques that I came up with:

Intermittent fasting: a common manifestation of this is 16/8 which means you limit the window during which you eat to just 8 hours a day.  So, my plan is to stop eating after dinner (usually around 8pm for us) and then not eat for 16 hours (which takes me to noon the following day).  Some days it might be later, some days it might be earlier, but it doesn’t matter; the key is just to get that 16 hour fast in. 

Weight Watchers: from the breaking of the fast until, say, six in the evening, my plan is to count points, with the broad aim of having around a third of my total allowance during this time.  This shouldn’t have a major impact since I’m usually at work and taking a pack-up so by sticking with plenty of zero point fruit and veg and lean protein, I should be able to eat something fairly decent.

Then, for just two hours a day, no rules apply other than trying to eat mindfully – i.e. not for the sake of it, not too much (very akin to the principles of HDE).  I might even keep a paper food diary just to help encourage this mindfulness (nothing like putting you off eating an entire tube of Pringles if you then have to write it down).  This means that we can cook and enjoy an evening meal – and many of the meals we have are fairly healthy and low point anyway because the years of WWing mean that I tend to keep portion sizes down and veg content high anyway – without having to measure every swig of oil, without having to avoid certain foodstuffs because they are just not diet friendly. 

There is additional flexibility in that there is no reason why the two hour HDE window has to be in the evening – so if I want to go out for lunch with my team, for example, I can do that and then count points for the afternoon / evening.  Which, again, is easy enough.

I reckon doing this should be enough to get me the 350 calorie saving that I need.  Of course, this also means that weekends are free too, but again, the eating needs to be mindful because I would need to be aiming for roughly maintenance calories in order to preserve the deficit.

If I could achieve this, it would be a stone by Christmas.  It sounds pitifully slow but I refer you back to my earlier point – time passes and it’s all very well to lose weight more quickly but if you can’t sustain it over a long period then it’s all for nothing.  It might go back on, it might not but you’re never going to reach the end point because there are too many barriers.  Sustaining something, anything, has always been the issue for me and I think that is because deep down I want the freedom to cook and enjoy good food more than I want to be thinner.  I need to use the tools that I have to make minor tweaks to almost fool myself into changing.

I’m going to give it a whirl anyway, and will report back when I’ve got a month or so under my (managerial) belt.