Could my Gut go from Fat to Flat in One Month?
As you may know I have a love/hate relationship with weight loss. I veer from ‘Why should I conform to society’s standards of beauty and change my body to fit the criteria our media deems fit to call appropriate?’ – to ‘Shit! My arms are wobbling and I have back fat, back fat! I need to lose weight. Fast.’
And so my mind flits between these two extremes – salad and smoothies one week, and Burger King the next. I never go more than 10lbs either way. And I am never happy. But the older I get the tougher my jeans are to do up and my Midlife Crisis Crisis increases.
So, after a luxurious kid-free ten days of eating, sleeping, eating, shagging, eating and sunbathing I came back flabbier than ever (the ‘sex makes you lose weight’ myth is evidently bollocks) and I decided that enough was enough. I had two weddings coming up in the next eight weeks and I had to make sure I wasn’t the dumpiest there. Drastic measures called for drastic action. It was time to Cut The Crap.
So what did I do?
No faddy diet for me, or slimming pills or meal-replacement shakes. I simply decided to invent a new diet and for once stick to it.
Welcome to the Cut The Crap Diet.
It’s easy to follow, you just stop eating and drinking shit and stop making excuses about not having time to exercise. This is what I have spent a month not eating or drinking:
– No caffeine
– No alcohol
– No (saturated) fats
– No wheat
– No sugar
– No fizzy drinks (except water)
– Hardly any dairy
– Minimum white carbs (except the odd potato or rice)
– Nothing processed
Basically I have lived off:
– Fruit
– Vegetables
– Salad
– Pulses
– Eggs
– Low fat meat, fish and seafood
– Nuts (the kind not covered in chocolate – sorry M&Ms)
Maybe it was a bad idea? Maybe I was not going to benefit at all from my Cold Turkey (hmmmm, turkey) approach… but I believe in listening to my body and mine was screaming ‘I’m all dirty inside, clean me!’ So I did. And here is how it went.
DISCLAIMER: I took no advice from a medical professional and I am by no means a qualified nutritionist. Copy me at your own risk, I never know what I am doing.
Day One:
Shopping. I skip down the aisle of my supermarket positively glowing with enthusiasm. I’m going to stop buying shit and look at all the ingredients labels. I’m going to try new things like bean sprouts in my salad and jars of artichokes to snack on. I’m going to swap biscuits for macadamia nuts and ice cream for nectarines. Yup, I’m going to do this!
By 8pm I have a massive headache and I’m sodding starving…
Day Two:
Made a replacement for Spaghetti and Pesto out of strips of courgette and a home-made herb sauce. Neither my stomach nor brain were tricked. I miss pasta.
I’m irritable, my body is aching and I’m REALLY tired.
Day Three:
I haven’t had a crap yet. In three days!! Surely with so much spinach and fruit I should have been by now? I’m so irritable and exhausted I convince myself I am pregnant. I do a test, I’m not. I’m just on the world’s biggest sugar/carbs/caffeine come down. At this point most people crack… but not me.
After Week 1:
I’m not that hungry any more. In fact I look back at what I was eating on holiday and feel a bit sick. I’m happy with fruit for breakfast, a light salad and meat and veg for dinner. After a tough weekend with the kids I want to drown myself in Pinot Grigio and Chocolate Cookie Ice Cream, but I hold fast and have a handful of cashew nuts and a green tea with lemon instead. Just call me Gwyneth.
Inches lost around waist in total: 2″
Weight lost in total: 4lbs
Week 2:
Well, well, well. My stomach in visibly flatter.
Inches lost around waist in total: 3″
Weight lost in total: 7lbs
Week 3:
Bad start to the weekend. I’m so pleased to have lost half a stone that I let it slide a bit and over indulge. Just a bit. Just two slices of home made ‘Citrus and White Chocolate Torte’ (check out the recipe here) and two glasses of white wine. But that’s okay, the more you tell yourself something is banned the more you crave it. So I skip dinner Saturday and lunch Sunday and go back to normal the rest of the week.
Inches lost around waist in total: 3.5″
Weight lost in total: 9lbs
Week 4:
I did it! I made it until the end of the month and I have nearly lost a whole stone!
And my hard work must be showing after going to a meeting and my client saying how great my skin looked, and mums at the school gate remarking on my lack of pregnancy paunch. So that weekend I skip off to the shopping mall, happily searching for a dress to wear at my friend’s wedding and I comfortably slip into a size smaller than before, a much-coveted size 10 (that’s a staggeringly amazing size 6, for you American folk)! I haven’t been able to do that since my wedding day. Normally at this point I relax and go treat myself to a big-arse ice cream. But I hold fast and fly off to my friend’s wedding without once stopping off at Burger King at the airport or giving in to a G&T on the plane.
Inches lost around waist in total: 4″
Weight lost in total: 12lbs
So was it sustainable? Not really.
I did feel fantastic wearing my figure hugging dress at the wedding and dancing the night away without too much wobble wobbling, and of course I spent the weekend eating what I fancied. Unfortunately when you drink as much as you want, the next morning you eat like you haven’t eaten in a month (which… errr… was kinda true) so I came back 3lbs heavier. And I also had a few mojitos and white wines with some mates the following week, and I even treated myself to some chips. So hey ho, back to normal, being strict all the time can’t last forever.
But I’m still a size ten and I’ve trained myself off sugar and wheat. I don’t miss bread, I don’t miss pasta, I drink slightly less than a fish now and I’m very good friends with green tea and avocados.
So if this is something you want to try before Christmas, I strongly suggest you go for it. What’s the worse that can happen? You look great, feel great and lose some weight?
Let me know how you get on, and remember if you feel crappy and pregnant in the first week it’s just the sugar withdrawal (but do check to make sure, or you’ll only wonder why you aren’t getting any slimmer)!
