14 March 2015
It is now 1 month since I set out to lose some weight. My experiment? To outsource all aspect of my dietary including compliance.
I have a pretty hectic lifestyle (which I love), I have a business which is growing rapidly, I attend lots of dinners and drinks events with customers and staff. I usually entertain at my house 4 to 5 times a week, 3 or 4 breakfast meetings per week etc. I also one of those people who works 80 hour a week – but I love what I do.
I am 48 and overweight for most of my life apart from a couple of periods when through complete dedication to diet and exercise (at the expense of work effort), I have got down from my usual 130 – 140 kg to 110 kg. I am fit and can spar with a boxing training for 30 minutes at a session. I have never smoked but i have never been a sports person or a lover of the gym either. As soon as I started back in a new business – the lifestyle undid all the hard work.
I was looking for a solution to how to diet while maintaining a busy lifestyle. I needed professional help in an unusual way.
I am an Australian based in the Philippines at present and we have about 500 staff at Cloudstaff. The local Government here requires us to have company nurses for staff health and safety – so I thought why not use that team and they could help with me with this compliance experiment.
The experiment is to outsource my diet.
How does it Work?
I have 2 qualified nurses who are employed by my company, I stagger their shifts, one starts at 6am and the other at 3pm 5 days a week.
The 2 nurses have 100% control my diet under the supervision of a dietician in conjunction with my GP. They plan the meals for the day and help prepare them.
They accompany me everywhere, – if I go shopping they come with me, if I have a meeting, they follow me there.
They serve my meals and supply water and beverages and ensure compliance.
I’ll be sitting at my desk and a snack will automatically appear.
Meals
I am using up by 4 or 5 am, I start with a warm water – old chinese thing
- 6:00 am Glass of warm protein Milk
- 7:00 am half of my breakfast
- 8:00 am other half of breakfast meal
- 9:30 am quarter or third of the mid morning snack
- 10:00 am More snack
- 10:30 am Remainder of snack
- 12:00 pm half of the lunch
- 2:00 pm the other half of lunch
- 3:00 pm Part of Afternoon snack
- 4:00 pm Part of Afternoon snack
- 5:00 pm Part of Afternoon snack
- 7:00 pm Dinner
- 9:00pm Glass of warm protein Milk
Sometimes I’ll even divide the snack even smaller. If the snack is a pancake, then I’ll get it cut into 4 pieces and served 15 to 30 minutes apart – so its just a mouthful.
Water. Every snack and every meal is served with water – I seem to prefer room temp water or slightly warm rather than ice cold – not sure why this is
So what have I found One month into this experiment.
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I’m never hungry – The smaller more – more frequent meals work! I wake up in the morning and I am just not hungry and I never let myself feel hungry – Because I have divided the snack into 2 to 4 mini snacks, I will usually skip a couple of them then latter if I feel a little peckish, I use it.
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Portion Control – I never realised that 60g of protein was so small! Portion scales are apparently my friend. So now I really dread to think about how many calories are really in a standard restaurant meals I used to eat.
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I started the diet off on 2000 calories a day and I was worried that it should have been much lower like 1200 – but it works and I don’t feel like sh*t. I started this 4 weeks ago I was 152kg, this morning 147.1 and so long as the trend is slowly heading downwards, I feel it more likley to be a sustainable lifestyle change. I have crash dieted before and had my weight see saw.
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No Energy Slump – One month in and I still have heaps of energy and there is no mid afternoon slump.
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I have the weekends off, I’ll choose what I want, this morning was eggs benedict with bacon but only half a serve and I did not feel hungry. I find myself just controlling what I eat.
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I am over sugar. At first there were headaches, grumpy – but this has all passed. At the office we celebrate staff Birthdays and their Cake Day (the anniversary when they started with us). Last month I gave out about 145 cakes. and these are great homemade cakes. No desire to have a piece.
In fact if I now think of a Rum and Coke – I just think sickly sweet – Not interested -
It is easy to say “No”! On my day off the diet last week I was at a restaurant, had a few glasses of wine and when people started to order dessert, I said “No”. This was not about guilt.. its just that there is no craving for it.
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No exercise. I am not exercising yet.. I will.. just trying not to change too many things at once.
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It’s Automatic. I do not have to think about this diet.
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If I don’t like the food – change it.. Corn soup with protein powder was NOT a winner.. Don’t eat anything that does not taste good. If you are going to take the calorie hit.. Enjoy it.
So lets see how the next month goes.