I have a backlog of photos that I need to share with you guys but I have something more pressing I need to write about. Today.
If you’ve been following my Facebook or Twitter, you probably saw this one coming. Over the weekend, I went on a diet.
The response I normally get when I tell this to my friends and colleagues is immediately “you don’t need to diet!” or even “what do you even have to lose?? If you lose weight you’ll disappear!”. I wish that were the case. Truthfully, I may not look extra large in my photos, but being ethnically Chinese we work to a different BMI scale than Europeans. Last time I checked, I was in the squeezing-into-healthy-but-bordering-overweight range.
To be fair, given what I normally eat… it probably isn’t surprising!
So also unsurprisingly, I wanted to slim down to a much healthier BMI for my height.
I know there’s a lot of controversy over weight loss, the ‘perfect figure’ yada yada, I’m definitely not trying to get wrapped up in that. I’m especially not trying to make anyone feel bad if they’re larger than me, but this is a journey that I’m on and I wanted to share it.
In the past half a year I’ve been working really hard to get fit, healthy and lose weight. Losing weight being my primary objective.
At one point I was getting to a happy routine of anti-dieting, healthy eating and Blogilates-exercising every other day.
The weight was slowly coming off, I even dropped a dress size! I was feeling healthier and better than ever.
Then I went on holiday and all of that stopped. I remember being cooped up in a small, dark holiday home in France with my family (I regretted booking it as soon as we got there) with no wifi, being allergic to the dusty sheets on the old, creeky bed and feeling generally miserable.
I felt so crap that dieting and exercise was forgotten. I couldn’t work out anyway since there was no internet and the poor structure of the building blocked out any 3G signal I could have used.
I started putting on weight again. I tried to get back into my old habits but it didn’t last very long.
Luckily, before it got too bad, I heard some of my colleagues were doing a six-pack challenge. First to get a six pack wins!
I knew one of my other colleagues was also trying to lose weight (so far she has!) so I challenged her to first-to-get-down-to-our-ideal-weight, which just so happens to be losing 5kg.
I am so competitive so this was the perfect motivation!
I heard about the Military Diet through various Youtubers, with varying results. All of them saw results. I’d been waiting for an opportunity to try it (also a 3 day window where I wasn’t due to eat with friends so I could actually complete it!) and with the new challenge in place and 3 days free with time to buy all the necessary ingredients starting Saturday, I took the plunge.
So now you have the back story. Let’s bring on the food.
Ready?
Here goes!
Breakfast
If you’ve already looked into the Military Diet, you’d know the drill, so bear with me:
– 1 cup coffee/tea (black)
– 1 slice (wholemeal) toast
– 2 tablespoons peanut butter
– Half a grapefruit
I had tea.
Lunch
– 115g tuna
– 1 slice wholemeal toast
– 1 cup black tea.
I had to convert all their US ‘cup’ measurements into UK measurements, that was a pain. I measured out the tuna (I bought Sainsbury’s Tuna Steak in Olive Oil) to 114g and decided I couldn’t be bothered to find the final 1g. Towards the end of this meal I realised I had converted the measurements right, but I initially hadn’t checked the calorie values of each part of the meal, which was the important part.
To my horror I realised that the tuna that I was eating was 189 calories per 100g and for the diet we were only supposed to eat 150 calories worth. That means for the tuna that I was eating, I should only have 80g of it. My 114g tuna would blow the calorie count out the water.
Thankfully at that point I’d also grown sick of it. I stopped eating, measured how much tuna I had left on my plate and – you’ll never believe this – had exactly 34g tuna left.
If you try this, only eat 80g tuna for this meal!
Dinner
– 85g lean meat (I had chicken breast fillets)
– 120g green beans
Converting the green beans wasn’t easy – different places suggested 150g or 110g. To be on the safe side, I went for 120g. I steamed all of it, added sea salt and pepper and it was yum.
– Half a banana
– 1 small apple
– 136g vanilla ice cream
I went for Kelly’s Cornish dairy vanilla ice cream, 136g gave me more or less exactly the calorie count necessary. Plus this was delicious!
EOD Verdict
Like most others who’ve tried this diet, I wasn’t at all hungry at the end of the day. I don’t usually eat ice cream so having that at the end of my day was a bit strange. I don’t know why but it also made me crave something savoury afterwards.
I woke up super late (went to the midnight showing of Avengers 2 the night before at BFI IMAX. IT WAS SO GOOD!) and by the time I was ready to eat it was already like 1:30 ~ 2pm. I had badminton at 4pm so had to shovel breakfast and lunch within 30min of each other. Was very happily full after that!
I drank insane amounts of water.
I exercised hard for at least 1 of the 2hrs I played badminton for.
I walked to and from the supermarket in the morning (2 miles) and of course walked whilst doing my grocery shop.
The food was infinitely healthier than what I normally have on a Saturday.
I found it really tasty too!
I cheated and weighed myself the morning after: I lost over 1kg.
So far so good…
Muchos love,