What I’m going to try and do now is create an actual weight loss plan, essentially what I would follow if I was starting from the beginning, given my own experiences.

The most important thing to do at the start of this is to take measurements; weigh yourself, measure your waist, chest, legs and thighs. If you’re particularly geeky (like me), take your blood pressure, pulse, blood sugar, cholesterol and uric acid levels. Ok, maybe not the last three, but it’s worth checking your blood pressure and pulse. And take pictures of what you look like. Yes, I know if you’re overweight and not feeling great about the way you look, the last thing you want to do is take pictures of yourself semi-nude, but you will wish you had once you’ve lost a bit of weight. I didn’t and I wish I did. Measuring yourself is important to keep track of progress, but don’t get obsessive about it. I weigh myself every Friday morning on the same scales at the same time roughly. The absolute number that you first take isn’t that important, what you’re measuring is the change against that baseline, so it’s important you stick with the same scales and ideally at the same time of day. I’ve actually used Wii Fit for this as it keeps a record and plots a graph of your weight changes, which is great to see.

So the starting point for me was to reduce the amount of carbohydrates in my diet. I am quite sensitive to carbs, which is why I’m prone to putting on weight, so I’ve had to cut my carbs back quite a bit. Plus apart from walking my dog, I don’t really do any other exercise, certainly nothing strenuous which requires me to load up on carbs. What the right amount of carbs is debatable, and does depend on an individual’s carb sensitivity. You can find out the amount of carbs in a product by looking on the food label, or simply looking on http://nutritiondata.self.com/. There are even apps out there for carb counting.

I’ve already posted that I think Aktins is too extreme in the early phases because you are required to consume 20g of carbs compared with the typical 250g we tend to consume. For actually losing weight, I targeted around 50g of carbs per day, and for maintaining my weight around 100g per day.

Now you may be asking yourself “But if I reduce my carbohydrate intake by that amount, aren’t I going to be tired all the time?”. For the first few days, yes,your body needs to adjust to the reduced amount of carbs, so you will be tired. And you’ll get cravings as the effect of years of carb addiction will take effect – you need to stay with it. I found that taking a mineral supplement called chromium for the first week or so really helped take the edge of the cravings. But the key thing to note is that after a few days the tiredness passes and actually you gain much more energy.

Carbs are the most easily accessible form of energy for the body, particularly processed carbs because of the easy and fast way they are absorbed by the body. But the body has other ways of getting hold of glucose. After all, going back to caveman days, food wasn’t plentiful all the time (that’s why we store excess energy as fat), and certainly primal man’s diet didn’t consist of the large amount of carbs that modern man’s diet does. If your body isn’t getting the energy it needs from carbs, it simply takes it from the fat cells in your body, as well as being able to convert both dietary fat and protein into energy through a process called gluconeogenesis. So it’s myth that the average person needs lots of carbohydrates to get through the day. My own personal experience here is that during the day, I have much more energy than I used to have, and I also sleep much more soundly at night. Of course, I still fall asleep on the sofa at 9pm whilst watching TV, but I think this is a combination of middle age and red wine, rather than insufficient carbs!

These are the foods I tend to eat lots of: unprocessed meat, fish, nuts (almonds, macadamia, walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans), seeds, pulses (beans, chick peas and lentils mainly) vegetables (excluding potatoes and sweetcorn), eggs, berries, salad vegetables, and onions.

These are the foods I eat in moderation: processed meats (i.e. salami, ham, bacon, sausages), fruit, sweet potato, peanuts & cashew nuts, dark chocolate (min 70% cocoa), cheese, sweetcorn

These are the foods I generally try to avoid: grain based products (i.e. bread, pasta, pizza, rice), potatoes, most breakfast cereals (although I’ve started having granola, but in very limited quantities), biscuits, cakes, sweets, milk chocolate, pastries, yoghurts with added sugar

I stay away from fruit juice, as despite what people thing, drinking fruit juice isn’t that good for you, as there’s lot of sugar in fruit, but take away the fibrous content through juicing, and all you’re left with is sugar + vitamin C.

Now what about alcohol? Well, unfortunately alcohol contains carbs, particularly beer as it’s derived from wheat. Wine isn’t too bad, particularly red wine because it has anti-oxidant properties, but again it needs to be consumed in moderation if you’re looking to lose weight. I actually think that giving up beer (apart from the odd bottle here and there) has had a significant impact on my overall weight.

And diet drinks? I stay away from things like Diet Coke simply because they are too sweet – even if they don’t have any calorific content as such, you can’t wean yourself off sugar if you’re drinking sweet things. You retain a taste for it.

So that’s what I tend to eat and drink these days. Next post on diet will cover portion size.