Strength Loser

By the time I went to bed last night, the DOMS had almost gone and there was nothing left of it when I awoke this morning, which was encouraging with this Monday AM, Wednesday PM, Friday AM program.

Got home from work this evening, fed the cat (priorities!), got changed straight away, stuck The Biggest Loser workout DVD (I’ll call it TBL from now on) in the player, and started Workout 2: warmup, strength and cooldown.

The warmup and cooldown were fine, but again I wasn’t able to do the entire main section, strength. It’s not particularly difficult, but I was halfway through it before I realised I didn’t have to hold a 2kg dumbell in each hand. My arms were dropping off, which drained me of energy completely. So ~12 mins into that section I skipped through to the cooldown and called it a day.

It’s a little disappointing, but it’s still only the first week so I’m not going to beat myself up about it. The DVD does show that two dumbells is considered hard or advanced, one dumbell (held by both hands) is medium, and the easiest option is empty hands. I’ll use one dumbell on the next strength session (this time next week) and see how we go. I’ll be continuing “Week 1″ of the program until I can consistently do a full week properly.

Regardless of everything, that was 40 minutes of time well spent. It wasn’t a cardio workout so now, about 90 minutes later, my arms and legs know they’ve been worked, rather than the lungs. It’s all good. And so was dinner and the tall glass of Orangina afterwards!

A new day of DOMS dawns

Following on from yesterday’s essay (sorry about that) where I mentioned that I did Workout 1 from The Biggest Loser – The Workout DVD that morning, I had set my alarm to wake up early this morning to start the exercise program properly. The alarm went off, I woke up… and discovered that most of my body ached in a way that I’d forgotten it could: DOMS had come a day earlier than expected. I suppose at my current fitness level even the warmup and cooldown count as exercise that would help bring it on.

So rather than try to push through it, which everything I’ve read said is not advised, I figure that yesterday’s exercise can count as “Monday” and I’ll pick it up from Wednesday PM as per the schedule.

Aching muscles or not, it feels good to have done something healthy to have brought on that reaction. And I find myself looking forward to Wednesday evening for the next wheezing session.

Trying to be a Loser

It’s been 2 weeks since I started using The Daily Plate, but it’s a little difficult to tell if I’ve lost much weight as I’ve decided to ignore the decimal places on my digital scales (measuring whole kilograms only)… and the weekends are proving a challenge. In the last 12 months I’ve become fond of a couple of drinks on a Friday and Saturday night — where previously I was effectively a teetotaller and lucky to average one standard drink measure a week — which inevitably leads to poor dinner or evening eating choices. While the week may be spot on or under the daily calorie limit, the weekends can be as high as 1,000 calories per day over the limit, meaning I’m eating 8 days of calories in 7 days.

As I’ve not been exercising, this means I need to be consistently eating almost 300 calories a day (or 400 a day if you exclude the weekends) just to round off the weekly calorie consumption at the right number. Of course it’s not as easy as that, as a day of excess over 100 calories can’t simply be remedied by having 100 calories less the next day, as the excess has already gone straight into fat.

So it appears that I need to do something else or something more. After all, if it was going to be as simple as that, I should now be 121kg. Clearly it’s not, so two changes are required: exercise and addressing the weekend silliness.

Earlier this week I decided to start going out for a walk every evening whenever it wasn’t raining, so I managed that a grand total of twice. The morning after the first walk (1.5 miles around my old hilly run route) I was amazed to discover that my knees were telling me they’d been for a walk the day before — I can’t remember the last time a walk gave me that reaction. The second was a new route (1 mile) with a steep hill halfway through. It’s going to be a fun route once I get to the point where I’m running and looking for a demanding hill.

Also this week I saw my first episode of The Biggest Loser (UK). Normally I make it a point to avoid reality TV (along with I’m A Spoiled Princess: Get Me Out of Here, etc), regardless of whether it’s considered a worldwide phenomenon, but it seems I made a mistake with this one. It seems quite effective as a source of inspiration.

So, to address the issue of rubbish weather preventing exercise — short of reaching the point where I’m motivated enough to “just go out” in the rain or sleet — I discovered that there’s a The Biggest Loser workout DVD. In fact, there are two in the UK: The Biggest Loser – The Workout: The Official Workout and The Biggest Loser – The Workout: New Year, New You. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s become a multi-product franchise in the US and even has its own Amazon Store.

I’ve always been leery of workout videos, perhaps being old enough to have seen VHS tapes from the 1980s with surgically-proportioned Californians wearing leotards and leg-warmers shouting “Woo, yeah!” every ten seconds. However, on Friday I took the plunge and bought The Biggest Loser – The Workout: The Official Workout DVD, which I watched through yesterday and read the suggested schedule and other information that comes with it. I gave it a run through first thing this morning (workout 1: warmup, cardio & cooldown) and was amazed to discover that I couldn’t complete the cardio part of the workout. Almost made it to the 9th minute of cardio (during the skipping rope) before having to take a break, then forwarded to the cooldown and called it a day.

There’s no doubt about it: I’ve felt brilliant all day for just that 30 minutes of exercise, and feel confident at starting it properly tomorrow morning. More to follow.

As for the weekend silliness, I think it probably dates back to my university days: I’ve always felt the end-of-week let-your-hair-down thing, where you have a takeaway and/or a few drinks. Even during the years of hardly any alcohol consumption, I’d still regularly order pizza or Chinese on the weekend. Clearly relaxing on the weekend isn’t a bad thing, but I’m beginning to discover that it doesn’t have to include a takeaway — or perhaps could include better food choices.

My standard pizza home delivery recently has been a large Domino’s Texas BBQ thin crust pizza, a tub of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food icecream and often a 1.5L bottle of Diet Coke or Sprite. Then I’ll normally have half of the pizza and half of the icecream in one sitting, occasionally consuming all the icecream in one sitting. Have you ever looked at the calories in a major chain takeaway pizza or brand name icecream?

The Domino’s website states that one slice of this pizza is 202 calories, with 10 per pizza — 1,010 calories per half pizza. The Ben & Jerry’s website says one serving of their Phish Food is 270 calories, with 4 per tub — 540 calories per half tub. So that’s 1,550 calories each for Friday and Saturday’s evening meal, excluding drinks and anything else I may have during the evening. That assumes I haven’t been stupid and eaten the whole tub of icecream,  which would make it 2,090 calories in one sitting — that’s a day’s energy intake.

The other type of takeaway I tend to get is Chinese food, but finding accurate nutrition information for it is next to impossible, as I don’t think there are any major Chinese takeaway food chains and therefore no nutritional information (the cynic in me thinks that the only reason major chains provide this information at all is because of the flurry of 1980s lawsuits when some people suddenly “discovered” how bad eating 5 monster hamburgers with secret sauce really was for them). There are some online resources, but at best it’s a guess. Looking at what may be my average Chinese takeaway of spring rolls, and half a tub (one serving) each of sea-spiced pork and chicken chow mein, it probably rounds out to about 1,800 calories. Assuming I don’t get silly and eat all of it, making it over 3,000 calories in one sitting. Though lately I’ve taken to just buying spring rolls and a tub of chow mein, making 1,000-1,500 calories depending if I get silly with the quantity.

It’s appallingly bad when you look at all the numbers, and even some of the quantities being eaten (allowing for ignorance of the numbers). I take some comfort in that this doesn’t happen every weekend, and it certainly doesn’t happen every day. Which is probably all that’s saving me.

Looking at the numbers — and laying it all out here as a kind of name-and-shame — it’s clearly a Bad Idea to have popular takeaway, and a Very Bad Idea to have it delivered when you’re home alone. Time to find alternatives, if I must continue with the “bah, it’s the weekend!” type of behaviour.

So there we have it. That’s the facts of the past and the plan for the immediate future. Time will tell if I can manage to combine both the exercise and weekend eating behaviour. Stay tuned…

Oh, and I’ve learned that if you’re on a health-related Internet forum and want to ask for advice or alternatives to weekend silliness, don’t give details or numbers. I did, and watched in open-mouthed amazement as some people went absolutely mental at me, even declaring that I didn’t deserve to consider myself a dieter and a general let-down to humanity. Still, at least they didn’t blame me for World War 2…

Exploring my weight options

Since finally being able to get back into archery, I’m afraid my motivation is still near rock-bottom. From my — albeit illness-enhanced (which turned out to be H. pylori and therefore quite serious) — adult best weight of 106kg, my time off archery, gym and running, and a general lack of “caring” (at least enough to act), I’ve let my weight climb back up to 122kg.

During a chat with a friend back in Perth who’s had his weight progress as his MSN status for months now (i.e. 130/120/90 where 130kg was his starting weight, 120kg his current, and 90kg his target), he mentioned that he’d had gastric band surgery and it had changed his life — he’s lost 17kg at roughly 250-500g per week, and is progressing steadily. My half-sister also had this procedure done, when she was in her teens around the time she was diagnosed with diabetes. State healthcare in Australia and here in the UK will not cover the operation unless your BMI is 40+ unless you have other co-morbidity issues such as diabetes, high blood pressure, etc, in which case the cutoff point becomes a BMI of 35.

I’m very fortunate in that I have none of the health issues often associated with people of my weight, and particularly at my age, but my BMI is alarmingly close to 40. Hence considering gastric surgery (of some kind, as there are a lot of options) as a solution, particularly as all the exercise I was doing requires a lot of time, and that was blighted by illness and, more than once, injury. However, I’m not the type to take such a drastic route without some serious consideration and research.

If you’re unaware, gastric band surgery — often called LAP-BAND after one of the companies who were among the pioneers of the procedure, in the same way that the Crescent, Hoover and Xerox names are often used — entails a laparoscopic procedure that essentially wraps a balloon-containing band around the uppermost portion of your stomach that can be filled or drained, constricting or opening the entrance to your stomach as required. The band is connected to a tube that ends in a port that is typically surgically attached to a chest muscle below your ribcage that allows a needle to be inserted through your skin and into it that either adds or removes saline to adjust the balloon. The result is that you feel full quicker, you can’t “wolf” food down, any kind of comfort eating is more quickly satisfied, and a number of other positive and negative side effects.

There are many other gastric surgery options as well, each with their pros and cons, but from what I’ve read the adjustable gastric band is probably the least invasive, does not mandate specific nutrients and measurement (as is required with gastric bypasses), seems to have the least fatalities due to complications, and the documentation I read says that it has at least identical success in weight loss over 3-5 years to the other methods. You might say it’s the lesser of a number of evils but, as I occasionally say, the lesser of two evils is still evil. So to speak.

Part of the post-operative, life-long changes that must be made as a result of gastric band surgery are in diet and physical activity. Some people find they’re never again able to eat certain foods (some report inability to eat red meat or pasta), as indeed my sister experiences, but she prefers to be vegetarian and doesn’t miss pasta, so she’s not all that upset about it.

Prior experience has taught me that my weight can be handled effectively by taking care of my diet and doing exercise so, as I would have to do that anyway if I had this kind of surgery, I figure I may as well just make the diet and activity changes and do without the operation. It is a logical argument but it’s not perfect in that I can still fall back on my old ways. With a mother, uncle and two younger half-siblings diagnosed with diabetes, and an older half-brother who died from a massive heart attack a couple of years ago, there is a very real sense of the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head. (Incidentally, I mention that they are half-siblings only because there is also he question of inherited diseases, not because I don’t love them dearly!)

So yesterday I signed up to The Daily Plate — now owned by and integrated into LiveSTRONG (as in Lance Amstrong, the Tour de France champion and cancer survivor) — which is a collection of tools to allow me to diagnose, recommend and record my calorie intake, and is also a social network and forum community providing challenges and a sense of both belonging and of someone to hold you accountantable.

I’ve calorie counted in the past and found it too much like what I imagine accounting to be like: picking peanuts out of poo. We’ll see how TDP goes.

However, one thing that struck me today was the fact that without TDP I would have gone to bed tonight having consumed around half the calories I should have been consuming in order to lose weight (as counter-intuitive as that sounds). I’ve consistently read that in order to lose weight, you need to reduce your daily caloric intake by only a couple of hundred calories per day otherwise your body will go into “starvation mode” and not burn anything, but when you do happen to eat more in a day than you should all that excess will be stored as emergency fat. Then when you eat less calories than needed your body won’t shift it, then you overeat one day, and so on and so forth. It has made me wonder if that’s what I’ve been doing: I know I don’t each much at all, particularly when compared to those around me, and so tonight I’d have gone to bed having only had around 900 calories for the whole day. The sums I’ve done say at my current weight and activity I should be able to lose about 750g per week on 1,900 calories a day.

Time will tell. Either way, I’ll most likely share it here. Stayed tuned, if you’re interested…

Motivation, where art thou?

I wish I understood motivation. I wish I understood where it went. I wish I understood how to generate it.

While chatting with a friend this morning about how long it’s been since I did any archery, I worked out that it was just over 9 months ago, in late September 2008. The same evening that I screwed up my arm.

Truth be told, the main reason I’ve not shot since then is fear of repeating that excruciating pain, and the long, slow physiotherapy process required to simply have a normal arm again. As mentioned in my New Year post, I think compound might be an option, and I’m planning on trying one out tomorrow. More to follow on this.

I then looked at the time I blogged about archery prior to that date and it was October 2007 — back when I was going to the gym 3 times a week, running 3 times a week, and doing archery 2 times a week. I was a calorie-burning and weight-loss machine, burning 3,000-4,000 calories a week on exercise alone, who was spending most of his spare time being active. I’d dropped from 118kg to 106kg and felt fantastic, culminating in the 5km Santa’s fun run.

Now 21 months on I’m worse off and heavier than I was back then, simply because I’ve lost the motivation to just get out there and do it. My running shoes are constantly calling out to me, my pushbike eyes me malevolently whenever I’m in the garage, and my bank statement proudly displays my wasted monthly gym payment, so I know I need to get back into the groove.

I know it’ll happen eventually — it’s how I’m wired. I just wish I knew why motivation ebbs and flows like this.

Back to the gym… again!

Today was my first visit to the gym in… some time. In fact, I’ve not been at all this year — and we’re 1/3 of the way through it! My weight has started to climb back up, stairs and hills are interesting again, I’m becoming noticeably lethargic, and yet I’m finding it difficult to sleep properly and to get up in the mornings. There are no valid excuses, merely a list of reasons that begin with me first not being able to go due to injury, enjoying the spare time a little too much, then falling out of the exercise habit and even forgetting to go, and then trying to regain the motivation to get past the embarrassment and gain the willpower to actually get back into the routine.

It’s awful to be back at square one again, knowing that all — or most — of the progress I’ve made in the past has gone again. Still, the irritating optimist I try to hide behind a mask of faux-pessimism knows that I’ve done it once before, so I can do it again.

So today I met Tarkwin at the leisure centre, where we both discovered that the planned gym extension has now been completed, and found ourselves standing in what felt like a proper commercial gym. A strange feeling for a council facility, which my experiences have shown are usually grubby, run-down and provide well-loved wobbly machines. It was unexpectedly encouraging.

Surprisingly, my exercise card was still in the rack, yet Tarkwin’s wasn’t. The staff put a sticker on the card every 2-3 months to ask you to book a Re-Focus (a reassessment to you and me) and if, after a month, you haven’t booked it they remove your card to free up space in the card rack for members who attend — or so the theory goes. I ripped my sticker off late last year as I hadn’t been going often at that point, and the “torn sticker” look seems to get the hint across.

I did most of the scheduled workout, with the exception of the dip/pullup machine and rower, and kept all the intensities at the lowest of the sliding scale and found that, although it was hard work, I managed it without killing myself or feeling bad afterwards. Very pleased indeed — and lifted some of the despair I had at having let myself go (yet) again. Again. Again.

Looking forward to Wednesday’s visit, and plan to get out either for a walk, jog or cycle tomorrow if they weather’s nice. The shoes and Forerunner need a dust-off, and the bike just needs a once-over and the tyres to be pumped up. Providing there’s sunshine, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to get out at start on the road to increased fitness again.

Then I’ll come back and watch the London Marathon and dream of entering it someday. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to do it, but I expect I’ll have done the Reading Half Marathon before then as part of the lead up to it, and a lot of 5K (such as the Santa’s Fun Run) before that.

One step at a time…

Weight to Go – 1 month later

Well, it’s been exactly one month since I started Weight To Go, and I have to admit that the results have been positive. This time last month I weighed 122kg and now I’m a fraction over 117kg. A 5kg (11lb) loss in 31 days is a success by anyone’s reckoning.

I should clarify that I’ve done next to no exercise in the last month, for a variety of reasons ranging from injury to weather to bone idle laziness. I’m planning on rectifying that very soon, so we’ll see how that goes.

The little weight-tracking iPhone app I use, called Weightbot, conservatively forecasts that at my current rate I’ll drop below 100kg in November. Simple maths suggests it might happen much sooner–sometime in May or June–but I suppose the app is allowing for the few speedbumps I’ve had this last month and the historical data I entered as far back as August last year, which was nowhere near as encouraging as this last month has been.

The meals are still not a problem, though I do stray a little bit here and there–but I’ve always read that sticking religiously to something will drive you nuts–so I’m not afraid of the occasional pub lunch with my colleagues or dinner out, trying to limit it to no more than once a week if possible. I sometimes won’t have fruit with each morning or evening blended shake–it depends on whether I’ve remembered to buy some–though I try for at least a banana or handful of berries (strawberries, blueberries and/or blackberries), and each afternoon shake is simply mixed with water using a spoon (a little chunky like badly prepared Quik, but palatable–ideally you’d blend it at home and bring it to work). I still have a slice of bread (or two) and margarine with some of my meals, but other than that I’m sticking to the plan.

So that’s it for this update. I’ll continue with Weight To Go and let you know how things are going in a month or so.

Weight To Go – Day 12

Well, it’s been 12 days since I began the Weight To Go system. I weighed myself this morning at 119.7kg — that’s a 2.3kg (5lb) loss over almost 2 weeks. And a total of 3kg lost this month. Very pleasing.

The programme is turning out to be much easier than I had expected, and I’m still finding the shakes filling and palatable, especially when mixing berries and/or bananas in with them. I’m not sure if it’s some secret ingredient in the shakes*, the simple fact of having the exact nutrients required to stave off hunger without adding too many calories, or the fact they’re so aerated by the blender, but I really feel no inclination to snack between meals.

In fact, I usually have to remind myself to have the afternoon shake as I often don’t feel hungry at all — but I make myself have it around 4pm, as it will be at least another 3 hours before dinner and I don’t want to find myself yearning for a snack. This is particularly an issue at my office, where all my colleagues seem to look for any excuse to run out to buy some doughnuts, pastries, bacon and sausage baguettes, or all manner of fried or sugary food for everyone at the drop of a hat. It’s a lovely sense of camaraderie, but a nightmare if you’re me.

A weak point for me (outside the office junkfood smorgasboard) is immediately after the evening meal. Perhaps I’ve unwittingly trained myself as some kind of Pavlovian Dog, but for some time I’ve started to crave a dessert/sweet the moment I’ve finished dinner — not even 30 minutes to an hour later. For a few nights I found myself finishing dinner at around 7:00pm and knowing that I’d need to have a shake later that evening — say around 9pm — but looking for something sweet in between, and raiding the cupboard. I now address this by having my evening shake either immediately after dinner or as soon as I feel that post-dinner craving. It works.

I’m not a strict adherent to the diet on good days, either, as I do add the occasional item to the shakes or meals (with the shakes it’s often fruit, and with meals it’s often bread to help with the soup or wet dinner cleanup) as well as alcohol, whether it be wine or beer. Though I’m naturally someone who rarely has more than 2 drinks in one sitting, regardless of whether it’s been a 2 years or 2 days since my last drink, so it’s not going to add immensely to my caloric intake.

Providing one can overcome the cost of the programme, I think this is something that one can continue over the long term. And that’s something I plan to do, finances permitting.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

* I really hope not, as it will make the eventual to normal meals extremely difficult. But a secret incredientia is unlikely: their ingredients page makes it pretty clear.

Day No.1 of Weight To Go

Here’s the rundown of my first day on the Weight To Go system (I really should get paid for all this advertising), as promised…

First up this morning I weighed myself in at a dismal 122.0kg exactly on my Tanita digital bathroom scales. Not a happy start, but a useful baseline for the first day of a diet plan.

Breakfast was a shake with fruit. I chose the strawberry flavour, as I think it’s it’s the most morning-like of the bunch and is a better choice for mixing with berries. I poured 200ml of water and a handful of ice cubes into the blender, emptied in the shake powder sachet, added fresh strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, and then blended them together for ~30 seconds. My blender only has the one speed, so it was very straightforward. The end result was ~700ml of aerated smoothie. And it was delicious, with a nice creamy taste! My only reservation is that I’ll probably save the blueberries for the vanilla flavour, but that’s just a taste thing.

For lunch I chose the red pepper soup, and its preparation is the same as for all of the wet packet foods: open the corners of the packet and place in the microwave for 2 minutes, remove the top of the packet completely and stir the contents, then back in the microwave for another 1 minute. The soup was very nice — not too peppery.

The afternoon shake was vanilla, and this one I kept plain: just water, ice and sachet, blended together. It was quite nice as it was, though I think things like blueberries will add to it, as creamy/foamy vanilla is very plain as a drink.

For dinner I chose the Cumbrian meatballs and, because I didn’t have my act together this evening in terms of vegetables to go with it, “southern style” oven fries. A very British meal: animal protein and chips. While not the most balanced meal I could have had, it was marvellous. If tonight’s meal was anything to go by, these packet meals are going to be no problems at all — particularly as there seems to be quite a range to choose from.

The post-dinner shake was banana and, because I had 2 over-ripe bananas that either needed to be eaten or composted, I thought I’d try a banana smoothie: water, ice, sachet, and 2 bananas. And very nice it was, too.

Perhaps it was because I had all my meals late today, being a Saturday and I slept late, but I found having what is effectively 5 meals quite a challenge: I had breakfast ~10:30, lunch ~14:30, afternoon shake ~17:00, dinner ~20:30 and “dessert” shake ~22:00. I suspect things will be different during the week, particularly as I’ll be having breakfast ~07:30, so it will be interesting to see if I have this “can I fit it all in dilemma”.

Now’s the time to confess a little, perhaps to offset the overly positive suggestions from the previous paragraph, but that wasn’t all I consumed today. Excluding a couple of cups of tea (no sugar), I also had 2 slices of margarined bread with soup at lunch, 2 pints of ale in the evening (it’s the weekend!), and a Kit-Kat after dinner. Not quite the strict adherence to a plan that I’d envisaged, but it’s the weekend and, at least as far as lunch goes, if I’m to endure soup (even nice soup) it has to have something to provide texture and absorption.

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday is that none of the food requires refrigeration. It will all happily sit in your cupboards — or in the box it came in, if you’re particularly lazy — and the expiry dates are reasonably high. Aside from the water and optional ice, the only perishables that you require are the fresh fruit for the morning shake and the vegetables for the evening meal. This could mean that big American-style fridge-freezer you have could become nothign more than an expensive ice-cube tray holder and fruit and vege crisper…

Other than the variations and concerns about being able to get it all in there every day, I’m very pleased with today’s test. But rather than post daily updates — I can’t imagine anything more boring than a “I ate X, Y and Z today” food diary blog — I’ll probably just provide a summary at the end of the 7 days. Suffice to say it’s encouraging, and seems viable over the long term.

Weight To Go has arrived

Having made the order for a 7-day Standard (omnivore) starter package of Weight To Go on Tuesday and only receiving the despatch notification this morning, I was resigned to receiving the package on Monday. After all, what’s the point of ordering a 7-day trial of a product when the product takes a week to deliver, particularly if you’re planning on continuing with the programme if it turns out to be suitable? However, I received the package later this afternoon via courier, which is still not a very good turnaround time but was not entirely unexpected as their Shipping & Returns page says they ship the packages after 2-3 days, which I assumed excluded the courier’s delivery time.

For those who may be interested, I thought I’d provide a little unwrapping experience, more to illustrate exactly what you get with an order. The box it all came in contained:

• A pricelist and re-order discount page, an explanation of how to use the plan (how much to eat, when and what else can be eaten with it), how the plan works and recommendations on food and drink while on the plan.
• Instructions on how to prepare the shakes, as well as providing alternate ways of preparing them: hot, cold, sweeter, less sweet, thickshake, as a dessert, mousse or pudding, and flavouring alternatives.
• A leaflet offering a place in their Success Story programme if you have 2 stones (13kg) or more to lose, presumably to make you a case study.
• Lunch meals: 7 packets of (wet) soup, similar to the packets used for Uncle Ben’s Express Rice and gourmet soups. The flavours are 2 each of red pepper, sweet parnsip, pea & ham, and 1 of Mediterranean vegetable.
• Evening meals: 7 different meal packets, in the same kinds of packets as the soup. The flavours are spicy vegetable dahl, tender one pot chicken casserole, chilli con carne, Cumbrian meatballs, fragrant chicken curry, pasta bolognaise, and succulent braised beef.
• A box containing 21 milkshakes in foil sachets and 2 energy bars. The shakes were 5 each of banana, chocolate and strawberry, and 6 vanilla. The bars are called “chocolate crispy” and “caramel energy”, and the documentation states these are intended as energy supplements during exercise. The shakes are for breakfast and two snacks through the day — the documentation suggests one in the afternoon and one after the evening meal — totalling 3 per day.

Each packet states the number of calories in each, though I presume that as this system is designed to average 850 calories per day, that information is not of much use unless you’re tempted to swap, say, a shake for a soup.

I’ll be starting the plan tomorrow morning, so I’ll keep you updated.