Day 13 - Starch Solution

Today’s stats:

Well, the stats might look similar to yesterday only worse. I literally had five minutes to get up, dressed and out the door to avoid being late for a lecture. This means not only did I not get a chance to do the weighing for the second day in a row, but I also didn’t have time to do the other tests either. I promise that tomorrow, I’ll get it done :)

One person asked me how I am able to keep my motivation on “such a difficult diet” without having the good feedback from the scales. Well, first, I don’t find it a difficult diet. Really, it’s not that hard, especially when you don’t seem to crave the other “foods”. The second is that the scales lie as I discussed in a previous post. Sure one day it might say I’ve dropped 2KG and then it’s a good day for all - but next day I’m likely to have “gained” a kilo or more - perhaps more than the scales said I’d lost previously. How would you feel then? Well, pretty crappy I’d bet, probably the exact opposite of how great you felt the day before. So for me the scale isn’t a huge part of the motivation, though of course I’d love to lose more weight.

The third thing is that as Dr McDougall promised, I’m already feeling and seeing differences in myself that I like. I can run faster for longer, my joints are more flexible and just generally I feel better. Yes this isn’t scientific and yes it’s very personal and may not apply to others. Fine, but for me personally I value these changes. Thus, I’m now doing this less and less for weight loss and more and more just because I feel good.

So today, there was no time for breakfast, so I had to run out the door. I have the good fortune to have a very supportive family and waiting for me were two lunch boxes (because the lectures last all day and well into the evening). I also didn’t have time to stop at 711 to get any healthy snacks or to buy water.

I managed to get to the campus on time, but the water fountain was broken. No luck there. Got to class and they brought in tea, coffee and biscuits. Well, Dr Mcdougall doesn’t recommend coffee for a number of reasons. First, caffeine is a stimulant and puts stress on the body and second the acids and oils in the coffee itself are not kind to the stomach. However I’m not a heavy coffee drinker and the way I look at it today is that it is a medicine or a drug. With that in mind, it is a balance of costs exercise. What will the coffee give me vs what damage will it do? Is being able to focus better during the lecture and not passing out worth the additional load I’m putting on my body? Well, it’s up to each person to decide that for themselves. Personally, I don’t drink coffee any more, but occasionally, a black coffee or perhaps one made with soya milk, would probably be okay.

So yeah, coffee… It was in one of those jugs that you push the top down to pump the coffee out. Somehow though the guy in front of me had difficulty operating the pump, so turned on the lock (to disable the pump) and then gave it a nice hard push - and totally destroyed it. Alas no coffee. Turned out though that it was coffee with milk already added, and well, there are lines I’m not going to cross. It was then arranged that the next delivery would be black coffee with milk on the side.

Fortunately lunch time comes around, and I figure I can fill up my flask with boiling water. At least then I can make tea - and I brought my own with me. So off to the pantry to get hot water - and what a surprise, the water bottle is totally empty. The last person to use it couldn’t be bothered to change the bottle sigh.

Lunch was good though. I had a lot of potato and rice (my main starch staples) with broccoli and baby bok choi. Very tasty. I saved half of it for dinner (two lunch boxes, one of veggies and one of starch).

There was a brief break at 3pm, when in theory the new coffee supply should have turned up only, it didn’t. It did in fact turn up around 3:45. Joy of joys, she was carrying a separate container of milk. I would then be able to get a caffeine hit, which barring being able to have a little snooze would greatly improve my afternoon. Alas, would you believe it, despite the milk being separate, the pot still contains coffee with milk! This is so typical of Hong Kong.

I did get pretty hungry around 4:30, but that’s seemingly normal for me. I managed to eat a couple of small apples (which are tasty very sweet these days) and drank three cups of tea (teecinno chocolate coffee, peppermint tea and lemon and ginger tea).

We finished up the day of lectures around 5pm and so I took the opportunity to eat the food I’d put aside for dinner. Was as good as lunch time, but alas, there wasn’t much of the tomato and potato left, and so I only had rice as my starch. Not a problem, but I did miss the potato. At home, I had some fruit in the evening (a couple of small bananas and some grapes) as I really had no need for another meal, (this was about 8ish). That said much much later (around midnight) I was really hungry so I popped out to subway (gotta love Hong Kong) and picked up one of the veggie delight 6” subs. I doubt it had more than a 150 calories or so (it is after all mostly veggies, only the bread really has any meaningful calorie load) but it tasted good and filled me up. Yay!