Quick Recap

Well, the sharp eyed amongst you might have noticed that I haven’t posted in a while. That’s mostly because I fell off the wagon a little. I didn’t however fall all the way off, just enough to stall my progress. This was a combination of factors such as stressing about assignments and other projects and generally not having enough time to get things done. This post isn’t meant to be an apology, my choices are my own, and stupid or not, I think they’re pit falls that a number of people could fall into. Forewarned is forearmed and all that, so I want to share them here. Of course, I knew about some of these and they still broadsided me, so even if you are completely aware of them, chances are they are still going to trip you up now and again.

In what way did you fall off?

This was basically consuming too much calories in liquid form - think coffee, beer and of course energy drinks. They snuck back into my diet as I was spending many long nights working on projects that had managed to sneak up on me. Ironically I’m not sure the extra calories or caffeine actually mande a blind bit of difference. It did however push my weight up a couple of kilos, which is far from ideal. However I didn’t start consuming animal products.

The slippery slope

This is what you have to watch out for. Making a mistake here and there isn’t a crime, it’s just life. The problem though is one leads to another and suddenly before you know it you’re at the bottom of the slide. A quick energy drink here to clear a headache (which worked beautifully) leads to another one later in the day (well I’ve had one already, another surely won’t hurt?). This is called licensing, and it’s something I’ll talk about more in a future post. In any case you start off with the best of intentions and often you don’t quite realise how you managed to get to where you did. Mistakes happen - just don’t use them as an excuse to make more of them :)

Running didn’t help

I’ve been doing a fair bit of running, basically running every other day (although I took a couple of weeks off, which turned out to be a bad idea). This has certainly been helpful in the case that I can now run further, but my speed and other physical traits haven’t seemed to have improved. In addition my weight loss stalled once I started (something well documented) and this meant that rather than progressing as smoothly as I had been, I completely flat-lined and actually went up a bit. This kinda hit my motivation even though I was fully expecting it and prepapred for it and helped line me up with the slippery slope.

Over time though, this habit will improve things for me both physically and mentally, but again, watch out for things messing with your head.

Did you eat meat at Christmas?

Actually I did, I decided to try some of the turkey and the gammon. I was curious as to how they would taste. Would it be like missing an old friend? Or would it have no appeal to me? I really didn’t know what to expect and as I’m not approaching these changes for ethical reasons (although I might in the future), I thought I’d give it a ago.

Well, the result was quite interesting. Not only did the meat not taste as good as I had expected (or more importantly remembered), it had a very strange after taste. Almost like an oily metal tang. Now if it had been a local restaurant, I might have thought that the meat was off or poorly cooked. However we went to a nice buffet at the Hotel Icon, a place where we eat regularly and the food is always outstanding. I still frequent their restaurants as they’re willing to cook me things without oil in it and actually seem interested and willing to help me stay within the Starch Solution. Great place. Anyway, based on that I am convinced that the meat was fresh and cooked to perfection. In such a case all that can be said is that clearly my tastes have changed, and that meat to me know is pretty gross even from a taste point of view.

This was a result that I wasn’t expecting. I thought I might no longer have the urge for it, or find it bland or uninteresting. However to find it actually revolting was quite a shock. I’m not sure everyone goes through this, but it was certainly an interesting result for me.

What now?

Well as of Monday, I’m back full time on the Starch Solution. I shouldn’t have dropped off it to start with and I could have restarted it properly at any time, I just didn’t feel like it. That said, my diet hasn’t changed much during the past two months. It was and still is primarily starch based, just it had some additions that certainly wouldn’t get McDougall approval. It does show however that starting off with a beer on a Friday, can quickly turn into having one daily - which is a big reason for simply taking these foods and drinks out of the game altogether. Black and white is easier than “moderation”.

I’m also contacting some local restaurants and finding out what they put in their food. Hong Kong is not really Starch Solution friendly but there are a couple of great places where I’ve found what are (I hope) approved foods, or if not, they aren’t far from it. I’m hoping these restaurants will confirm this for me, and if so I will publish those details online so others can enjoy it.

I’ll also start publishing my stats again in the near future. My scales are playing up, although they reckon my weight has already dropped since Monday. I’m still quite a bit up from where I was two months ago (about 3kg I reckon), but this is a far cry from my starting point (though not recorded) of 104kg which was 14kg from where I am today.

At least I know what the correct diet is and how to fix things, even if I’m too stupid to use it properly :)