Exercise and Dieting

First off, I hate the word ‘dieting’. I reminds me of when I was a boy, when the only time you heard the word was when an old person (30's or 40's, hah) was screwing their faces up as they contemplated the Rivita with cottage cheese topping they were about to eat. So, dieting equals pain (and Rivita) for me.

Anyway, I don’t ‘diet’ as such. I try to eat less and what I do eat I try to make healthy(ish). I don't analyze everything for fat and carb content, a rough idea is enough, and generally you can tell by the taste: the better it tastes, the worse it is for you. Carry out takeaway curry with rice and nan bread: bad, but tastes really good, chicken salad sandwich with wholemeal bread: good, but not very exciting at all.

The problem I’m currently experiencing is that I’ve ramped up the exercise. This week I’ve been out on the bike twice, been swimming once, and spend about 2 hours on the indoor bike. This sounds good, and it can’t be bad but it makes me VERY HUNGRY, and as you should be able to appreciate, when you are VERY HUNGRY, it is more difficult to control what you eat. When I'm that hungry, I feel like putting my head in the fridge and not coming out until it’s totally clean, not even a wrapper left.

During January, I decided for the first four weeks to concentrate on my eating habits, generally cutting down, eating better and drinking less. This worked, and my weight came down steadily. Now I’m exercising more, controlling the eating is harder. No doubt I should be able to eat more, as I’m more active and burning more energy. But I’m not burning as much as my stomach is convinced I am. Last week at this time I was thinking, this isn’t so bad, I’m loosing weight, I’m eating well, and I’m not suffering too much. But today, my stomach is shouting, FEED ME, PLEASE, HAVE PITY, FEED ME. This wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact that I just had my lunch an hour ago. Oh dear.

So what to do about it? I’ll probably tweak what I’m eating to see what happens, more oaty thinks maybe. Nuts and raisins tend to reduce my hunger, but you need to be careful of them, one small packet had enough energy in it to power a small town for a month. If you don’t believe me, check the back of the packet, the energy is not measured in kilo-calories, but in mega-calories, no kiddin. Anyway, I’ll try a few things and see how it goes.

This morning, my weight was 17 stone 2.6 lb (or 240.6 lb)