Diet talk

[lnr]

Gah, I don't know quite what to say here, because I am a muddle of contradictions. I'm around 100kg, give or take a couple either way. I'm type 2 diabetic. I'm very very strongly encouraged to lose weight to try and bring that into remission, but I've been resisting that and trying to concentrate on eating sensibly to manage the diabetes. I don't believe in dieting for weight loss, because it's usually counterproductive in the long term, but I live in an environment where the pressure for me to lose weight is enormous, including from myself. So, gah. Anyway, skip the rest if you don't want to read about diet talk.

Anyway, for some reason one of the weight loss company ads got me, and I've signed up for a two-week trial of Habitual.

It's a total diet replacement scheme - three months of meal replacements: 4 soups, shakes or porridges a day, for a total of 800 calories. Which could be great or could be awful but VLC diets are supposedly good for "reversing diabetes" and I figured I could give it a go for the cost of postage, and here I am 1.5 days in and doubting myself. So far nothing tastes *horrible* but it's not inspiring. I'm tired and hungry and grumpy but to be fair that's probably not lack of calories - just lack of enjoyment and the weight of expectation of the next 12.5 days! I feel like I *could* carry on a bit longer, but that I'm almost certainly *not* going to sign on for the first full month after the free trial. Which to be fair I thought was a likely outcome anyway. I guess the only question now is do I stick it out for two weeks, or do I go make a sandwich and chuck the meal replacements away?

Anyone want a bunch of 200 cal shakes?

Comments

[aldabra]

What happens if you have one meal a day of this stuff instead of three? Or if you eat this stuff plus all the fruit and veg you want, and accept that it'll be more than 800 calories but less than if you were eating normal meals?

Tired and hungry and grumpy sounds like a carb crash. I get those and they lift after 48 hours; something to do with your metabolism recognising that it's not getting carbs and switching to another pathway. Might be worth sticking with it until tomorrow evening and see if you feel better.

[lnr]

Interestingly it's 4 meals a day (which is weird to me, because I'd work better with three!) - but it turns out they do suggest you could replace one of them with a 200 cal non-starchy-veg based meal and continue to get similar results (or a bigger meal with meat and/or a small treat) if you accept slower results. They've also suggested that since I don't plan to cut out all the existing exercise I do I could also experiment with adding a 5th 200 cal meal as well.

I think if I do quit the full TDR before 2 weeks then there'll be no harm in using these up for breakfast for the next few months. Though maybe not soup for breakfast :)

Interesting on the carb crash front. I'll see how I do tomorrow!