Diet Trials : Paul McKenna

Well I did it this morning… even though I didn’t really want to, but I sort of got forced to by my wife. It was weigh in day!

I knew that I wouldn’t be surprised by what I saw, as I know that I haven’t been following all of the golden rules. I find the eating what your want when you are hungry really easy…. but I keep neglecting to eat my food consciously and therefore I am finding that I am eating alot more than I was doing in the early weeks.

A few weeks ago on Day 16 I cheated a bit by weighing myself. After the first 2 weeks on the Paul Mckenna diet I had lost 5 pounds which I was really pleased with as I knew it was going to be a slow and steady weight loss. But it was probably around the second week that I started to get a bit complacent and not putting the diet as priority anymore. So this morning when I got on the scales I was still 17 stone 9lbs. Plus I went out last night for a few beers so felt a bit bloated! So I still have lost the 5 pounds and managed to keep it off. It would have been disasterous if I had put any weight on, but I hadn’t.

I must get back on track and get back to how I was in the first few weeks of the diet where I was eating consciously and listening to my body. I am determined to succeed!

The last 4 weeks have gone quite quickly for me, which is surprising as normally when I am on a diet it seems like time almost stands still. During the 4 weeks I have been able to do normal things like go out for meals, which if I was on the Atkins diet would be very tricky to find a restaurant that is carb free. It almost feels like I am not really on a diet at all.
One thing I forgot to do was to weigh myself. Well more like I got the scales out of their hiding place in the wardrobe… but couldn’t get on them. Not too sure why….scared I suppose of failing and I know that I have slipped up a bit. Being able to put my thoughts and feelings about my weight on here has really helped me, but I really want to be able to say that I have lost a decent amount of weight. I will tomorrow weigh myself and post it up, fingers crossed that I haven’t put any weight on….that would be disasterous. I think I am now worried as I really do believe in this diet and if this hasn’t worked then I am going to be really lost as to what to do next. I know there is no miracle weight loss programme, and it does require hard work and motivation, but I really do just want to lose a few stone. I suppose there is always liposuction if I get really stuck!

I am now determined to get back on track this week. On Friday I had it all planned in my head that I would have “good, healthy proper meals and some extra exercise.” Well things didn’t quite go according to plan.

On Saturday I went to by niece’s 2nd birthday party and that involved kids party food… you know sausage rolls, sandwiches, sausages on stick, biscuits and cakes. Not what I would call a proper meal. But then again, even though it was hard to eat consciously with young kids raving about around you, I didn’t stuff myself as much as I would have done a few weeks ago before I started on the Paul McKenna diet.

I then arranged for a family meal at my house in the form of a huge Chinese take away. This was a big treat for everyone, all 10 of us, as we haven’t had a Chinese meal together for years. I really just couldn’t help myself having 2 helpings as the food was gorgeous. I think we all felt that we had eaten too much when we had left the table.

This week though I am determined to follow the Golden Rules strictly and make sure that I don’t mess this week up. I don’t know whether me having some failings is helping any of the Diet Trials readers? Maybe it makes you feel better when you slip up to know that someone else is also making a few mistakes. Paul McKenna did say that he would expect a few mistakes to be made, but the crucial thing is not to feel really guilty about them, but to know that your shouldn’t have really done it but then to move on with a fresh day.

So it’s now Friday morning and for the last few days this week, after the final Paul McKenna show on Monday, I have slipped a bit with the diet and the Golden Rules. When I started the diet I was so motivated about the diet, and was so inspired by the Golden Rules that I was able to visualise myself losing weight and reaching my goal. I think it is so easy to slip back into old habits and revert back to eating quickly and when you are not really hungry. When I eat I know that I am starting to eat quickly again without doing it consciously and slowly. A few times this week I have found myself getting to the point of feeling too full and just eating because food was there. I will get back on track as I can see that it is working for me and this is the best way to lose weight that I have found.

I am now totally against dieting in the form of stopping certain food groups, whether it is stopping fatty foods or cutting out carbs… I think we all know now that this only works for a certain period and the weight loss isn’t permenant. I have to get my mind set as it is in a naturally thin person and treat food in a way so that my body gets what it needs and not what I think it might need. For instance the jam doughnuts I ate at work the other day… I wasn’t hungry when I ate them, I’d only just had my lunch, but I must have had a craving to eat them. I should have stopped myself, either by a tapping or spinning technique, or just asked myself whether I was actually hungry.

I am going away for the weekend, next weekend, with my wife to meet up with a group of search engine guys like myself, so I could do with really focusing myself this week to shed a few more pounds. Then while I’m away I will have to remember the Golden Rules. As this week is nearing an end, I am definately going to make sure that this weekend is planned to involve good, healthy proper meals and some extra exercise.

The last Paul McKenna show was mainly to do with increasing exercise but also to do with some more visualisation exercises to help you keep motivated and to continue with this life change. I was more interested when I was watching it, to find out how much weight people had lost in the studio audience. When the series started, all of the audience were weighed….there were maybe 200/300 people there. Each week the same crowd came back to share their experiences of the diet so that we can follow them through the weeks. The audience were all weighed again to see if the weight loss experiment worked, and in total the audience had lost 80 stone. This made me feel very positive as I haven’t weighed myself for a while, but I also don’t want to get dissappointed when I do get on the scales again.

The average weight loss should be about 2 pounds a week, but people lose weight at different speeds. Some will drop a lot of weight and then level off for a bit and then lose some more. I think the hardest thing is to not compare your own weight loss to someone elses. For instance in the audience there was one woman, who I must say was huge. She had lost the most weight over the 3/4 weeks of the show, at a staggering 27 pounds. Others had lost about 7 pounds, others around a stone…so it really does vary.

One valuable piece of advise that Paul McKenna gave was that we have to remember that it is not important where we stand but the direction that we are moving in. So as long as you are losing weight steadily, and making the changes to the way we view food then we will get there in the end. I do not expect to be down to my ideal weight instantly… but I hope that by the summer I will be nearly there.

Paul McKenna in last night’s show was focussing on increasing our exercise levels. During the diet I have felt myself get more motivated to exercise, even to the point of thinking about dusting off the exercise equipment that I bought a few years ago and never used. The exercise that you do during the day doesn’t have to be strenuous, just enough to make your body need extra energy and therefore speeding up your metabolism. Paul McKenna presents his show in such a good, down to earth way and doesn’t set goals for people that are unrealistic. The best exercise to do that is simple is just walking. Aslong as you increase your exercise to do more each day than you were doing before you started the diet the better it is. He suggested that a pedometer is a good way to analyse how much or little exercise that you do in your normal life. I know that for instance my wife does more exercise than me, just in the amount of times that she runs up and down the stairs after the kids.

I started today a new regime. At work I will go outside for a quick cigarette and normally stand around chatting to whoever is around. But today I thought that I would use this time to fit in some exercise. So instead of just stood smoking, I decided to walk and smoke, walking to the end of the car park and back. It’s not very far, just far enough to smoke a cigarrette, but it is about 200 strides for each trip. So yes, even though I am combining smoking with exercise which don’t really go hand in hand, I have done an extra 1000 strides so far today and this has increased my normal daily total.

Well the final show was aired last night …

NO I hear you cry, well it’s ok Paul Mckenna has a Weight Loss System you can buy online ( just click the picture )

You can also buy the “I Can Make You Thin” book by Paul Mckenna as well .. phew.

Well on Friday I am going to publish my results … so hold tight

I have a test that I will be carrying out over the next week or so when I get the opportunity to have a MacDonalds meal. Before the diet I probably would have had a MacDonalds every few weeks, mainly if we were out somewhere with the kids at the weekend and we would take them for a Happy Meal. It is certainly not a regular meal for me. One of the main complaints that I always have when I eat a MacDonalds meal is that they would never fill me up. This is something that I have heard a few people say especially men, who may end up having to order an extra burger or some more fries just to feel like they have eaten enough when they leave the restaurant.

So the test will find out whether the rules of the Paul Mckenna diet will change my outlook on having a MacDonalds. I reckon that the reason that the meal does not fill me is because I always eat a MacDonalds really quickly. It’s just something about opening the box up and smelling that juicy burger, you just can’t help stuffing it in as fast as humanly possible. So I will eat my next MacDonald consciously making sure that I smell my food and chew it properly and slowly, taking into account all of the flavours and textures that are part of each bite.

I strongly suspect, knowing that my meal portion sizes have been reduced by eating consciously that the MacDonalds will be able to fill me up if I eat it conscioulsy. I am more concerned to find out what a MacDonalds really tastes like. You are certainly more aware of salt levels in food when you chew it a lot…so I may even find myself being totally put off eating a MacDonalds!

My temptation got the better of me…

Last night I went out to the pub for a few drinks as on a Thursday we have a baby sitter which allows me and my wife to have a night out. We were hungry when we got to the pub and we often eat there on a Thursday. I scoured the menu for a meal that would satisfy my hunger and the only thing that kept jumping out at me was haddock and chips. I just had to do it.

They were delicious… plus the bonus being for the fat levels in the meal, (even though that fat isn’t an issue on this diet) that they were freshly made at the pub with real potato chips (none of these frozen chips). It wasn’t a greasy meal which I think would put me off a bit now that I am eating consciously. Anyway they were gorgeous and I remembered to follow all of the Golden Rules of the diet. It’s great being able to eat what you want and know that you will be losing weight in a steady and controlled way.

This afternoon I am very pleased with myself. At lunch time one of the guys in the office had gone and bought fish and chips and the smell of them was wafting through to me. It would have been dead easy for me to go and get myself some as we were all sat in the office drooling over the greasy chips and that smell of salt and vinegar. My wife was saying to me that if it was what I wanted to eat ,we should just get in the car and go and get some. As long as I was eating when I was hungry and that I ate consciously and stopped when I was full, then there wasn’t a problem. The main thing about the Paul McKenna diet is not to forbid any sort of food even if you would class it as a food that on most normal diets you would have to keep well clear of.

I would normally not have thought twice about it but when I thought about what I actually wanted to eat I knew that my body didn’t really want fish and chips…I just thought I did. I opted for a walk in to town and a sandwich from my local Deli shop. I found that I enjoyed the walk and my lunch. So I have done well today in enjoying the bit of exercise and doing my fat intake some good by not getting drawn into fish and chips.