Diet Trials : Paul McKenna » Week 4

4 Weeks of Paul McKenna

diettrials — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 11:11:03 +0000

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!

Day 27 – Determined to Get Control Back

diettrials — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 13:43:21 +0000

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.

Day 24 – Getting back on track

diettrials — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 10:02:32 +0000

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.

Weight Loss

diettrials — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 10:00:23 +0000

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 is Making me Exercise

diettrials — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 17:31:35 +0000

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.