Midweek Check In: The Long Road

I was showing off my food diary to one of my colleagues yesterday. "Dieting's a bit of a challenge for you though," he said. "After all you're going to have to stick to it for ages."

This is true. My eating habits have changed for a week and a half and I can't see them switching back in the near future. I will indeed have to stick to my diet. This brief analysis had put its finger on one thing but missed several other points.

Firstly, to me every stone is another milestone (to be celebrated with a jumbo ice cream and a quadruple bacon cheese burger - joke). When I am 23st 12lbs I will be one stone closer to 15st 7lbs and so it will go all the way down past twenty into the teens. It's a lot to drop but there are many places to feel good about myself upon my way.

Second it's not really a challenge, I macced down on a burger from a popular high street chain last night because I had earned the calories (but only just... medium fries only from now on, way too close to the ceiling). Besides as eny fule kno at this stage that particular food item contained the rest of my (up to that point) paltry fat intake for that day. There's a reason that an encounter with the golden arches can flatten your mood, oh yes.

Third the implication that I would one day come off the diet is somewhat premature. If you were doing something that made you feel terrific and helped you stay healthy would you go back? Thought not. I will certainly reach a time where I may not be as meticulous in diarising my food items. But I think once I've been at this for a month or two I'll be able to tell how much of what I'm eating by eye.

Leads to the question of the day. Which part of a diet is the diet? Is it the weighing? The diarising? Or the calorie controlling? If you calorie control but don't diarise or weigh are you dieting? Whatever a diet is I'm finding mine fascinating at the moment and the health benefits are making themselves felt too.