Wednesday October 17

A fairly easy day to day. It’s starting to concern me when all these difficulties I keep on talking about are going to happen. I don’t want people reading this to think it seems easy because it isn’t and if you go into it with the mindset that it is you will likely fail. So I got to thinking why is it seeming easy and it has occurred to me it is my mindset. I am expecting it to be difficult which I think is making those tougher times seem much easier. If my mindset wasn’t right then I probably would have stuffed up a few times by now if not completely failed. So I think it is like anything in life you want to change about yourself, you have to be prepared. Preparation is the key to success. It is not a guarantee of success but without it failure may be a foregone conclusion.

Breakfast was a delicious omelette again. My morning snack is still pork crackle. For lunch I had chicken and lettuce salad with an Avocado dressing. The avocado dressing while taste fine is not really what I would prefer, I would much rather just a little mayo and thats what I will do next time. Things are going so well that I no longer seem to need my afternoon snack so I didn’t eat again to dinner. Dinner was fantastic. Leanne made keto friendly swiss meatballs served with green beans. Oh my they were fantastic.

One thing I have forgotten to mention is last week Taylah my 16 year old made these things called keto fat bombs. They are tiny little things you freeze and these particular ones tasted like lemon cheese cakes. Today she made some more of these as well as these peanut butter balls. Absolutely delicious and a good way to satisfy that sweet tooth or just to sate your hunger in between meals. Of course like anything you don’t want to eat to many.

Link to a recipe for lemon cheesecake fat bombs. I’m not sure it is the same recipe Taylah used but they look the same.

lemon-fat-bombs-7 — Lemon Cheesecake Fat Bombs, they are the bomb.

Tuesday October 16

So after my weigh in success yesterday I am really keen to go well this week and keep my momentum going. The hardest thing will be not weighing myself before next Monday. Something I recommend you avoid. It can play with your head if the results aren’t up to expectation. The smallest gap in between weigh ins should be no less than a week. If you have more strength than I do you may even want to push it out to every two weeks, but personally I think once a week is good.

As I mentioned the other day Ben and I planned to go for a walk at six this morning and we both met that commitment. I took my beautiful German Shepard Khaleesi with us and we walked for an hour even though there was a light drizzle. As I have said before the exercise is not something I am to worried about just yet but I enjoyed the walk. We have planned to go again on Thursday.

Ben and I on my 40th Birthday. I was much thinner even only 3 years ago.

Had a spinach and mushroom omelette for breakfast. I must say if you like eggs that is a good thing because they make following a keto diet easier as they are quick and easy to prepare. I had my normal pork crackle snack mid-morning. Lunch was a chicken caesar salad. One of my kids said how can you have a caesar salad without croutons? So I came up with what I think was a good idea and crumbled some pork crackle over the salad. It wasn’t the same as croutons but it gave the salad the crunch that we as humans like to experience with our food.

It just won’t stop raining here in Toowoomba so I had to call off cricket training this afternoon. I kept working instead and stayed out until my eldest finished work at the cinemas at 10. Surprisingly enough I hadn’t eaten since lunch and I was not feeling hungry in that time at all.

Weigh in Day Monday October 15

Here it is!! The day of reckoning. Will all my efforts bear fruit, or will it be a drastic failure. If you remember I weighed 135.9 kilos a week ago and here is hoping I don’t anymore. So I jumped on the scales straight out of the shower this morning and I am now 132.7 kilos. Was I excited? No. To be excited I would have wanted to see maybe a 5 kilo loss. However I was extremely happy. A loss of 3.2 kilos will do me just fine. If I lose that every week than in 10 short weeks I will be close to 100 kilos which if I had a goal I would be happy if I reached that by say February next year. Although my experience with losing weight in the past is that next week I won’t lose as much. I don’t know if this is the case for everyone or just me, but I always seem to have a good loss followed by a small loss and so on. If I can lose 1.8 kilos this week though that will be 5 kilos for the fortnight and a 25 kilo loss if I can keep that up for 10 weeks. I will certainly take that but the important thing is that I at least lose something every week.

It wasn’t all smiles in the house though as Leanne only lost 600 grams. She took it better than I would have but she still wasn’t happy. After a bit of research I found out that this can happen as the body starts to repair itself and the weight loss will come. It’s just not fair though as having a healthy body is great but we as humans are a little vain and will take looking better over being better. Of course the other thing which I told her is she is nowhere near as overweight as me and smaller weight losses should be expected.

Overall I found today quite easy. I ate way less than I would have last Monday and probably any other day than I started. As we have always heard protein fills us up and keeps us satisfied longer but I have always found this doesn’t seem to be the case. However now I think maybe it does in a physiological sense but not necessarily in a psychological sense. Now that I am convincing my brain that none of those tasty carbs are coming my stomach is saying yeah well I am well satisfied anyway. I don’t want to get carried away to early though, because I may let my guard down and thats when things start to go wrong.

In the past after a corned meat dinner I have made fritters with the left overs. So I spent the afternoon searching for a keto friendly recipe to make fritters. There is quite a few fritter recipes on the net, mainly for zucchini fritters. I just wanted a batter recipe but they were all complete fritter recipes and none of them took my fancy. So I pulled out my trusty day to day cookery book, the same one I used for home economics at school and my mother also used for home economics at school and found my tried and true fritter batter recipe. I then experimented changing the flour with almond and coconut flour. After a bit of fiddling around I came up with something I was happy with. However when I cooked them they didn’t seem to be quite right. Then I realised I had forgot to put the baking powder in so they were quite flat. Despite this they were quite tasty and I served them with avocado dressing and shallots and a side serve of spinach. The whole family loved them and with a few minor modifications and remembering the baking powder I think I will be close to perfecting them next time.

This is a good time to tell you if you seriously want to try the keto plan than don’t be afraid to experiment with your traditional recipes to make them keto friendly. If things don’t turn out don’t be disheartened just try again or try something different all together and after a while you will have a bunch of keto recipes that the family love.

Weekend October 13 and 14

I am normally a very busy person on the weekend. I have three high school aged children who either have jobs, play sport or both. Saturday mornings at this time of the year I normally spend coaching my junior cricket side. This Saturday was suppose to be the first game of the year but it is still raining so I would be home and bored, which in the past has led to me eating for enjoyment rather than nutrition.

Scrambled eggs for breakfast again but it did the job of filling me up before I went shopping with the family. We had a few things to shop for but mainly we were out to buy items we need to make sure our meals suit the keto eating plan. Some of the things we have and will be using are almond flour and milk, coconut flour, stevia sweetener and psyllium husk powder (although we forgot this while at the grocery store). I think it was probably an unusual sight at the grocery store as all five of us walked up and down the aisles checking the carb content of different foods. We would call out to each other this is no good or hey this has no carbs and we would get strange looks.

One thing that came to our attention was when searching the internet for foods suitable for keto is that just because a certain item came up in the search didn’t mean it was actually suitable. A lot of items come up because they are low carbs but still have to many carbs to suit keto. One thing we were looking for was bread and an internet search comes up with an option but checking the label at the store it was still to high for keto. So my recommendation is if you want to give keto a go make sure you check the label and don’t just buy something because someone says it is suitable.

After shopping we had to go to my son’s footy presentation. While there the smell of hamburgers being cooked wafted through the hall making my stomach grumble in anticipation of chowing down on one. I remained strong and went home for lunch. However now I didn’t feel like a salad served with cold meats, I wanted grilled meat. So we grilled some sausages and that was our lunch. It did the job and those cravings went away.

While shopping we bought 2 small packets of pork crackle and that was our afternoon snack replacing the large packet of potato chips that was more usual. I ate slow savouring every bite and washed it down with sugar free soft drink. This was quite satisfying and I then enjoyed an afternoon nap in front of the tv.

For dinner I decided to find a recipe to make flatbread. I wanted to make kofta and serve it with a salad on the flatbread like a home made kebab. All the best bread recipes for keto seem to have the psyllium husk powder that we had forgot to purchase earlier. However I settled on one that didn’t. It used a mixture of almond and coconut flour and although the dough (it was more like a batter) was easy and quick to make, they did take a while to cook. They came out more like fluffy pancakes however served with the kofta, salad and a dressing they were quite delicious. In my opinion they could easily have been used as pancakes for a dessert if one so wished.

On Sundays my 16 year old daughter plays women’s grade Cricket for Ipswich which is about an hour and a quarter away from where we live. Actually I should probably share with you that we live in a small city Called Toowoomba in the state of Queensland in Australia. Anyway I have to get up early so the two of us can get there for the match. This Sunday I was in the shower trying to wake up when my wife tells me that word had come through that the ground is to wet and the match has been called off. Instead of going back to bed I thought I would experiment for breakfast with an idea I seen while looking for the flatbread recipe the evening before.

f13f036be1e927f25fbbec060e3afddabb22f935 — How my 90 second keto bread was meant to look.

Link to the recipe for the 90 second keto bread. You will find this recipe in a few places on the net. This particular sight claims to have perfected it. They tell you how and why in the review before the recipe.

Have you ever tried a cake in a mug? Oh my they are to die for. Well I found a recipe for a keto bread that worked just like a cake in a mug recipe and takes only 90 seconds to cook in the microwave. So when finished the bread looks a lot like english muffins so my idea was to make bacon and egg muffins for breakfast. Unfortunately it didn’t turn out the way the recipe said. I believe this was my fault the recipe said to let the bread slide out of the mug, however I only realised that after tapping the mug to make it come out, which it did in chunks that looked a lot like scrambled eggs. Only my son and I were awake so we ate the mush which was quite tasty and that was my breakfast for the day.

Lunch was bacon, egg, garlic butter mushrooms and some leftover kofta. It was quite enjoyable.

Now if you have been reading this blog from the start you may think I am a lazy bastard as all my meals are being made for me by my lovely wife. This has been the case this week as Leanne was the one to do all the research on what we could eat as it was her idea that we try keto. So last Sunday while I was away with my daughter for cricket she did a lot of the weeks prep. This time I was home and was quite willing to help. We spent quite a bit of time in the kitchen. We roasted two chickens which were pulled apart to use for our lunches. We roasted some pork skin to make pork crackle for our weekly snacks. All the while we were preparing our Sunday night dinner of corned meat with veggies and white sauce.

I realised this would be another of those tests I am always talking about some time in the future. I can easily see us getting tired of doing this prep or even being to busy to get it done. All I can say is if you decide to go keto, it is a little more preparation than you might be use to but if you are committed then hopefully the pros will well outweigh the cons by a long way.

Leanne found online a keto friendly white sauce for the corned meat and I have to say I think it tasted better than the standard white sauce. I only had a small dinner though, as I had been grazing on the chicken we cooked earlier while pulling them apart.

Sunday night is usually our once a week dessert night. I decided I wanted to do pancakes with a blueberry coulis and cream. However I spent that much time looking for a recipe I liked that I was no longer hungry and we decided to forgo the dessert. Maybe this keto thing is really starting to work on keeping my hunger sated.

Friday October 13

After working late last night I had a lazy day today. I didn’t start work until about one. Had scrambled eggs for breakfast, fairly simple but tasty. Pork crackle was my mid-morning snack like every other day this week (still not sick of that) and lunch was the same as Monday chicken and lettuce salad. I was happy about that as I had been waiting all week to have it again.

Talked to Ben (best friend, brother I never had and actual cousin I have mentioned before) this morning and he wants to start doing more exercise to help him lose some weight. Even though I am not worried about exercise just yet I agreed we could do something together and we have decided to go for a walk together early Tuesday mornings. He literally works around the corner from where I live so he we will meet me at my house at six. I live halfway up a hill so our biggest issue now is do we start with the incline or finish with it.

So i’ve just been trying to ease myself into all of this and haven’t mentioned what approach I am taking towards my plan. Anyone with a little knowledge probably realises I am following a Keto eating plan. The last time I lost weight I was using a similar eating plan but had never heard the term keto before. The basic idea of keto is to cut out carbs and increase fats (preferably healthy ones). If you are interested in trying this there is a lot of information online about it, which makes it much easier to know what to do and not to do.

A chorizo chilli dish was for dinner and once again another winner. Better yet was the fact it has been raining for days here and it was the perfect dish for a cold, wet and windy night.

Now comes the weekend and I know I keep saying here comes another test but here comes another test. When I lost weight the last time I was a Monday to Friday dieter. It worked for me and on the weekend I still got to enjoy the foods I like just in moderation. However on the keto diet if you do this it stops the ketosis. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but it does mean you need to get your body into ketosis again. At this stage I want to stay in ketosis so I will not be following my old program on this. Weekends are where we always let our hair down and enjoy naughty food to often. So here is hoping i can get through the weekend without failing.

Thursday October 11

Had a very busy day today and didn’t get home from work until after midnight. Overall I handled the day very well. Had an omelette for breakfast, a pork crackle snack and leftover cajun chicken with a lettuce and avocado salad for lunch. The salad was quite delicious.

I came home for dinner about Eight and had sausages with a creamy garlic sauce with beans cauliflower and broccoli. It was nice enough, not the most delicious thing I’ve had this week but it did the job.

After dinner I went back to work and I knew this would be another huge test for me. When I work late at night I get quite hungry and Hungry Jack’s is my normal go to. I managed to avoid going there but when I got home I was ravenous. I wasn’t meant to eat anymore but I had some pork crackle to sate my hunger and I don’t feel to bad about it. I think i’m still going quite good four days in.

I took a shirtless photo of myself to show just how obese I am. This is a very hard thing for me to do. I am extremely embarrassed of my body and won’t even go swimming because of it. However I have to own this, embarrass myself into doing something about it.

B758F05C-82D6-4461-B7EA-C0082F9FE72A — Just looking at this photo disgusts me

Wednesday October 10

You know what taste like shit? 90% dark chocolate. So I know I said I was confident I wouldn’t need to eat again last night but I did indulge myself with my allowed chocolate snack. Did not enjoy it at all.

Something different for breakfast this morning, a smoothie. It didn’t taste great but neither did it taste bad. I’m not sure what was in it but i’m guessing blueberries and coconut water were two of the ingredients. The important thing is it wasn’t a struggle to drink and it has kept me satisfied hunger wise well into mid-morning.

I have mentioned how I was a real skinny kid until I hit my teens and then started putting on weight. There were a few reasons for this in my opinion. One was some health issues I had which i may go into detail about at a later date. Another in my opinion was the good intentions of my parents. Growing up my parents were really strict about what we ate as a family. It was always healthy wholesome food and rarely if not never junk food. We never had biscuits or chips or lollies in the house and it was never an issue. Eating was always about nutrition and never enjoyment. Unfortunately it is impossible to live in a bubble unaffected by what everyone else in the world is doing. So when I was exposed to more delicious fat and sugar filled food I was instantly addicted. I went to boarding school for the last three years of my schooling (I grew up in a remote mining town) and ate more shit in that three years then the rest of my life. Then I finished school and moved to a city to work and my junk food intake increased again. It was like being in heaven. I just ate and ate. If I went to a fast food restaurant it was like I thought I’d never go to one again and order enough food to feed three people. I could be wrong and this may have just been because I have an “addictive personality”, but I feel if I had been exposed to these types of food more often as a child then maybe I wouldn’t have been so greedy about it as a teen and adult.

Didn’t forget my lunch box today yippee!!! Was so busy at work today that I had no issues or cravings that could make the day difficult. I believe it goes along way to prove the affect of boredom on peoples eating habits. Had my usual pork crackle snack at about eleven, lunch was a base free quiche with lettuce that was nice but not as nice as my previous two lunches and had almonds for a snack about six. I am starting to feel like I’m forcing the almonds down just to make sure I am not hungry later so it might be time for a change on my afternoon snack.

Got home from work about Eight and had a delicious meal of Cajun chicken with cauliflower bake. I have never liked cauliflower but have always eaten it because it’s healthy but this time it was delicious.

81E577D9-45EE-460B-AFB9-D17BAE93881B — Cajun chicken with cauliflower bake yummy!!

Its about an hour after dinner and I am well satisfied. I don’t think I have that starving feeling all day. I am a little concerned about that as I know it was a lot harder the last time I successfully lost weight. Three days in and I can’t wait for the next 4 days to pass so I can weigh in. I so badly want to know if this is working but I have learnt in the past that weighing yourself to often can lead to disappointment. Once a week though with successful results motivates you for the next week.

Tuesday October 9

Woke up this morning feeling really good about yesterday and excited about today. If anyone is actually reading this they might be thinking what a load of bullshit, he is making it seem not only easy but also enjoyable. Trust me the tough times will come, come soon, and repeatedly.

Breakfast was the same as yesterday and just as enjoyable. One thing I will have to be careful of is eating the same thing over and over again. In the past when I have done this I have eventually got sick of the dish and refused to eat it again, meaning a perfectly healthy dish that I enjoyed once is no longer an option. I find it interesting that this does not happen with junk food. I certainly can get tired of eating the same junk food over and over but I never refuse to eat it again.

What an idiot!! I left my lunch box at home! At about 11 I went to get my pork crackle snack that I was really looking forward to and no lunch box. By the time I was able to get back home 2 hours later i was ravenous. I ate my pork crackle but was still starving. Half an hour later I ate my lunch (egg and avocado mix with lettuce, also quite delicious) and ten minutes later I ate more pork crackle which wasn’t on the daily menu. My hunger was finally sated but i was feeling quite guilty and angry at myself.

Upon reflection it was a small set back and really nothing to get worked up about. It’s not like I’ve blown the diet, just ate a little more than I should have and not the wrong type of food.

I coach a junior cricket team and the season starts this weekend. We train on Tuesday afternoons and at todays training session I got more involved than I usually did, so I am counting this as an hour and a half of light exercise.

82A9EBA3-7E47-4644-847C-86D01611E542 — My wonderful cricket team after we won the Grand Final last season (the cute little red head at the front is my beautiful eldest daughter. Yes and that’s me with my big fat gut hanging out of my shirt in the black).

After training, at about 6 I ate my afternoon snack of almonds and went back to work for a couple of hours. I have a couple of jobs one of which is an uber driver. Two or three times a week I need to fuel my car and I have this ritual of buying a pie or a sausage roll or a pie and a sausage roll when I fill up. I knew this was going to be one of those testing moments. Its like the dog who salivates when the bell rings, while I’m filling the car my stomach is grumbling and my mind is imagining how good it will be to bite into my usual tasty pastry snacks. I stayed strong though, walked pass the pie warmer with a sad look on my face and just paid for the fuel. I’m glad the petrol station owner was not working because he knows me so well he always tells me what specials are on and convinces me to try new items they are selling to give him feedback (something in the past that made me feel quite special that he seemingly respected my opinion).

I was home just before 8 and enjoyed my dinner of meatballs in tomato sauce served with green beans and stuffed zucchini. I was still hungry after dinner and thought tonight I might indulge in the small amount of 90% dark chocolate I am allowed to have as an after dinner snack. However it is now 2 hours later as I type this and I am completely satisfied and am confident I won’t eat again before bed.

Day two is a success despite the little setback this afternoon. Looking forward now to tomorrow’s challenge.

8AF14966-6DC1-49DB-AC73-B83F383A9E2F — Spinach and Fetta Omelette. Doesn’t look like a typical instagram meal but trust me tastes like one

The Journey Begins

Monday October 8

Fatboy was the nickname given to me by an uncle as a teenager. I was bone thin as a kid until i became a teenager. I slowly put on weight in my teens and by the time i was 16 I was obese and have been except for a few years in my mid to late 30s.

In my mid to late 30s i managed to lose approximately 50 kgs and manage to keep it off for a few years. A mate of mine said i should have kept a blog of how I did it, and inspired other people to try.

Through reasons and excuses ( I will go into more details about these in the future) I eventually put back on the weight and now am slightly heavier than when i started to lose the weight.

I told myself this time I would blog about my journey in the hope of sharing that it is possible to change your lifestyle and lose weight, even if you have been fat most of your adult life. The reality is probably more selfish in that by blogging about it I hope to increase my chances of success because I don’t want to be the idiot who started a weight loss blog only to give it away 2 weeks later (still a possible outcome but here’s hoping).

So here it is my blog. I started the journey this morning. I can’t take credit for starting the journey, that goes to my wife. We have friends that have had some amazing results through changing their eating habits and my wife decided to give it a go. I would like to say I was dragged into this kicking and screaming but the truth is I want this badly.

So this morning my beautiful wife cooked me a delicious feta and spinach omelette (I’m not fibbing it was great). I scoffed it down as I was running late and then realised i hadn’t weighed myself yet. Idiot now I would be heavier by 1 omelette when I did weigh in. Oh well the journey wasn’t starting off exactly the way I planned and in the past this would be just the excuse I would need to say well i’ll start tomorrow, or next week or even next month. Not this morning however, it was a slight oversight no biggie i would not use this for an excuse.

To the bathroom I went and stood on the new scales my wife had purchased on the weekend. 135.9 kgs. Now before you say thats terrible, let me just say I was ecstatic. I had tried the scales out on saturday and I weighed 136.6 kgs. Amazing!!! Just 5 minutes in and I am going great guns and considering I had already eaten the result was even better then it looked. Now in the past this would call for a celebration, Maccas for lunch yay!!!! Not today though i was determined to be steadfast and strong.

Once again my lovely wife who wakes up and starts work earlier than I do had prepared my midday meal and snacks for the day. At about 11 am I was feeling a little peckish and opened up my lunch box to see what terribly tasting snack i had to endure to end my only slight hunger. Pork crackle!!!! Not just store bought pork crackle but home cooked pork crackle. I thought that was a mistake so I called her. Excitedly I said I have pork crackle. She said yes that was one of my snacks and I could not contain my excitement that it wasn’t a mistake. She also asked me what i thought of breakfast and I told her it was great and asked what was in it. Apparently she had used cream in the omelette and cooked it in butter. Bullshit, I can have cream and butter? I love cream and butter no wonder that omelette tasted so damn good.

I had a real busy day and didn’t have time to eat lunch until about 3pm. It was a simple salad of chicken lettuce and mayo. Once again it was delicious and after the cream and butter revelation i didn’t even doubt the mayo being in there.

I am not really concerned about exercise yet as i just want to get in the habit of eating well and for the right reasons and then add the exercise. However I did go down to the cricket nets with my eldest daughter to throw her some balls and I decided I would count this as 40 minutes of light exercise. Things were going good.

I went back to work after that and at about 6pm i drove past a Hungry Jacks (Burger King for non-aussies) and the smell had me stuffed. I can’t do this, I love Hungry Jacks. So I went into my lunch box to see what snack remained to hopefully quell this hunger. Not the type of hunger one gets because of the need to eat to survive, but the type of hunger an addict has. I found almonds. I like almonds, especially the smoked variety but these were plain raw unsalted variety. I started to eat them anyway and really wasn’t enjoying them at all. However by the time i finished the bag I was, but I still fell hungry. I got busy then so I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Not long after though I realised I was no longer hungry and the almonds had done the job.

I finished work about 7:30 and went home hungry but not ravenous. Leanne (that’s my wife) had made a concoction from the left over roast pork from the night before with mushrooms served with some green beans It was absolutely delicious.

My appetite sated I settled in for the long haul. I knew this would be the hardest part of my first day. After dinner I am a notorious grazer. I can eat healthy all day but continually let myself down between dinner and bed time. Tonight I was lucky however. I had a 3 hour phone call to my best mate, the brother I never had and my actual cousin (yes all the same person). Didn’t think of food once. As soon as I was off the phone though my brain said food, my stomach grumbled with assent. This is quite often where I can convince myself that whatever calories I eat now don’t count because I have been good all day. Not tonight though, my motivation and will power can at least see me through this night.

I sit down and finish typing this blog and soon as I am done I will go to bed. I have made it through the first day relatively easy as things go but I know there are tougher days ahead. I’m confident though, success tomorrow and I am on a streak. If you are religious pray for me, if you are a gambler bet on me at the long odds, if you a dreamer wish me luck, i’ll need it and then some.

I know this is just a bunch of writing and maybe a little boring at this stage but stick with me, as I get use to this blogging I will upload pictures of some of the food I eat photos of my fat arse (the only thing not fat on me is actually my arse, well not the only thing but the only thing I will admit to) and hopefully photos showing me being less fat as the journey goes on.