Minimize Me: 10 Diets to Lose 25 Lbs in 50 Days Read Online Free PDF

diet
and it is my last day of fasting today. When I first conceived the fifty-day
challenge, I always knew it would be difficult. It is why I have always
referred to it as a challenge. It is entirely possible that I won’t succeed.
When I talk about not succeeding, I don’t just mean by not achieving my
weight-loss goal at the end, I mean by becoming lazy and not following the
diets to the letter. I know that I talked candidly earlier in the book about my
intentions to cut corners, but if this were to spiral into flagrant
rule-breaking then what would be the point? I would have failed, and this is
something I am genuinely worried about. Take today for example. It’s my
youngest daughter’s first birthday, and it would have been incredibly easy to
throw in the towel and tuck into that heavenly, moist, rich, indulgent, smooth,
velvety chocolate cake. We had friends, family, neighbours and even a few
strangers popping by to tuck into cake and wish our daughter a happy birthday,
but I was strong and managed to resist. I didn’t completely resist, however,
and I did find myself sitting in the corner while no-one was looking, sniffing
the empty plates while using my daughters bib to catch the dribble.
     
    As hard as Monday’s
fasting was, I found that it worked, so I followed a similar routine throughout
the day today. Nothing but black coffee and water until 2pm, then soup in two
sittings through the afternoon, but instead of having an apple, I decided to
save the 80 or so calories and add those to the extra 125 (courtesy of my
discovery yesterday) and increase my evening meal to two slices of wholemeal
bread (toasted) and a few extra beans. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have ditched
the apple. It would have been my only source of sugar that day, having already
resisted the cake. I found that I was incredibly irritable and tired in the
evening. It’s a strange combination to be both irritable and tired. Normally,
if I find myself getting irritable, I will get up and do something to take my
mind off it but with so little sugar in my system and with so few calories
consumed, all I could do was retire to bed early. I’m sure that for most
people, when they think back to their child’s first birthday, it’s a wonderful
warm and happy memory, whereas mine is a largely forgettable and frankly rather
bleak memory, thanks to the 5:2 diet. Sorry, Sophie, I’ll make up for it on
your second birthday.
     
    Day five was as easy as
days two and three, as I simply ate what I wanted. Here’s the thing though – I
actually found that I didn’t always eat what I wanted. Instead of breaking open
the biscuit barrel in joyous celebration of getting through another awful day
of fasting, I found that I actually wanted to eat far more healthily than I normally
would. The diet very specifically says that you eat normally for five days a
week, but ‘normally’ for me consists of at least five chocolate digestives
before lunch. There was no way I was going to fall back into that kind of bad
behaviour, especially after having put so much effort in, so it leads me to
wonder whether the success of the 5:2 diet is down to the fasting at all.
Perhaps people are simply benefitting from an altogether healthier lifestyle?
I’ve done all I can with the 5:2 diet and, if I’m honest, I’m glad it’s over.
The whole point of this challenge was to see whether changing diets every few
days is more sustainable than sticking to just one, and I already feel that my
theory has some credibility. All that awaits now is the final weigh-in tomorrow
morning. I’ve decided it makes sense to record my weight in the mornings, as it
simultaneously gives me my starting weight for the next diet. I do feel like
I’ve lost some weight, but I don’t know if it’s just blind optimism.
     
    From here on in I will
only be using imperial weights, because it is going to get confusing if I keep
quoting imperial and metric measurements. So, just to confirm that 1 lb