Fajitas

16 stones 9.4 pounds. And about damn time too.

Veggie spag bol

16 stones 11 pounds, dammit. Not to fret though. A virtuous day thus far (a big handful of dried fruit and seeds passed for lunch today, and a quorny spag bol this evening).

Question: to formally begin exercise or not? I'm getting the feeling that this is about as far as I ccan drop by diet alone, thus phase two of the plan needs to come into play; stepping up the exercise regime.

By 'stepping up', of course, what I actually mean is 'initiate'. Hmmm. I live close enough to my place of work to make walking into work neither here nor there in the exercise scheme of things. Options - gym at lunchtime (or another time) or perhaps a spot of running and so on.

Frankly, neither option causes a wave of pleasure to ran shuddering through my bones, though there's only so much good can be done by taking the stairs and suchlike at work. I used to have an exercise bike. It was brilliant for hanging ironed shirts on, though that was about it.

I reckon what I need is something like a running machine, but one with no handy arms etc at just the right height for dandling a hanger from.

Turkey stir fry

16 stones 10.6 pounds. Seem to have been lurking at this weight for a handful of days now. It's that two stone barrier, I know.

Mind you, once through it this time, I'm going to drop like that Twilight Zone ride at DisneyWorld. Fast, and seemingly out of control, if you've never had the pleasure.

As for tonight's tiffin - a marvellous medley of turkey, chili and garlic oil, soy, bag of the usual oriental-friendly veggies and a few noodles.

Fridge to gob in about seven minutes. Glorious.

Does Guinness count?

16 stones 10.6 pounds. The answer to that, by the way, is no. Never mind. Just a ham and salad sandwich for me tonight, then.

Hake, new spuds, peas n carrots

16 stones, 10.6 pounds. I like a good bit of white fish. And so does me tum. Low in calories, high in protein, tasty and kinda fresh in a way that meat rarely is.

Now you pan-fry yourself a good chunk of fish with a few onions, tomatoes, a bit of chili and suchlike, boil up some potatoes and whatever veg is to hand and you, my friend, have got yourself a winner. All your major food groups addressed, but none of them insulted.

And only one minor food indiscretion today, an ersatz walnut whip a friend got from the market while ferrying back to work with his lunchtime Subway - some foot-long monstrosity of meat and salad. It looked gorgeous, mind. Though muggins here struggled on with his banana and his apple, dammit.

Veggie chili and rice

16 stones 11.8 pounds. And a mess of chili and rice, with a splash of tortilla chips on the side.

Burp. And probably fart; once the low-fat, high protein and reasonable roughage combination starts to work its dark magic within me guts.

Fish, chips and mushy peas

16 stones 12.8 pounds. And a bit of a relief, that. I'd had a nasty attack of trepidation regarding the whole a.m. weigh-in after the weekend's shenanigans.

Anyway, back on track with some steamed haddock, mushy peas and a handful of chips frenzy. All washed down with a couple of cans of 7 Up Zero. Oh, and a mess of popcorn later - the air-popped stuff and mighty fine it is too.

Steamed haddock? Hark at me. That'll be the deep-fried stuff - I just didn't eat the batter :-(

Oooo there's a Wii Fit advert on the telly. Want one!

Two days in the wilderness

I dread to think. A lost weekend, frankly. Not quite Ray Milland and a shedload of booze.

More like me and a pile of assorted styrofoam containers which had given up the containing aspect of their duties and had moved on towards retirement from their appointed task of ferrying still-warm grub to the vicinity of my cakehole.

And pizza slot.

Oh, and chinese hatch.

I've been a bad, bad boy. And now I'm paying the price. Guilt. Who could have thought that a few scoops of processed carbs could have caused such inner torment? Not me, that's for sure.

I'm sticking to the ricecakes with a smidge of Marmite on them from this point on. It's the only approach that makes sense.

Hiccups along the way are to be expected. And with what I've ingested since Friday, hiccups are the least of my problems innards-wise. Though the occasional turnoff the motorway of righteousness into the service station of excess is perhaps only to be expected. it's getting back onto the motorway with the minimum amount of pork pie wrappers in your pocket is the trick.

Egg and bacon sarnie

16 stones 10.2 pounds (bugger!). Frankly, knackered. Lolling in front of the telly with a plate of bacon and egg sandwiches, with some infomercial washing over me. Who buys steam cleaners off the TV anyway?

Veggie spag bol - variation 17 take 2

16 stones 9.8 pounds. That's it. It's official. I've lost two stones.

I'd wondered that a few pints of post-work Guinness and a kebab might have done me some short-term damage, gut that's not the case. I'm not sure I can advance claims for a stout and takeaway diet just yet, though I'm interested in compiling more research on the topic.

Supper tonight was a luvverly easy spag bol, with a load of quorn-based sauce straight from the freezer (made a big batch a few days ago and parcelled it up in the freezer in a vaguely anally-retentive manner).

Next big target? That'll be the sixteen stones marker. Estimated time to that point? Not sure. I reckon getting there by the end of the month is a bit ambitious, but I'll give it a go...

Chicken shish kebab

16 stones 10.8 pounds. Better, though an evening in the pub and then the aforementioned kebab may have done a smidge of damage.

No matter. Tomorrow is another day.

Sossies, carrots, new potatoes

16 stones 12.2 pounds. A bit of downward shiftage after the biriani-related upsurge. Phew.

Tonight's fulsome repast involved Linda McCartney and her veggie sausages. And not entirely terrible they were either. They don't taste like sausages, which I suppose would be reassuring if I were of the vegetarian persuasion, but it's not an unpleasant munch, to be sure. Not easy to describe, though. Mind you, with a smidge of the condiment of your choice, who's to know?

And compared with the porky versions, they make calorific sense. Calories in a sausage? About 170. Calories in a Linda McVeggie one? That'll be 101 calories then.

Result!

Chicken stir fry

16 stones 13.0 pounds. And that'll serve me right for indulging in wholesale curry pleasure last night. Was it good, though? Oh Lordy, yes it was.

Anyway. On with the motley. Or in this case, on with the BlokeDiet. The teatime two points of cider notwithstanding, it's been a good dieting day. Chicken (marinated overnight), bag of supermarket stir fry beansprouts and whatnot, packet of decent noodles. A splash of oil, soy and a shake of some sesame seeds, and there you go.

A piece of piss. Though quite how you can have a piece of a liquid, I'm not sure. A shot of piss? A dram? Easy, in whatever language...

Imminent curry delivery

16 stones 10.6 pounds. Close to the magic two stones loss marker, and I'm about to undo a few days' good work. As soon as this blog's updated, then it's on the phone to one of our local purveyors of curried nosh.

The only question - what's it going to be? I'm a bit of a curry wuss; no phalls, vindaloos, ceylons or tindaloos for me. Though I'm not a pasanda/korma merchant either. Somewhere in the middle; dhansak, rogan josh, dupiaza.

Mind you, I am partial on occasion to a biriani. Meat, rice and a veggie curry on top - what's not to like about that?

Naan bread - that's a must. Yep, I know that takeaway naan isn't always that much cop - all too often the bread's cooled in those silver-lined bag things they come it, resulting in a brackish and often faintly damp-from-condensation dough. No matter. Having one anyway.

Decision made: chicken tandoori biriani. Lovely...

Nothing yet: dried fruit a possibility

16 stones 11.0 pounds. Not got round to eating anything yet, what with one thing and another, so there's a chance that I'll just snack on some dried fruity stuff that's kicking around in one of the cupboards somewhere. Trail mix? Is that what it's called? You know the stuff - sultanas and currants and a few cherries and some nuts and some slivers of dried coconut.

There's an element of calm before the storm here, I think. Tomorrow night's going to be a takeaway night.

Indian, I reckon...

Muffins and marmite

16 stones 11.8 pounds. Supper was a case of using up some bits and bobs. Thus, a packet of muffins (the English toasting kind, not the American cakey kind) that were nearing their scoff-by date were brought into play.

A) toasted, b) smeared with a smidge of some low-fat marge that was kicking about and c) Marmite. Bottled yeasty pleasure. Ya can't beat it.

Egg and cheese sarnies

16 stones 13.0 pounds. A big pile of them too.

Hardboiled egg, a little grated cheddar, a twist of black pepper and just enough mayo to bind it all together. in between a couple of slices of the squarest, whitest, most supermarket-est bread the shop had to offer.

That's living alright.

Mind you, I'd stay upwind of me for the time being.

Jacket spud with tuna and salad

16 stones 12.8 pounds. Aren't I a good boy? Reasonably healthy grub today, and no lapses unless you include the Kinder Happy Hippo I scoffed about teatime. which, though lovely (kinda like eating the last bit of an ice-cream cone, all wafer and vanilla mush), was small enough to have inhaled by accident rather than eating.

Leftover veggie shepherds pie

16 stones 12.8 pounds. Leftover shepherds pie (veggie variety, alas - another Quorn-infused offering, I'm afraid).

Though there followed a trip to the pub and three pints of some lovely ale called Sunchaser - no idea who the brewery is, so will have to make a return trip at some stage, for research purposes, d'accord.

As I've been treating this diet at least semi-seriously, I've been a bit careful with the old alcohol intake of late. I've found that as long as there are enough drinking alternatives around (lemon tea and Diet Coke being my personal favourites at the mo), the absence of a chilled bottle or two hasn't been too much of an issue.

A bit boring, though. Getting old, you see...

Spag bol with beef for a change

16 stones 12.8 pounds. Still shifting downwards.

Got on a kinda groove that seems to be working at the moment. Basically, eat not a whole amount during the day (small bag of dried fruit this morning, bowl of soup at lunch, then a reasonable evening meal - wholemeal spaghetti with a beefy bol sauce around 7pm).

Let's see how it goes.


Oh, and an almost unreasonable amount of coffee (black, no sugar, ta very much) in the morning, and lemon tea (the unsweetened instant stuff as I am, at heart, a heathen) the rest of the day, with occasional in-between breaks for Diet Coke. Or Diet Pepsi.

No brand loyalty, me. Offer loyalty, though...

Roast chicken - slight return

16 stones 13.6 pounds. Yay! No shiftage back over the 17 stone mark. And hopefully that's the way it'll stay, though I'll have done my gut no favours whatsoever with another mess of roast chicken, rpast spuds, carrots, peas, gravy and very sausagey stuffing indeed.

These things are sent to try us.

Mind you, I was pretty good in terms of going light on the gravy, using that spray FryLight stuff on the roasties and on the chicken to crisp it up a bit. Not the same as dousing everything in goose fat, I know, but one can't have everything.

FryLight's weird stuff. It's in a pump dispenser for atarters, and is basically vegetable oil in some kind of diffuser spray arrangement. The idea is, as far as I understand it, that you only need a light coating of oil/fat to do the frying business, which is what this delivers, as opposed to drowning everything in artery-troubling oilyness. I daresay too that it means you pay the same for a good-sized bottle of decent olive oil as you do for a little squirty bottle of this FryLight stuff, but what the heck.

I can always indulge myself a little when I'm down to my eventual target weight (personally, I'd be delighted with 12 stones, but we'll see).

BIg box of popcorn

16 stones 13.6 pounds. Yep, I've dipped under 17 stones for the first time since records began. And am celebrating by scoffing, well, not much at all. I've been to the movies this afternoon (the rather splendid Spiderwick Chronicles - kinda a horror movie for kids - and don't worry was taking a couple of nippers to the movies; not sitting there on my own in a children's matinée like Uncle Disgusting, if you know what I mean and I think you do) and topped up with a gallon of Diet Pepsi and one of those cardboard skips of popcorn (salted).

Thus I'm stuffed. Am wondering also if there's something to this BlokeDiet gubbins after all. I've gone from 18 stones 10 to under 17 in about three months. And, as the last couple of months of blogging shows, without trying too hard a fair percentage of the time.

Ah well, we'll see.

Next major milestone? 16 stones 10, as that'll be the two stone point.

Veggie spag bol - variation 17

17 stone 0.8 pounds. Yikes. This in becoming a trend. I'm in grave danger of dipping under the 17 stone mark any day now, if I'm not careful. Just scoffed something easy - previously frozen spag bol sauce (Quorn again, I'm afraid. Nothing meaty, alas), and some tricolore curly wurly spirally kind of pasta, the name of which I can't remember (and I'm too stuffed to rouse myself from the chair and check the packet in the kitchen).

16 stone something. A dangerous possibility...

Bacon and tomato pasta

17 stones 1.6 pounds. Yep, you read that right. Definite shiftage downwards. So a very minor celebration round at Blokediet HQ - a simple supper of pasta with a bacony, and sun-dried tomatoey sauce. And a couple of cans of non-fat pop.

Chicken and bacon salad

17 stones 4.0 pounds. Leftovers. Is there a finer word in the English language? Especially when the leftovers are a plateful of shredded roast chicken and a hefty dollop of stuffing. So, out with the bag of salad, in with some sweetcorn and a couple of chopped peppers and plenty of smoked bacon. Lob in a dash of dressing (low-everything, as well) and Bob's yer deceased game show host.

The even better news is that there's enough chicken leftover for a chicken and stuffing sarnie at some point too.

Who says responsible eating can't be fun?

Roast chicken

17 stones 3.6 pounds. Roast chicken, new spuds, carrots, peas, stuffing, gravy. And then ginger sponge and custard. Burp.