#oneaday Day 11: Weigh-In

A brief break from the Manor of Sleep today to update you on my Slimming World progress, should you be interested.

It was our second week on the programme this week; our third week of attending the group. And it seems things have been going pretty well — over the course of those two weeks, I've lost a little over half a stone already.

This is very pleasing indeed. Based on my previous experience, the rate of weight loss tends to slow down a bit after the initial couple of weeks, but that's fine; I simply want an overall downward trend, because I often think back to how good it felt last time around when I dropped over six stone in total and could once again do things like fit into jeans, cross my legs and see my knob.

This time around Andie and I have been making a real effort with the "speed food" you eat on the programme; for the unfamiliar, Slimming World is based primarily around the concept of "free foods" that you can eat as much of as you like per day and still maintain your weight loss. These tend to be foods that provide energy without a ton of sugar and fat, so include everything from fruit and veg to things like pasta, rice and lean meat. "Speed" foods are a subdivision of the free foods that have particularly good energy density or something; they make you feel full and provide the nutrition you need while minimising calorie, carb and fat intake.

You're supposed to try and emphasise "speed" foods as much as you can on the programme — the ideal is apparently to try and incorporate them into each meal so that they occupy a third of your plate or more. Last time around, we struggled a bit to incorporate these in a practical manner; I, in particular, am not especially fond of a lot of vegetables, so chomping through a third of a plateful of them could sometimes feel like a bit of a chore, making meals somewhat less enjoyable.

However, we've come across a couple of good solutions this time around: frozen fruit in "overnight oats" and vegetable soup. The latter in particular is a revelation; it turns out that in a lot of cases, the vegetables I'm not a big fan of primarily irk me due to their texture rather than their flavour, and if you turn them into unidentifiable mush, I will happily down a whole bowlful of them, especially if said soup is seasoned nicely and perhaps has a bit of "free" meat in it.

"Overnight oats," meanwhile, if you're unfamiliar, involves getting a pot or bowl or something then creating a "layered" concoction involving 40g of oats, some fat-free yogurt and some frozen fruit. You then stick this in the fridge overnight and the fruit thaws, the yogurt sort of oozes through the gaps in the oats and the whole thing becomes… well, fruity, oaty mush, to be honest, but depending on the fruit you use, it can be very nice indeed.

One of the good side-effects of overnight oats, I've found, is that it takes quite a long time to eat for various reasons. You probably could shovel it down yourself, but I find with the acidity of a lot of fruit, it's something I prefer to take my time over a bit more. It's supposedly good to eat things more slowly anyway, because it allows your body to have time to tell you when it's full and satisfied rather than you feeling like you need a little something extra. To have something that seemingly makes me want to eat slowly would seem to be an effective way of managing this — and it's a much more substantial breakfast than a couple of cereal bars, too.

So anyway. That's all been going well so far. I hope the good progress continues; I'm feeling quite motivated at the moment after a long period of not being quite able to summon up the energy to get started on weight loss again. My aim is to end up feeling at least somewhat like I felt when I wrote this piece in 2015. We'll see how things go, however. Perhaps updating you all on my progress every so often will help keep me honest!