Man Vs Belly – Fatchelor Life 05 (Insomnifat)

My single biggest impediment to dieting successfully is my sleep pattern. Getting up in the afternoon is diet kryptonite. You end up with no breakfast or a meaninglessly late one which throws off the schedule for the rest of your meals and in the dark of the night you seldom want a proper meal so it leads to snacking etc. It also tends to sap my willpower and lead to “dark thoughts”. An obvious example would be the fact that last week when I was getting up (roughly) normally I was cooking every day, posting to the blog, etc. This week? Nothing on either front. Continue reading…

Man Vs Belly – Fatchelor Life 03 (Feeding the dirty pigeons)

Because there is nothing more exciting than reading about what I eat I have to apologise for posting this today as opposed to last night. Though in the interests of OCD I’m backdating it to last night. I CONTROL TIME ITSELF! Anyhow. I actually woke up a full hour and a half before my alarm today. Not through an act of will, but thanks instead to my deaf neighbour deciding that half nine in the morning is a good time to start a disco. Unfortunately being up early didnt aid with getting breakfast early, as I stomped downstairs and angrily brushed my teeth. Which necessitated waiting a while to eat. Continue reading…

Man Vs Belly – Fatchelor Life 02 (Avoiding morning soup)

The video for Parklife always makes me think Damon Albarn’s a cunt. Which he may or may not be. But that amzing insight is rather tangential to the subject at hand. Day two, supplies are running low, the other survivors are looking at me with I can only call “speculative ill intent”. The weight of the machete I hid in my luggage is the only thing I can trust. Ahem. Well I set an alarm today in an attempt to pull back my morning. I woke up a minute before it went off, but only got out of bed an hour after waking up. Still, beat yesterday by two hours if I keep that up I’ll be up at a human time by Thursday or so. Continue reading…

Man Vs Belly – Fatchelor Life (I get up when I want)

A little over a year ago I wrote the following, “I don’t want to shock you gentle reader, but I’m overweight. Not as overweight as I was in the past but nowhere near my “proper” weight either. Over the years I’ve tried various diets and eating plans, with the results ranging from excellent to disastrous.” It mildly saddens me to say that this statement still holds true today. Though again, a little less than when I wrote it. Back at the beginning of March I entered into a diet pact with someone. Nothing outrageous, we’d try to lose two pounds a week from the first week in March till the last week in June, specifically June 26th (the significance of that date should of course be obvious to our more devoted readers). Continue reading…

Man Vs Belly – My first month with WeightWatchers

I don’t want to shock you gentle reader, but I’m overweight. Not as overweight as I was in the past but nowhere near my “proper” weight either. Over the years I’ve tried various diets and eating plans, with the results ranging from excellent to disastrous. So about five weeks ago, after my most recent home-brewed healthy eating plan failed to get off the ground, I decided to try a more structured commercial plan. A few years ago I’d enjoyed some amount of success with WeightWatchers ZeroCount plan. Which they dont do any more it transpires. But after investigating a little further they now have a very similar option in their “Filling & Healthy” plan. As there is a less than zero chance of me ever going to a “live” meeting, and as it was on special offer, I signed up for three months of WeightWatchers Online. Continue reading…

Man Vs Belly – Return to the temple of diet bar doom

So back over here I outlined my initial forays into the world of jam and diet bar manufacture. The former turned out splendidly, the latter, not so much. But undeterred I ventured once more into the fray. I wish I could tell you that I fought the good fight, and the second batch turned out better. I wish I could tell you that – but homemade diet-bars is no fairy-tale world. Continue reading…

Man Vs Belly – Healthy “Rice Krispie” Bars and Zero point “Monkey Butter”

Well I am nearing the end of my third week trying out the Weight Watchers program. I’ll cover it in another post but in short its going quite well. But I am now obsessed with using as few points as possible and I find that the biggest point sink (apart from affordable mince oddly enough) is snacks. Particularly “proper” snacks i.e. non healthy ones. The other day I was consumed by the bizarre urge for a rice krispie bun which lead me on a hunt for healthy rice krispie buns which ultimately led to the creation/modification of the recipes below. Oh yeah, I suppose I should mention, there are no actual rice krispie’s involved here. Sorry for breaking your heart. Continue reading…

Tears of a (fat) clown

Well I managed to stick to my diet (roughly) for only about a week before it all went pear shaped (just like my body *zing*, well actually I’m more sausage shaped). That was about a week and a half ago. I could make the usual excuses (Commuting, work, assignment work load, lack of planning). But to be honest I think the actual reason has a lot more to do with motivation and sub-conscious sabotage, like a lot of things in my life I suppose. Anyway, enough whingeing, I’m going to start again Monday morning so hopefully my next post will be a bit more positive.

A week of dieting dangerously Or How I learned to stop worrying and love the broccoli

The title is a lie, there is sadly no danger involved so those who were hoping to read about my dieing in some extreme food related accident should move along. Alarmist title aside though I am once more embarking on the perenial penance of fat fuckers everywhere – a diet. So if you’ve always wanted to be with but were worried about not having a J,O,B, then I suggest you take your chance now while I’m emotionally vulnerable. Because obviously thin people have no problems with their lives. Moving on, everyone in the world appears to be doing the Slimming World diet. So obviously thats too commercial for me. Or alternately, I had a look at it but I just cant get on board because their documentation fails to properly explain their underlying methodology e.g. while I understand how the A&B choice works I dont understand (becuase its mentioned nowhere) the reasoning behind it. I also took a look at the Hackers Diet. While it does have some interesting material around accurately measuring body weight (which I shall be using) and is painfully straightforward it doesnt look like it would work for me. So my diet shall be a hybrid of Slimming World and Weight Watchers No Count, I may use the “Syns” (why the alternate spelling?) from Slimming World because their product lists are more locally comprehensive. As with my last diet speed and convenience will be the watchwords behind by meal plan. Continue reading…