Counting Calories

Please consider donating the price of a coffee to my campaign. I'm trying to lose 72 lbs in weight in 52 weeks for Macmillan Cancer Support.

I'm really sorry to announce that the Mighty Hike through the Peak District has been cancelled due to Covid-19, so I'm going to move on to my next fundraising enterprise for Macmillan Cancer.

I've lost 52 lbs in weight over the last seven months – matching my original goal. I hope to lose 20 lbs more before the end of August. But that's just not enough. The weight has been coming off, but I've only raised a fraction of the money that I wanted to raise.

So, I have decided that in the next five months I will take things up a notch. By the end of August, I now further pledge that I will also grow my hair back.

If you know me, you may assume that I suffer from male pattern baldness. We know what assuming does, don't we? It makes an ass out of you and me. But you would be right.

With everyone in lockdown, this is absolutely the right time to use a tried and trusted method that scientists know about and that I have seen on YouTube. I am adopting a two-fold methodology that combines Percussive Calval Attenuation and Nocturnal Follicular Thermal Stimulation.

The former method has traditionally been associated with ritual humiliation of men with receding hairlines (or slapheads, as they are sometimes known), but it also fosters therapeutic widening of the capillaries as blood rushes to the site of percussive trauma, in medical parlance, the “slap site”.

In the second method, we know that a woollen cap or “tea cosy” is often used to disguise hair loss, but it is less well known that wearing such a cap to bed also retains body heat, focusing it locally in the area that Doctors call “the bonce”.

I started using both these methods two weeks ago and I am already seeing results. The results are that my scalp is very red and sore and I can't sleep at night because my head is too hot, but they are results nevertheless.

I also smell of Baby Bio, because I have been rubbing it into my head. Actually, let's be honest, I smell of Worcestershire sauce because we're in lockdown and that's the closest thing I could get.

When I return to work, after the lockdown, I promise that I will have a full and lustrous head of hair and it will totally not be a hair-piece that I bought on Amazon for £48.99 plus postage and packaging.

If you wish to support me in my weight loss and, now, hair gain endeavours, please donate using my Just Giving link.

Please consider donating the price of a coffee to my campaign. I'm trying to lose 72 lbs in weight in 52 weeks for Macmillan Cancer Support.

I first wrote about meal shakes in June 2014. At the time I noted that every article I’d ever read about them follows the same predictable trajectory; a journalist goes on a diet of Soylent or Huel for a week or so and then reports back on the experience. The results invariably have a negative slant.

There are dozens of articles like this and they all have the same cliched beats:

• The clinical, other-worldliness of making a meal from powder and water
• Comments about the texture and colour, which make the replacement sound undesirable
• Observations about unpalatable flavours
• The longing that the writer had for basic foods during the experiment
• Some discussion of undesirable physical side-effects
• Relief at the end of the experiment and a conclusion that we’re still a long way from finding the future of food

When the BBC programme “Trust Me, I’m a Doctor” aired a package depicting its hapless presenter, Alain Gregoire, giving Huel a go this week, guess what? It had all the same moments as every other version of the story. Worse, it buried the key research finding that using Huel statistically improved the presenter’s health over one week in a dismissive footnote.

I think it’s time for a journalist who actually knows something about meal shakes to say something positive.

I’ve been using Huel every day for well over six months. Before that, I used other meal shakes on and off for about five years. There are clear advantages that these tourists miss when they parachute in and jot down a few notes about their food hacking holiday.

1. Meal shakes are not meal replacements. They are meals. I’ll talk about Huel as its the shake I’ve used most. It’s a complete meal with a balance of carbohydrate, protein and fibre, vitamins and minerals. It’s made from recognisable foods like peas, coconut and oats. It is food. Yes, it’s a shake – but we don’t call an oatmeal and fruit smoothie a “meal replacement” when we have one for breakfast.

2. If you don’t like the taste – that’s a personal thing, but as it’s a shake you can hack the flavour really easily. Like coffee? Add a shot of espresso. Mad about chocolate? Add a teaspoon of premium cocoa. Too sweet? Cut it with the unflavoured and unsweetened version. Add bananas or peanut butter or berries or maple syrup and blend the heck out of it. Too thick? Add more water. Not creamy enough? Mix with milk. Lactose intolerant? Use Oat milk. And, for the love of all that is precious and lovely, blend it, then chill it before you drink it. There is nothing about the taste and texture of meal shakes that you cannot fix.

3. Huel is vegan and, for those concerned about phytoestrogens, soy-free. I’m already vegetarian and trying to be vegan. Huel has helped me to reach that goal. I haven’t had an egg for breakfast in six months.

4. Meal shakes strive for nutritional balance and have helped me become the fittest I’ve felt in years. I’ve been using it to control weight loss – true – and many of the benefits come from that. But I’m also getting a full spectrum of vitamins and minerals I wasn’t getting on my haphazard former diet.

5. There are some enthusiasts who drink meal shakes for every meal – but they are probably in the lower percentile of users. Personally, I replace breakfast and snacks with Huel. Occasionally I have it for lunch. It varies, but there’s no narrative of denial going on here at all. I’m on a calorie-controlled diet but if I want a slice of toast or two, that’s what I’ll have.

6. These stories always focus on meal shakes as a wholesale replacement for food, rather than on why a person might need or want them. It’s the same argument as vegetarianism – no one is making you do it; it’s a choice that fits a lifestyle. For me, they’re a quick option that I can fit into a time-poor day. It takes me ten minutes of scooping and blending in the evening to make three meals. That’s time saved I can use to make a stew or curry or chilli from scratch for dinner.

7. Counting calories with Huel is simple. One scoop equals 200 calories. Two scoops equal 400. I even have a couple of smaller scoops that are about 150 calories each. Whether you’re trying to bulk up or slim down, you know exactly how many calories you’re having, every time.

8. And finally, they are convenient. Some of my job is leading workshops and giving lectures. On one day every week, I do that for seven hours straight – with a health condition that makes me prone to low blood sugar. With a meal shake I can “eat” in the middle of a workshop. I just take in a flask of chilled Huel and have a glug in a quiet moment. I can eat in the middle of my commute, standing up on the train. Try doing that with a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs.

Gregoire’s conclusion was that he “missed the social aspects of eating a meal with other people, as well as the pleasure in preparing and eating food”. It was a curious thing to say, given that almost no one who uses Huel uses it for every single meal.

You don’t have to give up the enjoyment of food; the meditative moments spent prepping and cooking, sitting down and savouring tastes, smells and textures. You don’t have to give up your social interaction with the people you care about at the end of the day. You can still have all of that. In fact, you can have more – because you have more time.

You can have your Huel and eat your cake.

Please consider donating the price of a coffee to my campaign. I'm trying to lose 72 lbs in weight in 52 weeks for Macmillan Cancer Support.

It’s been a weird month out in the world and at home – but this isn’t a blog about that. It’s about me losing weight.

I did have two moments that gave me pause this week though. The first was a Facebook acquaintance, who I respect, posting a general instruction to filter them out of posts about dieting. The second was confirmation that I am now less likely to die from a heart attack than I was six months ago.

Those two pieces of information don’t seem related but, to me, they are. You see, I feel like I’m trying to do a positive thing with my weight loss campaign. I am losing weight for the sake of my health – but I am also, in that process, raising money for Macmillan Cancer Support.

That post had a long comment thread all about what total dicks people who post about their diets are... and it got me thinking and fretting. They – the respondents in the thread – were asking people who were posting about their diets to do so privately (or not at all) or not to talk about the health impact of their diets.

That seemed reasonable enough.

Oh, hang on, no. The other thing. That seemed overly didactic and prescriptive.

I just can’t do that. I'm trying to raise funds and I’m using my social media to publicise this fairly heavily. My posts are set to public so that my friends (and anyone else) can choose to share them if they wish.

I agree we should be kind to each other and acknowledge that there are many complicated organic and psychological reasons why a person may be overweight. There is no circumstance where we might consider it right or proper to abuse or discriminate against people because they are obese. And, yet, this happens all the time – at micro and macro levels and in systemic interactions throughout the lives of fat people.

In fact, I started on this journey as a protest against one of these “systemic interactions”; a poster campaign (from a charity) that trivialised obesity as though it’s a lifestyle choice; something that people can just choose to give up. (Spoiler: it’s not. Losing this much weight is really, really hard to do – and it is best done with the kind of love, support and encouragement that can only come from telling people what you are doing).

So that part, I can get totally behind.

What I can’t agree with is that as a society we should stop all discourse about the relationship of weight to health because some people may be triggered by it – because life is much more complex than that. It is not a case of there being a right side or wrong side; of there being categories of thing you can say and can't say.

Here are two facts.

1. There are people who have eating disorders, who have to deal with dysphoria on a daily basis.

2. Being fat kills individuals faster than not being fat.

There are literally thousands upon thousands of studies that link being overweight or obese to higher incidences of disease and organic disorders. Anything else is a straw man.

So, yes, while I can understand that some people have body dysphoria or issues related to eating who might not want to see that stuff, I’ve made a utilitarian decision to serve the greater good.

Anyway, I mention all this because I am becoming increasingly depressed about our political discourse in general. I am preoccupied with it and feel oppressed by it. I have deliberately stepped back from some social media platforms because of it.

There is a kind of authoritarian tone on Twitter, Facebook and some discussion forums where people can now make these instructive pronouncements with the certainty that they have a right to do so. It is a form of asserted supremacy, often academic in origin, and I have no truck with any of it, whether it comes from the left or the right of the ideological spectrum.

And because I was worried about that for the last two weeks, I failed to notice that my heart health measurements had quietly crossed into a new category while I wasn’t looking. My fitness tracker estimates my VO2 max level – the amount of oxygen used to work out – from heart rate during exercise. When I started this it was classified “Fair to Average” for my age. It crept up to “Average to Good” a little before Christmas. This weekend I checked it after a hike through the Yorkshire hills and it’s now “Good to Very Good”.

This had been a real worry for me. I had some scares before my diet began; dizzy spells and getting out of breath; potential signs of poor heart health. I’ve now lost 43 lbs and benefits like that are tangible, irrefutable and positive. But I was so worried that my attempt to improve my health was potentially upsetting others, that I had completely missed it.

That’s what gave me pause.

So, if you don’t mind, in future I’d like to allow myself a moment of pride and a second of relief, without feeling castigated for it.

Please consider donating the price of a coffee to my campaign. I'm trying to lose 72 lbs in weight in 52 weeks for Macmillan Cancer Support.

I lost weight over Christmas, which was an achievement in itself but, dear reader, I have to tell you; the plateau is kicking my ass.

As I explained earlier, hitting a diet plateau is a common occurrence I had never heard of. Partly because I’ve never tried to lose a third of my body weight before. I thought I was doing brilliantly, losing between two and – at the very beginning – three lbs a week. That was until the beginning of December, the fourth month of my weight loss plan. My weight logs show that, in the last six weeks, I lost five pounds; which is less than a pound a week.

The truth is, there where some weeks where I lost no weight at all, even though I kept a careful eye on what I ate over the holidays. I mean, I ate three vegetarian roast dinners during that time but a) not all on the same day and b) I counted every calorie.

It’s getting harder is the message here. Those adverts that started this ball rolling – the ones that equated obesity with smoking? They can get in the sea. I’ve been eating less than 1800 calories a day for over four months. I’ve increased my exercise levels and cut out refined sugar completely from my diet. I’ve lost 35 lbs. And I’m still obese.

Remember that film The Goonies? I can still do the truffle shuffle. I am still Chunk.

Of my original goal to lose 52 lbs, I have already lost 35 lbs. I have 17 lbs more to lose and even then, I’ll still be clinically overweight. So here’s where I tell you a secret: until the beginning of December I was going to set a new target.

I was going to upgrade my challenge from losing 52 lbs in 52 weeks...

And do you know what? I still am.

From now on my goal is not 52 lbs in 52 weeks – it’s 5 stones and 2 lbs in 52 weeks. That's 20 lbs more than I originally intended to lose, 72 lbs in total, and that’s my New Year’s Resolution. I am not going to let this beat me, I am going to boss it. I’m going to cut out more carbs, shave some calories off my allowance, walk further, row for longer, box harder and put weights in my fricking rucksack.

Because Goonies never say die.

Please consider donating the price of a coffee to my campaign. I'm trying to lose 52 lbs in weight in 52 weeks for Macmillan Cancer Support.

Work is beating me up, I have my second cold in as many weeks and, because I have a cold, I can’t work-out. It’s drizzly and grey outside and, yesterday, I slipped on a patch of oil, flipped into the air and landed on my back on a crowded train platform.

I’m feeling a little sorry for myself, so I thought I’d write a positive post about giving up bad things.

I once spoke to a nutritionist who told me that nothing was “bad” for you, as long as it was part of a generally balanced whole. Well, screw that. The fewer bad things you cram into your talky hole, the better you feel.

Most of our bad habits service the pursuit of dopamine or serotonin or noradrenaline. That hit of tasty endorphins you get when you satisfy the craving for a doughnut or a Snickers.

In my twenties, I drank alcohol every evening – a hangover (pun intended) from being a student. I smoked the equivalent of about thirty cigarettes a day and one of those might have been a “funny” cigarette. I ate sweets and chips and pastry. I was a vegetarian, but that just made it worse. My diet was all carbs and no protein, so I was skinny, spotty and pale. By the time I hit 27, I felt terrible and had a full-on health crisis when my weight dropped to 7 stones 13 lbs.

7 stones 13 lbs. To put that in perspective, I currently weigh 15 stones and 7 lbs, after three and a half months of dieting. It was a weird time. After my diagnosis of reactive hypoglycaemia, I got my diet back on track, began to eat more healthily – but I also had a renewed concern for my general health.

The usual narrative is that when you give a thing up, you’ll miss it and feel miserable because you are depriving yourself of pleasure. Here’s the secret no one tells you:

When you give up things that are bad for you, it can feel good.

Now – some people will immediately jump to the conclusion that “good” means “virtuous”. I find this most when I talk to people who find out that I don’t drink. Some assume I am secretly lording it over them in my mind (which couldn’t be further from the truth). Virtue has nothing to do with it. Live and let live, I say. You do you.

Don’t worry about the intentions others project onto you. It’s all about how you feel. Here are the two things that motivate me:

The “good” effects of bad things are illusory

This is such a simple correlation but people will jump through many hoops to minimise the undesirable effects of their bad habits because the initial dopamine (plus alcohol/nicotine/caffeine and/or sugar rush) feels so euphoric. But, here’s the rub; it only feels euphoric in comparison with the corollary downside of the same activity.

When you smoke, that first nicotine hit feels good because your body is habituated to it. You are in withdrawal and suffering the effects of depleted neurotransmitter activity – that was caused by nicotine use in the first place. After addiction takes hold, you have to smoke just to feel normal and smoke more to get the feeling of euphoria.

It doesn’t have to be a chemical transition either. It can be entirely psychological.

When you have the first drink of the evening it signals to your brain that this is the end of the day and you are about to switch from “feeling stressed” to “I don’t care”. There is an immediate relief-response associated with the ritual. It’s why you feel better after a sip of wine before the alcohol has had any chance to take effect at all.

That is to say; the euphoria is a) partly psychological and b) only euphoric in comparison to a base state that is worse than normal. That’s reinforced by the fact that we often have to learn how to like these things. No one enjoys their very first cigarette. It tastes horrible and makes you feel dizzy and sick. Kids don’t like alcohol because the taste is acquired – and the sweet spot between pleasantly tipsy and obnoxious drunk is something you have to learn how to calibrate. And, yes, let’s mention weed. Smoking dope does really odd things to your body and perception that you learn to like, but that would completely freak you out if they happened out of nowhere.

Drinking, smoking, coffee, eating sugar, overeating – these are all things we do for comfort. But the state of discomfort is caused by drinking, smoking, caffeine, sugar...

That’s true before we even consider the “bad effects”.

Cutting out bad things improves your health tangibly

According to the NHS, it can take months to really feel the health benefits of not smoking. Let me tell you from experience, those benefits can be profound. I smoked from the age of 16 to 31 and smoked heavily. I had pneumonia in my late 20s and carried on smoking. The stuff I was coughing up was so complex and fleshy, it looked sentient.

It only took three weeks for the chemical craving to stop. Just three weeks of feeling restless, anxious and compulsive. The physical effects took a while longer to dissipate. The colour of my face changed from pallid and slightly yellow, to a healthier pink. The acne on my chin cleared up. The stains on my fingers and nails faded away. Crucially, I stopped spending the first five minutes of every morning coughing bits of lung into the toilet. I could breathe.

When I gave up alcohol, I realised that the feeling of sluggishness I experienced every single day was down to the four units or more I was drinking every single night. Many people in the UK think a glass of wine or three every evening is fine for them – and it’s OK if that’s you. For me, I noticed pretty soon that I felt better when I don’t drink. I realised that I could wake up feeling rested rather than groggy and thick-headed. I coped with my stress more effectively because I felt fitter and more mentally alert. I didn’t need a drink to switch off at the end of the day.

You may be thinking, well der! Of course, if you drink you’ll feel it the next day. But if I had a pound for everyone I know who thinks they are not a “morning person” or who swears they need “an hour or two to wake up” – and who also drinks half a bottle of wine a night and says “I’m used to it” or “it doesn’t affect me”, I would have one hundred and thirty-eight pounds.

Giving things up by accident

While I’ve been counting calories, I’ve given some things up by accident. I’ve been vegetarian since I was 13 (with some missteps). I stopped smoking when I was 31. Giving up alcohol was more complex.

I stopped heavy, student-drinking in my early 30s and had a decade where I drank little and infrequently. I stopped completely about five years ago. Any lapses I’ve had since have been due to the horror people exhibit when you say you don’t drink. People in the UK would rather hear you’re under investigation by Operation Yewtree than find out you’re teetotal.

But I'm not just a teetotal, drug-free, non-smoker. My vegetarianism has tipped into veganism, I’ve stopped having refined sugar and given up bread. You must really hate me by now.

I wrote about all the health benefits I’ve experienced while losing weight in another blog post. Some of those effects I have to attribute to giving things up. Sugar was my Achilles heel. I could eat half a packet of biscuits without thinking, absent-mindedly dipping in as I worked or watched TV. I had made several conscious efforts to give it up previously, but hypoglycaemia made that tough. All it would take was an afternoon of teaching or a difficult admin task and my blood sugar would drop, I’d get faint and dizzy and the quickest fix was an intravenous flapjack.

Now that I am counting calories, that’s stopped – mainly because I have healthy, protein-heavy snacks and Huel to fall back on. And just like that, without really thinking, I’m off refined sugar and no longer craving it.

The point is, you can give things up in a positive way. It’s all about changing the story you tell yourself. If your “script” is one of denial and deprivation, then you will feel that you are missing out. Instead, you can focus on what you gain and – even better – take some pleasure from setting your own goals and achieving them. That way, you’ll get your dopamine hits from doing good.

Though if someone came up with a low-carb, sugar-free doughnut that tasted as good a real one, I’d be all over it.

*Please consider donating the price of a coffee to my campaign. If you're outside the EU, you can donate via PayPal instead. I'm trying to lose 52 lbs in weight in 52 weeks for Macmillan Cancer Support. I've shed 32 lbs so far, but there's more to go and I would like to raise £5200 overall.*

This week's update is a video rather than a blog post. My CMS doesn't allow video embeds – so here's a link instead.

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