This post is the twenty-fourth in a series and the third to chronicle diets. In the middle of the month I moved out of my temporary digs in Glebe to stay first (for a week or so) at a Mascot hotel, and then – from the 22nd – in Wollongong at some friends’ house.
1 December
In November I went from 113.3kg to 108.2kg – a 5kg loss – with the trend continuing this month.
A suggestion made last month to Dr Nanda, my GP, that I’d be at 100kg by the end of the year looked, however, less likely to end up being true. Going by the trend, I thought that by then I’d probably be at around 105kg.
This would also be off the mark but notice in the above chart the curve becoming smooth as I get used to a regular routine. Spikes got smaller but, as we’ll see, they didn’t long stay flat.
Unquestionably, I understand why some people who try to diet might be disappointed. Progress is, for a start, hard to gauge without a set of scales (which I’m using every morning, when I just get up) but if you persist small things anyway can be noticeable – even without a morning reading each day – such as clothes. In my case, the red-and-black-check shirt worn on this day, which I had had trouble wearing in October because then too tight. I also now easily fit into my size 40 pants. Instead of my belt, when fastened, impaling the second notch in the strap, it now sat in the fifth notch. And I could touch my feet without effort; even putting on socks in the morning was simpler.
Went to Coles in the morning and bought (see receipt below) a blue grenadier fillet, some smoked cod fillets, lamb chops, baby spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, apples, blueberries, and sugarless flavoured mineral water.
3 December
Went to Coles and bought (see receipt below) yoghurt, an avocado, low-carb snacks, milk, and sugarless flavoured mineral water.
6 December
Morning weigh-in saw me at 107.3kg. Later, went to Coles and bought (see receipt below) sliced ham, Greek yoghurt, portobello mushrooms, strawberries, blueberries, baby spinach, barramundi, a piece of ling, low-carb snacks, and sugarless flavoured mineral water.
The calorie count for the first week of December was, as follows:
The activity chart for the same period of time:
And, lastly, the macronutrient chart:
I ate an average of about 51g of carbs per day that week.
7 December
Morning weigh-in had me at 107.4kg. Later, went to Coles and bought flavoured sugarless mineral water.
11 December
Morning weigh-in had me at 106.9kg. Later, went to Coles in Broadway Shopping Centre and bought sugarless flavoured mineral water, apples, and baby spinach. With some errands to do in Pyrmont I went to Coles there, too, and bought garbage bags and low-carb bread. Receipts below.
Late in the afternoon a bank email arrived and said:
It was hardly surprising to receive this message from a CEO. Other organisations had been advertising similar messages on TV – Coles had an ad highlighting the importance of simple things, such as a meal shared with family, David Jones had an ad featuring shop display windows (difficult to access for some due to lockdowns) – as I’d earlier in the day discussed Covid-19 over Facebook Messenger’s video function with a Polish friend. Instead of us pursuing meaning, I’d told her, meaning had come to pursue us, showing us what’s really important in life.
A silver lining of sorts.
I look back over my year of shopping lists and consider how, in March and April, stores had been responding to the crisis by, for example, telling customers that locals only would be served. At that time – readers of this sequence of posts might remember – my local supermarket set up plastic barriers at the entrance in order to make people enter by a different door from people leaving the store. Now, the government’s efficient response to the disease – the use of cash payments, wage subsidies, and rigorous contact tracing (with the use of QR codes at cafes, restaurants, and clubs), among other practices – had (temporarily, it turned out) put a lid on infections where other countries were still in crisis. In Japan, some tests have to be paid for by the resident (up to A$160) and in Poland people were declining to have a test as to do so’d mean staying home, some considering such a measure onerous due to the loss of income in which it would result.
Companies in Australia took a leaf out of the government’s book, exercising themselves with the aim of making sure the community remained viable, people remained fed and housed, and those in need were assisted with whatever measures they had at their disposal. On the nightly news was a heart-warming spectacle.
14 December
Morning weigh-in showed a figure of 106.3kg. Here is the previous week’s calorie chart:
Here’s the activity chart for the week just finished:
And here’re the macronutrient totals:
I ate an average of about 47g of carbs per day that week.
15 December
Morning weigh-in gave a reading of 106.2kg. Later, went to the IGA in Mascot and bought milk, Greek yoghurt, toothpaste, and taramosalata.
17 December
Went to Coles and bought (see receipt below) low-carb snacks, yoghurt, raspberries, and blueberries.
18 December
Morning weigh-in had me at 105.7kg, and later went to Bunnings and bought a sink drainer. After going to the new place at Botany I walked to the IGA and bought garbage bags and tissues.
19 December
Went to Auburn with friends and at the Gima Supermarket bought kalamata olives and walnuts. On the way back to the hotel, at a service station I bought milk.
21 December
Morning weigh-in gave a reading of 105.4kg and the previous week’s calorie intake was:
The activity chart:
And the macronutrient totals:
That week I ate an average of 59g of carbs per day (see that spike on Saturday? – it was mostly due to eating a single piece of baklava!), the progress chart at this point in time going like this:
Later I went to Coles and bought low-carb bread and low-carb snacks.
24 December
Morning weigh-in gave a reading of 104.3kg. Later, went to Woolworths in Wollongong and bought (see receipt below) marinaded goat’s cheese, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, an orange candy melon, half a honeydew melon, a mango, nectarines, lentil soup, doughnuts, and mouthwash.
27 December
Morning weigh-in gave a reading of 104kg. Later, on the way back from Sydney in the car with my friends, I stopped at a service station and bought (see receipt below) low-carb snacks.
28 December
Morning weigh-in gave a reading of 103.7kg and the previous week’s calorie count was, as shown below.
The activity chart was, as shown below.
And the macronutrient totals were, for the week:
In the week just past I ate an average of 48g of carbs each day.
29 December
Morning weigh-in had me at 103.3kg. Later went to Ariel Café in North Wollongong and bought some ground Campos coffee in kilo bags.
30 December
Morning weigh-in had me at 103.2kg. Later, drove to the Leisure Coast Fruit Market and, with friends, bought (see receipt below) milk, prawns, provolone, green and red chillies, “Manner” brand wafers, shiitake mushrooms, green capsicum, tomatoes, nectarines, lychees, eggplant, a sweet potato, onions, ginger, garlic, oyster mushrooms, button mushrooms, a daikon radish, zucchini, an avocado, plums, eggs, sirloin steak, mangoes, broccoli, and apples.
Later, we went to the same place and bought (see receipt below) a range of biscuits and honey and ice-cream, plus soy sauce, oyster sauce, cooking wine, coriander, zucchini flowers, pickled ginger, cooked red peppers, Havarti cheese, blue brie, and corn chips.
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