If a diet forces you to throw away food from your cupboard or makes you give up food you enjoy then, long term, it won’t work.

A sensible amount today, but still below my target of 1645 calories.

Breakfast
Bowl of Shreddies and semi-skimmed milk – 218

Lunch
Ham, tomato and onion sandwich (wholemeal) with light mayo – 277
Strawberry yoghurt – 72

Dinner
Chicken breast with Chicken Tonight Spanish sauce, instant mash, sweetcorn – 539
Lettuce & tomato with light Italian dressing – 50

Total: 1256 calories

I did feel a bit hungry between lunch and dinner so I may need to look at adding something as a snack between.

I also replaced my old analogue kitchen scales with a fancy digital set today which makes counting calories a whole lot easier.

See, this is why you don’t go by an individual day’s weigh in.  This morning my scales are reading 205lbs; I’ve lost a whole 5 pounds in one day!  Unfortunately, despite my ridiculously low calorie count yesterday it is physically impossible to lose 5 pounds of fat in one day without the aid of a scalpel.

If I hadn’t read the Hacker’s Diet I would probably be thinking how great this is, in 10 days time I’ll have lost 50lbs.  And when I get on the scales tomorrow and my weight has gone up, as it inevitably will, I would be downhearted and depressed and give it all up.

However, I now know to only look at the trend, and the trend in my PhysicsDiet.com profile is showing 209.5 pounds, a far more believable weight.

Rung 1 of the Hacker’s Diet exercise plan consists of:

2 bends (trying to touch your toes)
3 sit ups
4 leg lifts (lying face down on the floor)
2 push ups
105 steps with 7 jumps

I wasn’t far out with my defibrillator and oxygen mask comment earlier!  The lying down exercises were fairly easy and I could probably move up to the next rung fairly easily if it was just those.  Unfortunately there are also the steps to do.  I did them, but not without my heart going at a million beats a minute (ish) and sweat pouring off me.  It just shows how unfit I am and how much there is to do.

Right, that’s this week’s meals all planned out.  Kind of.  The funny thing is that once I cut out all of the crisps, sweets, biscuits and all the other junk and started planning proper meals I struggled to get to my 1645 calories a day.  The highest is 1540 and the fewest 1050.

Part of the problem is that I don’t drink anything except water (for reasons I’ll explain another time).  So no fruit juice in the morning is minus 100 calories; no coffee throughout the day is minus another 100, and so on.  Maybe I should take up drinking alcohol again, that will soon bump the count up.

I’m going to stick with the plan anyway, to start with at least.  Over the week it is a 9454 calorie deficiency, which equates to about 2.7 pounds.  That’s slightly more than I was planning to lose, but until I get a feel for how many calories I burn – my real TEE – I’d rather my calorie intake was slightly under than over.