What A Difference A Day Makes

Yesterday I was lethargic, ravenous, I had a headache and I struggled to function to do basic tasks.

Today I spent the whole day out with the boys making the most of the sunny day. We packed all sorts of activities in, including watching a bit of Punch and Judy on Swanage seafront (it makes me laugh so much). 

I haven’t felt hungry once, not at all, all day long. 

For breakfast I had full fat Greek yogurt with a handful of blueberries and raspberries (straight from my freezer). For lunch, knowing we’d be out, I made a tuna salad to eat. We decided to get fish and chips for the boys so eating a tuna salad felt appropriate. For dinner I made a Mediterranean chicken tray bake, I just added a few new potatoes for the boys. 

And I noticed a remarkable difference in my mind and body. 

In Dr Michael Mosley’s book, The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet: Lose weight fast and reprogramme your body he clearly states, very near the beginning, ‘done badly, a very low-calorie diet will cause misery. Done properly, rapid weight loss is an extremely effective way to shed fat, combat blood sugar problems, reverse diabetes, perhaps even cure it’. (Short Books 2015: 19.) 

Interestingly enough, yesterday I tried to substitute 150 calories of poached egg and mushrooms with popcorn. It would seem that my subsequent lethargy was a reaction to eating something which was fat-less and therefore unable to fill me up and sustain me for the day. That is why I was prowling the cupboards for almonds and raisins and that is why I was so tired. My body digested the popcorn easily and I had a sugar surge which in turn made my pancreas produce insulin which forced the sugar out of my blood and into my cells, and later, when I felt tired and hungry, I had ‘crashed’; my sugar levels had dipped to below where they had started.

Yesterday, in Dr MM’s words, I did my diet badly and it caused me misery. Today, I followed the diet correctly, ate the right foods and I didn’t suffer once. My calories are below 800 and I even wanted to go for a run, but I ran out of time.