Slow progress so far, 11 days in, and the reason for this is quite simple: I’ve been eating sweets. My wife, who was on holiday for a week with her parents, brought a bag of fudge, red licorice, and suchlike and I’ve been dipping in at least once a day. This will not do, obviously! Last week, I’d lost around 2lbs, and now I am putting it back on again.

I will be cleaning up my diet, and increasing the intensity of my workouts at the gym - I am 18 days until a 10k race and I still want to lose a bit of weight before hand.

So I am day 4 of my GI Diet “mission”, and everything is going great - as with last time, I am finding the low-GI method of ‘dieting’ (I prefer ‘dietary lifestyle’) much easier to follow than others. I’m sure that others are fine, but compared to the Atkins-style low-carb diets, this is heaven.

Anyway, one part of the low-GI diet is cutting out caffeine. As it states in my copy of Rick Gallop’s “The GI Diet”:

Although caffeine doesn’t represent a health hazard in itself, it does lead to increased insulin production, which reduces your blood sugar levels and makes you feel hungry.

So, no more caffeine for me, at least in my ‘phase 1′ of the GI plan (which is until I lose my weight and go into maintenance). So no coffee (good bye, morning mochas!), no tea (unless I drink decaf), and no more diet cokes (I could drink 3 or 4 cans of this a day).

I was down to 266.6lbs this morning, from 270 on August 31. The aim is to maintain or decrease this level for the rest of the week; I certainly don’t want to gain anything!

This is the first weigh-in for my GI Diet ‘mission’, so I am beginning this from ‘Week 0′ - makes sense, no?

Target for now: end of 2008

Ultimate goal: August 3 2009 (birthday)

Stats: Current / Target / Goal

Body weight: 270lbs / 224lbs / 200lbs

Body fat (%): 31% / 15% / 10%

Lean body weight: 186.3lbs / 190.4lbs / 184lbs

Fat weight: 83.7lbs / 33.6lbs / 20lbs

Why the GI Diet? It’s hardly flavor of the month these days, right?

Well, back in 2005 I did the GI diet for a few months, and lost over 20lbs; then we moved, and I fell into bad habits, and I ended up not caring. Since then I’ve tried other ways to lose weight - weight watchers, low carbing - until I purchased Tom Venuto’s “Burn The Fat, Feed The Muscle” ebook. If you’re trying to lose weight, you should really take a look at it - it will educate you on where so many of us go wrong, and what we can do to fix it.

Anyway, part of the BFFM plan is to do resistance training (ie, weights) along with a balanced diet. I’ve been doing the resistance training for 3 months or so, and it’s going well - I’m slowly losing fat, and building muscle - but my nutrition has not been great. I find it hard without a set structure. Then I remembered the one time I actually had success and enjoyed what I was eating! The GI Diet!

I dug out the old book I had, and started reading, and so much was mirroring what Venuto says in his book - eat good, lean proteins, plenty of healthy carbs, and mono- and polyunsaturated fats.

I remembered the meals I ate way back when (and its funny how habits I started back then - drinking skimmed milk, eating wholegrain bread, using Flora Light margarine - are still with me.

So this is me back at it. I will endeavour to post regularly, and weigh-in with body weight, and body fat %, on a weekly basis.

Thanks for reading.