Diets or lifestyles?

So, another long time since I wrote anything, well, I’ve been busy, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it… Now, while I have been busy, it’s not so much that I couldn’t pen a few words… I just get very distracted, and to be fair, organising a 10 month trip to SE Asia is a decent enough distraction. I have been doing things towards the trip, like arranging accommodation for the first week in Bangkok, getting jabs, buying crap and trying to finish the games I have left un played (Uncharted 3) currently, extremely good game… Also opened a bank account for free foreign transactions (metro bank) and a bunch of other things I’m not writing about atm (on a train home from work atm)

So, the point of this post, diets, people tend to be scared of this word, conjuring images of weighing food, meticulously reading food labels and calculating calorie and fat intake to the last mg! Not everyone that follows a ‘diet’ does things to that sort of militant level (eh Claire?). To me, a diet is a lifestyle and just like everything else its just as much finding what works for you and incorporating it into your day to day thinking, it must become second nature… If you’re constantly forcing yourself to adhere than its not going to work in the long term. Over the last 3 years I have played with different diets, trying to work out which would work for me and I could fit in naturally. I’m very much a ‘foodie’, even if I hate that word, it’s about right…. I love experimenting with flavours and textures, and I don’t really hold back either. But I have very strong will power and can stick to things quite easily, also giving up certain foodstuffs seems not to be a problem. I’ve been through low fat diets, low carb, restricted calorie and now, today have started an alternate fasting diet, this is not a new idea to me, about two years ago I tried a couple of days fasting, it didn’t go well, I felt ill and had intense headaches… I guessed my body didn’t get with the abstinence part of fasting(apparantly that’s a big part of it!) and gave it up as a bad ide. Like a lot of other people I saw the horizon program about fasting and this sparked my interest again, but alternate day seemed a much more sensible idea, especially as my exercise/cycling routine could well be in direct opposition to the lack of food, e.g the need for energy past the hour/hour and a half exercise period. From the research I could effectively skip days around to suit my schedule…. So let’s give it a go, this is what I thought on Monday (yesterday).. It’s 18.00 and I have had one small meal at 15.30 (about 20–30% of usual calorie intake) basically Greek yogurt, seeds, berries, nuts…. The sort of lunch I have usually anyway, and it’s not too bad, had some hunger come on a few times during the day, but nothing that wasn’t easy enough just to forget about, although watching man vs food was slightly torturous, I have to rethink my viewing on days fasting…. Once I get home it’ll go one of two ways, either really easy as I get stuck into more work towards the travel, I will play games till bedtime, or I’ll be offered a load of food and struggle through, whichever one it is, my next meal isn’t till about 7am tomorrow… 13 hours away…. That sounds ridiculous… I have thought about food quite a bit though, and there are techniques to ease the hunger, one that I read about is working out what to eat for the small meal and splitting it up throughout the day, I’ll have to think about it, it may be worth trying, then again, I may be fine today and not need it. I’m giving this diet 2 weeks trial, see how I feel, what happens with my body and go from there, the whole area of fasting has always fascinated me, and I’m going to give it a go, can’t hurt, can it?