Week 2 Status = 142.7KGs / 314.6lbs

First off, this week was hectic :) I had one travel out to another city in Turkey, and another out to Cape Town, South Africa. I had to visit Cape Town to speak at a conference, and that trip took 28 hours of flights for a total of 28 hours of stay :) What a week, right?

Let me start with the week’s update; I lost 1,7KGs (3,7lbs) and got to 142,7KGs (314,6lbs). Compared to last week’s weight loss number this is drastically low but real. What I mean with that is, the 5,6KGs (12lbs) weight loss last week was pretty much water loss. This week’s 1,7KGs (3,7lbs) looks more like it can be a real fat loss. If you assume that all that loss came from fat (no way) based on the fact that 1gr of fat is nine calories I have a total weekly deficit of 15.300 calories, getting me to a daily 2.185 caloric deficit. This might look very high, but again, this might be right as well. My guess about my daily intake is about 1.800-2.400 cal/day. I’m sure I was eating more than 5-6k cal/day before starting the diet. None of these are scientific data. It is just good to keep an eye on the numbers. Trust me; they make sense in the long run where I will need to keep a closer eye on my caloric intake.

So, how did I survive the week? Traveling during a diet is always a challenge, especially if you are traveling to a different time zone. Thankfully, Cape Town is just 1 hour behind Istanbul. I didn’t have to manage meals and time zone transitions together. With my “don’t eat after 6 PM” rule I simply ended up not eating during my flights. I just did a light breakfast when the time was right just before landing Cape Town, and that was it. The meals on flights are hardly healthy unless you specify you need low-calorie food during your check-in. Knowing I wouldn’t eat during my flights I didn’t do that. Once I got to Cape Town, I checked-in to my hotel and looked into the room service menu. That’s where I got a little bit surprised. I was looking for something with some meat, vegetables and no bread, no dressing. That did not exist. At least to get a good amount of meat I decided to order a burger, and ask the chef not to put any mayonnaise, ketchup, or dressing in it. I ended up eating the meat in the burger and the top crumpet. This was the final meal of the day for me, and I only had roughly two eggs worth of omelet during the whole day. So, that top crumpet was well deserved.

The next day I had breakfast at the hotel. It was not hard to find some healthy options in there. You might argue that these sausages in the photo below don’t necessarily belong to a healthy diet. You might be right, but those are the best out of what I could find in the buffet having some decent protein and animal fat. Processed food it is, but better than eating Nutella and waffles :)

My last meal of the day was a hard one as well. I decided to do it at the airport. My flight was at 8 PM, and I was at the airport at 5 PM. Plenty of time to eat some healthy food right? Sure, if you can find it! The Cape Town airport didn’t have any restaurant selling salads, or anything like that. It was all grab’n’go shops with wraps or packaged salads with dressings already poured in. Thankfully I had some protein bars in my bag! I knew this would happen at some point and I did pack some protein bars back home. We should talk about protein bars and how you should pick one, but that’s a discussion for another day. I used one of my protein bars and bought some packaged beef sticks from one of the shops for variety. Again, not ideal, but best of what’s possible.

I’m not going to change my plans for now. The three rules are the same; no sugar, no starchy food, and no food after 6 PM. I will keep it as it for another week and see what’s happening. See you next week!