Proof is in the (lack) of pudding

So today was crunch time in terms of the new diet. Time to weigh in before my follow up appointment with David Bryant at Catalyst Nutrition and Dietetics. After my last appointment David had promised that if I stuck to the new diet at least 95% then I would be happy with the results.

Well, I think I managed to stick to the 95% and I have to say David was pretty darn right. After two and a half weeks of our modified diet I weighed in this morning at 72.5kg. I was a bit dehydrated when I weighed in, so lets call it 73kg, which is exactly the goal weight we were aiming for. That is a loss of just over 2kg in the last two and a bit weeks. If I am honest I snuck in a cheeky weigh half way though and it showed that a lot of the weight loss actually happened in the first week. Pretty impressive considering I was hardly overweight when I started.

I should be clear too, this isn't weight that would have just come off anyway because I exercise a lot. This is a couple of kilos that I have been trying to lose on and off for most of the past year or so. The closest I have got has been around the 74kg mark, and that has been just before races when I have been at maximum training.

What is great about all this is isn't it hasn't taken any crazy or extreme diets. The diet is still a very balanced one. I don't feel there is any particular food group that I am either eating too much of or too little. I haven't cut anything out or made really significant changes to the way I eat. I still eat meat, carbs, sugar etc. This means it is sustainable for me. Perhaps most importantly (to me anyway) is that I haven't been hungry. The biggest change has really been where I am getting carbs from (mmm lentils), bringing more structure to when and what I eat and eating a bucket load more salads and vegetables. That's been it really. Simple, but I am amazed at how effective it has been.

I am quite looking forward to where it goes from here. I am certainly planning on continuing the diet and I suspect that I may lose a little bit more weight. Although since I have reached the weight I was aiming for I won't be actively pursing further loss.

Besides checking how the diet had been going, today was also about setting out the next step, perfecting my race prep and race nutrition. I sure learnt some interesting things out of the session, like switching to some fairly refined sugars in the last few day before a race to move the last of the fibre out of the system. I like to think I have quite a dialed in nutrition plan when it comes to racing, but I have always been open to suggestions, so I will be interested to see what David comes up with. Could be a bit of experimentation going on in the coming training sessions.

So far so good though.