Look To The Future Now, it's only just begun.....

With Noddy Holder's dulcet tones ringing in my ears, it is time to bid you all a Merry Christmas.
Not so long ago I would don a Santa suit and give presents out at the village hall, no padding required. Well I could still don the red suit, but thankfully no one has asked me to this year.

I'm right at the back

Having come off the drops for Christmas I have noticed a few cravings returning, mostly for crisps... I see Pringles have brought out a festive Christmas flavoured potato snack.... God they're like crack cocaine... So I have so far avoided them. However I have gained a half pound this week. I've done so by reintroducing carbs to my diet, however I'm being sensible and my blood sugars are very good. Mrs Dim has lost a pound, I hate her, I want to smash her face in.... calm down Len... calm down... You do not advocate violence... especially not to loved ones... "Cranky? Moi?" "Think happy thoughts" Lidl and Aldi are doing cheap veg. All the Brussel sprouts you can eat..... I confess there may have been a few side-effects to coming off of the drops.

Seriously it's not been too bad this week, though when you mentally tell yourself you can have that Mr Kipling Christmas Slice, you will have that Mr Kipling Christmas Slice... or two.

25.3g of Sugar... No wonder Santa is fat.

I do therefore have a slight fear that on January the second I will hit the scales and the screams will be heard from outer space. When you diet, everyone can hear you scream.

So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all... Check back around the second and I'll be blogging and back on the diet again.

Some early good news...  The Slenderiiz UK website is now up... so if you want to try the drops or vitamins and supplements yourself, that's where you can get them.

http://www.slenderiiz-uk.com/

Thank you all for your support.

I hope Santa brings you everything you wish for.

Best

Fatboydim

Weight

17st 9 (and a half) lbs

Three Kings and a Picture of Vorders

Week four. One month. Seven hundred and twenty hours. Forty three thousand and two hundred odd minutes of food deprivation.... I mean dieting. Those of you who can channel your inner Carol Vorderman will realise that the sums above don't quite add up. That's because I'm two days late on the blog this week.

Yes this really is Countdown Carol

It's been a busy enough week for me as I've been doing some filming, writing and editing. It's appropriate that the Irish Film Board are choosing this time of year to run the Catalyst project, whereby three lucky filmmakers will be given €350,000 to make their films. The three winners are like the three wise men Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar, chasing a star and hoping to find a miracle at the end of it. of course these days Melchior, Caspar and Balthazar are a firm of solicitors working out of Stoke Newington. So the added energy and brain-juicery that seems to be a bi-product of this diet seems to be serving me well. Though if brain-juicery is the best I can come up with maybe I don't stand a chance of being one of the chosen.

Anyhow... Below are two photographs. The first was taken four weeks ago on day one of the diet.

Day 1

Day 30

The second photograph was taken today. Now neither photograph is a work of photographic genius, I have made no effort to glam-up other than I actually got dressed this morning, but I think there is a noticeable difference. Admittedly photo 1 is taken with a DSLR and photo 2 is taken with a phone... one is landscape and one is portrait... But in fairness my face was so fat you could only get it all in using landscape mode. 

Here's a Countdown sum for you:

18  13   17  9  18  4

and your target is

247

Now you'll have to time yourself for thirty seconds while you try to work it out... Get a friend to do the music for you... It goes.... ner, ner.. ner ,ner .. ner, ner - ner, ner.. ner ,ner .. ner, ner der, der.. der, der... dodo derder... boom!

Here's the solution: 18st 13lbs is what I started out as. 17st 9lbs is what I weigh today. 18lbs is my weight loss in four weeks.  247lbs is how much I weigh in poundage.

That's two of these:

Now cute as babies are... carrying around two of them in bodyweight is not fun. 

The fact is, that I have surprised myself. Not because I've lost weight, that's bound to happen if you stick to a diet, but because I have not wavered at all. Seriously, I have found it relatively easy in the last four weeks to not have cakes, chocolate, pastry, potatoes, bread, sugar, ice cream, Bombay mix, wine, nachos, rice or pasta. I have, as confessed had a few pints, but only because I was at a social function. I have to put the lack of hunger pangs down to the drops... I have to... I've never lasted more than three days on a diet before and I've always been hungry. Tell someone that they can't have a thing and they want it even more.... That hasn't happened... It has to be the drops. 

Now as I have said before on this blog, I'm not a salesman... I'm not selling anything... but my sister is bankrolling this little experiment because she herself has been stunned by the results, and is looking to bring Slenderiiz to the UK and Ireland. So anyone who's interested I will post up details as I believe their website will be open soon.

I promised my sister I would do this for at least one month and I am delighted with the results. Now, with Christmas around the corner I am going to start to phase carbohydrates back into my diet. I'm going to eat well this Christmas and have a few treats. So officially i am coming off of the diet until 2nd January 2014. Then I will pick up the challenge again... Hopefully having maintained my weight. So I will still blog over the next few weeks but I will officially come off the drops tomorrow... That way I will see what happens between now and Christmas to my appetite.

Ironically I have also been on the vitamins and minerals... those ran out two days ago... after a month with no coughs and spluters I have immediately got a sore throat and a cold. Of course that's probably coincidence... but it's a lot harder to assess the impact of taking vitamins and minerals. I guess if you are a person who takes those kind of things anyway then they're great... but for my own part I cannot at this moment in time vouch for their effects. all i can say is that my sister feels a lot healthier taking them. So again it's a caveat... but as I am no longer taking the vitamins and minerals I will see how I move forward without them.

So keep posted... More to come... and details of the Slenderiiz UK website will be up soon.

For now...

Fatboydim

Weight 17st 9lbs

Fishing For Compliments

I have a nemesis. Yes an enemy within the camp... She sleeps with me every night, gazing upon ample flesh with a recurring nightmare of  Hans Solo being swallowed whole by Jabba The Hutt. She gazes upon me with a mixture of love, fear and suspicion... yes it's Mrs Dim. Ask any poker players out thgere who have had the pleasure or otherwise of sitting at a table with the two of us and they will tell you how ruthlessly efficient she is at dispatching her husband... Well she's only gone and done it again. I was delighted this week to have lost three pounds bringing my weight loss to a total of 13lbs in three weeks. However the enemy... as she shall from henceforth be known... lost four pounds this week... bringing her total weight loss to 12.5lbs. (I shouldn't mix imperial and decimal... but I'm just so damned annoyed.)  How??? How did she do it? She's been eating yoghurts... an occasional biscuit, bread and cheese. Admittedly in mouse sized portions... but still. Whereas I've been good... very good... although... well ... (I'll whisper this bit) I was at the Irish Film Board's Catalyst Project this weekend. Networking events are notoriously social... pints were consumed. Over the whole weekend I had a total of five, but i did calorie count them in and missed out on a dinner and lunch respectively. What was great at the event however were how many compliments I got, about how well I looked and that I had obviously lost weight. Honestly I was not fishing for compliments either. I also got a buzz from having to place another notch in my trouser belt... otherwise my pants would fall down. So there is definite progress. (For our American friends I am using the word trouser and pants interchangeably - though in usual parlance in the UK and Ireland pants are worn under trousers - hence underpants. Pants is also used as a term of disapproval as in: "Have you seen Downton Abbey?" - "Yes it's pants."

The Cast of Downton Abbey - Not really pants, but many of them are wearing pants. A thoroughly miserable looking bunch though.

I guess it all goes to show how different we all are, that different body types will lose weight at different rates. I am still amazing myself daily that I haven't craved a cake, a chocolate or a bag of crisps. 2nd confession... at the hotel there was a small bowl of peanuts and crisps.... I did eat a handful of the crisps. (For our American friends the word crisps is the same as chips, but chips in the UK are French Fries, though if you ask for French Fries you won't get chips. Got it?) In three weeks I can honestly say I have not felt hungry once. Yet I am sticking to a 1250 Calorie diet.

Now someone who is fishing for compliments is my sister Dee. She sent me these photographs this week.

Eleven weeks apart two photographs of my sister.

She's wearing the same clothes in both photographs, the difference in the "color of her pants" or the "colour of her trousers" is down to the quality of the camera and tungsten light as opposed to ultra-violet light. That what the Slenderiize programme (program for the yanks) has done for her in eleven short weeks. She is now approaching three months on the diet and her total weight loss is 40lbs to date.

So as I head in to week four I'm going to try experimenting with my drugs... by which I mean my prescribed pharmaceuticals to control my diabetes. My blood sugar levels have been great... so it is possible that I am now taking too many tablets and that I should therefore start to cut down. This may prompt a greater weight loss next week. Mrs Dim has found that she has reduced her insulin shots from 80mg per day to around 45mg (I think it's mg might be ml - but whatever she is taking almost half of what she was taking.) Now I'm only on tablets, but I'm willing to give it a go. I can't advise anyone else try this... as I'm not a doctor, but I have written lots of episodes of Casualty and Holby City - in fact give me a wire coat hanger, a biro and a penknife and I could perform an emergency tracheotomy right now. - Seriously, however... any diabetics out there should consult their GP first before undertaking any diet. My GP is from Kerry... so he doesn't care too much - Sure go ahead.

That's it for now... I'll try to get another video up, but you know yourselves what it's like this time of year.

until next week

Fatboydim - getting slim

weight: 18st 0lbs