So the last couple of months have been quite hard for me, at the beginning of April I started exercising properly again and eating healthily; using a calorie counter and really cutting back on takeout. When I did crave my favourite Chinese, I would walk and only get chicken and mushroom, take it home and cook a basmati rice to go with it. I became engrossed in many other fitness bloggers, such as The Lean Machines and Carly Rowena, and my good friend Christie who is a personal inspiration of mine. They've really spurred me on. I made weekends my cheat meals (evening meal on Friday or Saturday and then lunch on Sunday), whilst still being sensible. I cut out red bull and portion sizes and instead of doing one big shop on payday I split my food money into 5 weeks and started buying fresh food to cook with.
However, some stuff then happened at work and I fell back into a routine of takeout, and snacking, and put back on the 7 pounds I originally lost, and so this brings me to today. I find healthy eating easy peasy, but the ease of cooking it is my downfall. If I get home and am even slightly tired i find every excuse in the book to order a takeaway. Obviously even with the best workout pattern this isn't the best regime to have, so this results in my either not losing ANY weight, or putting it on.
This weekend, I realised something had to change. I'd saved some money for some new clothes, as I hadn't bought any in a while, and I just got so fed up with thinking I can't wear what I want to wear because I look lumpy that I came home with some biscuits for the cat and some cleaning products. DEPRESS. Whilst looking at my usual YouTube channels, I saw some videos by other people about the 'military diet', a diet which claims you can lose up to 10 pounds in a day.
Too good to be true I said. Will be so expensive I thought.
WRONG!
The website gives you the meal plan, the substitutes and even suggests a plan for the days off the staple 3 days it recommends. I watched a few vlogs and after deciding it didn't look TOO hard, and like I wouldn't hate myself too much from doing it, i bit the bullet and popped to tescos. Baring in mind some of the products used you will have leftovers after the three days, the whole plan came to £7.99. I had a couple of things at home already, so I reckon it would be around a tenner otherwise. I thought this was so good for 3+ days of food, especially as I usually only spend about £15 a week on a food shop anyway. I will link the plan at the bottom of each post so you guys can see it in full.
DAY ONE:
STARTING WEIGHT: 12 stone 7 lbs. (I have about 2 stone to lose, I was at 10stone 10 a few years back and would like to get back to that plus some and then carry on a healthy lifestyle so in no certain circumstances am I doing this long term. If it works I would like to do it every other week until I am at my goal weight and happy with my contingency plan) I woke up feeling quite excited for some reason. Maybe it was thought of potentially being 5-10 pounds down by Thursday, or maybe it was the fact I love everything on the breakfast plan!
BREAKFAST: half a grapefruit, one piece of toast with a table spoon of peanut butter and a cup of green tea. Breakfast filled me up quite nicely - I rarely eat breakfast and when I do it's normally a lot later (as I have work today I ate this at 7.45am), so I'm hopeful already because I'll have more fuel than a normal day start. The toast and peanut butter was quite dry, but after a few glugs of green tea and bit of grapefruit it goes down a lot better.
DINNER: half a tin of tuna, a slice of toast and a mug of green tea I was particularly worried about lunch, as I have quite a gruelling job and had visions of myself keeling over halfway through the afternoon. However I think having breakfast really helped set me up to keep going to dinner (12.15pm) and then some, as I didn't start to feel hungry until around 4/4.15pm! (Either that or I was too busy to worry about it!). Thankfully today at work isn't filled with endless treats being brought in (half of why I got in this position in the first place!) so I find it easy to keep to plan, filling my mind with other things! I made the tuna and toast into kind of a sandwich so it felt more bulky. I must point out that you can eat the bread as either toast, or plain bread, and you can switch the meals around just so long as you eat all that you're allowed to in a day and no more.
TEA: a cup of green beans, 3oz meat (I chose cod steak as that Was what I already had), half a banana, one small apple and a cup of vanilla icecream Sadly I was really looking forward to this meal because it had the most in it!!! I'm not a big dessert person, but I must admit the thought of the icecream kept me going all day! I have spread this out a bit so had the apple and the beans/meat at around 5.45pm, and have just had the banana on top of the icecream as a later snack (7.45pm).
All in all I feel like today has been fantastic for a first day,I have felt full enough, not tired and most importantly I've actually liked all the foods I've had! I've also probably drank about a litre of water which I wouldn't normally do, and need to start doing! I'm gonna round off today with some light exercise (swim machine for 10 minutes, cycling for 10 mins, step ups for 5 mins).
DAY TWO:
I slept rather well but woke up a bit tired. Not sure if this is because of the diet or the fact it was so friggin hot last night!
BREAKFAST: half a banana, one egg (cooked however you want) and a piece of bread (I toasted!) and a cup of green tea! The egg was the blandest thing ever I'm not gonna lie. I scrambled it, and had it on the toast. I had to drink a glass of water halfway through because my mouth was so dry. Need to think of better ways to eat egg, maybe making the yolk runny would be the one?
LUNCH: was meant to be a cup of cottage cheese, but the thought of that makes me wanna vom so I subbed in a can of tuna again, 5 crackers and one egg (I boiled this one as I was gonna be at work for it)
I was full til lunch (12.15) again, so one up side to dry eggs I guess! I hard boiled an egg this morning as well for lunch, and put it in the fridge at work. The tuna went down fine again, and I cut the egg up into slices which was fine thankfully given the breakfast nightmare. I also had a lot of water and a cup of green tea. Crackers were a bit different to bread so that was a nice change,
TEA: half a cup carrots, a cup of broccoli, two hot dog sausages, half a banana and one cup of icecream.
This was my least fave so far. Makes the dry egg brekkie look like GBK. I stir fried the broccoli, carrot and sausage as I'd seen someone on YouTube do it and it looked alright but it was awful. I think next time I do this meal I'll do it as boiled veg. The sausages were fine Though! Thankfully I was starving because despite not being hungry til around 4 again I waited for a bit when I got home and just had the banana, then after a shower had the rest.
All in all, an ok day, not as good as yesterday but hopefully it'll pay off! Tomorrow is the day with the least food so we will see how I fair!
DAY THREE:
I can't deny that I feel a lot better from eating breakfast. I am waking up slightly earlier and getting up earlier in order to have it which wakes me up a bit more than rolling out of bed, getting ready and leaving within 20 minutes!
BREAKFAST: piece of cheese, 5 crackers, mug of green tea, one small Apple
This was surprisingly filling. I was actually running slightly late despite my opening sentence, so I took the crackers to work and ate them within an hour or so of being there which also helped with the rest of the day.
LUNCH: one egg, one piece of toast, cup of green tea
This was up there with the rank stirfry from last night. So bland, I actually cheated and had a banana as well.
TEATIME: cup of tuna, half a banana and a cup of icecream
This was the smallest tea so far but thankfully I get on well with the tuna so I was happy with that. This is definitely the hungriest I've been this week and I was hungry at around 3pm after lunch today, but I soldiered on!
The hardest day but I see why they put the smallest day at the end of the course!!
RESULTS:
Drum roll.......
-5pounds!
I am quite happy with this, though obviously anymore would be have been grand! But I'd be happy with losing 5 pounds every time I do this!
Other than the weight loss, these three days have really motivated me to get going again, and to reach my goals and then maintain it.
I have sat down with my original plan and used the substitutions list on the MD site to change anything I wasn't too fond of (cottage cheese, the hot dog meal and the lone egg being the ones), so this may help me next week keep on track a bit more.
I have realised the importance of breakfast, and I feel a lot less bloated from eating clean foods. It is actually proven to be healthy for humans to do a few days of this kind of diet, or another fasting style diet such as the 5:2 (this one is definitely more substantial than that one!). Plus it's mega cheap!
I would recommend this to anyone who would like to kick start a healthier lifestyle, especially if you never ate breakfast before like me, as this instantly gives you more fuel for the day. I'll be doing it again for sure!
http://themilitarydiet.com/military-diet-results/
