Posted on March 14, 2018 by Emily Forbes

Part 2 of my dieting experience; this was meant to be part one or the only part actually, but I got carried away with writing so split it into two! I recently attempted to diet as an experiment (again! Call it market research…..I care about my clients!). I had absolutely no need to diet! This experiment was

  • to empathise with clients and
  • have something to write about!

My goal was simple lose 3kg in 3 weeks and write a blog about it….

  • Starting weight was 56.9kg
  • I calculated my maintenance calories as 2000 per day, give or take.
  • A moderate 20% reduction set the calories at 1600.
  • Protein intake was a minimum of 1.5g/kg of body weight, aiming for 2g/kg of body weight to help maintain muscle mass.
  • Removing snacks and smaller portions achieved the deficit.

So what happened…..?

Week 1

I started my diet on a Wednesday. I know crazy right! But just to show you that Monday isn’t the only day of the week you can start a diet. I meal planned, shopped and tracked my food. One week later I weighed myself and was down 0.8kg to 56.1kg.

Week 2

Started to slip off the wagon already. Didn’t quite manage to track all my food but I definitely turned down food I would normally eat. I also saw a friend that weekend; there were treats involved. Weight was down another 0.8kg by the end of the week so I didn’t do as badly as I’d thought. Showing that as long as you don’t fall off the band wagon completely for days at a time you can still see results!

Week 3

My interest had waned by this point. If it wasn’t for the blog I probably would have given up totally. So I still put in half an effort. Again I had a friend come and stay. Again there were treats involved. Because of my lack of effort I gave myself a couple of extra days at the end. Final week I lost 0.6kg, finishing at 54.7kg. Not quite the 53.9kg target but still a decent amount of weight loss in just three weeks!

Things I learnt

  • I’m still terrible at dieting.
  • You need a REALLY good reason to want to diet and lose weight.
  • If you want to be successful, you NEED a goal.
  • Diets aren’t a one size fits all. You need to find one that suits you (see my previous blog)

So you can see here I only made small changes to my diet and saw a difference every week. Over time these small changes add up to make a big difference. Sometimes that is all that is needed. I didn’t stick to it 100% but I also didn’t go crazy wild when I did treat myself, showing you can still ‘have a life’.

I’ve now maintained my weight at 55kg for the last month. I have added my snacks back in to my daily nutrition but kept my portions smaller.

Keep consistent and you’ll reach your goal!

Before photo is actually from about 2 years ago before I started any sort of consistent training. After photo is from the end of the “diet experiment”.