Cohen's Diet Weigh In; Week 11.

Well hello! Hope you are all having a great week. :) I weighed in this morning and lost 0.8 kg, giving a grand total of 15.8 kg. I stuck to my crackers apart from one day I think, which I was really pleased with.

I noticed that my weight has been going down by less than a kilo for the last month and did a bit of exploring to see if I could work out why. With no cracker binges I was surprised I didn't pull a big number this week. I could say that it was due to some emotional or spiritual reason given that I am 0.3 kg away from smashing one of my biggest goals and so maybe my body was hanging on to it but I decided to get scientific and do some research. After much extensive searching and reading Cohen's Forums/Blogs, I discovered a few things that were helpful.

Firstly, it does not appear to be uncommon to be losing over a kilo a week even in your last 10 kg (which is in contrast to my theory of it just slowing down as I got thinner). This is good news and made me think about what I have changed in the last month that has given me 3 weeks in a row of less than 1 kg losses. The big thing that I have changed is soft drink. I have been drinking a different brand of diet soft drink recently. After a stack of research and consultation with my clinic it turns out that I can't have them. The Cohen's Clinic give us a list of diet soft drink that is allowed but I assumed it wasn't comprehensive. So even though the drinks I've been having have the same calories and nutritional information as sprite zero (which is allowed), some of the sweeteners are different and excluded from the program. D'oh! So from now on I'm asking about everything.

Secondly, we were told we were allowed natural yoghurt provided it doesn't have more than 2% fat. Turns out Vaalia (which, coincidentally is the yoghurt I switched to 2 weeks ago), whilst complying with the 2% fat rule, contains an ingredient called inulin which is not allowed on the program and can hinder some people's weight loss. They've said that Yoplait Yoplus natural yoghurt, which is the one I'd been eating previously, is fine.

Thirdly, I'd been having the wrong multivitamins. I thought I would get the super duper expensive ones and got the Swisse Ultravite Women's and it turns out they contain sugar. I've taken one every day of the program and have just been out to get some of the allowed Blackmore's Sustained Release Multi which is apparently ok.

Fourthly, I've been using the wrong curry powder. Apparently fenugreek has been banned and so that rules out most of the easily accessible curry powders so I'm just sticking to my cumin for now.

So this week I am endeavouring to stick to everything 1 million percent and see if it makes a difference. Just stuck all my softdrink in the cupboard and went out and bought a stack of the stuff I am allowed. This brings me back to the old Landmark saying, 'without integrity, nothing works.' Well, it's working, just not as well. So let's see this week if all of these little things actually do make a difference.

M. x