The Thermic Plan, dinners at home, meetings and greetings...

I've managed to get to day 5 of a Turbo Plan without a blip.The cold/cough thing drags on, I'm fine pottering, but anything close to exertion and the coughing starts.  So in the interest of a weekend of possible bikinis in March, I needed to do something to shave my winter coat.

The Thermic Plan is based on the Thermic Index of food (or eating by the celery principle).  Put most simply some foods require a much higher % of their own calories to be digested and expelled than others.  The overall winner is protein in that as much as 40% of the calorie value of the food is required to digest it.  It is the most important bit to get our heads around when it comes to eating well, not all calories are the same.  If we eat 3 eggs, in calorie terms we've only had two, if we eat three Mars Bars, biscuits, slices of cake, we have definitely eaten all of them!

The Dukan and Atkins diets are based on this principle, there is a slight difference in the focus of the Thermic Plan as it is all about keeping the metabolic rate as high as possible.  This is another way of eating 'more food for less calories'.  It does require exercise and eating quite a lot of calories at each sitting to encourage the body not to go into feast and famine mode.

Since I can't really go for it on the exercise front, I have cut out the more calorie laden permissible foods; seeds, nuts, lentils, beans etc and just stuck to protein, vegetables and a few pieces of fruit.

The M & S meal deal has been my 'Pure Package', but at £10 a day, I am saving about £540 over six days (AND I have 6 bottles of wine which they definitely don't supply and six puddings that have been given to various guests).

One of the critical parts of the metabolism boost is breakfast and I have to confess I do struggle with it, I only bought the eggs yesterday, but this week I have had a few early starts and the most that I can manage is a couple of oranges on the go, which is not enough calories to persuade the metabolism to wake up and get going.

So my typical day has been;

starter of prawn scallops and peas for when a friend came to dinner

morning 3 coffees and two oranges
lunch left over protein and veg from previous day plus 'zero noodles' (not actually sure what these are made from but they are carb free and give the impression of eating pasta or similar)
afternoon two cups of tea and no snacks (this is the bit that I hate)
dinner; starter like the peas and prawns,  'meal deal' offer roast chicken and veg or sea bream and veg or duck and veg and small glass of red wine
At night camomile tea with milk and the tiniest bit of agave syrup, sounds disgusting but it tastes like honey milk and is quite nice to go to sleep on.
.

The regime has been going for 5 days and I hesitate to say this, but it's really quite easy. I haven't felt hungry. The husband is away and I would normally revert to massive bowls of Harvest Crunch rather than bothering to cook. But this makes me cook and as I am cooking (and we are in a rare state of tidiness) it's easy to have friends for dinner, so unusually I have had people around twice this week.
We had roast chicken on both occasions and I had sea bream and pea puree tonight.

The only time I felt a real pang was on a trip to see my eldest, I hadn't had time to get lunch and by the time I got there it was too late to eat so the pot of Earl Grey wasn't hitting the mark.

I also got some supplies from Wholefoods, I have been a bit lazy about growing the sprouting beans and they are a great addition as almost like having carbs, but real stars on the Thermic Index...

love the signage in the booze hall

I did cave a little tonight and had some 0% fat Greek yoghurt and some passion fruit puree, it felt like a luxury, but actually was more sharp than sweet.

The meeting went well with the fashion people, better than I had expected, they loved the furry coat, had worked with Jerome Dreyfuss so were pleased that I had the bag, but did comment that too much black looks a bit 80s.

I secretly agreed, but better that it wasn't me that said it.  Last year pink was the new black and I thought it had had its moment so relegated my Ebay coat to dog walking duty.  Since it cost no more than a fiver, I don't really know why I was saving it for best anyway.  Then I read Susie Sosos post about bright coats and thought perhaps I had been a little hasty.

Tomorrow life is back to normal and my most avid reader is back home, so I might be less prolific in my ponderings. It's been fun, but does take up quite a lot of time!
Just reread this and realised I didn't mention the results of the Thermic Plan, I don't  have any scales, but I'm not too worried about weight as it is pretty irrelevant this early on.  I have noticed that my jeans are looser and I haven't lost weight in that 'top down' way that I would normally.  Usually, when I am eating a lot of sugar and carbs, but exercising enough to burn them, my face goes gaunt and people ask if I'm unwell, my shoulders get boney and then after a couple of weeks the weightloss goes down to the rest of my body. With this, the overall reduction seems to be more consistent and I don't have that really boney old witch look (which is always good news!)