Well, here we are at day 8 of the July Project, which began slightly later than planned on 3 July. The Konjac Fibre seems to be working OK; I’ve managed to remember to take it every breakfast, lunch and dinner (except for Saturday 7, when it wasn’t possible) and I have to say that it does seem to be helping me to eat less.
The way it works, it’s supposed to absorb water and swell up in the digestive system. This is then supposed to make you feel like you’ve already eaten, so you don’t eat as much at each meal. This then - over time - helps you to re-educate yourself to want less to eat so that when you stop “dieting” you don’t backslide. So far, seems to be working in this regard.
The other way that it’s supposed to work is that it helps to balance blood-sugar levels, so reducing feelings of hunger. This effect is taking longer to kick in, but I’m not feeling any more hungry than I would if I wasn’t taking it, so it’s not really a problem. Also, I find that if I drink some water, it helps to stave off the hunger pangs until it’s officially time to eat.
A side-effect of using this product is that my diet is now much higher in fibre than it was previously. This is good, because fibre in the diet helps to keep the digestive system clean and healthy but I think I’m going to buy shares in Andrex soon!
Throughout the June Project (see this post, this post and this post for more info) and so far through the July Project I had not weighed myself. I had an idea of how much I weighed, based on the last measurement sometime last year; I didn’t weigh myself, though, because I wanted to see whether my clothes started to feel looser, etc, rather than being a slave to pounds.
I had the opportunity, though, on Saturday to see what my current weight is and I am rather badly shocked. The last time I weighed myself, I was 18 stone. I was expecting to come out around that figure again, maybe a pound or two lighter thanks to the June Project. But instead, I was 19 stone 1 pound. If I have lost any weight due to the June Project - and I feel like I have - then that means that in the last year I put on well over a stone without even noticing! Scary.
So, I’ve made another change to the diet (small changes at first, hoping that they’ll be easier to stick to), to go with changing breakfast cereal to one that has less sugar (see this post); no more sugar in the morning coffee; that’ll save me another 0.5kg of sugar across the month, bringing the total up to 2kg!
I’ll give that a couple of weeks to see how it affects how I feel and then I’ll weigh myself again and see if I’ve lost any weight at all.
Since weighing myself on Saturday, it’s become clear that the July Project is going to have to last for longer than I had originally planned, so it looks like I’ll be doing this until the New Year at least.
You never know, I might even start to exercise!
