Procrastinating Again and a New Eating Regime

This week, I've indulged in a lot of procrastination.  My tax return is due to be filed online and I just can't get into the right frame of mind to do it.  It didn't help that I found an interesting book in the Little Free Library, whilst walking the dog.  It was this one.

I've been watching a diet programme on TV for the last couple of weeks.  It's called How to Lose Weight Well and it showcases lots of different diets, by getting volunteers who want to lose weight to follow them for either a week, six weeks or four months.

This week one of the diets featured was the Eat Right Diet, where one of the 'Shape Shifters' or six week dieters, had to follow this diet and eat according to their blood type.  Hats off to her, she lost over a stone in six weeks, which was pretty impressive.

Now, I'm not looking to go on a diet, although I would like to lose the weight I put on over Christmas and a bit more if I can, before I hit the big 50, but when I saw this book I thought I'd give it a read. The rest of the morning was then just about given over to it, once I got my nose in it.

I think I know my blood type, but might need to double check it when I next go to give blood next month.  If I'm right, I might just have to forgo a couple of my favourite foods according to this book. It was very interesting reading indeed and made a whole lot of sense (don't they always).  It's less of a diet book and more of a book about eating for optimum health, weight loss supposedly being a by product of eating right for your blood type.

I've made lists of the suggested highly beneficial foods, neutral foods (allowable foods in small doses that have no real benefit nor any real detriment) and foods to avoid, and I'm going to use it to guide my eating for the next few weeks and see how I go.  I may not stick strictly to it, but I'm going to do my best and see how I feel. I did pick up a few bits during the week to assist me in my new regime, but will probably phase it in gradually, as I use up what we already have in.

The main things I potentially need to forgo are acidic foods such as oranges/vinegars and wheat based foods such as bread and pasta, mainly to help increase my metabolic rate, because my blood type supposedly doesn't metabolise these things well. I can opt for gluten free options, but I don't actually eat a whole lot of bread anyway. My breakfasts at the moment, however, are largely wheat based, so I need to make some changes there.  Reading the book has inspired me to get back to eating my chia seeds with almond milk again, which I haven't touched so far this year, so if nothing better comes of it, then that alone is a good thing. It helps that OH is happy to go along with some of the changes, i.e. cutting out gluten, as he is trying to lose weight for his cycling and thinks he might benefit from this too.

According to my blood type, I should also be partaking of intense aerobic exercise 3-4 times per week, which I currently already do, so I seem to be part way there already, just a few tweaks to the diet.  Apparently, this is the way my blood type responds best to stress, which goes directly to muscles and needs to be released via exercise.  This in turn helps to control weight, help balance emotions and maintain a strong self image, all of which I already knew and the reasons why I do exercise regularly already.

This eating system is also supposed to improve thyroid function which tends to be slow in my blood type and as I have been diagnosed with a hypoactive thyroid, this seems to fit well with my medical history.  I was rather surprised to note how many things I currently eat that are potentially slowing down my metabolism/thyroid function or impairing calorie utilisation.

It will be interesting to see what happens if I follow this system. I'll keep you posted.