Hi everyone,

I’m a tortoise. I suppose I’d be a turtle if I were American, but to British people turtles are those beautiful huge creatures that swim in the sea. Not only am I a tortoise but I’ve got one. He’s called Trevor and crawls around my flat. At the moment he’s asleep under the radiator.

I’ve been following this woe for about 14 months. I’ve lost 20 kilos (44lbs). Yeah, not bad, but most of it was in the first 6 months. I tend to stick. I stuck for months at 82 kilos, now I’m stuck at 80.6 kilos.

When I do loose weight it’s in spurts. I suddenly go into ketosis (I haven’t got sticks, but somehow I can feel it, my body heats up,) and I’ll loose a couple of pounds – then nothing more for a month or two. I’ve tried to analyze my food intake during these mad spurts but I can’t see any difference to what I normally eat. What I normally eat is quite a lot by the way, but I try to keep the carbs below 20g a day.

I’ve tried walking/jogging/ swimming - doesn’t make any difference.

I’ve tried taking a holiday from the diet partially for self indulgence partly because I wanted to shake my body up. During my 4 weeks summer holiday in the UK I ate “normally” but swam and cycled every day. Of course I put on six kilos (13lbs) which I’ve now lost and I’m back where I was.

From the age of about 16 to 25 I was 8 stone 6lbs (118lbs / 57 kilos). I was quite thin and found it impossible to put on weight. Then I went to college and the rest is a story of slow but steady weight gain. I don’t think my target of 70 kilos (154lbs) is unrealistic. I obviously feel much better having lost 44lbs than I did before but I still look a bit like Buddha when I’m stripped off.

Here are some of the things I’ve tried to speed up weight loss:

Lots of water.
Lots of green tea.
Giving up caffeine.
Giving up dairy.
Meat fast
Daily exercise
(I’d like to try the fat fast but I’m a coward)
When, if ever, I reach maintenance, I feel I will already be an expert!

I’m not going to give up, but it would be so nice to get under 80 kilos!

Best wishes from Belarus,

Robert

P.S. I thought just occured. For me a sure way to go into ketosis and loose a little is to be ill! I always loose if I have a cold or flu - the last 4 pounds loss was the result of gastro-enteritus.