A day in the life of a dieter

Well, Jae and Andy have diet blogs going so why shouldn't I?

Also, a while back, Stig did a picture blog recounting a day's activities and I've always wanted to do something similar, so I thought I'd combine the two ideas and provide a photographic record of a day's activities relevant to a guy trying to lose some flab.

The idea is to provide details of everything of nutritional significance that went into my mouth and every significant calorie-burning activity in one day, in this case Tuesday 28th July 2009.

(Nutrition details come from packaging (not that there was much packaged food involved) and an excellent site I found called Nutrition Data com.)

9.53am, coffee with dash of milk, approx 25 calories

12.12pm, bowl of Special K cereal (approx 120cal) with semi-skimmed milk (approx 120cal) and a chopped banana (approx 100cal) = 340 calories

2.10pm walk to my dentist to discuss my checkup appointment

2.51pm and from there to the Bull ring Open Market to do some fresh fruit and vegetable shopping.

and from there to my gym, a total of 2 miles or 3.2km. Burned approx 200 calories.


3pm arriving at gym.

3.32pm First exercise completed: 20 mins rowing, burned 220 calories

3.46pm Second exercise completed: stretching and flexing. Burned approx 10 calories

4.28pm Third exercise completed: 20 minutes (plus 1 min cooldown) on bike. Burned 200 calories


4.36pm Break in fourth exercise: resistance training (in all, 3x12 shoulder press, 3x12 chest press, 3x12 pecs, 3 x 3x12 leg resistance exercises). Burned approx 40 calories

5.17pm Fifth exercise completed: 13.30mins cross-trainer. Burned 200 calories.

5.20pm after a mad rush, sitting down for some R&R in the sauna. No calories burned immediately, but it feels good!

5.30pm More R&R in the hydrotherapy pool. No swimming today (big pool off shot to the right; note sauna & steam room straight ahead). No calories burned, but muscles well massaged!

5.55pm three small plums (what else!) bought earlier at the market as a prize to myself for completing the wortkout. Approx 25 cals each = 75 calories

I forgot to provide evidence of two apples eaten during the course of the evening once I got home, about 95cals each = 190 calories

9.08pm late dinner of mixed salad with cottage cheese and lemon dressing (approx 100 cals altogether) and grilled lemon & ginger & paprika chicken breat pieces (basically, home-made nuggets, approx 260cals) and watered-down sugar-free cranberry juice, approx 40 cals = 400 calories

9.33pm dessert, Flora pro-activ low fat apricot yoghurt, 71 calories


11.42pm mid-evening cup of blackcurrant tea (4 cals) and currant bun (which was a lot tastier than it looks!) 174cals with cottage cheese filling (approx 20 cals) = approx 200 calories

1.25am late-night cup of Rooibos tea with a splash of milk = approx 25 calories

I haven't recorded the 3 litres of water drunk at the gym and during the evening while sitting at the computer, with no calorific value.

The balance, though: 1125 low-fat calories in and about 870 calories burned with exercise.

Two unusual things about this day: normally there'd be a sandwich, salad or bowl of soup in the mid-afternoon/early evening with a value of about 300 calories, and I'd not walk to the gym so I'd burn about 200 cals less. Even so, I'm extremely surprised I'm not losing weight more quickly (OK, admittedly there are a few food sins along the way on a weekly basis, but I'm fairly consistent...).

Any comments, tips or hints are most welcome!

Picture Post (Selfridges)

(Blogger has done something strange with the picture links in this post. I'm in no condition to correct things right now so I'll leave things as they are for the time being. All my photos are on Photobucket)

This is sort-of inspired by Stig's exposé about his geekery. One of my own geekish weaknesses is architecture. I can't say I'm particularly knowledgeable about it, but few things are as likely to make me hold my breath or stop me short as a striking or beautiful building.

Well-designed, well-constructed and properly functional buildings really are works of art in the truest sense of that word. I live in a city which was famed for a lack of taste or foresight on the part of its planners and architects in the 1960s, which brought about some of the ugliest and badly-built major developments in the UK and wider.

More recently, the Birmingham skyline has seen some stunning additions to its skyline and this post is about one such building. It's famous in its own right, has won all kinds of awards, and is well-represented all over the internet (a google images search results in 19,000 pictures).

So here are some more pictures of Future Systems' Selfridges department store. I am particularly mindful of it this week, as its designer, Jan Kaplický suddenly died last week and this is my little insignificant tribute to a great man.

I fell in love with the idea of this building before I ever saw it, as various impressions of the designs were floating around long before construction began six years ago. One of the many wonders of this building is that there are no flat surfaces outside - everything is curved; sometimes very obviously, sometimes less so. At the time, one of the statements made about the building was the promise that the Selfridges name would never have to appear on the outside: the building would be striking enough for a name-plate to be unnecessary. Regrettably, a few years down the line the Selfridges people clearly decided that wasn't enough and they put a huge neon sign in the only street-facing window, which I think sort of spoils the effect.

Anyway, enough of my jabber-jabber, here's a load of photographs, all taken by me over a period of about two years, arranged more or less in order from the Moor Street point of connection with the rest of the Bull Ring Centre around to the St Martin's Square point of connection. It's built on a hill and of the many entrances, there are three at street level, and they lead to three different levels!