Prologue

It's Friday, November 20th, 2009.

Today marks the start of my first *real* diet. I've tried various minor home measures in the past - from cutting down to lite/light products, no added sugars, etc to trying a salad diet and more. I've never really gone into a full diet program before. But yesterday I signed up for the Kate Morgan Weight Loss Program, available at a local chemist. It's a meal replacement and diet education program. I've come to realise that relying on my own self-discipline and judgement when it comes to diet really does not work for me. I'm a lazy person at the core. I'll almost always take the easy way out - opting for fast food if we can't be bothered cooking, or something simple but not really healthy. Plus, I *love* the taste of food. So dieting really wasn't working when I had to rely on myself.

The program involves various shakes, bars, cereals used as meal replacements for your breakfast and lunch meals, with a 'bible' of dietary guidance to help you learn to choose healthy meals for your dinner meal (with portion amounts, allowable and banned foods, etc). I will also be trying to introduce more exercise into my day - a task which, while I started daily walks of 2km a couple of months ago, an injury to my foot has made moving around too much rather painful. So I will be looking at other options.

Having a shake for breakfast (with any additional food shown as 'eat any time' on my list) isn't really such a hard thing for me to do. Why? Because for a long time, my breakfast of choice has been a Farmer's Union Strong Iced Coffee. Yes, I am most likely addicted to them (so going without them is going to be hard) but that drink would get me through until lunch when I would have a sandwich or two (or maybe some nachos). So I'm used to the concept of a drink to start my day.

I have collected a sample of the flavours available for the products, so that I can try them out and pick my favourites. Didn't want to grab a week's worth of something that sounded nice but tasted bloody awful. This diary will be used as a record for myself, of which replacements & meals I have eaten, which I enjoyed, which I don't really want to have again.

But it also serves another purpose. I want to have a record of everything - the progress made from start to finish including everything I have eaten and everything I have done. I want to see what works, how well it works, which bits felt good, which bits felt bad, how hard it was, how I feel each step of the way. For me, this is a huge step. I want to be sure it's working.