This is where I’ll keep track of my weekly weight loss over the period of 12 months of living on wartime food rations.
My goal is to lose 100 lbs over 1 year…
Click graph to enlarge..
START – September 23, 2011
Start weight- 299 lbs (home scales- no clothing)
Week 1- 293 lbs ( -6)
Week 2- 289 lbs (-4)
Week 3- 285 lbs (-3)
Week 4- 284 lbs (-2)
Week 5- 280 lbs (-4) Total so far = 19 lbs lost
Week 6- 277 lbs (-3) Total 22 lbs
Week 8- 267 lbs Total 32 lbs
Week 11- 264 lbs
Week 13- 269 lbs (+ 5) CHRISTMAS WEEK!
Week 19- 255 lbs (-14) Total loss 44 lb (click here for progress photos)
START August 5, 2009
START: 315 lb
Week 1: 305 lb – 10
Week 2: 302 lb -3
Week 3: 298 lb -4
Week 4: 296 lb -2 Total weight loss so far -19 lb
Week 5: 296 lb -0
Week 6: 293 lb -3
Week 7: 291 lb -2
Week 8: 289 lb -2 Total weight loss so far -26 lb ( click here for comparison photos )
Week 9: 289 lb -0
AMAZING!! KEEP AT IT. WISHING YOU GREATEST OF SUCCESS
THANKS Melinda!!!! I gotta keep going- I just have to do it this time!!
C xx
You are amazing!!! I have a hard time trying to lose 30lbs and you lose 26 lbs in 8 weeks. I will be following you and hope I can have the will power to be like you a WINNER!!!!
All the best keep up the awesome work!!!!!!
Thanks Rena!!! This is the danger time for me though- I seem to be able to do quite well for two or three months in previous attempts at losing weight and then complacency sets in…
I really am hoping that keeping this blog so visible and doing this as hopefully what will become an interesting culinary social experiment/record that this will be enough with all the support people are giving me to SEE me over he next couple of months and over that rather large invisible BUMP!
Thanks so much for reading and commenting Rena and I hope that you will be successful in your attempt too..
Any weight loss is a success!!!
C xx
Wow girl, you are doing it! Great job!
Just found your blogs whilst searching internet. I was interested in your experiment. I too have a fascination with the rationing and diet of ww2 and have a compilation of war time recipes entitled victory cookbook. I wish you all the best with this. I know that the diet was extremely healthy and led to an overall improvement in childrens health, (Probably could do with some rationing now) and that obesity was rare. I thought I was the only one with this fascination, nice to know I am not alone.
Wow this is just amazing good on ya! we were watching a war time rationing programme on tv last night and they tried out the recipes on people who had actually lived through the war, to see if they remembered them they all said they did, and they were quite nice,, but blah they sure did not look it, and the portions were so small. I said to my husband, gosh i would be so slim if i lived off that, i would prob Be begging some of your rations lol. So this morning i decided to look up some recipes and came across your blog and just find it facinating, what a concept, our goverment are trying to tackle an obesity epidemic could this be the answer, never mind expensive weight loss surgery that no one really know the long term out come of our health, in fact it would save our health service a fortune in treating weight related illness. In an ideal world the surplus could feed the world,, those who are a lot less fortunate but i guess thats just the stuff dreams are made of. But hey i wish you every success and all those who follow your example.
Thanks soooo much Jan!!! Yes our own and our kids future really is in our own hands….. I LOVE what Jamie Oliver is doing in th eUS at the moment trying to instill this into folk. As you know from reading my blog I have a HUGE weight problem because I tend to eat too much and also eat too much of the wrong things at times…. not sure it’s even about being hungry…. hoping this journey will sort my demons out and teach me a new way to eat and keep the weight off once it goes
Thanks so much for reading C xx
You are doing amazing. I have always been fascinated with the diet during the 40′s and am always saying how much healthier we all were. Fresh food is definitely better than processed!! Keep it up.
Carolyn,
I am wondering if you are still doing this and how you are getting on?
Thank-you for such a wonderful resource.
Jo
Oh gosh! I haven’t updated this for a while! Yes I am very much still doing this and I’ll get this updated as soon as I can- thank you for drawing my attention to it and reading my blog! C xxxxx
Can you please give us an update? How much do you weigh now?
Hi Blaire- apologies- I need ti get this page updated and will do so on my days off this weekend. My weight is now 255 lbs and I’m losing weight each and every week
C xx
Hi Carolyn. I am doing my own wartime rationing experiment soon, I it to begin on Monday. I have been inspired partially by your fascinating blog. I weighed out some of my rations yesterday and got a mighty shock! I also hope to lose weight, and improve my healh. As I type this I am making a wartime inspired beef and VEGETABLE stew, with some suet dumplings, which will be my food for the next couple of days, though I admit I have a weekend of eating up all my non-1940′s food stocks ahead of me! Wish me luck! Perhaps I will also start my own blog!
Hi James- wow! I wish you much success on your experiment too! Yes it really is quite shocking to see how little the rations are especially for eggs, cheese and meat but using these sparingly and eating way more wholefoods and veggies IS the way to go! One of the hardest bits for me in the first two weeks was a) the time it took to cook food from scratch b) Giving up junk/processed foods and trying to stretch the eggs and cheese (I wasn’t a vegan in previous attempts)
I’m looking forward to hearing all about your journey!!!
Good luck xxxxxx
Thank you for your supportive response. I really do feel that this is going to be a positive experience for me, and will try to keep in contact through the process. It is also interesting to see how little was wasted at that time, and to compare that to today, both in terms of foodstuffs and resources. I fully expect to see my dustbin getting less full each week as I find uses for things that previously might have been discarded. An unfortunate consequence of plentiful resources is the tendency not to worry about throwing things away, which I have been as guilty of as anyone else. I hope that one lesson of this will be to make use of everything and discard nothing useful!
I am really enthused now. You sound a lovely person and I so admire your tenacity . Well done!
Hi Carolyn
Thought I would give you an update on my progerss to date. So far I have been getting on quite well. I have got through the first week without really feeling hungry, which just goes to show how much food w eat that we don’t really need. A small 400gram loaf has lasted a week, which was a surprse, and one tin of corned beef provided lunch for the whole week as well, in the form of sandwiches. I have eaten a lot of vegetables, amd very little sugar or fat, thoughI have made a fruit-cake using a wartime recipe which my grandmother taught me to make some years ago, and which I have had a small piece of every day. I have stopped taking sugar in tea, which has helped my sugar ration last so that I still have plenty and will be in a position to make another smal fruit cake as a result, though there is still some left over from last week. I even manage to use two sausages to make a small sausage casserole (with the emphasis on root vegetables) which lasted two days. I am feeling better and so far appear to have lost about 3 pounds, while saving money and reducing waste! Yesterday evening as a treat I bought a small portion of fish and chips and struggled to finish it, which once again goes to show how portion sizes have increased to a ridiculous degree in the last 70 years. A few chip and a small piece of fish (about equivalent to what would have been served in the 40′s) was plenty. I am feeling very positive and ready to go into the next week in an optimistic frame of mind.
Wow James- this is wonderful news! I found the first week or two quite tough as I went “cold turkey” on all the processed/convenience foods I was consuming- stopping eating vast quantities of cheese was hard too
I applaud you for your efforts- it sounds like you are doing wonderfully well and you MUST post back again and tell me how you are doing!
C xxxx
Hi Carolyn
Hope you are well? My own 40′s experiment is still going well and I am still enjoying all the new things I am making. I am now approaching the end of the second week, and my weight loss now stands at slightly over half a stone! I was giving my experiment two weeks initially, to see how it went, but I am so happy about the results so far, I think I will leave it open for an indefinite period! Plenty more weight to lose and lots of recipes yet to try!
Hi Carolyn
Your lovely blog has inspired me to start my own, so here it is http://foreverbox.co.uk/kitchenfront/ there is nothing much there yet, but hoping it will grow with time.