In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to try a strange high-protein diet last week consisting only of Harzer cheese and broccoli. Well, I completed that experiment, and here is some information about how it went.
I cheated a bit
Originally I had planned to eat 16 pieces (800 grams) of Harzer cheese and about 250 grams of broccoli, one per hour. Well, I actually maxed out at 10 pieces on one day. I simply didn’t feel that hungry. I also was not that rigorous about eating one per hour. However, I did eat more frequently than I usually do.
I mostly wasn’t hungry
One of the questions I had was whether I would feel full or not. I did mostly, so much so that I ended up eating less than intended.
I lost weight
Around mid-May I set a goal to lose some weight. I started around 74 KG, and set a goal of reaching 72 KG by September 1st. I track that goal using beeminder.com, a fantastic goal-tracking and incentivizing software I have been using for 15 years now (developed by one of my best friends). The incentive for reaching your goal is not to have to pay Beeminder money. Essentially you bet against yourself. If you go off-track, then you have to pay, and then they re-start the goal automatically, with a little bit of wiggle room for you to catch up, but more money on the line.
I have used Beeminder for losing weight on and off for over 10 years, ranging from a period of about 3 months to 12 months. Once I get to my desired weight, I simply set the goal to stay there, or maybe a few kilos more. One thing I have learned since tracking my weight more frequently is how much it can vary from day to day, and within the day. I usually try to be very consistent in how I weigh myself. I usually do it first thing in the morning after waking up, and usually do it twice, once before peeing, and once after. Usually there is about a one kilo difference between before and after peeing. In other words, I usually pee about a liter after waking up. (Bowel movements also make a difference). Usually my weight goes up during the day as I eat stuff. From one day to the next, my weight can also fluctuate up to a kilo or so, without a ton of explanation why. In other words, it is not that useful to compare day to day. Comparing week to week is quite helpful though. At this time scale, you can start to see meaningful trends, and not just noise. In the 3 days leading up to this recent experiment, I weighed between 71.6 and 71.8 Kilograms. During the experiment, I saw my weight drop a little bit almost every day, which is unusual, even when I am trying to lose weight. So this diet was really working. That is until Thursday. Thursday night I finally started feeling hungry. I had bought some Wasabi nuts a month ago, and the package was open. I decided to have a few while I read my book before going to bed. I ate some, then set them aside. 20 minutes later I was still hungry, and I ended up finishing the bag. I estimate that was probably a good 800 calories worth of nuts or so, which was about double what I had been eating per day the rest of the week. Sure enough, when I stepped on the scale on Friday, I had gained a kilo. However, some of that was probably just noise. On Saturday and Sunday I went back down considerably, weighing in at 70.5 kilos on Sunday, or a little bit over one kilogram less than when I started, or about 1.4% of my body weight, which is a fairly considerable loss for one week. Here you can see my Beeminder graph since May, and the steep decline in the last week (the green dots are the actual values, the purple swath is a smoothed-out trend to get rid of some of the noise. You can see that one green dot that went up on Friday that I mentioned)
I like variety
By Thursday or Friday, I was starting to get pretty tired of just Harzer cheese and broccoli. This was actually a bit surprising to me, because I don’t actually enjoy eating that much since I had a traumatic brain injury just about a year ago. Nothing tastes the way it used to, so eating is mostly not enjoyable. That being said, it turns out that I do like a little bit of variety. One thing I was particularly missing was bread, especially my favorite bread that I discovered in the last year, Hunsrucker from the Moss bakery, a 100% rye bread which is incredibly moist, yet is not as dense as a true pumpernickel.
I will still continue to eat Harzer cheese from time to time, especially as a healthy late night snack, but I will not be doing a Harzer cheese only diet again any time soon. And speaking of the cheese, I do also have some preferences about Harzer cheese. I had some from the Penny grocery store, and some from Rewe, and I preferred the Penny mostly. The Rewe was a bit sticky on the outside. At least, for the first few days. The second few days, I got a different batch, and it was considerably better. Harzer cheese continues to age in the store. If you eat it when the best by date is still 3-6 weeks in the future, it is considered “young”. The center is a bit white and has a different texture. As it gets closer to the date, it gets more aromatic, which I think I like less, but some people prefer.
I had a bit less energy
I was wondering if this diet would leave me feeling like I had more or less energy. For the most part, I felt quite fine. I did my normal day job, plus also some yard work nearly every day. I have another Beeminder goal to get exercise twice a week, which I first did on Thursday. I started jogging a route several months ago, and track my time on it. Normally it takes me 25 or 26 minutes. Thursday it took me 27. Saturday it also took me 27, even though I felt like I was really giving it my all. Clearly, I had a bit less energy, due to my low caloric intake. Today I went jogging again, and did the route in about 25.5 minutes, back to my normal range.
Data
I kept track of what I was eating everyday. I average around 800 calories per day, which is quite low. I definitely would not be able to sustain that level for a long period of time, nor do I want to. But for one week, it was quite doable.
| harzer kase | broccoli | 100 ml leichte schorle | Additional | total calories | notes | |
| Sunday | 10 | 150 | 1 | 695 | ||
| Monday | 8 | 200 | 1 | 250 | 837 | hummus and daikon radish |
| Tuesday | 8 | 150 | 1 | 150 | 720 | hummus and carrots |
| Wednesday | 8 | 200 | 1 | 200 | 787 | |
| Thursday | 8 | 300 | 1 | 800 | 1421 | 250 gram skyr + 120 gram nuts |
| Friday | 6 | 200 | 2 | 200 | 681 | 150 gram skyr |
| Saturday | 6 | 200 | 3 | 150 | 650 | hummus with broccoli |