I gave up caffeine while I was on holiday and it took me pretty much all of the two weeks to feel even vaguely human in the mornings. I had feared that it would be very difficult getting up early for work but, so far at least, it has been ok. I am glad I had the two weeks to get used to being caffeine-free though.

It will vary from cereal to cereal. I have a small digital scale that I plonk my bowl on, set to zero then fill as required. It's handy for measuring rice and pasta too, and it's the only way to know for sure because "cupfuls" and other rough measures will vary dramatically from kitchen to kitchen.

I have had an awful last few days and I don't have an excuse. Whatever willpower I found just after Christmas has deserted me. Well, I can sense that it is still there but finding it is like trying to grab a marble from a jar of oil with a pair of tweezers. It's rattling around in there somewhere, but I'll be damned if I can get a grip of the thing ..... At least I have made sandwiches for lunch today. If I can get through the day, get home, do a bit of rowing in the evening and get to bed early, I might be able to get back into the groove.

I found this a short while ago ...

1g Carbohydrates provides 16kj (3.75kcal)
1g Protein provides 17kj (4kcal)
1g alcohol provides 29kj (7kcal)
1g of Fat provides 37kj (9kcal)

From http://campuslife.lboro.ac.uk/food/nutritional/info/

@cadburyaddict11 I think we often do things that are bad for us because they are familiar, and the familiarity makes us feel safe. While binging on food as a form of medication can be just as destructive as binging on alcohol or drugs, I think you have to give yourself some leeway if you are going through something stressful and traumatic. It's not good that you feel out of control, but it is understandable. I just wonder if you should give yourself some room just now and start gradually exerting more control over over the next while. You've got to give your wounds time to heal.

Hope everything goes ok for you on Monday.

@peartiser The John Wayne diet :)

I had a bad day yesterday. For a start I felt ill so I was off work, and I could tell from first thing in the morning that the day was going to be difficult. All day I ate when my stomach demanded it rather than when I should. When I eventually cooked dinner I used my usual portions even though I knew it would not be enough then, later on, it all got too much and I went out and got a chinese takeaway. Blerg.

How would it be enforced? If you put on a "please confirm your age" field in the registration form, people can still put in what they like. I completely understand your concerns, but I do not think this is something that technology can solve. Given the social nature of TWYE it may be down to all of us to give sensible advice to those who ask for it.

If you are prepared to spend some money you could get an elliptical trainer or rowing machine. I have just bought a rowing machine and I am doing a 20 minute session on it in the morning and the same in the evening. It was the only way I could fit exercise in to my weekdays, and it has been great so far. Knackering, but great.

I tend to cook twice as much for dinner then put half in the fridge for the next evening. Either that or I cook a big batch of something - bolognaise sauce - at the weekend, divide it into four or five portions and freeze them, then gradually use them over the following few weeks.

I would be a bit wary about reheating rice. I have one of those steamers with the base and plastic containers that you plug in. 60g wholegrain rice, 100ml water into a pyrex dish and whack it on for 35 minutes. Ok, it takes a while but it's predictable and the rice is perfect every time.

"Mindless Eating" by Brian Wansink talks about the psychology of snacking and how to avoid it. One of the things he talks about is the big boxes of cereal you get these days. He advocates splitting it up into multiple smaller plastic containers, keeping one available and storing the others as far away as possible (back of the cupboard, pantry ..etc). The rough idea is that if food looks available and plentiful we will be more inclined to grab a small amount to snack on. The other thing is definitely not to store anything in plain sight because that will just act as a trigger to get you thinking about food.

He puts it a lot better than me and backs it up with clinical evidence. It's well worth a read.

"Mindless Eating" by Brian Wansink talks about the psychology of snacking and how to avoid it. One of the things he talks about is the big boxes of cereal you get these days. He advocates splitting it up into multiple smaller plastic containers, keeping one available and storing the others as far away as possible (back of the cupboard, pantry ..etc). The rough idea is that if food looks available and plentiful we will be more inclined to grab a small amount to snack on. The other thing is definitely not to store anything in plain sight because that will just act as a trigger to get you thinking about food.

He puts it a lot better than me and backs it up with clinical evidence. It's well worth a read.

I put extra light cream cheese on my sandwiches as a replacement for cheddar and butter.

@alexressi what about food without a calorie amount? If I do "d twye apple wish this was chocolate" will it not think that I am adding an "apple wish this was chocolate" to my diary?

What about using something like a hyphen character and make everything after the hyphen a comment, so ... "d twye banana:100, apple - wish this was chocolate"

@alexressi For some further - slightly confusing - info, I tried modifying the GUID field using Yahoo Pipes and it still would only load one entry in Safari. So it may be the link field or something as well. Putting the feed through Feedburner first fixes it, so it is definitely sortable... *confused*

I think you should focus more on portion size. I couldn't believe how much pasta and rice I was eating compared to the "recommended" amounts when I actually measured out what I was cooking. The first time I cooked with a more reasonable amount I felt miserable, but I found that I got used to it fairly quickly. Have a look at wholegrain pasta and rice. No fewer calories, unfortunately, but they are better for you.

@BleedingSweat Cheers. Actually it was my birthday on Thursday and I was wondering if that had imbued me with a "ohh what's the point" kind of attitude. Anyway I just did a workout and I feel a bit brighter now...

I have noticed that some feed readers and widgets only show one item from the RSS feed of my diary. I think this is because you have set the value in tag on each RSS item to be the same (the URL of the diary). This value should be unique for each item, so you might want to add some kind of unique ID to the end.

I got off to a really good start this year but, for the past few days, I have lost all sense of discipline, eating takeaway food and not exercising. I guess it is probably to do with being back at work, busy and stressed ...etc. So I need to find a bit more willpower from somewhere so I can stay on course despite work nonsense.