One thing this will tell me, however, is how a midweek night off affects the rate of weight loss, so hey, maybe it’s not all bad.

So, onto day 3. Breakfast time. After two days, I was a little tired of my (albeit delicious) sausage casserole type thing, and really fancied some baked beans. Most beans are perfectly fine, but due to regular baked beans having more sugar than beans in them, they’re off the menu for the duration of the experiment. Never one to be defeated by such trivialities, I decided to make my own. Find out how after the jump.

This is how:

You need:

• Some beans. ‘Proper’ baked beans are made with haricot beans, but I had a tin of black eyed beans in the cupboard, so I used them. I recommend using tinned beans, as with dried you need to soak them overnight. This is shit if you’re hungry.
• A red pepper
• An onion
• A clove of garlic
• Oil for frying
• Seven or so blitzed cherry tomatoes (normally cherry toms, chopped and whizzed around in a blender)
• A tablespoon of paprika
• A splash of worcestershire sauce
• A pinch of mustard powder
• A pinch of chilli powder
• Salt
• Pepper
• A dash of cinnamon
• A dash of all-spice (not Old Spice, that would be rubbish!)
• Oregano

Chop the onion, pepper and garlic finely, and fry in the oil until soft. Drain the beans and chuck them in the pan, along with everything else apart from the water. Give it a good stir, and the paprika should give everything a lovely red colouring. Bring to the boil and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring regularly. Keep an eye on the mixture, and if it’s looking too dry, add some water to moisten everything, bring to the boil then return to simmer. Easy.

Remember, this recipe was essentially made up, so use what you have in your cupboards / fridge, and experiment! I’d never realised making baked beans was so easy, and they taste so much better than shop bought varieties. An epiphany indeed.

I had the beans with some fried mushrooms, Jamie Oliver Italian Style sausages, and a couple of slice of organic bacon. Best breakfast I’ve had in a long while, truth be told.

Remember, if you’d like to start your own weight loss (and many other) experiments, I’d totally recommend you check out the book that got me started on this – The Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. I’m particularly looking forward to the chapter on improving sex, although a quick skim through suggests it’s not a chapter to read in public!

If you’re not aware, the basic premise of the plan is similar to that of the infamous Atkins Diet, but with a few key changes – no dairy whatsoever, unsweetened tea and coffee is fine, you take a day off once a week and eat and drink what you like, and a glass or two of red wine is positively encouraged on an evening, as it aids fat loss apparently! That excuse will do for me. I very much enjoyed a glass of Turner Road Merlot last night, and I shall be doing the same tonight. It’s a hard life, eh?

On the progress side of things, my weight has dropped by 2.5 lbs this morning, which is probably due to natural fluctuations in the body, but hey, I’ll take it!

Update – Today’s Food So Far

Breakfast

Same as yesterday. Still delicious

Snack

Four slices of deli ham.

Lunch

Steak ‘Burrito Bowl’:

Slice up and fry some sandwich steak, and cook add peppers, onions, carrots, garlic, and seasonings of your choice. Boil some pinto beans and throw them in the pan as well, mix around to flavour everything then Stick it in a dish and eat it. Just make sure the pinto beans are cooked properly or they’ll taste rank!

For this experiment I’ll be following the Slow Carb Diet, as popularised by Tim Ferriss in his book The Four Hour Body. So this is Day 1, and this is Experiment #1 – Rapid Fat Loss. The goal is to lose 14lbs (1 stone) of body fat before I head off to Tunisia on Easter Sunday. Tim suggests you can lose 20-30 lbs in 30 days, so my target shouldn’t be too difficult… time will tell though.

So, onto the food:

Breakfast

• 3 Jamie Oliver Italian Style Sausages
• Half a green pepper
• Half a white onion
• 6 cherry tomatoes
• Seasoning

Grill the sausages. Chop up the rest of the ingredients as you see fit and fry them in a little oil / Fry Light with some salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar to taste. When the sausages are cooked, chop them up and toss them in the frying pan to flavour everything. Serve up and enjoy. Delicious.

Update: Lunch

1/2 a baked chicken breast, a handful of rocket, four chopped cherry tomatoes, 1/2 a green pepper, dressed with a little balsamic vinegar (you’ll end up realising I LOVE balsamic vinegar!). Again delicious and filling, and there’s still the rest of the chicken to snack on, should I get peckish!

Having experimented with altered sleeping / working patterns a number of months ago, and even going so far as attempting to adopt a biphasic sleeping pattern in order to accomodate my most unsociable of working hours, I know all too well the stresses that competing sleep / work / play priorities can put on the body, and the mind. What I did discover though is that the body can manage with scarily little sleep – as low as 4.5 hours was the furthest I could go, and still feel functional, and I think that had I stuck with it, I could have kept it up, and turned it into a success. Sadly, however, it’s just not sociable. A 90 minute nap at 8pm does nothing to endear you to friends and family, who just don’t seem to understand.

Given that research released today suggests that the most creative time of day is 10:03pm, shouldn’t more people think about burning the midnight oil? Just think of what we could achieve… Mornings? Pah!