Monday, July 30, 2007

Worst Week Ever

A bbq, a wedding and a business trip, all in the space of 8 days.

This morning on the scales, 17st 10lbs. Not good.

Belgian beer, cheese, more beer, lots of red wine, cooked breakfast, more cheese, ...

Delicious, and I don't regret a minute of it, but it has set me back a bit, and I have a two week business trip coming up.

Oh well..

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Blogging while the wife's at the gym

I'm on a roll this morning... three posts!

Again from FatBlokeThin, a link to some subversive commenting on Special K adverts. It just had to be linked!

Philosophical Musings

I've been reading the interview with FatBlokeThin over at wltips.com

"This spiritual change has enabled me to totally change the relationship I have with food and alcohol to such an extent that I do not feel remotely that I am depriving myself as many people do when following traditional diets. I eat healthily and regularly and take alcohol in moderation. This combined with a sliding scale of physical exercise and continued positive thought amount to my weight loss program."

It struck me that apart from the spiritual change, the approach is largely similar to mine. Don't be deprived. Eat healthily, have the occasional beer or three.

However, there's a fundamental difference: my philosophy isn't at all spiritual.

Or is it?

I'm an atheist, and one of the positive aspects of that world view is that you have to accept responsibility for your own actions. You can't pass anything off as being god's will, or "god told me I should...". So I have a very simple choice: I can be fat and unhealthy, I can be skinny, healthy and miserable, or I can be slightly overweight, more-or-less-healthy, and still be happy and enjoy a good meal out and a bottle of wine once in a while.

It's not spiritual in any sense, but the end point is largely the same for both of us. The only real difference is how we got there: spiritual guidance or just presenting yourself with choices and picking one. Of course, often the trick is realising you have to make the choice.

This leads me to another thought, comparing the difference in progress between what I'm seeing and what my wife is seeing: her goal is to get into the BMI=25 or less healthy range. Getting down to 27-ish was fairly easy. Anyone who is vastly overweight can lose weight by eating sensibly most of the time. Getting your body to shed the last few pounds is more of a challenge.

Back to the interview, and another bit that struck a chord with me was "My apathetic view of exercise is legendary but I am working on that with attempts to boost my motivation levels all the time."

I hate exercise. I can't think of anything more boring that trying to exercise for the sake of it. I bought an exercise bike that I've hardly used. I've got a real bike in the garage that rarely moves - the wheels could have rusted in place for all I know. But I've been making more of an effort to do things that are active rather than just sitting in front of a PC. Spending an evening on car repair might not be exercise in the traditional sense, but it's moving around, burning calories, and more interesting that watching TV! A Sunday lunch at a pub is all the more rewarding when you park 3 miles from the pub and stroll along the canal to get there. And you'll burn off some of the excess calories on the way, as well as working up an appetite.

Friday weigh-in, 100th post

This is the One Hundredth post since I started writing this blog.

The Official Friday Weigh in Result: 17st 4¾lbs, so ¼lb up on the week. Not bad in a week when I had my birthday with all the attendant piggery that goes with celebrating a birthday.

The unofficial Saturday Result is more encouraging: 17st 2¾lbs.

That a good way to start the weekend. And the sun is shining, too!

Thursday, July 19, 2007

I think the Plateau might be back....

It's going to take me all week to undo the damage of last weekend, and this weekend doesn't look like it'll be much better. BBQ at a friend's on Saturday, which will involve lots of food and beer. And the following weekend is a family wedding, which will no doubt be a weekend of cooked breakfasts and other bad options.

Having a social life is a real obstacle to being thinner!

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Plateau Busting over at Fat Bloke Thin

FatBlokeThin is travelling at the moment, and he's found that he's managed to push himself off a plateau despite eating an 8oz chili burger.

It certainly mirrors something I've found: sometimes having a bit of a blow out gets the metabolic rate up and I lose that weight, plus more, quite easily.

I'm not advocating the "stuff your face like it's going out of fashion", but I do think that eating well occasionally helps stop your metabolism from going into "starvation mode".

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Friday, oops, Saturday Weigh In

Yesterday morning wasn't a good start to the day. I forgot to weigh myself, and then left my laptop at home. I realised when I got to work, and had to come back home again to get it.

Frrrfu!

Good news this morning, though, 17st 4½lbs. That gets a few more milestones under way: it's my new lowest weight, a great week - 2¼lbs lost, and takes me past the three-quarter point to my goal of 16st 9lbs.

I had a "Doh!" moment a few evenings back: I passed the 18 stone barrier without re-calculating my points allowance; it's now 31 points, down from the 33 I started on. I find I can get away with a little more, so while I could lose weight steadily at 35 or 36 points before, that's come down in line and I now need to be sticking under 35 points.

This weekend won't be good - at least from a diet perspective: birthday dinner and a barbecue this weekend. Quite why we're planning a barbecue when there's a severe weather warning is beyond me. It'll be a laugh, though!

Monday, July 09, 2007

Diet Expectations

One of the problems with weight loss seems to be that everyone wants a quick fix. Yeah, I'd love to be able to do a month long program, lose the excess, and return to what I was doing before. We all would.

But life isn't like that, and a couple of articles over at the excellent Diet Blog are worth a look.

First of all, a sobering review of various trials says that the average weight loss after 12 months was just 6% of start weight. Even if you take my start weight of 273lbs, that's still only about 15lbs or so. Not much.

They also have a "ask the readers" for Weight Maintenance tips. Definitely worth a look. My own process here is slow and steady does it. I'm really trying to make sure I lose weight slowly: the last thing I want to do is to slow down my higher-than-average metabolic rate. If I can burn 300 calories a day more, that means I can eat 300 calories a day more and still lose weight. If I try to lose faster, I'm likely to bring the base rate down, and that will make maintenance harder.

Friday Weigh In

This week's diet lesson: having a cold bad for weight loss. The desire for comfort food when you're feeling miserable is hard to resist. Oh, and my cure for a sore throat might be effective, but it's also a point and a half a go: gargling with whisky.

17st 6¾lbs on Friday, and hovering around there over the weekend. Saturday was too tiring for words, and Sunday wasn't much better. I'm telling everyone I came back to work for a rest this week!

The cold is much better, and I'm back on track for this week. Thanks to Fat Bloke Thin for prompting me that I'd hadn't updated the blog last week.