Friday, August 31, 2007

Maintenance Plan

Since I'm on the final straight - the last half a stone to lose - I thought it was time to write out my maintenance plan so that I can't change the rules later!

Original Target: 17 st 9lbs
Maintenance Target: 17st 7lbs. This is a bit lower, partly to make the numbers easy and give me a bit of lee-way under the original target, which is a BMI of under 29.999999999).
  • Under 16st 7lbs: Gold Zone: Excellent stuff. Keep polishing the halo. This is where I want to be before a holiday or other blow-out occassion.
  • Up to 3lbs over (16st 10lbs): Green Zone: Fine, don't let it go any higher. Keep weighing daily to monitor.
  • Up to 7lbs over (17st): Yellow Zone: Need to cut back and get it back under control.
  • More than 7lbs over: Red Zone: Step away from the refrigerator and put your hands up. This is the calorie police. You are under arrest for wilfully neglecting the plot.
Once in either the Yellow or Red Zone the "stick to the plot" rules apply until I'm back at the maintenance target weight.

I'll try to stick to the daily weighing anyway - it'll be a good habit to keep up and it doesn't take more than a few seconds each day.

Friday Weigh In - Surprise drop

My weight has stayed pretty much steady every day for the last two weeks... apart from the last 2 days when it's plummeted.

It'll probably go back up this weekend, but the scales this morning reported a record low of 17st 0¾lbs - so a loss of 4lbs over the week and just 5¾lbs to go to my target of 16st 9lbs.

I don't know what I did differently, but something changed. Perhaps working on the car at odd angles is a surprisingly good way of burning calories or something.

Let's see if I can crack the long elusive 17 stone barrier next week! That will bring me into the maintenance plan level for what I want to stay at.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Fat Bloke Thin on diet progress

I'm not the only one struggling to keep focussed here. Over at FatBlokeThin, the man himself makes a number observations I can really identify with.
1. I have the attention span of a gnat that is really preoccupied about something very VERY important that keeps gnawing away at him even when he's not really thinking about it.
Yeah. Me too. And I find I can keep about one change of habit in the forefront of my mind, so if I'm trying to lose weight, trying to be tidier is right out!

2. If I don't get results, I get fed up and change tack very quickly - not big on hobbies, me...
I can identify with that too... I tend to try something for a while - a year or two at most usually until I can do it better than 90% of the population - and then give up and learn something else. It's not a good trait when you're trying to change your lifestyle though.
3. This blog has turned into a digital millstone in some ways. I really like to read other peoples blogs and comment about what they are talking about but the act of commenting starts a reciprocal relationship.........
I can understand that too. For me the blog is very much a conscience of mine, even though I don't get many readers, it's still somewhere that I feel I have to be accountable for my actions without the guilt associated with that accountability in real life. I'm accountable here, but I'm not going to disappoint someone if I fail to live up to the expectations - if that makes sense.

Friday Weigh In - thanks for asking - and a look back to where I started.

I could have sworn I posted a weigh in result over the weekend, but it isn't here, so I can only assume I was hallucinating.

17st 5¼ is the latest result, up slightly from the last weigh in, but given that I thought this was hiding some dehydration from the travelling (it was - the weight crept up for a few days) I'm not worried about that at all.

Life is far too busy right now - lots of fun things to do and things that need doing, so it's hard to keep focussed on losing some weight.

Holidays are mid-November - 10 weigh-ins to go - so it would be fantastic to hit the goal before I go. That means some serious focus between now and then.

I'm looking back at the rules I set when I started out....

"Change No 1: Reduce sugar in coffee by 1/2. So one spoon in a mug instead of two. One and a half in the big travel mug I use at work." Well, I'm more or less there. It's more like two in the big travel mug, but the coffee in the office is quite bitter.

"Change No 2: Limit alcohol intake. Maximum of two beers on school nights (or 1/2 bottle wine)." Hmmm, this varies. Sometimes I stick to it, sometimes I don't.

"Change No 3: Healthier snacks. I just bought a load of cereal bars (2 1/2 or 3 points instead of 5), and stocked up on cereal for the office. " I thought this would be the hardest to stick to, but it turns out to have been the easiest. As long as I've got something to munch when I'm peckish, I don't mind if it's not three bars of Cadbury's Twirl.

"Change No 4: Pub lunches and takeaways. Try to limit to one per week, and aim for healthier choices." I've pretty much stuck there.

With these rules, my daily points intake is around 35-37, which I could get away with when I was on 33 points - now that I'm supposed to be on 31 it's a bit too much, so I need to find a way to reduce the total down a bit. Lunch is the easy target here, I think. I need to start making a salad to take to work once or twice a week. That will give me more variety as well.

My normal day breaks down into roughly these numbers of points (multiply by 70 if you're thinking in calories).

4 for coffees throughout the day
4 for breakfast - cereal, milk, a little sugar, perhaps some fruit
8 for lunch - down from 10
8 for dinner
6 for a couple of beers

That's 32 points, so if I can stick to that plan as an average, I should be getting there.

I also need to dig out the book and start tracking points again. I've been pretty lax about that and it shows in the results.

Andy

Monday, August 20, 2007

Post Trip Weigh In - phew

The morning after getting off the plane, I got on the scales with a certain sense of trepidation. And rightly so, since I didn't think I'd been that good.

17st 4½lbs is ¾lbs up from before I left: pretty good, but I also felt pretty dehydrated. It's crept up to 17st 6½lbs since then, which is a bit of an increase, but a lot better than I expected -- or deserved!

So it's back on the wagon this week; let's see how it goes!

Friday, August 10, 2007

No weigh in, I'm travelling

I'm in the US on business this week, and generally finding it difficult to be good and stick to the plot. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Sunday, August 05, 2007

Friday Weigh-in, and the elusive wagon

I've managed to shift some of last weekends gain to produce a weight in result of 17st 3¾lbs. That puts me 1lb down on the previous weigh in 2 weeks ago, which sounds better than it is.

I'm really struggling to stay focussed right now - and with a two week business trip coming up, I don't see much of an improvement on the horizon. I seem to be able to stay with it for 2-3 days, then the desire for something nice takes over, and I start to lose the plot again. I'm also really struggling to stick with habits I established quite firmly to start with - daily weighing and tracking seem like a real chore right now.

I guess I shouldn't be too hard on myself: it's the results that matter, and the weight is still coming off, albeit in fits and starts. But the sun is shining, and what I really want to do is to go and sit in the garden with a beer and a book. And that's 3 points I probably shouldn't have today.