Why I Want To Lose Weight

After something of a glum post on Monday, I have decided to take the advice of Ellie from Ellie Unzipped, and The Evolution of C., and spend this week re-evaluating my weight loss, confessing to myself (and you) the things I am still doing wrong, and reminding myself of why I want to lose weight in the first place.

I'm going to start with the latter, as I've never really addressed it. You assume its more or less the same for most people - to have more confidence, to be healthier, to look better etc. But I had all those reasons for a long time, and never did anything about it, so I thought I'd look at a few OTHER things that drove me to finally start shedding the pounds.



- I'm sure most people reading this will have come across the fantastic blog Jack Sh*t Gettin Fit, and if not, head over there right now for one of the funniest and most original weight-loss blogs around. He runs a regular feature called W.I.D.T.H. (Why I Do This Here), and I have contributed twice, so I'm going to share those with you here too.

- A feature common to both the above pics is wanting to look better for the opposite sex. It might sound vain, and a poor reason for wanting to lose weight when compared to health, longevity etc, but the fact is that my paranoia regarding my weight, and how I looked, effectively made me house-bound for several years. I wouldn't talk to girls, for fear of them laughing at or mocking me, I would avoid social gatherings like the plague, and I even deactivated my Facebook, so embarrassed was I about my weight. One day I would like to meet someone and maybe have a family etc, but I really feel I have to be happy in myself before I can be happy with someone else. I need the confidence to talk to others, and being happy with my appearance and feeling 'in control' of my life would definitely help that.

- I already mentioned that I deactivated my Facebook account. One of the factors leading to that was actually someone else having SUCCEEDED with their weight loss. It sounds like a terribly petty thing to have done, and I'm still embarrassed about it, but there you go. It was a guy I went to school with, who always had a problem with his weight. I've said before that I was overweight at school, but I wasn't as heavy as this guy, and one of the salves to my conscience was always that "at least I'm not the fattest guy in the year." He has now lost a lot of weight and gained a fair bit of muscle, and looks pretty great. A friend of mine commented on a photo of him saying something along those lines, and it made me so self-conscious. If she was looking at current photos and remembering how we looked at school, what must she think about me? A bloated slob, trying to hide his chins behind a scraggly beard? It was too much for me back then, and I dropped completely off the radar for many of my old friends. I can't wait to rejoin Facebook - my reward for hitting my goal weight. I'm already planning my first status..."Headspace is now half the man he was. Well, two-thirds, but its a vast improvement!"

- I was only two years old when Halley's Comet last appeared in our skies, so I don't remember seeing it. When I was very young that fact always rankled me, and I told myself that I WOULD be around to see it next time. That's in 2061, when I will be 77 years old. Want to make sure I don't die before then! Would also be nice to hit 100, and get my telegram from the Queen (well, it'll probably be King William by then!).

- In an older post I made a list of Things I Can't Wait To Do When I'm Slim, and all of those would certainly be reasons for me wanting to lose weight. In addition, as I am currently training to be a doctor, I would hate to one day have to talk to a patient about how their weight was affecting their health, while still be being obese myself. I would feel like such a hypocrite!

Anyhow, those are some other reasons (besides the usual ones) why this weight-loss attempt came about, and stuck. Later in the week I will carry on this re-evaluation of my goals and methods - I will try to admit to myself things I'm still doing wrong but try to ignore, and I'm even toying with the idea of dropping my anonymity, and coming-out as a loud and proud weight-loss blogger...we shall see!

Week 18 - RESULTS

I haven't posted in almost a week, and haven't really been making enough effort on the diet/exercise front either...

STARTING WEIGHT:   237.9 lbs

ENDING WEIGHT:  237.5 lbs

WEIGHT LOSS:  0.4 lbs

Sorry for not having written anything for most of this week. I feel bad that I'm now going to write a negative post today, as I did still manage to scrape a loss, but in terms of focussing on my weight-loss, this week has been a complete failure. For several reasons.

I'm still not exercising. Apart from that run I took on Monday night, I've hardly left my room. Revision for exams would be a perfect excuse, except I wasn't even doing that. I seemed to regress this week back into the lazy, excuse-making slob I was for so many years before. I would be sat there, browsing the internet, telling myself I ought to run, and I ought to revise, I ought to do SOMETHING productive...but I didn't. I kept saying things like "agh, this day is almost over, no point now", or "tomorrow is the day to get back on track." The same old guff I spouted for years, as my waistline expanded, and my grades slowly dropped.

Not posting also meant I more or less forgot about the blog, and therefore the weight-loss. I even stopped weighing for a couple of days, in fear of what the scale would say. Luckily managed to score a small loss, but that is, once again, thanks to really restricting my calories on the last two days. That's not healthy, not sustainable, and not what this diet attempt is all about. Suffice to say, last week I lost my way.

I feel more fired up for this week though. I have two weeks now before my exams, which sounds like a long time, but there is a full year of material to cover, so I've got my work cut out. I'm also feeling stressed, and angry, and frustrated, all emotions which previously drove me to exercise, so I hope they do the same for me again. Now I'm hitting the revision properly, I'll have a more structured day, and will also be more keen for a stress-relieving break from the books, so would expect to run more often this week too. Ideally, I want to get four runs in by Monday, and have gone over all my revision material at least once by Sunday night. If I can do that, and score a loss on the scales too, I'll feel like I'm back in control, rather than drowning in circumstance.

I'm fed up with making-do, and scraping by. I had a fantastic opportunity to drop out of an Obese BMI this past week, and I threw it away. By next Monday, things WILL be different.

WEIGHT LOSS TO DATE: 

59.6 lbs

 237.5 lbs

237.5 lbs

Victory From The Jaws Of Defeat

So I nearly scuppered myself yesterday, after recording a massive weight loss, but luckily I pulled things together, and managed to (almost) turn my day around.

I started well, with a decent breakfast. As I wasn't exercising last week I had reduced my calories to compensate, but as I'm into the latter half of my weight loss now, I don't want to be relying on reduced calories for too much longer. The time will come when I need to stabilise my weight, and balance out a normal calorie intake with regular exercise. I don't want that change to come all of a sudden once I hit my goal weight, so I need to start thinking about gradually bringing my calories back up, and increasing my exercise accordingly.

I was really busy in the afternoon, trying to arrange funding for next year at university, and as I went off to post my grant applications, I realised I was quite hungry. And I made a bad decision. I went to McDonalds.

I hadn't been there in months, and to be honest the food didn't taste especially great. I counted up the calories I had consumed, and with breakfast I was already flirting with 2000. "No problem," I thought. "I'll just make sure I go for my run tonight."

I spent most of that evening psyching myself up for my run (when I really ought to have been revising), as I haven't been in a few weeks now, and kept trying to make excuses. Finally the time came (just before sundown, when its getting cooler), and I started doing my stretches. Then, disaster! I felt an awful twinge right up the right-side of my back. I left it for a second and tried moving again, but it still hurt. I didn't know what to do.

Instantly that lazy, greedy part of my brain (which dropping almost 60lbs still hasn't killed off) tried to convince me that running was out of the question. AND, as I'd already eaten fast food and was probably going to gain weight, I might as well 'do it in style', and have a massive binge.

But screw that! Having lost so much weight last week, I knew that a slip here would see it all pile back on (the more I lose, the keener my body seems to be to regain). I worked out that my back only hurt if I twisted sideways, and should be OK when I was running upright. So I changed into my running gear, grabbed my iPod, and went to fill my water bottle.

Second disaster! As I sometimes put a dash of fruit concentrate in my water to improve the taste, and as I hadn't run in a while, that water had been sitting in the bottle for a few weeks. And boy, was it furry in there! Instantly I wrote off any chance of running that evening. I even got as far as choosing a DVD to watch instead.

But I got angry with myself. Angry that once again I was letting something get in the way of my running. I've been putting off going running for ages now, and I'd had enough of it.

So, I decided that I would trek all the way down to the shops, buy a new water bottle, trek all the way back home, and then DARN WELL RUN! Never mind that I'd have a pocket full of change and a dodgy back, I needed to burn some calories!

And I did! I only managed three miles, testament to the lack of recent exercise, but actually enjoyed the first couple of miles, which was encouraging. And when I woke up this morning and weighed...I was exactly the same as yesterday! I'd managed to eat a McDonalds and still keep my weight the same, which seemed like a massive triumph, somehow.

Of course, I was making mountains of molehills (as they say), but that's the way excuses work. They start out small, but then get bigger and bigger to keep you on your ass, and out of your running shoes. It was a massive struggle, just to get out of the house and three miles around the estate, and after all that I didn't manage to score even a 0.1lb loss...but it still felt like a huge achievement!

Week 17 - RESULTS

After struggling to lose pounds over the last three weeks, have I finished this month with a bang, or a whimper?

STARTING WEIGHT:   243.6 lbs

ENDING WEIGHT:  237.9 lbs

WEIGHT LOSS:  5.7 lbs

Yee HAH!

This is a much bigger drop than I expected this week. Indeed, its my biggest drop since the first two weeks of this weight loss program. As I mentioned in my previous post, I haven't been running at all this week, so what on earth happened?

I think the fact that this is my biggest drop since the beginning is a clue - back then, the weight was just falling off me, because I switched into a low-carb diet. I think something similar has happened here - on my visits home each of the last three weeks, I have been stocking up on carbs, far more than I usually eat, so I will have been gaining some weight as water (and maybe that caused the lower weight-losses over the last three weeks). Having switched back into a low-carb diet this week, I expect some of the weight lost over the last 7 days will have just been water. None the less, still very excited to see such a big drop, for several reasons!

- Into the 230's! Took me a little longer to lose the last 10lbs than it did previously, but I finally dropped out of the 240's, into territory I haven't seen since...gosh, I can't even remember!

- Into the 16 stone bracket! Granted, its still the very high 16-stones (16.99, in fact!), but just to see that 16 in front of it is incredible. 16 stone was my 'base weight' when I was in my last years at school, so to be closing in on that weight makes me feel so young!

- Over the plateau! Even though I was still losing weight over the last three weeks, I wasn't hitting my target weekly loss. Today's weigh-in smashes my target weight-loss, and makes up for the smaller weighs earlier in the month, so there's a real sense of being back on track, which is nice!

- Only one pound away from Overweight! If I do things right, I should only have an Obese BMI for another couple of days. I have been obese for so many years, its actually making me a little emotional to type this. Soon I will be overweight. I can't wait to be overweight! Haha, never thought I'd hear myself say THAT!

Anyhow, that's enough from me. Tomorrow marks the end of the fourth month of this program, so I'm taking it a day early and posting up the comparison pictures now. Getting there, slowly but surely!

WEIGHT LOSS TO DATE: 

59.2 lbs

 

237.9 lbs

 

237.9 lbs

Week 17 So Far...

Touch wood, I've seen significantly better results this week than I have in the past month, so I should be able to record a substantial loss on Monday.

This has been without any exercise, too. I promised myself that I would exercise, and I'm slightly annoyed that I didn't, but I'm pleased to see significant weight-loss regardless.

There were a few things that kept me from exercising. To start with, my revision mind-set saw me keeping unusual hours at home, either not sleeping at all or sleeping far too long, and the days have gone by in something of a haze. Can't believe its Sunday already! Then, I got the wonderful news that I passed my first two exams - what a relief! Didn't do as well as I might have liked, but as I'm on a fast-track course and doing two years in one, I'm grateful/relieved/amazed just to have passed! After that news, I 'treated' myself to a lazy day, and never really got out of it. Need to snap to it, got two more exams in three weeks!

As such, the revision begins (again) in earnest tomorrow, and as I'm planning to structure my days better going forward, that's a perfect opportunity to fit in time for running. Time hasn't been an issue, of course, but planning it will give me the extra kick I seem to need to get me out the door. I think the time away from running caused by my injury broke my stride (pun half-intended), so I need to make it a regular part of my schedule again.

I'm also planning a holiday away at the end of July. I'm going with an old friend of mine from my first stint at University, and we'll be flying to Vienna, catching the train down to Slovenia and riding a boat down the Danube to Slovakia, all in one week! I really want to lose as much weight as I safely can before then - not because my travelling companion is a young lady (we really are just friends!), but because I'm afraid I'll put ON weight while I'm away. This isn't unavoidable of course, and we've got a lot of activities planned that will help burn calories, but she keeps getting excited about all the restaurants and cafes we can visit, so I think food will play a big part in our trip!

Naturally I'll be away from blogging for that week, and I'm already dreading coming back after a 7-day hiatus, just to report my first ever gain. Still, I've got about a month before then - plenty of time to shift plenty of pounds!

My Top 10 Running Songs

I wasn't sure how to start this post, as the songs I listen to on my runs aren't necessarily songs I would listen to otherwise (I'm more of a blues/soul man at heart). I know some people like to hear solid pounding beats when they run, but others need something bouncier and more fun. I tend to use a combination of the two, with cheesy pop songs followed by 'harder' tunes to drive me on.

To come up with this list, I simply opened my 'Jogging' playlist on my iPod, and saw which 10 songs had the most plays. Here they are, in ascending order!

10) Chariots Of Fire (Vangelis)

I don't use this one as much as I used to - when I was still living at home, I had a nice straight flat stretch right at the end, and I would play this song as I sprinted for the finish line. It made it in to number 10!

9) Gold (Spandau Ballet)

Another song with an Olympic connection! This one used to help get me up the hill when I was running back home!

8) Bat Out Of Hell (Meatloaf)

Besides being a classic, banging tune, the beauty of this track is that it's nearly 10 minutes long. I used to play it when I was tempted to give up the run early - I would tell myself "don't quit until this song is over," and I'd bag another mile or more before the end came!

7) Eye Of The Tiger (Survivor)

Made famous by a Rocky film (Rocky III is the one, I think), this is a good all-purpose song, that helps me find the right rhythm when I'm running. I may even indulge in a little Rocky role-play when the streets are empty, too!

6) I Need A Hero (Bonnie Tyler)

OK, here's one I'd be quite embarrassed to be caught listening to, but as a running song, it really gets you pumped up! Not saying I'm a hero, by any means, but when you're all sweaty and tired and breathless, and this song comes on...well, you'll almost believe you ARE!

5) Don't Stop Me Now (Queen)

An example of a 'bouncier' tune, not one to make you feel all bad-ass and get the testosterone flowing, but it does give your energy a boost, and makes you feel lighter on your feet. It also helps makes running fun, which is a huge bonus!

4) Hot Stuff (Donna Summer)

I don't know if this song ever made it to America, or if people will only know it from a scene in 'The Full Monty', but its another tune I find makes me bop my head, pick up my pace, and run with a smile on my face!

3) Gonna Fly Now (Bill Conti)

I'm sure this one features on many people's running playlists, and for good reason - try going for a run with this playing, and you'll see what I mean! My second Rocky-associated tune!

2) Till I Collapse (Eminem)

This is one of the few songs on my list that actually gets me fired up. Most I play just to help the time pass, but this one I play when I'm flagging, or making excuses, or sore. Sometimes I just have to play this song on repeat, and its effect never changes - as soon as those drumbeats kick in, I'm flying!

1) Footloose (Kenny Loggins)

This probably only made it to number one by virtue of the fact that its often the first song I play (and then just have it on shuffle from thereon out). That said, there has to be a reason I usually play this first - its fun, bouncy, and the rhythm seems to synch perfectly with the pace I run at!



So there you have it! Some are old, some are cheesy, and some are just theme-tunes rather than songs. Some I would never listen to outside of my running gear, but as they've so far helped me to lose 56lbs and counting, they'll always have a place on my iPod. If I ever hear them playing on the radio, all I can think about is going for a run!



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Barriers To Losing Weight: Excuse 3

In my 'Barriers To Losing Weight' posts, I will outline some of the biggest obstacles (some self-imposed and some not) that previously prevented me from getting in shape. I will also describe how I overcame these obstacles, in the hope I aid someone else in doing the same.

3) I just don't have time to exercise.

Haven't done one of these posts in a while, despite having a list of them all ready. I think that once I started to shift the pounds, my old excuses seemed lame and pathetic (which they often were), so I stopped trying to reason them out. I've already talked about putting it off until tomorrow and feeling like you don't deserve to be slim, but the excuse above is one I also made, and one some people will still use, and feel its justified. I don't claim to have any universal answers - all I can do is explain how I overcame the barrier myself.

People are always busy. I don't know anyone who can truly claim to have completely free time. We fill our days with various jobs and chores and activities, and they then expand to fill the time allotted for them (Parkinson's Law in effect!). Heck, I even plan my free time - if I decide to watch a DVD in a spare couple of hours, that is then on the to-do list, and that time is filled.

I guess the first thing to do is to evaluate your day, and count up all those 'dead' hours doing things like watching TV, or putting your feet up, or browsing the internet. I can spend full days doing nothing BUT that, and by the end of the day I will feel I've not had a spare moment...but I won't have achieved anything. People will say they need to rest, that their jobs are hectic and stressful and they need those few hours in front of the TV to unwind. Well, exercise is a great stress-reliever too, once you get into it, so one just has to make the decision to work out. You have to decide what you want more - one more episode of that favourite TV show, or one more pound dropped this week.

And that's another thing people with genuinely busy lives will have to do - decide what they really want. Its all very well saying you would like to lose weight, but just don't have the time for it. The problem is, that's passive - you are placing yourself in a hopeless position, a victim of your own schedule. You have to be active in your decision to lose weight. Those pounds aren't going to burn themselves. The whole point is to get out of your comfort zone - obviously things can't stay as they are, as the way they are has caused you to gain weight. You have to put weight-loss on an equal footing with your other commitments, not allow exercise to be the first thing you cancel when your day fills up. It should be the one thing you NEVER cancel!

It can be a very difficult decision though. You might have to cancel some of your after-work activities, or wake up an hour earlier each day, or say no to your friends if they want to meet up for that weekly coffee catch-up. You'll feel like you're letting other people down (when really you're letting yourself down by avoiding exercise). You'll feel tired and grouchy (but losing weight is never going to be as easy as gaining it). You'll feel like you're missing out on things you like, and then the diet becomes the enemy, something you resent (in which case, you have to remind yourself that the diet is your friend, only its a 'tough-love' friend trying to help you shift the pounds you hate).

I guess for me, I just had to switch the argument around. I couldn't go on saying "I have too much stuff to do, so I can't exercise". That's never going to change. You'll NEVER have time to exercise using that argument, so you will NEVER lose the weight. Instead, you have to bite the bullet, and say "I HAVE to make some time for exercise, so that I can lose weight". By all means, say you are only putting things on the back-burner for a while, rather than cutting them from your life completely. You can go back to that book club, rejoin that amateur dramatic society etc etc AFTER you've lost the weight. But for now, you have to decide what you really want - do you WANT to get slim, or do you want things to stay as they are?

This was a hard post to write, since as I don't really have any answers (because everyone's circumstances are different), it sounds like I'm having a go at people who still make this excuse. Some people will have commitments which don't feature for me at all, notably children who need taking care of. That's obviously a difficult one, but I guess getting fit and being healthy will allow you to spend better quality time with your family, and MORE time, once the health dangers of obesity no longer apply. Its going to be a heck of a transition, trying to fit in exercise around school pick-ups and dinners etc etc, but if you have the support of family etc, that might make it easier. Not easy, but easier - losing weight is never going to be easy...there is always going to be something that gets in the way, and we all have to make sacrifices in order to realise our goal weight...

Week 16 - RESULTS

This week has come round a lot quicker than I expected - did I remember to lose any weight?

STARTING WEIGHT:   245.8 lbs

ENDING WEIGHT:  243.6 lbs

WEIGHT LOSS:  2.2 lbs

Better. Much better than the previous two weeks. Still a bit below my weekly target, but then I did say any weight loss this week would be welcome, as I've had a lot on.

The last three weeks have been small on the weight-loss front, but big on distractions. I have only managed to run once in that period due to my injury (which luckily seems all better now, and I'm determined to go out for one tonight). I've had an exam and lectures, which always lead to late nights (and Red Bulls) or mad dashes in the morning (and forgetting lunches, so eating out). I've also had to visit home each of the last three weekends, and as I've mentioned before, I really struggle to watch my eating when I'm away from my room.

All in all, I haven't been behaving myself. There has been too much "I'll try running tomorrow," and not enough running. Too much "I'll just eat this rather than go shopping," and not enough dieting. I've been lucky to see the losses I have over the last three weeks - my daily weigh-ins have been fluctuating so much, that had I ended the week on Friday, I would have showed my first gain.

Luckily, my timetable is more or less back to normal now. I'm on revision break, so I don't have any reason to leave the house except to shop or exercise. I have more free time to fit in my exercising. I'm determined to get back on the wagon this week, and start seeing a maintained loss, rather than a nervous diet at the weekend to try and drop the gained weight.

My pattern of three-weeks-per-10lbs has been broken now, so my rate of weight loss has definitely slowed. How much of that is just a natural rate reduction, and how much my lack of exercise, I'm not sure. I would love to be into the 230's by next week's weigh-in, especially as its a month-end weigh-in, but that would necessitate a rather larger loss this coming week than I have managed in a while.

We shall see!

Here's my tally to date, and then the photos. As next week is my month-end, I'll be posting up the comparison pictures then!

WEIGHT LOSS TO DATE: 

53.5

243.6 lbs

243.6 lbs

Week 16 So Far...

 Time to get back on the wagon!

I think the dreaded reduction in rate of weight-loss, the one I have been expecting for so long, has finally come.

Well, I say dreaded - I absolutely know that the speed I was losing weight before was really good. Some weeks were crazy-good, far more than my weekly target, but others were smaller, so it averaged out nicely at just over the rate I wanted to shift the pounds.

That's all changed now though. I am currently still at a loss for the week so far, but its a lot less than I could previously manage. If I keep seeing smaller losses (ones that are actually below my weekly target), I might have to re-evaluate my diet and exercise.

And to be honest, that won't be hard, as I haven't been as diligent as usual the last couple of weeks. I have had two visits home, which always puts a dent in my dieting, and an injury prevented me from exercising in that time. I guess I should be pleased I saw any loss at all over the last fortnight!

Things are looking up now though. I have a stag party for my cousin tomorrow, but I am determined not to drink too much or be talked into eating greasy foods. I also went for a run on Wednesday night, my first for about 20 days, and I managed my usual distance in about my usual time, so the exercise hiatus doesn't seem to have set me back. Next week I will make sure I get back on the wagon, diet and exercise-wise, but will accept any loss I get for this week.

Also, we had a service of thanksgiving today, for the families of those who donated their bodies to us medical students to learn from. It was a really nice affair, and I dressed up in a three-piece suit for the occasion. (Partly out of respect, and partly out of joy that I can actually get into the waistcoat/vest again!) Imagine my excitement when not one, but TWO young ladies from my course came over to comment on how much slimmer I was looking - they even patted my belly, to make sure it wasn't a clothing-induced illusion! Part of me wanted to say "I'm barely half-way, you ain't seen nothing yet!", but I think I'll wait and let my future weight-loss speak for itself.

As I've mentioned before, I'm also being measured tomorrow for the suit I'll be wearing to my brother's wedding. In September. 12 weeks, and therefore potentially 25+ pounds away. There will be much sucking-in of bellies, I can assure you!

Weight Loss - Time Travel?

 'When this baby hits 88kg, you're gonna see some serious fit!'

Not exactly a profound post today, more just an idea/realisation that I had, and thought I would share.

Part of the spreadsheet I use to record my weight every day is a 'notes' column, where I note down the weight at which I have passed each BMI point, each 10% progress marker etc, so I have a series of mini-targets to aim for each week (you can read more about it here). Included in this column are dates from the past when I can remember being weighed (and my recorded weight at the time), so I can congratulate myself on being lighter now than I was on that date. They stretch all the way from a doctor's appointment I had when I was 16, through a bungy jump I did in New Zealand, to an aborted attempt at weight loss just last year.

It's always nice to pass one of these markers. I can tell myself "I'm lighter now than I was at age 25!", and sometimes I even dig out old photos from that period, so I can compare.

The thing is, sometimes its more than just being lighter than I was at that age. When I record a lower weight than I could at, say, age 23, I actually feel as though I have lost all the accumulated years since that age, and not just the pounds. 

In many ways my weight (or my perception and paranoia about my weight) kept me from doing things I wanted to in the past, and I feel like I wasted a big part of my youth being scared, and nervous, and embarrassed. To now be dropping the pounds, and to look in the mirror and see my body the way it looked 5 years ago, actually makes me feel 5 years younger. I feel as though I now have the freedom and the ability to do things I wouldn't have dared back then. I feel as though the clock has been set back, and I have been given a second chance to live my youth, the way it ought to have been lived - to the max, full of confidence and excitement, passing up no opportunity.

I still have nearly half my target weight to lose, and those 48 or so pounds, once dropped, will take me back to a weight I haven't seen in about 10 years, when I was 16 years old. When I think of everything I have achieved since then I am amazed, because if I list everything I haven't achieved, all the things I was too embarrassed or nervous to do...that list is twice as long. So to be given a second chance now, another opportunity to do everything I want to do, with all the confidence I should have had back then, and all the knowledge and experience I have gained since then - well, I feel as though the world is my oyster.

I'm sure the Patent Office would laugh me out the door, but as far as I'm concerned, I have finally worked out how to travel back in time - lose weight!


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Week 15 - RESULTS

A busy week for me, where I haven't been able to focus as much on my dieting, so how has that affected my weight loss?

STARTING WEIGHT:   246.1 lbs

ENDING WEIGHT:  245.8 lbs

WEIGHT LOSS:  0.3 lbs

Apologies to my regular readers for the lack of posting recently. After my exam the week before last, I have had lectures all last week and this, and what with that and several visits home, blogging hasn't been the first thing on my mind.

And neither has my weight loss. I think a combination of less free time, and the injury I sustained to my leg, both meant I haven't been for my runs in a few weeks. Visiting home the last two weekends has meant I have been eating more that usual, and not the same foods I usually eat on my diet. Lack of exercise and increased calorie intake have meant I've struggled to maintain even a level weight, let alone a loss. The weight-loss recorded above was the best I could manage after several weighs this morning, some of which actually recorded a gain. I went for the lowest one though (although some might say that's cheating), as that was the best way to keep up my enthusiasm. If tomorrow's weigh-in is a high one, I know I'll now work harder this week to shift the pounds, to make sure I earn the small loss I have taken for this week.

The good news is my leg is feeling better, so I'm going to risk a run tomorrow. I'm also back home and the fridge is stocked with my usual dieting foods, so I can make a good effort on it this week. The bad news is I have my cousin's stag night this weekend, so I face my third weekend in a row away from home, and so away from my controlled environment and 'safe zone', where I am able to diet effectively. My willpower and enthusiasm both seem to vanish when I'm away from my flat, and I find myself eating things I wouldn't normally, without the ability to stop myself. I don't really know why that is, but I'm determined to be more controlled this Saturday night, and not have yet another weekend of undoing all my good work.

This is now my third week in the 240's, and I'm still in the relatively high 240's, so I definitely expect my pattern of 3-weeks-per-10-pounds to end next Monday. I knew it had to at some point, as my rate of weight-loss slowed, but a part of me feels I could have recorded better losses in the last two weeks if I'd had some more self-control, which is infuriating. Still, I am in no way giving up, and I'm still greedy for the weight-loss, so I just have to make the effort tomorrow to diet well, and start exercising again. Once I'm back in that groove, I am confident I will be right back on track.



I had a mad rush preparing for lectures this morning so couldn't take my photos, so I will update this post tomorrow with the new snaps. Until then, here is my total tally, as usual.

WEIGHT LOSS TO DATE: 

51.3

245.8 lbs

245.8 lbs

Week 15 So Far...

After the excitement of reaching the half-way mark, I'd rather hoped that this week could be a bit more relaxed. A week where I didn't have to worry about scoring a great loss, but could put my feet up and have a couple of days where I don't have to think about pounds and calories and miles.

No chance.

Firstly, I had another 'Tuesday Bounce'. I think its probably because I eat less on Sunday night (as I have a weigh-in next morning), and I eat more Monday evening (as a 'reward' for a good weigh-in). I don't usually exercise on Monday's either, and I think these all add up to cause the bounce.

This week's bounce was especially bad, as I went to visit my Dad at the weekend, and he drove me home on Sunday with a bag full of food shopping. It was a lovely gesture, and the worst thing possible - chocolate, Pringles, cake, fizzy drinks... it was all there. It scares me that so many people live like that, that a shopping bag filled with stuff like THAT could ever be considered 'just the essentials'. Some of it I threw out immediately, but some of it I 'treated' myself to on Monday. The good news is I didn't enjoy it, and I was really gassy afterwards which means I'll avoid it in the future. But it meant my bounce was bad.

I've also hurt my hip, possibly by sleeping on the fold-down bed at my Dad's this weekend, which means I haven't been for a run in a while. I'm not sleeping as well as I would like, possibly because I'm not getting in my exercise, so I can't wait for my leg to get better!

Tough few week's ahead in terms of temptation too. As I mentioned, I was at my Dad's this weekend past. Next weekend I'm going down to visit my Mum. The weekend after that, I'm off out for my cousin's stag night! All this while I'm meant to be revising for my exams!

I'm getting measured up in a few weeks too, for the suit for my brother's wedding. Glad I've lost as much weight as I have, but the wedding isn't for three months, so I plan on losing a few stone more between now and then! Might have to politely ask the manager if they could possibly have a few smaller sizes standing by...