I will be skinny

There are at least 6 different types of hunger

2012-02-09T12:48:00.002+13:00

Current weight: 78.7kg

Hunger. Everyone experiences it, just like everyone experiences pain, tiredness or unhappiness. But I think it's useful to distinguish the different types of hunger. They are not all the same. It is possible to feel full and hungry at the same time. Knowing the cause of why you feel hungry can help with deciding whether to eat or not. Here's my list:

An empty stomach: your stomach contains sensors that knows how full it is. This signal is sent to the brain, and you can easily feel that your stomach is empty. Or when it's full. I try to ignore this feeling, when it's empty. It really doesn't mean anything. Having a full stomach is a nice feeling, though. It's a major reason why I gave up on a low carb diet, as I wasn't eating any fruit and I missed that full stomach feeling.
Tiredness. I am tired 99.9 percent of the time. I've been this way for nearly 20 years now, and I attribute my weight issues to tiredness (when I'm not watching my weight, I put on about 1 kilogram a month, about an extra apple a day). The more tired I am, the hungrier I am. I can be ravenous when I'm exhausted. This is caused by hormones making you hungry. I guess it's a short-term mechanism to give you a spurt of energy to keep going. When I have a nap, and I'm not (or less) tired, what happens? I'm not hungry.
Your body is lacking in food. This is the only reason why I should eat. When I have my "perfect" eating days, this is why I eat. Ideally, you try to not get really hungry and over eat. It is also possible to feel full (having just eaten a few apples a minute or two ago) and still be hungry, as your body hasn't digested the apples yet.
A stimulating environment. Have a filling meal and then walk into a supermarket. Feel hungry? This is probably just psychological (ie it all takes place in your brain) but it is hard to resist. This is the reason why I try to not go to the supermarket too often. I have to go roughly every 5 days (most of my food can last a week, the exception is bananas) which is bad enough as it is.
Unknown reasons. Pain, tiredness and sadness can happen for unknown reasons, and the same happens with hunger. Who knows what the cause is. Does it matter? If I am eating consistantly, I know that it shouldn't be there, and will probably go away soon.
Food anxiety. This was discovered recently, I drove to work, and 3 blocks away from home, I realised that I'd forgotten to take my food. I could turn around and get it but I absolutely hate being late for work. Anyway, there is a food vending machine at work. Yes, a very dangerous thing. I knew that I could buy a cookie for lunch, and if I was hungry at the end of my shift, maybe something else. I start work. What happens? I'm hungry for 3 hours. I'd just eaten before leaving work, so my body didn't need food. I was just anxious, either eating too much or too little. Ironically, about half an hour before I was about to eat the cookie, my hunger went away.

That's my list. I guess there might be a few different ways that I haven't discovered yet, or different ways of interpreting things.

2012 - plans for reaching goal weight

2012-01-18T07:39:00.000+13:00

Monday 9th Jan - 78.8kg

Monday 16th Jan - 78.5kg

2012 - according to the Mayan calendar, this could be our final year on the planet. I'm slightly dubious of that, but my chances of dying by asteroid collision with Earth is about the same as me dying by an air crash.

Anyway, weight loss. I gained over Christmas/New Year. This was the first time that happened, the last two Christmas/New Year periods I lost. It probably had to do with me spending Christmas day alone. That's a bit of a downer. Same with New Years eve.

I now have 12.5kg to go to reach goal weight, and I want to reach it this year. That's about 35 grams a day, if I want to reach it by the end of the year. That's entirely doable by just diet alone. But I want to reach it sooner. That means exercise. Walking and running.

About 20 days ago, I started a 100 day running challenge. It was going well, until last night. I just forgot. I went out in the evening to see a film (Darkest Hour - a reasonably enjoyable film) and bused back home. My car has a problem with the fuel pump, it'll get fixed in the next week. I ended up Skyping (video calling on my computer) and just forgot to have a run. Guess what? My 100 day challenge restarts. I want to have a self-challenge that I actually get to complete.

I have a lot of spare time, so I want to walk. Walking is ideal for someone with a lot of time. Every day, I want to go for a long walk. I'm sure that will help with the weight loss.

I have signed up for a group weigh-in at a very popular website. 1700 people signed up, a huge number. Only about 10% will post their weights by the end of the 3 months, and I want to be one of them. But more than that, I want to weigh less with each weigh-in. With the previous 3 month group weigh-in, only 3 people (one medium weight, two heavy) had each weigh-in lower than the previous out of 1000 starters. I want to be one of them this time. I have faith that I can do this, I've done it before.

Tomorrow, I start with my 'perfect eating' graphic. If I eat perfectly, I get a green square. Otherwise, it's red. I've done this before, and it's helped. Not a lot, but it's helped.

I want to reach goal weight somewhere between June and August. Is that achievable? Definitely. I'm not 100% certain I'll achieve it then, but I'm going to make aim for that period and see what happens.

2011 - a year in review

2012-01-02T22:31:00.003+13:00

79.1kg, a gain of 500 grams from last week

I thought it might be interesting to look back at 2011 and see how my year went. To look properly though, I need to go back to about August - September 2010. Back then, I was watching as a very popular website that I used to regularly go to, the users developed a spreadsheet, where people could enter their weights and see how everyone was going. People could enter their weights twice a month. I thought that I would have no problems showing everyone how someone could lose weight. But then, nothing happened. I didn't really lose, and stopped entering my weight after a few months. I was embarrassed about my lack of progress.

However, I made a promise to myself. The promise was to restart in January 2011 and for each weigh-in, I'd be less than the previous reading. So starting in the new year, that's exactly what happened. My weight went up and down a bit but twice a month, each reading was lower than the previous reading. Sometimes I'd realise that my weight was too high, and I'd have to start a low carb diet, simply to lose a few kilograms for the weigh-in, then I'd go back to high carb again. I was also refining what I was eating. Small changes to hone in the perfect diet that I'd eat every day, and in the same quantities too.

I had my birthday, and a few days later, the earthquake happened. 181 people died, 6,500 people were injured and thousands had damaged homes, or lost jobs. 20% of Christchurch's population temporarily left the city. There were a huge number of aftershocks. All in all, it was pretty bad for a while. The pool where I swam closed, but that was the least of our worries. Just this morning, we had a 'swarm' of earthquakes. Probably 20-30 that you could feel. Usually it's not as bad as this, and sometimes you can go for 2-3 weeks before you felt an aftershock, then it all happens again.

A week after the earthquake, Becky had her birthday. From then on, I was in full-on weight loss mode. I had sorted what I was going to eat, and how much. Each of my weigh-ins on the social bookmarking website was less than the previous reading. I wanted to be the only person on that website who lost each subsequent reading, of the 500 starting.

Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be. When I was attempting to enter the weight on the 1st of July, the spreadsheet didn't allow editing. Something was wrong. My motivation disappeared into thin air due to that simple thing happening. Surprising, isn't it? Ten days later, I told Becky that I wanted to be single, and we pretty much stopped talking for the next 3 weeks, until she moved out. That stress caused weight gain. More worries. I'd noticed that whenever I had money worries, I had this instinctive urge to eat bad food. I just couldn't help myself. Probably some evolved reaction to famine. For a month or so, I had money issues to worry about, which meant that I didn't eat properly.

While I was losing in the first half of 2010, I lost weight for 18 weeks in a row. That is exceptional for me. Before that, I'd managed 7 weeks. I put the difference down to eating the same thing every day.

My weight headed in the wrong direction for a while in the second half, and ended up about 10 kilograms heavier than what it had been. I guess it could have been worse. I've been losing (not totally consistently) since. I had a bit of a Christmas/New Year gain. That's fine.

I lost about 5.7 kilograms in 2011. 2.8kg in 2010 and about 6.5kg in the last 4 months of 2009. No one said that losing weight was easy.

So what have I got planned in 2012? Obviously reaching goal. But more than that. I want to finish my promise to myself. Each half month, I want to weigh less than I did previously. The online spreadsheet that I used in the past is obsolete now, you can now use it but only about 20 people bother. I also want to break my 18 weeks in a row loss record. I want to save up for a smartphone, and I plan on putting $1 in an old soft drink bottle next Monday when I lose. Each subsequent week, I put an amount that increases by $1, each time I lose weight. Finally, I want to complete the 100 days of running challenge I started a week ago.

So that's:

Reach goal weight. May at the earliest, I'd say.
Each half month, a weigh-in that's less than the previous one
Try and break my 18 weeks in a row losses record, and save for a smartphone
Finish the 100 days of running challenge

Speaking of challenges, this is the final post of the Give Yourself The Best Gift Challenge. How did I do? Well, I completed it! I lost about 4 kilograms in 13 weeks. No, that isn't a lot. But it's still a loss. More than that, I stuck to a long challenge. I'm presenting to myself this award: being able to display the image related to the challenge:

The image is now proudly displayed on the sidebar of this blog.

100 day running challenge

2011-12-26T09:35:00.002+13:00

78.6kg, a loss of 400 grams from last week

Well I'm continuing to lose weight. That's good. But that bad news is that I've not restarted my exercise. Other bad news is that my car has a faulty fuel pump, which means that I won't be using it in a while. I don't mind busing, especially in summer, but it's probably not worth busing to the gym. So I want to start running again. A challenge I'm giving myself is to do 100 consecutive days of running. I know that I'm awful at challenges, but I want to do this one. I actually want to succeed in a self-driven challenge. It has to be possible.

I'm working a lot today, but starting tomorrow, the plan is simple. 100 days. No misses. Every day, including days I'm sick, and my birthday. The last day is the 4th of April. I've "only" got 12.6kg to lose, so 100 days of diet and exercise will take me really close to goal. My only requirement is that I have to run for at least 5 minutes. Of course, I'm almost certain to run for longer, but that is my "if I'm sick, I need to run that" amount.

One more week of the Give Yourself The Best Gift challenge. Currently, I've lost just under 4 kilograms. Not as much as I would have liked, but every bit counts. I know that I'm going to get to goal. I just know it.

A loss is a loss...

2011-12-20T07:20:00.002+13:00

79.0kg, a loss of 200 grams this week.

Well, I gained for two weeks, and then I lost this week. That's good. I've turned the ship around, but I haven't lost much. I have yet to get to the gym, but hey, that's okay. I'm having a bit of a financial crisis at the moment (due to my own mismanagement of money) and I simply can't afford the petrol to get there. Everything involving money has to be carefully allocated for the next eight days. I won't run out of food, but it'll be close.

I tried budgeting food for $60 a week, but really, it's just too boring. $92 a week makes life more enjoyable, I don't want to feel like I'm living in a food prison where the (physically) small amounts of food don't create a spark of enjoyment in my day. I want to go low carb again, but when I'm at goal, not before. Plus I bought lots of olive oil, I'll use that up before I go overseas. So from my next pay in 8 days, I'm going back to what I was eating. Special K. Meat patties. Fruit. Veges (of course!). Whey protein powder.

Christmas is going to be an almost non-event this year. Apart from Skype, I won't be seeing anyone on Christmas day. That's not specifically an issue for me this year, but I don't want it to happen for more than a few Christmas days in my life. I'll treat myself to a few nice foods, but apart from that, I'll just watch some DVD's and maybe go for a walk or something. I expect to lose weight this Christmas day, the same as I lost weight in 2010 and 2009 Christmas days.

Weekly update

2011-12-13T12:00:00.003+13:00

79.2kg, a gain of 600 grams from last week

Okay, I admit that I'm headed in the wrong direction. Two weeks in a row of gaining. I realised what the problem was, being on holiday for such a long time was increasing the lack of direction for me. It's not that work makes my life better, probably the opposite (with the exception of getting paid, of course). It's just having five weeks of holidays is probably a lot, and any structure that I already had in my life might slowly evaporate.

So I'm back to work now, and the structure has increased. I have a feeling that I will start with the exercise again, I didn't have this 2 or 3 weeks ago. That's good. Any small gains will take a week or two to get rid of. I've been up and down so much on this rollercoaster, a small amount is not going to change any long-term results.

My brother came to visit briefly. His oldest daughter was graduating in Dunedin, so they flew to Christchurch and stopped in to visit me on the way down, and drove the rest. I complimented him on his weight loss. He has just as bad a problem with yo-yoing as I do. I said that he only had about 10kg to go, but his wife said that she didn't want him going to get as low as 80kg because his face looked "gaunt". That's wrong, of course, his face didn't look gaunt, it's just that really, she didn't want to be with a slim man, when she was not so slim. I think that this is a common problem in couples, one person feels insecure about the other losing weight. I hope he ignores her requests. But my brother has always been an overeater (such as planning to gain weight when on holiday) so who knows when he will reach 80kg, if ever.

Oops, I gained this week

2011-12-06T06:53:00.002+13:00

78.6kg, a again of 500 grams from last week

I lost 12 weeks in a row, but due to my own mismanagement I gained this week. I wasn't weighing daily, and due to overindulging more than a few days in a row, plus something I went to on Saturday night, Monday's weigh-in was a bit of a surprise. Well, really it wasn't. Don't worry, I haven't lost my weight loss mojo. This is a minor setback, a small bump in the road.

In terms of the dreaded exercise, I'm still not doing any. I'm hoping that will change soon, because I'm paying for the gym, whether I'm going or not. Maybe it's because I'm on holiday at the moment, and have been for just over a month now.

Because of my eating the same thing every day, it's easy to work out how much I spend on food. I was really surprised to see that I spend at least NZ$93 a week. That's a bit too high for me, so I am trying to get it down to about $60 a week. That means reducing protein, which may result in an increase in hunger. It's all a bit too early to tell so far. One thing I did try a few days ago was peanuts. At 44 kilojoules per cent, they are great value for money. The most expensive food in terms of energy is frozen vegetables, at 3 kilojoules per cent, but I don't buy them for the energy, rather for the nutrients. Anyway, after consuming probably more peanuts than I should have, I end up with a bad case of indigestion. I vaguely recall this happening in the past, when I over did it with peanuts. I'll have to limit how much I eat, and also plan my day so I have them over the whole day.

In case anyone is wondering what my cooking plan is, well there isn't any. I hate to cook, I see food preparation as wasted time so I tend to eat raw food or things that are easily cooked in the microwave (such as frozen veges). I've been this way since, well since I moved out of the family home. I've lived with two women, it seemed that my dislike of cooking rubbed off on them so they didn't feel the need to be all domestic and cook for me. Plus I would never ask them to.

I'm feeling fine about the gain this week, although my 12 week streak has ended. I'm expecting a loss next week.

Another week, another loss

2011-11-28T10:26:00.002+13:00

78.1kg today, a loss of 400 grams from a week ago.

Week twelve of losing weight. That's good. What is not so good is the lack of exercise. That's bad. I'm planning to start today, and go all-out. My reason at this stage is a 'secret' but I'm bound to tell you in the next couple of months. I may be going overseas sooner than expected (maybe), and I want to reach goal weight before I do. Then again, maybe I won't go overseas early.

I know I have said this before, and nothing has happened. This time I'm a bit more serious than before.

I want to start exercising today, and continue for each day, until I'm at goal. I have a games console (Xbox 360) hooked up to my large LCD television. I have a Microsoft Kinect (which I'd planned to sell, because I never thought I'd use it) which is a 3 dimensional infrared detection system for the Xbox 360. I have an exercise game (Your shape, fitness evolved). What that all means is that I can move and the camera sees where my body and arms and legs are, and tells me how I'm exercising. The only downside is that I have to move the couch each time I have to do it.

Because I have that setup, I can exercise on days that I go to work, and the gym is closed. That means that I have no excuses. Maybe if I have a cold, I can take a day off. Who knows.

Now, it's time for an analysis of the 49 weight loss bloggers who I have been keeping track of, when they posted their weights on their blogs. First, a bit of background. I knew that most weight loss bloggers didn't achieve their weight loss goals, but I wanted to see exactly how they didn't achieve things, and see exactly what was happening to bloggers as an average, and also what maybe the top 25% achieved.

In January this year, I made a list of about 200 bloggers, and in February I took note of posted weights by the first 100 who said how much they weighed. I've been tracking these 100 bloggers since. When they update their weight, I enter it into my spreadsheet. 21 have abandoned or removed their blogs so far. I wanted to see how they were going after 6 months, however only 36 posted their weight in August. That number went up to 49 if I recorded their weight in the 6th, 7th or 8th month.

The good news is that the bloggers are actually losing weight. Maybe. The average weight for the 100 in February was 95.5kg. For November the average is 93.3kg, a loss of 2.2kg over 9 months. That's about 54 grams loss each week. The problem is that I don't know about the bloggers who don't post their weight. 28 posted their weight in October, a lot less than the 100 in February or 54 in March. I guess I should have found 100 bloggers who posted their weights in both February and March, maybe I would get more data. Maybe the people who don't post their weights are gaining. I get the feeling that if they were losing, we'd know about it.

I thought that I'd have a question/answer way to describe the data. First question:

Does having a weight loss blog help you to lose weight?

I don't know. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. I know that for me, the answer is yes, but I don't know what proportion of bloggers are like me, who wanted to document their weight loss methods. To prove that it could be done.

What is the average loss for the people who posted their weight in the 6th, 7th or 8th month?

The 49 bloggers lost a total of 76.8kg, over an average of about 7 months. However one person contributed 31.3kg of that, the second best lost 20.0kg and the third best lost 19.6kg. This means that a lot of people gained. The average loss works out to be 1.6kg per person. But because some people were a lot heavier than others in this survey, as a percentage of starting body weight, the average loss is 0.46%. That means a 100kg person would lose 0.46kg after 7 months. In case you were wondering, median losses are 0kg and 0% of body weight. That means that 24 people gained, and 24 lost, with one person being the same as they were in February.

Okay, half lose and half gain. Let's talk about the people who lost. What was their average?

When you start to lose weight, you never know for sure whether you'll be successful. But if you were successful, you'd lose an average of 7.84kg or 7.14 percent of your body weight.

There have to be some people who are pretty good at losing weight, say the best one quarter of the 49 who posted their weight. How did they go?

The top twelve people lost an average of 11.5 percent of their initial body weight. The lightest of these people weighed 75kg at the start, which means that you didn't have to be heavy to be pretty good at losing weight.

It's almost December. How many lost for each of the nine months?

Just one. I'd post a link to her blog, but I don't want to unintentionally derail her progress by putting pressure on her.

So there you have it. Roughly half of all bloggers lose weight. I'll update the stats after 12 months, and see what's changed, and how many have reached goal weight.

PS apologies if there are any typos in this post, I've got allergies today and I'm having difficulty with my vision.

Weekly update

2011-11-21T19:17:00.007+13:00

78.5kg, a loss of 400 grams from last Monday

Well, another week, another loss. I seem to have the diet under control, but the exercise - it just isn't happening. I'm busy at the moment, going to see my father briefly in Dunedin, then back home again. The leaking hot water cylinder is being replaced on Wednesday, I need to do some things on Thursday - then on Friday - guess what?

I plan to restart exercise. Friday. The Give Yourself The Best Gift challenge issues that I stated last week are exactly the same. I'm eating a bit better, but losing weight is not on my consciousness as much as it should be. I'm hoping to change that by some method, starting Friday.

I know that I promised the results of my analysis of how 100 weight loss bloggers I've been tracking since February are going. Sorry, but I'm just too busy at the moment, so that will come next week.

However, here is a bit of a teaser, something to consider. It's a graph of those who have posted their weights, after 6, 7 or 8 months of me tracking them. The vertical axis shows how much that they have lost or gained. If they have gained, their dot is above the horizontal axis. The horizontal axis is their initial weight. All values are in kilograms. A very simple method to convert kilograms to pounds is to just double the number. That is accurate to within 10 percent.

There are 49 people on this graph (known as a scatter graph). 24 people have lost, 24 have gained, and 1 has neither lost nor gained.

10th consecutive weekly loss

2011-11-14T06:19:00.002+13:00

Weight: 78.9kg, a loss of 700 grams from last week.

Ten weekly losses in a row. That's not bad. I've got a good feeling about what I've achieved in the last 10 weeks, and fingers crossed, I won't have any gains. Things are looking good.

However, on the exercise front, things aren't looking good. I still haven't restarted it. It's been about 3 weeks since I've been to the gym. A service that I'm paying for, whether I use it or not. Bad weight loser.

Getting onto the subject of the Giving Yourself The Best Gift challenge, a challenge that I seem to be on but not putting much effort into, apart from posting updates once a week. We're on week 8 at the moment. Here are the action points that I'm not doing:

At the start of each day, plan my day with losing weight to be one of the most important things to achieve for that day

Write down what I eat if it is not on my 'list', writing that on my blog

Exercise as often as time and energy permits

Get quality sleep. That means going to bed at the usual time, rather than staying up late

Ensure that I have at least one full day of food at home, so I don't run out of anything

I've not achieved any of these, which is worrying. Yet I still continue to lose weight. I think that this creates unrealistic expectations of how much I can lose, and when the planets go out of alignment those losses don't occur any more. The other two action points I don't need to worry about at the moment, since I'm still losing. If I lose my weight loss "mojo", I plan to head over to watch the weight loss videos at made by Antishay at Youtube. They are quite helpful for motivation. Not so much as being inspiring, but there are hundreds of them there, and I would expect to watch 3 or 4 a day to help restart my mojo.

I've been reading weight loss blogs regularly now for about 6-7 years now. They fascinate me. Every weight loss blog goes through a cycle. First, it is created, but usually you don't read it when it's that young because there aren't any links to it. It's more likely to be deleted/go idle at this stage than any other. As time goes on, more people link to it on their blogrolls, and you start to read it, and when you see the name on some blogroll, you recognise it.

There is always one blog that gets linked to the most, one that I consider to be the centre of the weight loss blog universe. When I started reading weight loss blogs, Renee Gets Fit was probably the centre then. It's still being hosted, although hasn't been updated in over 4 years. I guess Renee is still paying for the hosting for sentimental reasons. Who knows. Now, it seems that Jack Sh*t, Getting Fit and Bitch Cakes are at the centre. I don't know which has more links to it, they probably share the top position.

There are about 2000 active independent weight loss blogs out there, as an estimate, based on blog rolls. An independent blog is my name for one that lets the owner link to sites not in the same domain name. The alternative would be a website such as Extrapounds, which is more of a community of people who are commenting on blogs within the same domain name. The average lifetime of a weight loss blog is about 2-3 years, from start to end.

I wanted to know more about the whole weight loss blog thing back at the start of the year, so I made a list of about 200 active blogs. 100 posted their weight in February, and I started tracking these, recording each month how much the owner weighed, if they posted a number. I'll do the analysis next week.

Another loss this week

2011-11-07T13:04:00.003+13:00

Weight: 79.6kg

In terms of weight loss, things are going okay. Not great, not awful, but okay. I'm losing. I'm eating sort of alright, but I'm not exercising. I guess I go through these stages of exercising well, then not exercising, and wasting the gym membership. I think that I'm going through a stage of loneliness caused by the breakup 3 months ago. I guess my social life is pretty much non-existent, and I don't seem to be bothered working on that, because I'll be travelling overseas in about 8 months. So things aren't great. I do have a cat to keep me company, and that helps a lot, but it's not ideal.

Moving on from that, here's a graph of my weekly loss for the last 9 weeks, in grams. There does seem to be a general reduction in how much I'm losing each week.

A loss is a loss, but I want to speed things up at least just a little bit. I've got a cold at the moment, but when sneezing drops a few notches, I'm going back into the exercise.

Halfway (second time)

2011-10-25T09:50:00.002+13:00

Back in mid-April I broke halfway, an accomplishment I celebrated by walking up the local hill (read about it here), and after my recent gain, I'm heading back down again. I'm halfway the second time. Today I weigh 80kg. 14kg to go. I've decided to not celebrate by going up the hill again, it wouldn't feel right, and I'm planning on one final walk just before I reach goal.

This is the fifth week of the Give Yourself the Best Gift challenge. I guess I'm doing ok, I lost about 1kg in the last week, but here is where the hard to understand bit comes along: I didn't do any exercise.

I don't know why I lost so much with zero exercise, and also I know why I stopped exercising: it was too hard. Or rather, when I exercised and had a sleep in the middle of the day, the day seemed much longer. That's because when I was sleeping, my short-term memory was moved over to long-term (with some of it chosen to be written over) and a week of doing this made a week seem just so long. Maybe I'll get used to it, maybe I won't.

I'd like to continue exercising still, but when you're losing anyway, it just doesn't seem worth it. I know that's probably the wrong attitude to take, but if I had to do the whole weight loss thing again, I'd do it differently. I'd start off exercising a lot, a huge amount. I could reduce the number of hours each week that I exercised, but I couldn't increase them. When I thoroughly got sick of exercise, I'd just aim for 1kg a month. I would have reached goal in roughly the same time as it's taken anyway.

Whenever I discuss weight loss with anyone, that's what I always suggest. 1kg a month is roughly 2 apples less a day. Your metabolism probably won't reduce because you're eating less (it'll reduce because you're getting thinner, but there's not much you can do about that), something that I noticed happening earlier in the year. Weigh daily, and try to lose a small amount each day. This wouldn't work for someone with bingeing issues, I have no experience in that, so I can't comment.

When I talk to other people about their weight loss, I generally say the same things. 80% of weight loss is psychological. Lose weight slower rather than faster. Don't tell anyone you're trying to lose weight. Weigh often but smooth out fluctuations to get an accurate reading. Then I ask them a question that shows how motivated they are. I ask them if they could buy a magic pill that they took one evening, and they were at their goal weight the next day, how much would they pay for that pill? Usually they say a couple of hundred dollars or so, which is nothing. I think that the more motivated they are, the more they're likely to pay. Me, right now with 14kg to go, I'd probably pay $2,000.

So there you have it. 7th week of losing every week. Halfway. Still disliking exercise. Nothing's perfect, I guess.

Another loss, but this time hardly anything...

2011-10-17T22:27:00.005+13:00

Week 4 of Give Yourself The Best Gift. How did I do?

82.2kg, a loss of a whopping 100 grams.

I guess I was derailed by the leaking hot water cylinder, as told about in the last post. But I shouldn't have been. Worrying about water everywhere doesn't mean that I have to put off exercise, and also my eating wasn't as good as it could have been. I also haven't written down what I've been eating, which I said I would do (and post it here on the blog).

This is the 6th week in a row of losing. Now that's an achievement. Usually I have a stall at this stage, and gain a bit. Not so with eating almost exactly the same thing every day. It's such a great tool to use for losing weight. I only wish I'd done it earlier.

I've got a new laptop, and haven't transferred all the data over, so no graph on how I'm doing in the Great Experiment. But it doesn't take a graph to show that I'm not doing so great. More on that next week.

3rd week of Give Yourself the Best Gift challenge

2011-10-10T12:49:00.003+13:00

Monday's weight: 82.3kg, a loss of 700g in the last week.

This week has generally gone well, I admit to neglecting exercise at the start of the week, then I joined the gym again on Wednesday. I guess it's good to be back, sort of. I never thought I'd rejoin, but I didn't think that I'd be single and suffer excessive eating for a month or two either. It is good, going to the gym and seeing the other people working out, it's motivating.

The downside of course is the tiredness afterwards, the need for a nap, and the fact that I simply don't have much time left in the day to do other things. I've also have become quite tired and had to cut short my exercise session a few times. The reason: I'm not fit.

My definition of being fit is being able to run for 30 minutes without stopping. I'm sure others have different definitions. I decided on Friday to test my fitness by running for one song on my music player, then walking for one song, then running again. I managed 4 runs and 3 walks. I was rather surprised by the lack of fitness, but then again, I haven't exercised properly in months. During the last song, I was officially running, but a fast walker would have overtaken me. In the past to get fit I have started off running for one minute, then the next day two minutes, and after a month I was running for 30 minutes and was fit. I'm in a bit of a hurry so I can't do that this time. Because of not being fit, I'm including running. If there's something that can get you fit quickly, it's running.

Which brings me to the Great Experiment. Can I lose weight at the rate found in the television programme Thintervention? Here's my graph so far:

The graph above shows that today I am about 600g heavier than what I should weigh. That's fine. Considering that I've only been going to the gym for 3 days so far, I don't have a problem with how it looks.

Today however, I won't be going to the gym. I'll be tidying my home because it's messy and a plumber will be coming over. Last night we had a 5.5 Richter aftershock. That's almost an earthquake in itself. Since September 4th we've had 7668 earthquakes and aftershocks with a strength of 3 or above. Of course, we didn't feel all of those. I've probably felt "only" about 2000. The one last night must have damaged the seal of the hot water cylinder where the pipe comes in underneath, and within an hour everything underneath was sopping wet, including the nearby carpet. I've got a container underneath, and there are drops every 5 seconds or so, but it's a nuisance. I'm so glad that I was here when it happened, and also I was wise enough to not put anything underneath the cylinder that could be damaged by water.

Second week of the challenge

2011-10-03T10:17:00.002+13:00

82.0kg, a loss of 500g in the last week. That's slightly less than I'd have wanted, and even more so since I'm on the Great Experiment where I get to see if I can lose weight at the rate obtained on the TV programme Thintervention. The way I'm doing things is I've got a specific weight that I should be each day. Today I'm 175 grams heavier than what I should be - that's fine. I have to be eternally careful though, because at least initially the rates that I need to lose are quite high. If I get behind a lot, I simply won't be able to catch up. Of course I've started thinking, hmmm, maybe I'll be able to stay on this experiment the whole duration and reach goal on 1st February next year? I hate it when I do this. I'm setting myself up for disappointment.

However, if I do manage to reach goal on the 1st Feb, I'm giving myself a holiday at Piha. My family used to have summer holidays there until I was about 10. 4 months of exercise and careful eating is going to be hard work. I'll try it, and I guess I'll just see what happens.

The Great Challenge - how long can I last?

2011-09-30T11:56:00.003+13:00

About a year ago I watched a television series called Thintervention. It was your basic lose weight through exercise and diet programme with a few differences. First, the people trying to lose weight weren't very heavy. Overweight and obese, yes. But not in Biggest Loser category of size. Secondly, it used 'real world' situations, or at least as much as they could find. Take about a dozen people, train them for 6 weeks on diet and exercise, then leave them alone for another 6 weeks, and see how they did.

I learnt two things from this programme. First, there isn't a linear relationship between weight and how fast you lose. It's actually a square relationship, which means that if you weigh double, you can lose weight 4 times as fast. If you weigh 10 percent heavier than someone else, you could expect to lose 20 percent more than them.

I also found out the mythical equation for how fast you can reasonably expect to lose weight. If you go as hard as you can, but you're not staying somewhere where exercise is your only activity. Here's how you calculate it: take your weight in kilograms (say, 90kg). Divide that number by 60 (1.5). That's the percentage you can expect to lose per week (1.5% of 90kg is 1.35kg). Of course, as you get thinner, the percentage drops.

You can read my post about the show here.

So what is this great challenge I hear you asking? I've decided to see how long I can last losing weight at the rate that the Thintervention people were able to. Starting today. I'll be concentrating on exercise and totally accurate eating for as long as I can manage. I don't expect to be able to continue until I reach goal, I guess it could happen, but I'd say it's not likely.

One reason why I wasn't able to do this until now is that for me, whenever I do significant exercise, I need sleep (or at least a lie down) immediately afterwards. Living with Becky made this rather tricky and not worth the hassle or trying to get her out of the bedroom for 2-3 hours. Now that I'm living on my own, coming home and needing a rest isn't going to be a big deal the way it would have been before.

Today I weigh 82.3kg. I'll go for a walk tonight, which will be the start of the exercise. I'll have my usual coffee and slice as a send off, I always do this so please don't try to convince me otherwise! I'll be joining the gym on Wednesday.

So what progress can I expect?

After 10 days I'd be 80.7kg

After 30 days 77.6kg

After 2 months 73.5kg

I'd reach goal in 124 days

Like I said, I don't expect to reach goal using this method. I'll crash and burn sometime earlier. The experiment is not to see whether I can reach goal. It's to see how long I can manage.

Third week in a row of losing...

2011-09-26T16:24:00.002+13:00

Okay, I accept that it's not the greatest achievement (especially with the fact that recently I lost 18 weeks in a row) but I have pleasure in saying that I have managed to steer the weight loss boat around and I'm consistently losing now. Today I'm 82.5kg, having lost 600g in the last week and 900g the week before that. I currently weigh the same as what I did back in March. Yes, the breakup has delayed my reaching goal by about 6 months. That's pretty bad but I accept it as things can get in the way of weight loss. 9 years ago I lost weight while watching two loved ones die of illness, something I still can't believe I did, but when it comes to dating related issues, it's all a bit too much.

How did I go in my challenge? Not that great. I didn't log all my eating, there was some Coke, some coffee and slices, and a few other things. Yesterday I had a chocolate bar. I was at work and debating in my head whether to have some Coke, so instead of going to the drink machine and continuing with that addiction, I went and bought a bar of chocolate. I've found it successful at eliminating caffeine cravings. It's better to have something fattening now rather than suffer again with the caffeine addiction. They were also passing around some small chocolate bites. I had one. However, the woman who sits opposite me declined the offer as the supervisor went around passing them out. She's been losing weight, I can tell because she usually wears something tight fitting. I guess the challenge for me is to decline or give away chocolate bites that are passed around. I've done it before, and I can do it again.

Exercise: I didn't do any. I guess I should have, but I just didn't have it in me. This week, I'm planning on walking a bit. I want to lose at least 700g a week, and that will require me to do some form of exercise.

So all in all, I'm pleased with how this week has turned out. It hasn't been ideal, but in my experience, weight loss never is.

New challenge

2011-09-18T20:53:00.003+12:00

I'm joining a new challenge that's starting in the next few days, it's called "Give Yourself The Best Gift" and what I like about it is the length - 3 1/2 months, from now until the end of the year. Who knows what weight I'll be then! I may sound a bit skeptical about my weight loss. That's because I have believed that I'll be some weight in the next 3 1/2 months so many times in the last 11 years since being at goal weight.

Anyway, about the challenge. You need to provide a statement, about what you'd like to achieve at the end of the challenge, and mine is:

My gift to myself (New Year's Eve gift) is to know that in the 3 1/2 months, I have done as much as possible to lose weight, survived any emotional or physical challenges that I've come across, and still was able to control my eating/reasonably exercise when those challenges (and they're bound to happen!) came along. That I can look back at this period and be proud of what I've achieved.

Also, we're (challengers) required to make a list of 7 things that we can use to achieve this. My 7 things are:

At the start of each day, plan my day with losing weight to be one of the most important things to achieve for that day

Write down what I eat if it is not on my 'list', writing that on my blog

Exercise as often as time and energy permits

Get quality sleep. That means going to bed at the usual time, rather than staying up late

Ensure that I have at least one full day of food at home, so I don't run out of anything

If/when something that starts to derail things, step back and analyse the situation. Work out what's going on. Find a suitable solution.

If I lose my weight loss mojo, instigate Recovering Mojo Plan (I haven't worked out what that entails yet!).

What I want to achieve is somewhere between the minimum and the maximum.

Minimum: lose weight every week while on the challenge, even if that is hardly anything

Maximum: reach the final stage of my weight loss journey: the 1kg a month line to goal I wrote about last post. The point at which I slow down my weight loss to 1kg a month, in preparation for reaching goal weight on 1st July next year. Theoretically possible.

First week of losing...

2011-09-15T00:27:00.002+12:00

I have gained quite a bit recently, the stress of the ending of my relationship with Becky (we hardly ever spoke for the 3 weeks between telling her I wanted to be single and then it happening), adjusting to the changes of living alone, then money worries where I had maybe 20 dollars to last 3-4 days (when I run out of money, I always spend what I've got on crap food - I guess some sort of evolved reaction to famine, and a possible reason why poor people are more likely to be overweight). So it was a bit of a weight loss disaster all around.

Thankfully, it has all stopped. Stress is over, indulgent eating has stopped.

In terms of weekly weight, Mondays weigh-in was the first week that I lost, I lost 0.7kg, making me 84.0kg. So I'm really back to what I was at the start of the year. I imagine that this whole recent gain will have put back my reaching goal by about 6 months, however I've changed my plans yet again.

When it comes to weight loss, I have a number of things helping me. One of those is the fact that I won't go overseas until I'm at goal weight. I'm definite about that, no exceptions. I'm thinking of going next July, which means that I have quite some time to reach goal. Originally the plan was to do the last 3kg in 3 months, reducing the chance of a reaching goal rebound. Now I'm thinking that I can just lose weight at whatever rate I can manage using diet and exercise, and when I hit the 1kg/month to goal line, I just slow down and cruise into goal on 1st July.

1st July. That's 2 years 10 months since I started this blog, and was at my heaviest. I would not have thought that it would have taken that long. Then again, I didn't expect to be single at the end. Looking at other weight loss blogs, it's kinda obvious that other people struggle too. I've only seen a few weight loss blogs where the person who started loses consistently and hits goal without having some sort of major rebound. Only about 10-15% of weight loss blogs reach goal by my estimation, a dreadfully low number and one hardly ever talked about.

So that's it. I'm pretty much sick of exercise, and when I do it, it makes me tired the whole day and I can't really achieve the other things I want to do in life. Weight loss has been high priority for so long, and I don't regret that, but I want to do other things too. By my estimation, I'll be hitting that 1kg/month line in about 4 months, which means 4 more months of exercise, then I'll still do exercise occasionally for muscle strength, but not for weight loss.

No more coasting

2011-08-18T11:39:00.002+12:00

Ever since Becky and I had our conversation about breaking up, I've been putting on weight. I've enjoyed eating more, I won't deny it, but I've been in a bit of a state of denial that my weight and any increases. That's stopping now. I'm back onto the eating the same thing every day. I've got 18 weeks in a row of losses to prove to me that it works.

I'm not so much in a hurry now, so losses every week are fine, I'll figure out the exercise later. My goal is simple: a loss every week. Every Monday I'll compare myself to the previous Monday. If there's a loss, I can go and see a film on Tuesday (which is the day prices are lower). If not, then I can't go.

To distract me from the loneliness (and adjusting to being single) I'm watching a DVD every day. These were recorded off television and when my video recorder got too full and I had to save it as a DVD to make room. The new rule is that I'm only allowed to watch a DVD when I weigh less that day than a week earlier.

I'm giving myself a sendoff today. It'll either be biscuits or bread. I've eaten more bread in the last 2 weeks than in the previous two years. I'll also get back to commenting and reading other blogs.

Guess who's on the market?

2011-08-02T12:18:00.004+12:00

I'm single. Yes, Becky, my girlfriend of 7 1/2 years and I are no longer together. She moved out on the weekend. About 3 weeks ago I told her that I wasn't happy (which I'm not, and haven't been for a while now) and wanted to be single again. I guess it was a bit of a surprise for her, but if you look at how we've drifted apart in the last couple of years or so, all the signs were there.

It's really disappointing for me, because I've never had a relationship as enjoyable (at least at the start) as I had with Becky. I honestly rated her a '9', which is one up from my first girlfriend 20-odd years ago. I wanted to marry her. I imagined growing old together. However, I've learnt that what you want and what you get are often two different things. In case you were wondering, my weight loss hasn't caused the breakup. I'm the same weight I was when we met.

So where does this leave me in terms of losing weight? For the last 3 weeks, I've been off the diet. Not exercising. Not weighing myself. I restarted weighing myself on Sunday, but I haven't entered it on my spreadsheet. Eating properly starts today. I will find losing weight harder while single, because I get lonely easily, and guess what I do when I get lonely? That's right, fill the void with food.

I have no plans to find someone right now, although who knows what the future will bring. I'm seriously thinking of having a year overseas, in a hot, inexpensive to live in country. That's a big step for me, someone who has never been out of the country. The trip to Indonesia is off, because I've put on weight and probably wouldn't make my preferred date of November, also having two overseas trips in a short span of time is going to be too expensive.

My new life has started. I'm recording a short video diary each day on my video camera. I plan to achieve things while I'm single. Wish me luck.

I feel like I'm drifting backwards

2011-07-16T09:38:00.002+12:00

My weight loss has stalled and I feel like I'm drifting backwards. Slowly. I'm not really sure why this has happened now, but I've got stresses about to happen soon and I really want to get my eating and exercise back in order.

This post is an acknowledgement of the situation and from the moment I post this, I shall try as hard as I can to work on my eating almost the same thing every day, and exercise the amount I know that I can do.

I haven't weighed myself but I don't think that the 'damage' is too great, but I'm going to leave it a week to prevent any nasty shocks.

I had 18 weeks of losses, I've probably had a few gains now, but I know I can go back to a string of losses again reasonably easy.

I'll check in next Saturday a week from now with the damage.

Losses 18 weeks in a row

2011-07-04T17:51:00.003+12:00

Graph indicates weekly loss in kilograms

I gained weight this week. That's not too much of a big deal because for the previous 18 Mondays, my weight has decreased each week. I guess it had to end sometime, and today it has ended. It's an achievement that I didn't expect to have, I've done 7 weeks in a row before a few times, but I honestly didn't expect to lose so many times in a row.

So why did it end? Three reasons came to mind:

1. My computer had a fault, so I couldn't update my spreadsheet. No spreadsheet = not worth weighing myself = temporarily ate more.

2. I had some stress. Most people eat more under stress. There was a mad rush to tidy my home because the owner came around to look at the living room and see if the room needed painting. I am not a tidy person, and I dread the owner coming around to look at the place.

3. I restarted the medicine I blogged about a few weeks ago. I had to stop taking it for some reason, and then starting again made me tired just like it did before. Tiredness = increased appetite.

Anyway, that's over and I'm restarting the clock and seeing how many weeks I can last this time. How did I manage 18 weeks? Regular readers will probably know the answer:

I am eating almost exactly the same thing every day, in almost exactly the same quantities, with rewards at appropriate times.

This post details how I'm doing it.

So I'm back to week zero. I probably won't surpass 18 weeks because I'll have finished my weight loss by then (the last 3 months will have the reintroduction of other foods so I expect my weight to fluctuate more than it is at the moment).

Lowest weight in over 7 years

2011-06-21T19:54:00.005+12:00

Another update in the going-back-in-time thing. Today I weigh just under 75kg, the last time I was at this weight was back in February 2004. I was single (well, sort of - seeing someone casually), studying, not working, and living alone somewhere that I pretty much hated. I'm starting to feel that I'm accomplishing things with the losing weight thing. I was in my 30's. It feels good to get this low.

My confidence in the ability to reach goal is pretty high. I'm 97 percent sure I'll reach it in November. The only thing that would be likely to derail things would be an unexpected medical drama.

More good news - the 12 hours of swimming that I owe can be cancelled, due to me weighing below what I should be today. Have a look at this graph (the vertical axis is kilograms above or below what I should weigh that day):

Every day in the last 2 weeks I should have weighed a certain weight. This drops by about 115 grams a day (0.8kg a week). The trip away made me get above this value, but for some reason I lost a lot of weight in the week back home. Surprising since I didn't do much swimming. I was about 12 hours behind in my swimming, but since I've reached zero in the above graph, I can cancel that. I might be able to do this now, but I'm not sure if I can do this a month from now. We'll see I guess. I'm only 6kg from cutting back on the exercise!!!

In other news, let's have a little chat about my (older by 2 years) brother. The first graph shows my weight has gone up and down a lot over the years, well my brother has yo-yoed more than me over time. What I don't understand about him is that he's going on a cruise in a few weeks, and he's planning on putting on weight! Ok, a 8 day cruise, you can expect to put on maybe a kilogram or so, right? Well my brother is planning to put on 5-8 kilograms!

Let's be realistic here, that's an awful amount of weight. Sure, maybe a few kilograms will not be fat, but we're looking at at least 5 kilograms of fat. In a cruise just over a week, it's crazy. Worse, he's been starving himself for the last 3-4 months and successfully losing weight. Currently he's the lowest in over 5 years. He's not averse to go on a fast to lose weight. So he's been losing, then expecting to gain, then he's going to lose again. He loves his food, but there's a difference between loving his food and over doing it.

We had a chat over the phone a few weeks ago, and I asked him if he thought he might have binge eating disorder. He wasn't sure. I'm not sure if he fulfills the whole criteria since he doesn't seem to be secretive about it. It's hard to understand. I guess I should just accept it and file it away in the things I don't understand about my brother mental drawer I keep on him. We aren't what you would say close. We're all different, my brother, sister and I. The only two things we've got in common is we're all intelligent, and we're all tall. Apart from that, there is no real thing that connects us.

Leave has been granted and the clock is ticking

2011-06-18T10:12:00.003+12:00

My application at work to take a paid holiday has been granted, which means that from now on, I need to lose those 10kg. This has been the 3rd time I've taken 3 or 4 weeks of leave from work, the others at April and the September coming up were for my trip, but as it happened, there is no way I'll get to goal by then. Actually, for September I could make it, but I want the last 3kg to be taken slowly, reducing the risk of rebound.

On Monday I went back to my old home town to say goodbye to the family home. It's been a part of the family for 37 years, but my father is selling it. I grew up in it, visited numerous times when I'd left for other cities and when I dream about childhood, I dream about that house (not the previous one we lived in from when I was about 3 to 10).

I wanted to take photographs of it, so I went back there and spent 3-4 hours photographing things. Everything pretty much. 496 photos later, I think I've got a good copy of was it was like.

The bad news is that I'm awful with trips away. I just can't help myself. I eat too much food, I've never had a trip back to Dunedin where I haven't bought food on the way there or on the way back. The same in this trip. On the way back it was just out of control. I wouldn't say it was a binge, but it was what it shouldn't be. I have a schedule and now I'm 4 days behind.

That's not a big deal, and I intend to catch up again because I owe about 10 hours in swimming. I'll catch up in the next few months, where my plan is to lose just under 7kg and be 3kg away from goal.

10 kilograms to goal

2011-06-03T15:37:00.007+12:00

Yahoo! I'm almost there. Only ten kilograms until I finish this thing. 18 kilograms down. Yesterday I weighed in at just below 76kg. I'm into single figures. My body is getting slim. Sure, there's still a lot of fat in my stomach, neck and thighs, but I've noticed the changes slowly happening. 2-3 months ago I started to notice my hip bones. 1-2 months ago I started to notice my collar bones.

I have to thank the speed of this process to eating almost exactly the same thing each day. I'm sure I would have gotten to 10kg above goal if I didn't eat the same thing every day, but who knows when it would have happened. I hate to think. Probably this year. I only wish I had started it sooner.

To celebrate yesterday I went and saw The Hangover 2. Ok, not my sort of film but I wanted to see something. I got a large popcorn there, which is probably the first time I've bought popcorn at the cinema in over 20 years, due to the cost. I had a coffee and slice (I get this every time I lose a kilogram) as well. That's probably about 5,000kj, not a huge amount, but enough for me. I didn't need to eat much for the rest of the day due to having had that.

Now, things start to heat up in the weight loss front. My work requires me to apply for leave 3-4 months in advance, it sounds like I've got an important job, but no, I'm just a lowly call centre worker with 20-30 hours of training needed for the job. I want to go Indonesia when I reach goal weight, which means planning exactly at what rate I lose weight. Anyone who has read this blog knows that 99% of my expectations of how fast I'll lose weight fail, but in order for the leave situation to be workable, I need to predict how fast I'll leave, and actually lose it at that rate (yes, I snigger each time I read that).

My plan for the last three kilograms is to lose each one over a month. The reason for such a slow rate is to prevent a rebound, such as what happened the last time I was at goal. I was at goal for exactly 4 days. This was back in 2000. I haven't been near goal since.

That leaves 7 kilograms, and I've decided to lose them over 2 months. 60 days. Theoretically possible. This assumes that I eat what I should, and exercise what I should. I won't be able to have popcorn. I will be able to have a coffee and slice at each kilogram.

This starts in a few days, when the sudden weight gain caused by all of that popcorn (carbohydrate related weight gain) goes away.

Then it starts.

Counting down the days...

2011-05-26T18:44:00.003+12:00

...until I stop exercising. I'm on some new medicine, and my doctor told me that it would initially make me tired. I didn't realise how tired, that long drawn out tiredness you feel hour after hour and day after day. It's not just the medicine, it's the exercise making it a lot worse. However, I'm just hanging on, trying to stay calm and keep to my routine. In the supermarket today I had awful cravings to buy some bakery (thankfully I didn't relent and buy them) due to tiredness. I also had difficulty remembering what to buy, surprising since I eat the same thing most days.

I really don't know how long I'll be exercising for, I'd guess from 55 to 75 days. That's exercise most days. I guess I can tolerate that. What will probably happen is that the medicine related tiredness will go away in the next week or two (I've only been on it 4 days so far) and things will get back to normal. Fingers crossed.

On the scale front, things are going great. I weighed in today at 76.6kg. Goal weight is just around the corner, I can see it in the distance.

Lowest weight in 5 years

2011-05-14T10:38:00.003+12:00

Five years ago I was my current weight: 77.7kg. Back then, I was trying to lose weight, on and off, not particularly successfully I might add. Studying at university, and looking for a job. Seeing Becky, but not living together. Not yet using the magic of wi-fi broadband, but on dialup. As it happens, I'd just been burgled, which caused quite a bit of stress for me. Guess what else it caused? You guessed right.

As I go back in time, the memories start getting fuzzier. That's great! Yes, the last 5 years have been a waste in terms of trying to lose weight, but I haven't been trying the whole time (as the graph shows!). 18 months ago, at my heaviest, something changed. I had my theory as to what produced successful weight loss. As it happens, that theory was wrong. But hey, I learnt things along the way. I learnt some things about myself.

What I learnt about losing weight was: the most important thing related to successful weight loss is the belief that you'll get there. If you don't have that, the odds are too stacked against you. For the last 5 years, I've always had this belief. Actually, since I first started losing weight, back in 1993 I've had a belief that I could do it. I've been at goal 3 times. I don't know why I have been blessed with this belief. There have been times in the last 5 years when I went to Muffin Break for a coffee and slice 4 times in a week. Yet still, I thought I could do it. Slightly delusional, I accept, but I'm still here. Not yet at goal, but it's within my sights.

What I learnt about myself and losing weight, unfortunately, was that you have to be at least slightly obsessed about losing weight. Exercise every day is difficult. My metabolism has slowed down due to a restricted intake, so if I want to get to goal this year, I need to exercise. I have less time to do things. I get tired due to the exercise. I need an extra sleep due to it often. Yet I carry on. I'm a numbers guy. What do I think of when I close my eyes at night, ready to fall asleep? That's right. My weight. I've done so for the last 610 nights. Every night, without exception. That's obsession, and I truely believe it's required to lose weight. But I'm not there yet.

I'm really pleased about achieving this. Of course, I've got in my sights the next milestone. 3-4 weeks away probably.

So why am I'm doing so well?

2011-04-29T15:29:00.003+12:00

Things have changed. Losing weight is easier now, much easier than I can ever recall in the last 10 years of attempting to lose weight (and failing half the time). I'm not saying that this system is perfect, and I won't ever rebound, but now after 9 successive weekly losses in a row, what's going on?

I'm eating exactly the same thing every day.

I have to say that this has been far easier than I thought it would be. I thought that I'd get bored. That hasn't happened. Ok, it's only been a couple of months so far, so eventually I'd get bored, maybe after a year. In which case, I would change what I'm eating, then carry on. By then anyway I'd be at goal (I know that I'm breaking a major weight loss rule here by assuming that I will be at goal at a specific date, something that hasn't happened in the last 11 years).

By exactly, I mean exactly. The only exception are bananas: because they come with their own packaging, are a bit messy out of their packaging, so I buy a bunch of middle sized bananas.

Here's what I'm eating:

Special K (I know that this is full of sugar, but it's the only sugar I'm having at the moment, excluding rewards)

Eggs

Meat patties

Bananas

Apples

Frozen vegetables (the 5 vegetable variety)

Cheese

Whey protein powder

Added to that is a multivitamin/mineral tablet.

This totals almost exactly 6,000kj/day (and this includes a reward meal every kilogram). Protein is about 90g/day give or take a bit.

It took me about a 2-3 weeks to work out the details of the food that I enjoyed, wasn't too expensive and had enough protein.

Is it healthy? I know I'm bound to be missing out on certain minerals/vitamins, which is why I have a supplement tablet as well. In a couple of weeks I'll be heading off to a dietitian to see if there are any things that I am missing out on, and what to substitute.

The plan is simple. If I eat exactly what I'm meant to (or less), I get a green square on my chart. Otherwise, it's red. That means if I have 61g of Special K, I get a red square. I use this method because it gives me no choice in the matter. After all, if I have 61g, why can't I have 65g? You get the idea.

I accept that this idea isn't for everybody. Some people love food. I am not one of those people. I love specific foods, and dislike others. Generally speaking, the simpler the food, the more I'll like it. I attribute this to my mother, who was fussy about food. She loved to cook, and was a good cook as well. When she died, there were at least 100 ingredients left in the kitchen, some of which I sampled the following year (my father doesn't seem to enjoy cooking, and as you can imagine from my eating list, I loath it).

Growing up, my mother would often make meals that I simply didn't like. I guess the fancier the meal, the greater the chance that I wouldn't like it. I much preferred to snack on an apple and maybe some vegetables than have some of her fancier meals. Anyway, when I told my brother of my new system, he said that my mother would be shocked if she were alive. That would be certainly true. In fact I wouldn't have told her.

Anyway, I'll tell you about this chart of mine. Because images are easier to process than words, I chose a rectangular chart where each day gets a square. A good day gets a green square, a bad day gets a red one. Here it is so far:

Each new day is added to the bottom, starting at the left. See those red squares on the 3rd and 4th bottom row? That's me having Coke (the real deal sugared thing, not that Diet or Zero cheap imitation) just before I gave up on it a couple of weeks ago. Caffeine cravings so far have been few and far between, and I haven't had any chocolate to stem the cravings so far. When I have a reward meal, it's not considered a 'red' day, just because I ate that reward.

Every time I get a reward meal, I do tend to splurge and eat more than that. Yesterday was an example, I was allowed a coffee and slice, and ended up having a 1,000kj chocolate bar as well, plus I was a bit disordered in the evening (I'm not crazy about whey powder, so I ended up having more cheese than I usually do).

Because I'm eating the same thing every day, I get a great insight into my body and how it functions in terms of hunger. So far, I have identified 5 different types of hunger. I'll post about that soon. But I now know my metabolic rate, which is (was) 8,500kj/day. I say was because in the last few weeks, my rate of losing has dropped somewhat, I figure that is because my metabolism has slowed. I'm still losing though. From this I can guesstimate that when I'm at goal, my metabolic rate will be about 8,000kj. This is without exercise. Realistically, exercise is one of those things that I do only to lose weigh, I don't see myself doing it daily (or even weekly) when I'm at goal. Monthly, maybe. I decided that I wanted to be in a state of fitness where I can swim for 30 minutes. How often that requires me to swim for 30 minutes, I have no idea (yet). I'll find out in the next year.

So all in all, I'm really pleased with my new system. I've been thinking about it for months now, but assumed that it would be too hard. Wrong. My cravings have reduced quite a bit too, which is great.

Another loss this week

2011-04-19T13:49:00.003+12:00

Some of you following me may know that things have changed, and I'm losing weight much more consistently than before. There is no point in losing the same kilogram twice (or worse, three times) but I've done this so, so many times. Up down, up down, up down down. That's the story of my weight loss journey. Until now. Yesterday's weigh in was the eighth successive weekly weigh-in where I had a loss. That's a lifetime record (actually, it's only a 16 year record, since I bought my first set of scales in 1995). Previously I was able to achieve 6 weeks in a row (I decided to not post this information last week, since an increase of one week doesn't seem enough really). I achieved the six week record twice in 2009, and once each in 2003 and 2005.

I know that this run I'm having can't last forever, but I expect it to last at least a few more months. Why am I so confident? Things have changed. I wrote a long, long post a few days ago about why but decided to break it up into a few bits so it wasn't so long. The next post will explain what's going on.

I have joined a challenge. I am notoriously bad with online challenges, usually giving up within a few weeks or so. I think that this is the first online weight loss challenge where blogs are involved.

The one exception to being flakey when it comes to online weight loss challenges is an online website which is usually related to social bookmarking. A subgroup was created for losing weight, and at the start of the year, 495 people weighed in and entered their weight on the provided spreadsheet. Weigh-ins are twice a month, and by now, only about 60 people have had a loss each weigh-in. I'm one of them.

The challenge I've joined is called Summer Lovin'. Ignoring the fact that we're in autumn here, it sounds a good idea. Post your goals each week, as well as your weight. It is run by Alexia at dimple snatcher blog I was half a week late, but was accepted anyway. Nearly 20 people have joined.

So I have to make goals for the next 7 1/2 weeks. I decided to keep things relatively simple at the start, so my current goals (I might add a few more as time goes on) are:

Perfect eating.
Start, and continue exercising, every day

A few definitions. "Perfect eating" means I get a nice green mark in my chart to be explained next post. I get the chance to say "my eating yesterday was perfect, exactly as I'd planned". The longest I've done recently is 9 days in row.

Exercise. At least a 15 minute walk. Maybe a swim, if I'm not working that day. Hopefully I keep up with my goals, and continue to lose weight, but maybe a bit faster.

These goals start tomorrow.

A walk up the hill

2011-04-15T16:37:00.007+12:00

A while back I decided that I'd have a walk up the local hill as a weight loss reward three times, roughly at the start of losing weight, halfway, then almost at goal. On Wednesday I decided to walk up again the second time. This post is the first time, that was in January last year. The walk is about 4-5 hours from the bottom of the hill to the top and back again. I had to wait until the weather was good (I would have preferred the day I was halfway but it was raining then), and I'd slept reasonably well to give myself enough stamina to walk the distance.

Time for some photos:

What the walking track usually looks like:

Panorama from the top:

Above the clouds (actually sea mist but clouds sounds better):

The walk down was as uneventful as the walk up, until I decided that I'd take a different track as a short cut. That led me down a different route in a different direction, so I had to scramble through brush to get to the normal route down. That added about half an hour. The difference between the lowest and highest points was about 500 metres. Two days later, my legs are still sort. However, the last time I did this walk my thighs were sore from rubbing against each other, I have pleasure in saying that this time they aren't sore at all.

I've said in the past of this blog of my addiction to caffeine. It's quite a problem, if I indulge in it, I get quite tired the next day, plus of course it's addictive and frankly, not worth having. Not with all the side effects it gives me. That's why, at the summit on Wednesday I drank my last caffeinated drink. I'm aiming for at least 2 years without it (I did that 12 years ago). Let's see how I go with that. Inevitably, I'll experience cravings. What did I do 12 years ago? Whenever I had the thought "just one can of Coke won't hurt", I bought a small bar of chocolate. That obviously causes problems for losing weight, but I'm thinking that I'll have cravings like that no more than once a week at the start.

Halfway

2011-04-11T17:13:00.010+12:00

I have pleasure in announcing that I'm halfway in my weight-loss journey. 14kg down, 14kg to go. It feels so good to know that all I need to do is repeat what I've already done, and I'll be finished. Time for some photos:

When I was at 94kg:

No visible change at 80kg:

Double chin still there, fat in my cheeks still there.

Now looking at my body:

Before:

After:

Noticeable changes, stomach smaller, collarbones more visible. Most of the fat which has left seems to have left my torso.

Side view:

Update:

Changes not so visible with the side on view.

Looking back at the photos I've taken when I was at my highest, I ask myself why I did that to my body. I think that the answer is complex, it was a case of being in an environment where I had easy access to junk food (Becky buys a large amount of junk food and keeps it lying around), plus I guess I didn't really care. Or at least care enough.

I'll post measurements in the next few days, and compare with those at my maximum.

It is time to talk about how long it's taken - 19 months. That's 750kj a day, just over 1 1/2 apples equivalent a day. One period when I gained, wasting about 6 months, and another period where I just maintained, without gaining or losing much, wasting another 5 months. The cause of the first delay was I went to a high carb diet after being on a low carb one, the other period - well I think I just had had enough, and wanted a break for a while.

There were LOTS of little gains, you know, a few hundred grams here, a few kilograms there. Over and over again. The sort referred to in my Piha holiday challenge that I've got going until the end of June. If I hadn't had any gains I would have reached halfway in about 145 days, not 587. That's four times as long! I don't expect perfection but it would have been nice to not have so many little, and not so little changes of direction, over and over again (about 30 bumps roughly).

Enough of the negative talk. I have changed my eating style substantially, and in the last 44 days I have yet to have a single 'bump'. More on that later.

Half done, half to go!

The pool has reopened, exercise begins

2011-04-05T12:03:00.003+12:00

When the earthquake occurred, all of the pools in my city were shut. Some suffered damage, some didn't. The local one, only ten minutes drive from my home didn't seem to suffer any real damage fortunately. It reopened yesterday. It's good to get back into exercise. In the last six weeks, the only exercise I managed was a 5km walk, and 3 minutes of running. Even though I considered myself reasonably fit through swimming, I was only able to run for about 3 minutes before getting puffed. I'm not sure what's going on there, but, since I don't enjoy running, I'm unlikely to find out.

From now on, it's sort of a race. A race to goal. How much swimming can I do? The limiting factor is my energy, when I do a lot of exercise I get tired, and need a lie down afterwards (and often I have a sleep as well). Since I have less energy than most people my age, I'm not surprised by that. Before the earthquake when I was doing a reasonably high amount of exercise, I was rather tired all day, I'm not sure whether I want to swim to that extent again. My eating has improved substantially, so maybe I can cut back on the exercise.

I'm still losing weight. I've lost 650 grams in the last week, and the week before that, I lost 700 grams. Those are good numbers, higher than average for the losses I'm getting with no exercise. Because half of the pools in the city are still closed, and are likely to be for months, my local pool is open from 5am to 10pm, 2 hours more than usual. The pool was pretty empty yesterday, the first day it was reopened. I get the feeling that it's going to get a lot busier once people find out it's reopened.

6 months to goal

2011-03-27T11:25:00.002+13:00

Last month, I predicted that at the current rate of losing weight, I would reach goal weight in 3 years. Things have changed, my eating style has changed, and right now, I'm 6 months away (25th September) from reaching goal, based on my loss in the previous month. I'm pretty pleased with that, I'm thinking maybe I'll reach goal weight by the second anniversary of starting this blog, and starting to lose weight, after being at my highest.

My body is changing. I'm starting to feel my hip bones again. Although that is nice, I'd like to see the fat around my stomach get smaller. Also I have these annoying clumps of fat on either side of my chest. They 'hang down' when I'm in bed, and get pulled down by my arm, which is uncomfortable. Sometimes I have to pull them back to their normal position. I don't recall having them in the past when I was this weight.

I'm getting used to my body, I've been this weight for 5 years, on and off. My weight records go back nearly 20 years so I know pretty much exactly how much I weighed for any date since 1993. The Piha holiday challenge is going great, which means no increases until the first of July. How am I doing this? Something a bit different. I've been burnt before, so I'll give it a bit more time before I tell everyone. Some people won't like it, but hey, if I'm losing weight, and I'm ok with it, then they should accept that.

Lowest weight in over 4 years

2011-03-21T11:27:00.002+13:00

It's taken a while. Just over 18 months to be exact, but I'm pleased to say that it was over 4 years ago when I was last at this weight. I'm at 81.7kg, with 15.7kg to go. Back then, I was living alone (while dating Becky), and looking for work. I won't dwell on the reason why I put on all of the weight since then, it happened, and I've got to let it go. I get a reward meal whenever I want for achieving this, I doubt it will affect my weight, because I'll eat less afterwards, total effect maybe 1,000kj.

Because all of the public pools are still closed because of the earthquake, so I'm joining a private pool. I didn't even know that these existed in my city until a few months ago. It's probably the only pool open here, so it'll be really busy. It's either that or running though.

I am going to attempt (note the word 'attempt') to lose 1kg a week, starting today. Currently, my eating plan is going exceptionally well, I'm losing weight consistently (about half a kilogram a week), but I want to speed things up. The other half a kilogram a week would come from exercise. I'm also looking forward to being half way in losing weight, I'll feel like I've achieved quite a bit when that happens.

Weigh-in

2011-03-15T09:36:00.002+13:00

I remember why my weekly weigh-ins usually stopped after a few weeks or so. That's because I realised that because I don't post frequently, half of the blog would be weigh-ins. I think that would be a bit monotonous, so this will be the last weekly update. I'll be posting more often soon, because I'll be halfway, and I want to share significant milestones.

As it is, I'm doing quite well. I've been losing consistently for the last 2 1/2 weeks. Things have changed, I've started a new eating style, but I want to see how it goes before I tell everybody what it is. I'll post in a couple of months or so if it is successful. If you were to note from my blog all of my ideas, plans and challenges, the one consistent thing would be changing things. 3 months of this new eating plan and I'll definitely feel comfortable telling people.

I haven't been exercising. The pool is still closed due to the earthquake, and I dislike running. If it is still closed on Thursday, I'll join a private pool.

Weight: 82.2kg

loss in the last week 600g

loss in the last month 1.4kg

loss in the last year 6.9kg

So things are speeding up, but I feel like I've just been crawling before now.

Weekly weigh-in

2011-03-08T22:21:00.002+13:00

I thought that it might be slightly interesting to post a weekly weigh-in. I've done this before, it didn't last long. This may stop at any time. I'll aim for Tuesday for no real reason.

This week I lost 300 grams.

Not a lot, but I haven't done any exercise. The pool is closed due to the earthquake, and will probably be out of action for weeks. That gives me walking or running as options. My eating, however, has been very good. It looks like the death toll for the earthquake will be less than expected, which is great news. Current guesstimate is around 200, with 166 bodies found so far. Amazingly, no people were killed in the ChristChurch cathedral, when the spire came down, and half the building collapsed (not the 20 I'd said). When the rescuers found out that there were no bodies, the feeling was 'surreal'.

Consistency is the key

2011-03-04T10:16:00.004+13:00

Have a look at the graph above, which details my weight loss since I was the heaviest ever, and I started the blog. Study it closely. Notice anything about the green line?

It's bumpy.

A bump on a weight loss graph is when instead of losing weight, you start gaining. This means a few things. It means you've been eating more than you should. It means you're wasting time because you are headed in the wrong direction. It means you have to lose the weight you've just lost again, so you end up losing the weight twice (or in some cases, more than twice).

Can I stop with the bumps on my weight loss graph? Hopefully. It's all just wasted time. I want to get to goal, retrain my eating habits, then slowly let go of this interest in losing weight. Sure, I'll still maintain this blog, and continue reading other weight loss blogs, but I think that'll be it. No more weight loss forums. No more searching for weight loss buddies. No more reading endless magazine articles which seem merely rehashed versions of countless other articles I've read over the years. Almost back to an 'age of innocence'. A time before I started putting on weight. There was a time when I didn't know what BMI meant. Or BMR. Or that protein suppressed your appetite. I just ate and stopped when I'd had enough. My body regulated my weight perfectly. I don't expect that to happen, my mind now has to do the job. I just want to stop constantly thinking about losing weight.

Back to the topic. Consistency. How do I make myself more consistent? The graph above has about 30 bumps. Over a period of about 18 months, that's one every 2-3 weeks. I've been talking on and off here about going to Piha, where I had childhood holidays, as a reward.

My challenge is simple: lose weight for 120 days, without any bumps, and I will go to Piha next summer. Guaranteed (I'll start saving now). But there can't be any bumps in the next 120 days, even one of a few grams means I won't be going to Piha next summer.

Today is day 1. Day 120 will be 1st July. To show you what Piha is all about, have a look at this link: http://www.flickr.com/search/show/?q=piha

In terms of the earthquake, things here are pretty bad still. 1 or 2 bodies a day are removed from the rubble. Some people are without water, electricity, or sewage. I'm not sure how much to write about it here, it depresses me whenever I think of it.

Earthquake

2011-03-01T22:23:00.007+13:00

About 6 months ago my city, Christchurch had an earthquake. It was quite big, 7.1, but happened at night, so amazingly there were two serious injuries and zero deaths. There was significant damage, about NZ$6 billion. Most damage happened in the built-up commercial zone, with buildings built more than 30 years ago, and also many, many buildings made of brick. We've been getting aftershocks since then, thousands of them. The frequency of the aftershocks has slowly been reducing, although now and then we'd get something biggish (say 3 or 4).

Until last Tuesday, a week ago. There was quite a big aftershock about 9am. I went swimming, came home and was doing things at home. Then it hit. Although it was smaller than the September 4th earthquake at 6.3, it was only about 10km from the centre of Christchurch. The shaking at home was much more noticeable. Much more. The kitchen cupboards emptied themselves. Broken glass (thankfully not much though). My LCD television fell over. I knew that this was worse than the September one, and things may get seriously bad for my city.

I went outside and the ground was shaking/rumbling/moving continuously for a period of a few minutes. The worst was over though. I called my girlfriend, but the network was overloaded. I managed to send texts to her and my brother to see how big it was (he's living elsewhere and I had no electricity).

This happened just after noon. By about 4pm Becky had returned home (she'd been knocked off her feet walking into a supermarket when it happened, people were screaming, people were cut from falling glass containers). She told me that a neighbour was within metres from death - he'd been waiting at an automatic teller machine when an awning fell down, narrowly missing him but killing the person behind him. I wondered what the death toll would be...

Well, the death toll slowly increased. It has increased (people are still searching through rubble a week later) and is probably going to be around 240. This is unbelievable for a city of 400,000. Almost all deaths occurred in the central business district. 50,000 people worked there, so you had a 1 in 200 chance of dying if you were in the 'four avenues' area. If you were in one of 3 buildings when it hit, the chances of dying increased dramatically: the CTV building, where about 1/3 of the deaths occurred (a 6 story building that was one story high afterwards; the PGG building (I'm not sure of the death toll there), and the icon of Christchurch, the ChristChurch Cathedral in the middle of the city (about 20, presumably tourists died inside it).

The whole city, in fact the whole country was in shock. The last earthquake of this degree of devastation occurred 80 years ago. I got text messages from my family from around the country, as a lot of people here would have.

People often criticise governments in situations like this, but one thing I am glad that the New Zealand government did was ask for overseas help. Within 8 hours of the quake, an aircraft from Australia was taking off with rescue workers. Within a few days we had, or were about to get, Urban Search And Rescue workers from Australia, China, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, United Kingdom, and United States of America. If you are from one of these countries, thank you for your contribution to saving the lives of the people who live here.

Of course there were awful stories. A friend of a friend saw the CTV building collapse. People had to have limbs amputated to be removed. People who were in the wrong place in the wrong time died, whereas others nearby lived. Two buses had been damaged by falling buildings with multiple deaths of the occupants.

As a result, I am in a bit of a state of shock. Not a huge one, but you know the feeling you get when you find out that someone is terminally ill? Something like that. I'm handling it ok, but my mood could be better. We had no power, water, sewage, although we've got all those back now. There are huge piles of sand and dirt piled on some streets, due to the liquefaction that happened in many suburbs. I'll probably go back to work soon. I'll get over this, but it may take some time.

I don't want this to affect my losing weight. In fact, amazingly, it hasn't so far. I broke my plateau of 4 months yesterday (see the above graph), which means that I'm the lowest weight in about 1400 days. But I need to be careful.

I've had my birthday. Becky has had hers. The cake is gone. I'm going back to my planned eating.

Now.

14th April 2014

2011-02-17T16:16:00.004+13:00

What is the significance of this date? It's the date that I expect to be at goal if I continue at the rate I've been losing in the last 30 days. While theoretically reaching goal 3 years away is still reaching goal, it's way too far away, I want to bring into the whole losing weight this theoretical date, and see what I can do with it.

Yes, I am losing. It's just too slow for my liking. On a positive note, I haven't gained in 10 months, which is a pretty long time. That shows that I'm less likely to rebound. I'm thinking the longer since I've gained, the less chance I'll rebound, which is what I'm concerned about. Also, from the 495 people who weighed in at the start of the year in the group I belong to, about 150 will have had 3 consecutive losses by mid February. I'm one of them.

I'm still not recording what I'm exercising and excess eating. I really need to work on that.

The whole no-sugar thing is working well, I've had sugar twice since I started the no sugar challenge, so $30 has been given away. That's $30 more than I could have given, but it's fair to say that I'm changing my behaviour. I still have cravings, but they aren't worth $15 most of the time.

I'm also concentrating on my diet. Each day I have to reduce something that I normally eat, until it's obvious that I'm not eating enough, then increase things a bit. I figure that'll take about a week.

Sugar free challenge

2011-02-10T09:33:00.003+13:00

After posting my blog entry last night, I got depressed. Thinking about the whole struggle that I've been having, not just recently but in the last 20 years. It got me down. But I started thinking about how I could increase the chances of success.

It's obvious that I'm a 'treater'. I feel the need to treat myself for many things which really, aren't worth treating for. Food is the treat. Usually it's sugar related. That's my weakness - sugar.

I've been a month without sugar before, and it didn't do me any harm. I've decided to go sugar free again, from today until the end of March. I'm allowed sugar on the following days:

My birthday

Becky's birthday

Becky's sister's birthday (I'm not sure if we're seeing her that day so it may not be used)

Becky's sister's graduation day

The point where I'm halfway through my weight loss.

That averages about once every 10 days, which is quite a lot, but I probably won't have much to eat for the days related to Becky's sister. I'm not allowed any sugar (cane sugar related products) until the start of April. If I have some with the exception of those days, I have to give away $15. I really want to see how long I can last without sugar. BTW, the giving money away thing is working because I haven't been into a takeaway shop or had ice cream since posting recently. That part is working, definitely.

I'm struggling

2011-02-09T23:06:00.002+13:00

There's no denying that at the moment, I'm struggling with losing weight. I am hovering around 83-84kg, and have been doing so for the last 5 months. What will get me started again?

I'm hoping that the weight spreadsheet which one social bookmarking website has started will help. At the start of the year, 495 people added their weight. That's quite a lot, and will be a good example of seeing how everyone goes. I expect only about 10 percent to be good at losing, but that's just the way it is. My goal was to lose every weigh-in, which happens twice a month. Mid January 204 people had lost, followed by 174 at the start of February. The next weigh-in is in 6 days, and I'm making a real effort to lose again, which means going low carb. I've already started. I'm sure things will be ok.

Anyway, once the weigh-in is over, I'll go back to medium carb and start doing what needs to be done. The second half of February is going to be hard though, because both Becky and my birthday are in it. I don't eat a lot on my birthday, but I do eat more than usual.

It occurred to me that maybe I should try and see if I can improve my swimming times. Because I generally swim twice a day, in the morning I'll try for a fast time, and in the evening I'll just do my normal swim. Tuesday 8th I did 30 lengths in 25 min, 51.29 seconds.

In addition, if I eat anything outside my normal planned food intake, I'll post it here, together with exercise done. That's the only way. I've also thrown away my current set of jeans. They could have lasted a few more kilograms, but I want to motivate myself to continue losing. In the interim I've only got some other pants which are slightly uncomfortable when sitting down for long periods. That will help somewhat, I hope.

Tuesday update

2011-01-25T09:55:00.005+13:00

3 posts in less than a week, what's going on?

84.3kg

Things at the moment would be considered a bit delicate. I screwed up, I admit it. As you know, the plan was to be less than the previous weight for the group weigh-in, this is something that I am really serious about. After work, I made a decision to have what I affectionately call greasies, which is sausages and chips. This is a common New Zealand delicacy, if you ever travel here you'll see Fish & Chip shops on many suburban corners selling artery blocking delights. It's inexpensive, fatty and not good for you. I had two sausages and half a scoop of chips.

At work I pretty much convinced myself that it would be a nice thing to do. Funny how that happens, I see myself doing it, and can't stop or back down. I have no idea about the energy value of what I ate, of course my weight increases because of all of the weight of those chips which take a while to digest.

I realise that I shouldn't have greasies, so my pledge is as follows:

If I walk into a fish and chip shop before I reach the 79.999kg, I'll give away $10 for each meal.

Currently I have $30 for a recent effort at weight tracking that I didn't blog about to give away as well. Now, last night I see that Becky has bought some ice cream. Ice cream is my favourite treat/junk food, but I don't buy it often for obvious reasons. I just had to eat some. Not much, but I'm trying to lose weight, not maintain. Another pledge:

If I eat ice cream (of any form) before I reach 81.999kg (exception: birthdays), I'll give away $10 for each time I eat it.

I'm trying to be serious here. I've been at 84 for so long. I need to start losing again.

Exercise:

24th: two sessions of 30 lengths. The first session I made a real effort to swim as fast as I could. I won't be doing that again. I only swam about 12% faster, but I was much, much more tired afterwards.

21st: 22 lengths

20th: 30 lengths

19th: 30 lengths

18th: 52 lengths

Eating plan

2011-01-23T10:22:00.002+13:00

84.1kg

There's no denying that I'm struggling with what I'm eating at the moment. As said in my last post, I haven't lost weight in nearly 5 months, and that makes me think that unless I pull my finger out, I won't make my 2 year anniversary to be at goal.

My plan for eating is quite simple: a mixture of veges, meat, whey powder, fruit, cereal and a few other things.

My eating plan starts today.

If I come across food that is not on the plan, I'll write it down on the blog, together with what nutrient values I think it has. My diet is planned to have just over 100g of protein a day, and just under 200g of carbohydrates. It rounds off at just under 6,500kj. I'll see how that works out in terms of appetite. I've had this diet before, and I did find that it made me a bit hungrier than I'd wanted to be, so if that happens again, I'll reduce the carbohydrate amount and add fat (probably in the form of nuts) and see how that goes.

Because I'll be eating a reasonable amount of fruit, I expect that my weight might increase just a bit over the next few days, due to the bulk of fruit eaten when I weigh myself. That's no problem, but at the start of the year, I joined up on a website to record my weight twice a month, and I promised myself to make a real effort at having a new low weight every weigh-in.

This gain caused by the fruit might derail my aim to have a new low each weigh, so about 4 days before each weigh, I'm going low carb to make sure it'll happen. Of course I can't go low carb twice a month (well, I can, but I don't want to) just for these readings, so I'm not sure how I'll go about the transition. I'll figure it out I'm sure. About 500 people provided their weight for the first reading, and after the second weigh in, 204 lost weight.

I'd like a 'reward' meal for each kilogram I lose, so when I reach 84.0kg I'll have one, and try as hard as I can to only have one for each kilogram I lose.

Exercise:

21st Jan 22 lengths (I ran out of time)

I had some breathing problems on the 21st (caused by an allergic reaction) so I didn't swim then, and decided to not swim today just in case I had issues again today.

Once my weight tops out, I'm thinking of aiming for 70g a day loss, then increasing it step by step.

Exercise goals

2011-01-20T08:30:00.004+13:00

Day 1 of getting back into it and I weigh 84.0kg. I first hit 84kg on the 5th September, last year (1 day after an 7.1 earthquake in my city that caused NZ$5 billion damage, but thankfully no one was killed, and at least 1000 aftershocks that I could feel, including a 5.1 today). In other words, 137 days wasted. That's not good.

Part of the whole losing weight includes exercise. I don't actually need exercise to lose weight, I lost about 15kg back in 2000 without exercise, but I want to lose weight at a certain rate, and that means exercise. I've used 3 types of exercise: swimming, running and elliptical trainer. Running is definitely the hardest, followed by the elliptical. It's not bad, the elliptical, but it's boring. I can drift off when I'm on it, and it gets my heart rate up to the recommended value, but there isn't really any enjoyment. Plus, it doesn't use as much energy as running, so things take longer. I can't really imagine going to the gym twice a day to use the elliptical.

Having grown up in a home less than 5 minutes walk to a large swimming pool, I have always loved swimming. Usually I'd go about once a week, but I didn't swim lengths, I'd just play around in the water. More than 30 years later, I probably would go swimming once every month or so, so not a lot. About a month ago, I got a 3 monthly swimming membership (about 3/4 of the price of a gym membership, which included the pool use) and started swimming lengths.

The first time I had difficulty, I managed to swim 50 metres, not a lot, before I was too puffed and needed to stop for a bit. That's not much, in fact it's useless. But I wasn't fit, and the muscles needed for swimming weren't really developed. However, I persevered, and today I was able to swim for 30 lengths (each length is 25 metres) with only 5 seconds between lengths where I turned around and pressed the lap button on my watch (to keep track of the number of lengths).

I would swim all day and lose weight at a huge rate, but for one problem: I get tired. Not only do I get tired after the swim, but I get tired for the rest of the day, so deciding on the most optimal number of lengths to do a day is quite difficult. Too little, and I don't lose much extra weight. Too much, and I need to have a sleep afterwards, and I'm tired. I don't know the ideal number, but I'm prepared to find out.

Also, to spread the load over the whole day, I plan on swimming most days twice. Swimming is the one form of exercise that I could do twice a day and not start to hate. Some days I simply won't be able to go twice, but apart from that, if I can go, I hope I will.

My gym membership was pretty much a waste of money, because I didn't go as often as I should have. This time for the pool, I want to keep a record of how often I go, and what I achieve. Why that never happened with the gym, I'm not sure, especially as writing it down on the blog would have been a good idea!

So here is what I've achieved so far:

20th Jan 30 lengths

19th Jan 30 lengths

18th Jan 52 lengths (I wanted to see how many lengths I could do, as it was I ran out of time and had to finish without getting exhausted)

Let's see how many days in a row I can go swimming! I'll aim for a range, at a minimum 30, and a high enough number without overdoing it to the extent that I'll be tired for the rest of the day.

The heat is on

2010-12-10T09:24:00.003+13:00

Today is the first day of my going back to the 4 day motivation thing. I'll modify it a bit, but basically, I have to weigh below a line of a graph in order to buy coffee at the supermarket, or go and see a film (although I'm allowed to see a film every 3 months even if I don't). This is the method I started way back over a year ago. I've only lost 10kg, it's not much is it?

Every day the weight I should be drops by 100g (although it slows down later on). That's not a lot, with diet and exercise I should be able to make it. In terms of exercise, I plan to swim Monday - Friday (on the weekends, the pool is too crowded) and later on in the day, go for a run. The swim will be 30 lengths (25 metres a length), and the running would be 30 minutes. I can modify these if they are too hard, or too easy. I've come across a food idea that's been floating about in my head for a while. What is it like eating the same thing day after day? I've been doing this on and off for about 3 weeks, and I have to say that it's a lot easier than I thought it would be. I have learnt to 'trust' the food that I've chosen, I know that unless I am exceptionally tired, I won't be too hungry (tiredness makes me hungry) I can make it through the day without a need for additional food.

I don't find repetitive food boring, so that's good. It really doesn't bother me. I know that not everybody can do this, but variety in food has never been an issue for me.

I realise that I haven't really lost any weight in the last 3 months, so I'm aiming for goal at the 2nd year anniversary of starting to lose weight: 3 September 2011. That's achievable. Today my weight is 84.075kg. I'll be posting updates on how I'm going, both with food and exercise.

Oh by the way, the 90 day challenge in the gym was a fizzer, I made it to about 10 days. I've decided to let my gym membership lapse, and only be able to swim at the pool. I won't miss the gym, I didn't really enjoy it, I only used the elliptical and the treadmill, and I only went to an exercise class twice in 6 months.

90 day gym challenge

2010-11-22T22:04:00.002+13:00

Recently I was thinking about how I've been a member of the gym/pool for nearly 6 months, but in that time I've only lost about 5kg, hardly a large amount and certainly not what you'd expect when someone goes to the gym. Of course I haven't been consistant, and that's been a big factor in not losing much weight. What can I do about it? Have a 90 days at the gym/pool challenge. I have to go 90 days in a row. That's certainly possible, except the days when the gym is closed (Christmas day is the only day it'll be shut probably). It's so easy to not keep a routine with the gym, so I think going every day is a good idea. I also want to track my kilojoules consumed and the whole saving for an iPod Touch needs to be done. Here's what I've been up to so far:

Monday 15th November
Treadmill: 3 min at 5km/hr walking, 3 min at 7km/hr running, repeated 10 times (30 minutes running in total)

Tuesday 16th
I have decided to start swimming. Freestyle. I was amazed how tiring it is, but it's been years since I've done it. Only managed 2 minutes.

Wednesday 17th
I wouldn't have gone to the pool today (very tired) normally, so I just went swimming for 2 minutes. That counts.

Thursday 18th
Swimming: 2 minutes freestyle and 4 x 1 minute (with breaks in between) totalling 6 minutes. It's still hard, I can't believe that I can only swim for 2 minutes before needing a break, in the past I've been able to swim for 1.5km (but that was breast stroke - a lot easier).

Friday 19th
Only did 2 minutes again of swimming. I'm not going to get very far at this rate!

Saturday 20th
Again 2 minutes of swimming. I did it before work, and didn't have much time, so left it at 2 minutes (plus the pool was really busy). In the evening, I went to a party. I had 4 chocolates there, which I feel is a good accomplishment. Energy consumed: 6715kJ.

Sunday 21st
Finally getting into the exercise thing. I did 10 lengths (25 metres) with a short break in between each length. 7 days in a row at the gym/pool, it's a good start. About 7,300kJ of food.

Monday 22nd 83.6kg
Today I start the saving for the iPod Touch. That's $20 a week, less food that could be considered poor food choices. Of course, I had a coffee and slice to mark the occasion, because that's the sort of thing I do. Total saved: $-9.40. I'll be having another one on Thursday (hopefully) to celebrate the purchase of something. At the pool I did 16 lengths (25 metres) which I'm pretty pleased with. Of course, it's one length at a time. 9,300kj.

Aiming for April...

2010-11-03T22:56:00.001+13:00

I've been thinking about the whole 2 years to get to goal thing. That's an awfully long time, and I have been thinking that maybe I'll see if I can achieve the same rate of weight loss achieved by the participants in the Thinspiration programme. After more thinking about the whole thing, I decided to see whether I could achieve goal weight in April next year. This would require determination, exercise and dieting. Can I do it? Maybe. I've decided to give myself 2 months to decide whether to do it or not. The plan is: exercise 2-3 times a day, diet at 6,500kj (I really have no idea how much of an energy deficit this produces, since I don't know my lean body mass). I'll keep a food and exercise journal on this blog. I have to admit that I'm not that much of a sticker to plans, so I don't know how long I'll be able to keep this up. I can give up at any time, and just go back to dieting at a much slower rate. I also may simply not have enough time to do 2-3 exercise sessions a day. I don't know.

It's nearly 11pm on Wednesday night, and at midnight, I'll start. I'll keep you up to date, and probably post every 3-4 days with my food and exercise details. I won't weigh myself until Saturday, since there is bound to be a loss right at the start, as my body empty's out.

How much can someone lose through diet and exercise? Thintervention provides the answer

2010-10-30T15:42:00.012+13:00

Programmes like The Biggest Loser are great. They show people losing huge amounts of weight, week after week. Apart from the aspect of people having to leave when they don't measure up to expectations, it's not a bad show. However, the people there are spending large amounts of time exercising, and their weight range is at a point where they can lose large amounts easily. What about the rest of us - the people who aren't that heavy and want to lose smaller amounts, we weigh less than say 120kg? How much can we expect to reasonably lose using diet and exercise, and we're not exercising 24/7 with an expectation that we'll win a large prize?

Thintervention is a programme that provides the answer. If you are able to get hold of it, I'd suggest you watch it. It has overweight and obese people struggling to exercise and eat properly. A diverse group of people are given a 13 week challenge. Using a personal trainer and an assistant, the group of 7 people are taught how to exercise (with the inevitable friction and conflict that results when you have a highly fit/motivated person telling unfit people what to do) and eat well, and not over indulge. This is actually harder than it looks, some of the group are real sticks in the mud (such as still drinking alcohol) and other people lie/don't tell the truth about what they are eating. This is brought out in the weekly counseling sessions, when the group leader decides to bring in a polygraph lie detector to ferret out who is telling the truth (nb: the polygraph lie detection is inaccurate, there are more accurate lie detection methods).

It sounds easy, a motivator, and counselling, for 7 weeks. Then the hard part begins. The group are left alone for 6 weeks. They're on their own, like the rest of us. How will they handle it? They all did amazingly well. All lost a large amount of weight. Over the 13 weeks, the smallest loss is about 10kg. Because the range of starting weights was from 76kg to 121kg, you could expect that the amount people lost would vary as well, which it did. But was there a relationship between weight and how much they lost? Yes.

As it turns out, the expected loss can be represented as a square relationship. That means that if you double the persons weight, you can expect that they'd lose 4 times as much weight per week. A simple way to use this to calculate your expected loss per week is to take your weight (in kilograms) and divide that number by 60. That's your expected loss per week as a percentage. Multiply that number by your weight and you've got the "Thintervention" expected loss. As an example, if your weight is 90kg, dividing that by 60 gives 1.5% per week loss, which equals about 1.4kg a week. Note that as your weight drops, so does the percentage loss per week unfortunately. In case anyone checks my calculations and trendlines, I've used the persons middle weight (halfway between minimum and maximum) to calculate the percentage, rather than maximum.

The graph above shows each persons loss over the 13 weeks (the vertical axis is percentage loss each week, the horizontal axis is weight in kilograms), with the diagonal line being the average depending on the weight of the person.

To use this information as an example, if I were to start at 94kg (my maximum when I started my blog) and get down to my goal of 66kg, it would take 28 weeks.

Yet another change of plan

2010-10-22T22:44:00.001+13:00

Anyone reading this blog will note that I often change the way I do things. I'm not sure why that is, I'm not like that in the rest of my life. Anyway, I did some calculations. I have come to the realisation that it's unlikely that I'll be able to reach goal weight before July next year, so I've decided to attempt to reach goal weight at the 2 year anniversary of starting this weight loss - September 3rd. Note the use of the word 'attempt'. There is no guarantee that I'll reach goal weight on that date, or any date for that matter. However, if I do aim to reach goal weight on the anniversary, it won't be a difficult weight loss journey, or at least at the moment it doesn't seem that difficult. I'll be losing 105 grams a day at the start, going down to about 37 grams a day for the last 5 months. That's because I want to train myself to eat properly before I reach goal weight (and the subsequent holiday) and not have a reaching goal rebound.

I have also decided to go high carb again. Low carb is great, but I never feel full, and I don't really enjoy food. Now I can have fruit! I've missed it. I know that last time I went high carb, it stalled my weight loss for 6 months. I'm hoping that this won't happen again. Why am I confident that it won't this time? Because I'll be doing things differently. First, I'll be counting kilojoules. I'm aiming for 6,000kj a day, if that's too little I think I can change it without too many issues. Second, I'll be aiming to have 100 grams of protein a day. Finally, I'll be exercising on the days where I think it's necessary. My plan is to be a specific weight each day. I weigh myself, and if I'm too high, I'll have to count and do exercise. If I'm below, I won't have to. I've done this before, but it didn't stick. Will things be different this time? I'm hoping so.

Anyway, today (Friday) I weigh 84kg (note the weight gain due to eating carbs).

Day 3

2010-10-17T10:53:00.001+13:00

Yesterday I changed the amount of food that I eat on my desert island diet so that the protein is 113 grams a day. That's the highest it's ever been in my life. The total energy stays at about 6,000kj. Today, again I fiddle with what I'm eating (while staying with the foods that I mentioned a few days ago) to make it just a bit less expensive. I'm really not sure whether to just aim for 3rd September, it would make things much easier. However, I'd like to see how much I can lose with a combination of my 6,000kj diet and exercise, so I'll give that a few weeks to see how that goes, and extrapolate into the future and see how much time I'll save.

Tidiness: could do better (I have a lot of tidying planned, because Becky is coming home tomorrow from Auckland, where she went to celebrate her father's 60th birthday party).

Day 2

2010-10-16T10:45:00.002+13:00

Today is the start of my 'desert island diet'. I've planned what I'm going to eat at each part of the day, and I'll see how I can handle it. If there is enough variety during the day, I should be fine. Apart from that, there isn't much to say. I get the feeling that maybe I'll be reaching goal weight on the second anniversary of starting this diet (Sep 3rd), we'll see. I haven't weighed myself, and I won't until Tuesday, when any carbohydrate related weight gain will have disappeared.

I'm also planning to post how tidy my home is, I'd say it 'needs some work' to get up to standard.

Day 1 restart

2010-10-15T19:16:00.003+13:00

I stopped blogging, I'm not entirely sure, why, probably because the blog wasn't important enough (being honest to myself) although I'd like that to change. I have this feeling that the blog follows my weight loss, and my weight loss follows the blog, so when one stops the other stops as well.

Today is a restart. I've been indulging just a bit too much, and I need to stop that, immediately. Starting from tomorrow, my diet is going to be the 'fixed' diet that I've talked about. By fixed, I mean the same day after day after day. Of course, I can change it, but I want to only change one food item at a time. If I change too many things, I just go off track.

The foods that I will be eating are: peanuts, olive oil, eggs, cheese, frozen vegetables, meat patties, olives, olive oil, milk and whey protein powder, and coffee. I'll try and see if I can eat the same things at the same time of the day. This is an unusual way of feeding myself, but because of my attitude to food (I don't really need variety) it'll be interesting to see how I'll handle it. I call this my "desert island diet" because I have no control over it (although this is not stricktly true). This diet has 100g of protein, and 6,000kj of energy.

Today also marks two other changes in my life, that I'll blog occasionally about. My tidiness. I've never been a tidy person, but I'll be making an attempt to be tidy at home, and posting here about how tidy I really am. I think it'll improve the home environment for both Becky and myself. Apart from the obvious reason why, I also want to show Becky that a person can change for the better, because I'll be asking Becky to change the way she does something (related to the blog) in the next 3-4 months.

As well as that, I want to be more organised. I've thought of a system of being organised, today marks a good start at actually using that to get things done. From what I can gather, many people aren't really organised, and as a result, don't lead as fullfilling lives as the could be. I want to achieve my hopes and dreams more than I currently am. The idea is simple enough: every day, at the start of the day I spend 10 minutes planning my day. That's it. I'll do it in front of the computer, looking at lists of things I want to achieve in the next 5, 20, 100, 500 and 2000 days. I've measured how organised I've been in the past, and it's shocking how ineffective I am. That has to stop. Put basically, most things on my to-do list never get done.

Tomorrow also starts the saving towards my iPod Touch. I'll put $20 towards it a week, but any money used to buy foods that aren't really healthy are taken off the money.

Day 8 of 100

2010-10-10T09:43:00.001+13:00

82.8kg, lowest weight in 1255 days, 4 days without sugar

I'm starting to think that maybe I don't have enough things to say to justify posting every day. Anyway, things are going well and I'm very confident in reaching goal, just when that happens, I have no real idea.

Update:

Well, I blew it. I ate a sausage and chips tonight, washed down with a can of Fanta. It's not a disaster, I'm not worried but I need to stop any follow-on effects that might happen.

Day 7 of 100

2010-10-09T12:20:00.002+13:00

82.9kg, lowest weight in 1253 days, 3 days without sugar

Not much to say about today, I seem to be losing weight steadily, although it's way too early to get carried away with calculations about what rate I'm losing and when I'll reach goal. But I can't help myself.

Day 6 of 100

2010-10-08T22:36:00.002+13:00

83.1kg, lowest weight in 1251 days, 2 days without sugar

Another loss. Yay. At the moment, the eating what I'm meant to be eating thing is going really well. I did buy some eggs today, and I'm adding an egg to my menu, so I'm about 5,750kj and about 80 grams of protein. I still need to fiddle with my protein intake as I think it's too low - I need to suppress my appetite more.

I've started to do my thing - what is my thing? Calculating when I'll finish my weight loss, and reach that hard to obtain state called being at goal weight. It's been 10 years since I was at goal (I remember the day, headed off to McDonalds to get a Kiwiburger, they are nice, it's a shame they don't make them anymore, I was only at goal for one day, because of the stress of my relationship with my then girlfriend and her controlling parents). The thing is that many times in the past 10 years I've done the same, worked out when I would reach goal, but for it to never happen. Will things be different this time? I really do think so, but I can't tell for sure.

I thought about making the reaching goal day the 2 year anniversary of my starting this blog, September 3rd. That's almost a year from now! But I plan the last 5kg to take 5 months. Another choice is to just see how I go at the current diet/exercise system, and then calculate when I reach goal based on that. I really have no idea about what rate I'll lose in the near future, and again, I really have no idea what rate I'll lose when I get thinner either. I'm sure my loss rate will slow down, but to what extent, I don't know. So my initial thoughts are when my 'theoretical goal day' breaks July 3rd, I'll take things easy and just aim for September 3rd.

I hope, I really hope that I don't go past the day. I will be truly annoyed.

Today at the gym I managed 72 minutes on the elliptical. That's not as much as I wanted (2 hours), but I'll take it. I had the first 10 minutes at the 8 setting, before the rest at the 7 setting. I don't think I'll do that for a while, it's just not worth it as it can result in my not exercising for 2 hours.

Day 5 of 100

2010-10-07T22:59:00.002+13:00

83.2kg, 1 day without sugar

Today my weight was the same as yesterday. The reason for this is because of the weight gain when I eat sugar. I'm not too concerned, it's just annoying that when you go low carb, your weight drops 3-4 days later by 1-2kg. Of course, the opposite happens when you have carbs, and you gain. Because of this, although I want to lose 17.2kg, in actual fact I need to lose about 18-19kg. I'll deal with this when I reach 76kg, by a slow change from low carb to high carb. More on that later.

I didn't get to the gym today because I was really tired. I didn't sleep well last night, as I had a lot of my mind, and I was simply too tired to go to the gym today. As for eating, 5,000kj is not enough for me, so I increased it to 5,500kj, by the addition of two slices of cheese. Eating this way seems to be fine, at the moment. Tomorrow I may go and increase the number of foods, we'll see.

In terms of what I eat, it's 75 grams of protein, and 40 grams of carbohydrates. That's fine. I'll try to increase the protein just a little.

Day 4 of 100

2010-10-06T16:16:00.003+13:00

83.2kg, 5 days without sugar, lowest weight in 1247 days

I have to confess that yesterday, after a trip to supermarket, I ate just a little too much, although I almost certainly lost weight yesterday anyway. The solution is to go to the supermarket as infrequently as possible, which in my case is once in about 10 days (which is related to how much frozen vegetables the freezer can hold). Today starts the beginning of my planned eating. I've never seriously done this before, eating the same thing day after day, I'm sure I'll find it boring but so what? Being on a diet has been known to be boring, the same as using exercise equipment is boring as well.

I have made a decision - today I am allowed sugar, in the form of coffee and something sweet when I go out today. This isn't me being perfect in my eating, but I want to be at least 6 days before I eat sugar again.

After I go out, it's off to the gym to do up to 2 hours of elliptical.

Update: well the gym went well, I did 2 hours on the elliptical on the 7 setting. The elliptical showed that I used quite a bit of energy during that, and I have difficulty believing that, when I compare what energy I use during running on a treadmill. For this reason, I won't say how much the display showed, rather I'll say that I did 100 units of energy expenditure, and all elliptical use will be a comparison to that.

Before I went to the gym, I had a coffee and a melting moment. I have to say that it was yummy. I only did 5 days without sugar, but I'm aiming for 6 days from today. I'm pretty sure I'll make that. I also had some Sparkling Duet at home, just a glass. As a result of all this energy rich food, I didn't feel like some of the normal foods that I'd planned.

Day 3 of 100

2010-10-05T20:56:00.002+13:00

83.4kg, 96 hours without sugar, lowest weight in 1244 days

It's only day 3, and I'm being a bit slack at posting updates. Ideally, this should happen at the start of the day, rather than the end. Especially if I'm online now and then during the day, why not do it then? Exactly. Recently I've been thinking that maybe I'm not eating enough, something that is quite possible with a low carb diet. For this reason, I've decided to count kilojoules. It's not something I enjoy, as it makes me think of food more, but I've decided to aim for 5,000KJ and see how that goes. That's on the low side of things, if necessary I'll increase it.

A degree of fiddling is necessary with my food because of carbs and protein. Protein is my friend, carbs are my enemy (so to speak). I want the protein to stay about 70 grams a day, but the whey protein powder isn't that nice to eat. I'll fiddle around with all of these things to see what can be done to make things easier for me.

I was tired all of today, so I didn't get to the gym. Tomorrow is another day, of course.

Day 2 of 100

2010-10-04T18:44:00.001+13:00

83.6kg, 63 hours without sugar, lowest weight in 1241 days

As it says above, I am lowest weight in 1241 days. That's always a good place to be, and it feels nice to know that it's 3 1/2 years since I was at this weight. That's the good news. The bad is that 3 1/2 years ago I was struggling with my weight just like I'm doing so now. Except then, I was putting on the weight quickly, now I'm taking off the weight, but not so quickly. Basically, there is a lot of wasted time in my weight loss travels.

Today I went to the gym, and did 72 minutes on the elliptical, before being too tired and needed to stop. The energy calculator in the display is way off, I'm sure that it is over estimating how much energy I'm using. I base this from the energy on a treadmill, which is verifiable, whereas a elliptical isn't, because there resistance setting is not an easily measurable thing. Because of this, I won't post what the energy used is, but I'll post a number which indicates whether I'm increasing the energy used or not.

After working out that it might be almost a year until I finish the weight loss, I've decided to speed up things a bit, by exercising as much as reasonably possible. I don't know how much that is, but time will tell. I've been on this diet for over a year now, and I'm not even half way, so I don't want it to drag on forever.

Day 1 of 100

2010-10-03T11:26:00.002+13:00

83.9kg, 38 hours without sugar

My plan for today is simple: eat my standard meals. That means veges, whey protein powder, and as much healthy fat as I need to make up the difference. This is what I did, although I ate a bit too much cheese (or it seemed to be a lot), but since I only buy 250g of cheese a week, it's not a big deal. I plan to branch out on the healthy fats choices later on, probably by trying olives and avocados.

After a long day of work, I just didn't have it in me to go to the gym. Also, the gym closes at 8pm in the weekend, and I would have only had about 35 minutes of exercise time before it shut.

So how did day 1 go? Very well.

100 day challenge

2010-10-03T11:10:00.003+13:00

Before Friday I hadn't logged into my blogger account for about 10 weeks. It felt good to see the work (both the writing, and the losing weight) that I'd done, so I decided that I'd restart the whole weight loss (and blogging) thing by having a 100 day challenge. Here's what I've decided to do:

Avoid sugar
Blog every day
Exercise every day
Use the money motivation for my iPod Touch
Stay low carb
Carry on with my 4 day motivational system
Have a specific rate at which I want to lose weight

What does this mean? It means that in the morning, I post what my plan for the day is, and at the end of the day I update on how I did. I try to avoid sugar, and I have a weight to be at (or below) every day. This weight drops by an amount every day, I'll start at 80 grams, then I'll try 100 grams, then 120 and finally 140 grams a day if I can make it. Today I weigh 83.9kg. This means that I'll reach goal late August next year, at the latest if I go to plan. I plan to lose the last 5kg over 5 months, to train myself to eat properly. Hopefully it won't take that long, I'll be able to lose weight faster than 80g a day.

Lowest weight in over 3 years

2010-10-01T15:30:00.004+13:00

It's been a while, that's for sure. I just can't seem to get back into the habit of blogging, I'm not entirely sure why. However, I'm still losing weight. Slowly. A little gain now and then, but over all, I'm losing. At the moment, I'm 84.0kg, which is pretty good, 10kg lost, and 18kg to lose. Nearly half way! So I'm the lowest weight in over 3 years, the same as back in April 2007. No one at work has seen me this thin before, which makes me wonder how they'll handle it when the changes start being more noticeable. I'll try to post more often, to say how it's going.

Money motivation

2010-07-25T13:37:00.003+12:00

Yes, it's been a while. I just can't seem to get myself into the whole weight loss thing, I know once I can get started, things will be fine, it's just the starting that is taking a while. I have been thinking about getting an Apple iPod Touch. This little gadget is a music player, it's also a mini computer. I have been thinking about getting one, but it's hard to justify the cost (about 1/5 of a laptop's price) given what it offers.

As I was buying an ice cream after going to the gym (yes, I see a problem here), I decided that I could do things - stop myself spending money on things that won't help me lose weight, as well as buy the iPod Touch.

So the idea is simple - I have a budget for food, and any money that I don't spend on food can go towards the iPod Touch. As well as that, I have a Microsoft Xbox 360 game console. It's 4 years old, quite old as consoles go, and in need of replacement, especially given that it was designed with a fault that increased the chance dramatically of it failing. I'm planning to sell it next week, and put the money towards a replacement which will hopefully last me until the `360s successor comes out. I'll go without one for about 6 months, and buy the replacement just before Christmas, when prices are likely to be lower.

So the idea is simple: I'm allowed $15 per week on food, apart from veges, healthy fats and protein sources. I can spend it on food, or bank it to go towards those items. Also, since I do have trouble getting to the gym, for every day that I get to the gym, $2 is added to the fund. For every day that I don't get to the gym, $2 is taken away. Some days I simply won't be able to go to the gym because of work commitments, but I still have to take off the money in that case. If I go every day that I can manage, I'll still save money, so that's not a big issue.

This motivation starts today.

Lowest weight in over 2 years

2010-07-11T12:04:00.003+12:00

I have pleasure in announcing that my weight loss has started again, and things are going well. I've got that excitement feeling, where I can actually imagine myself finishing what feels like the worlds longest diet (about 11 years). I have stopped my motivation system, the reason why I knew that I'd finish this diet, so I know I'm living on borrowed time until I lose track and stop losing again. I plan to restart the whole motivation system in the next week. Current weight: 86kg.

6 months wasted

2010-07-09T18:46:00.003+12:00

You might remember mid January that I got sick of being on a low carb diet, and went high carb. Who would have thought that the result of me deciding on that fateful day would be six months of wasted time? I'm back to where I was mid January, I've been on and off the diet since then, and I've just lost lots of motivation over these 6 months.

That's all changed now, I'm back on the low carb diet, and losing as usual. I'm also still at the gym.

I'm back, and hell freezes over...

2010-06-07T21:50:00.002+12:00

Yes, it has been such a long time. 6 weeks. The whole money motivation idea was a good one,but it didn't work. I'm not sure why not, it just didn't. I guess I needed an actual person to do the challenge with me, and because I'm doing all of this on my own, it didn't work out. I guess that I could have deleted both posts, but that's sort of cheating. I want people to find out about my failures as well as my successes.

Realising that I had reached a point where running outdoors wasn't my thing, I decided that my last resort was to join a gym - hence the hell freezing over. I never thought that I'd join one, I always figured that I could do it without, and I'm sure that I can, but I don't want this weight loss to go on forever. I really want to finish roughly by the end of the year.

The gym is quite inexpensive, it's not that much really, but it allows me to exercise as much as my body can tolerate. I see it as a machine, I walk in and then I'm away, exercising for a set amount of time. Then I walk out, and effectively turning off the machine for next time.

I joined just under a month ago, the first 2 1/2 weeks were really me getting to grips with the exercise, but no real intention of losing weight. I guess my eating increased. Then I went low carb. As you may recall, I went high carb back in January. Big mistake. The biggest since starting this weight loss.

About 10 days ago I went low carb again, and kept it up. It's always hard at first, but with each day it gets easier. As an experiment, I'm trying 150 grams a day of weight loss. I really don't know whether I'll achieve this, but I'm trying. If it's just too hard, I'll try 140 grams a day.

As for what I'm up to at the gym, well it's very plain and boring. The elliptical trainer. That's it. No other piece of equipment suits me as much. I get on, drift off and either one or two hours later, I'm finished. Two hours is a lot, but if I've got the time to do it, I'll do it. I'm pretty tired afterwards, but it's worth it.

My weight is currently 87.4kg, the lowest in about 3 1/2 months. Soon, I'll be back to where I was, that fateful day I went high carb back in January.

The challenge

2010-04-21T10:24:00.002+12:00

So it's 5 days into the $500 challenge and I have to say it's going well, although it's early days yet. I'm about the lowest weight in 2 weeks, and I've yet to go full low carb which results in a loss of about 1kg. This means that I've put on 2-3kg while I went high carb. I only lasted 1 day without sugar, which is really bad, hopefully I'll train myself to go without sugar quickly. Details:

Sat 90.9kg didn't run, so $5 owed
Sun 91.1kg, 22 minutes running
Mon 90.6kg, 19 minutes running
Tue 90.8kg, didn't run, so that's $10 owed in total
Wed 90.1kg, will run later on today.

So weight, at the moment isn't an issue, but running is. I need to run earlier on in the day, that way I don't put it off, then get too tired.

The $500 challenge

2010-04-17T10:16:00.004+12:00

You've probably guessed that I'm having trouble with losing weight, I haven't updated the graph at the top of the blog in 5 months, I'm not losing weight any more, and I'm breaking my rules about when I can see a film, buy coffee or go swimming.

That's not good.

I know that when it comes to motivation for weight loss, it can come and go. Wait a while, and it's bound to come back. So what can be done about it in the meantime? I know that money can be a huge motivator, so that's what I'm going to use. I'll fine myself $5 each day for the next 50 days when:

I am not lighter than what I was 3 days ago
I don't go for a run

So that's it, I need to run every day and lose weight at least once every 3 days. In order to see how I go without sugar, I'll add some incentive: whatever I owe in fines can be reduced by the number of days in a row without sugar at the start of the challenge, and similarly for the end of the challenge. In other words, at the end of the challenge I owe $85 in fines. However, I had sugar 3 times in the period, first 10 days into the challenge, second 15 days, and third 22 days. That means that I get to pay 85 - 10 - 28 = $47. What do I do with the money? I give it away. Leaving it places for random people to pick up seems the easiest idea.

There is an exception to this however: if something unexpected and bad happens, I'm allowed to stop. It's unlikely, but I don't want to have to deal with something bad and have to give away hundreds of dollars.

I'll post again in a few days to say how it's going.

Day 1 revised

2010-04-09T22:09:00.002+12:00

As you can see, I've stopped posting. I do seem to have trouble doing it every day, don't know why, I don't think it's worth trying to see what's stopping me. Anyway, I stopped running. I vaguely remember from years ago that if I ran every day, it was a lot easier to stay motivated to keep on running. So that's what I'm going to do. Run every day. That may become hard to do when I have to work, I'll figure something out. Take today, for instance. It was cold (perfect for running!) and dark (not so perfect) when I went out for my first run in over a week, but the cold killed the battery of my hand held timer (it's too dark to see my watch). However, I did manage 2 minutes, which is fine. Just keep aiming for an increase, and I'll be okay.

Today I ate well, I'm going low carb, and as a result I'll weigh myself on Monday and Tuesday to see how that's going. I may not post every day, we'll see.

Day 5 & 6

2010-04-03T12:27:00.002+13:00

Day 5
Weight: didn't weigh myself
Eating: bad, lots of carbs
Exercise: none, too hot again

Day 6
Weight: didn't weigh myself again
Eating: again, bad, lots of carbs
Exercise: 15 minutes, until ran out of light to see my watch. It was about 15 degrees when I ran, it is much easier running when it's this cooler.

Day 4

2010-04-01T17:40:00.001+13:00

Weight: didn't weigh myself

Eating: had a bad carbohydrate splurge

Exercise: warmer than yesterday, so didn't go for a run.

All in all, a bad day.

Day 3

2010-03-31T01:12:00.003+13:00

Weight: disappointingly, the same as yesterday. I was expecting a loss of water drop, but I guess I'll have to wait a while longer.

Eating: my going without sugar lasted - one day. I went out with Becky and had a coffee and slice. It's not a big deal, but I still want to see how long I can go without sugar.

Exercise: my legs are still sore from starting running. I'm sure that will eventually go away. It was really warm when I went for a run (23-24 degrees) so I got so hot and really tired afterwards. Thankfully it's autumn, so it'll get cooler soon. It was remarkably hot for late March, there'll be frosts soon. I've decided to not run when it's 23 degrees, I don't think that will happen very often. I can always run at night, if necessary, so the sun won't heat me up as well. I managed 20 minutes today. I'm also thinking that if I can lose weight through running, I might pass on going to the gym, to save both money and petrol. The one big drawback is that the gym is attached to a full-size pool and I'd so love to go swimming afterwards!

Day 2

2010-03-30T00:40:00.003+13:00

Weight today: 90.0kg. That's a loss of 1.1kg, of course I'm not losing that much fat. I was a bit sore today, I went for a run, but only managed 19 minutes the first lot of exercise, then I was just too sore for any other runs. I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll manage a bit more than that.

Eating: I had some chocolate today, because I want to see how long I can go without sugar, starting today. I'm hoping for at least 5 days. In the evening, I had an insatiable appetite, which I'm hoping is not caused by this exercise. If it is, I'm in trouble. Apart from the chocolate, I ate healthy food.

Day 1 of 120 exercise

2010-03-28T21:26:00.003+13:00

I had a few half hearted attempts at going low carb, and exercise as well, but now I think I've got it all sorted. The next 'hurdle' will be Easter, I'll try to avoid chocolate as much as possible. I want to put exercise as priority #1 behind work and sleep, starting today. I want to see how I'll cope with 3 months of going to the gym, and one month to build up fitness beforehand. Apparently, this time I'm serious.

The whole 4 month period will ideally result in me losing at least 12kg, the absolute maximum would be 17kg but I really don't think that will happen. I want to post daily, saying how my eating and exercise went. Also I'll be weighing in and posting that daily as well. The posts are likely to be short.

This morning I weighed in at 91.1kg. This is much higher than what it should be, but I'll be losing fluids in the next few days which will result in at least a few kg loss. How did my exercise go today? Pretty well. I fully admit that I'm not fit, so the plan was to run in a nearby park, 1 minute running, then 1 minute resting. Repeat as much as possible, ideally I'd run for an hour. It sounds pretty lame, just running for a minute, but in fact it's really great! You're only 1 minute away from a break. You never get really tired. I'm going to stick with 1 minute until it's obvious that I can manage two minutes. Yes, it adds an extra hour to the workout but if exercise is a high priority, that doesn't matter.

After running for 20 minutes, my right knee got a bit sore, so I stopped and went home. A few hours later, I went running again, again my knee got sore, so I stopped at 20 minutes. Last run for the day, I only managed 1 minute of running. The muscles just above my ankles were really sore. I'm hoping that tomorrow they will be much better. As for food, I had veges, tuna and olive oil as my main (low carb) food. Bad foods I shouldn't have had were: a can of beer, and three apples. I've got about a kilogram of apples left, I really shouldn't eat them so I'm throwing them out.

Tomorrow I expect to probably lose about 500g, and I want to run about the same period or hopefully more. BTW, opposite the park is where a friend lives. I don't see her very often, once or twice a year, but we've been friends for about 12 years. I decided that I wouldn't let her know that I'm running, because last time we met she said that I didn't need to lose weight. I don't know whether she was just being polite or didn't actually want me to lose weight (me being paranoid - maybe) but I'll just see her when I see her (preferably at goal), and not mention the fact that I was a lot heavier.

One last thing, only 3 blogs this month in my list of successful bloggers put on weight! That's 3 too many, but they are my true inspiration. They've lost continuously for 4 months so far, after 6 months I'll post the list.

It's been a while...

2010-03-20T12:07:00.003+13:00

Yes, it has. So you're probably wondering how the exercise is going? Well, it's not. I guess I was waiting for the optimum time to start running, then it started raining, then I had work, etc. I did prove that you could run 30 minutes in a day, just having started running, by running ten lots of 3 minutes. But that was too annoying, going for a run every 30 minutes.

I have decided to go back to low carb. I decided to do that after having something nice to eat, then getting very tired. That hardly ever happens when I'm low carbing, probably because I rarely eat something nice (half joke, half serious). I really, really want to finish this by the end of the year, which means that I definitely have to start exercising properly. So I'll just do it like I have in the past: start off with a one minute run, and increase by one minute until I reach 30 minutes. By then, I'll be fit.

I will then make a decision about whether to go to the gym. This will be based on how much weight I'm losing, I've never low carbed and exercised before, so it will be new to me.

I haven't weighed myself since deciding to low carb, the reason is that I typically drop quite a bit, and I don't want to obsess about the weight until next Friday, which is when I will have my first low carb weigh in for a while.

The plan...

2010-03-03T13:17:00.002+13:00

Well, Becky's birthday has come and gone, and now I'm about to start exercising. Here's the plan: start off slowly, and increase the amount of running I do daily until I start to experience increasing fatigue when I'm not running. At some point I'll say "that's enough" and drop it down a bit, then stay at that level.

I intend to calculate my metabolic rate, just in case there are any issues that come along. I'm not sure that there will be, but you never know! I'm old enough to know that life doesn't always go to plan.

I'll be counting kilojoules and keeping a record of how much running I'm doing, and from that work out how much energy my body would be using when I'm not exercising. Probably I'll also take a week out once every two months and not exercise, but still count kilojoules, and track my weight. That way I can see if my metabolism is being screwed or manipulated too much by the exercise/controlled food intake.

As far as Monday's weigh in went, I was 89.5kg on Monday, which means I forfeit yet another shirt. Tuesday I dropped to 89.2kg, and today I dropped again to 88.9kg. All this is of course just food emptying from my body, since I don't expect to be losing fat at the moment.

As you know, the heart of this weight loss method is motivation, and I plan on continuing the method of motivation I've done before. Next time I'll post, I'll have a graph showing my weights and a line I can't go above. If I weigh in more than the line, I won't be able to do the whole (coffee, film, swim) thing. The line starts off at 89.5kg (Monday's weigh in) and drops by 20g a day (small due to my not starting exercise yet).

I give up, admit defeat

2010-02-27T18:34:00.002+13:00

No, dear reader, I am not giving up my weight loss. I didn't sleep well last night, I was obsessing about the new plan of eating 8,500kJ each day. Would I still lose weight? Would I gain instead? Would I gain initially due to the increased weight of the food I was eating, then start to lose? How long would it take to have an definite answer? These questions kept of going through my head, so I had a large gap where I just couldn't get to sleep. I know it's the right choice though, I don't want to have problems losing because I'm eating too little, and I'm too scared to eat more because I don't want to put on weight.

As you may know, I decided that I wouldn't exercise in this weight loss, for two reasons. First, I wanted to prove that you didn't need to exercise to lose weight, and second, I've done it before (I lost 15kg in 2000). The first part is a bit of ego, if I were asked about how I did it, I could say that I did it without exercise.

Well, today I weighed myself, and I was 88.5kg. That's up 100g on yesterday, not a large amount up and nothing to worry about. I checked back on my spreadsheet to find out when I first reached 88.5kg since being at my maximum. 102 days ago. Although 1kg of the difference is because I was on low carb then, using the mythical 100g a day loss that I go on about, that means that I could be 9kg less than what I am. Effectively, I've wasted 3 months.

I have decided that due to wasting 3 months, and the fact that I don't really know when I'll be at goal (it could be this year, or it could be next year), I have decided to exercise. In addition, I've decided to go to a gym. That's something I haven't done before, so it's going to be a new experience for me. First though, I need to get fit, which will take about a month.

It's disappointing to have to come to this, but really, if I'm ever to get to goal, go on an overseas holiday, look for a new job (more on that in the future), I need to start exercising.

On Monday I start running, and I'll also stay at 8,500kJ while I'm running, unless there is a good reason to increase it.

Better safer than sorry...

2010-02-26T12:49:00.002+13:00

After the whole birthday thing, I went to having 7,000kJ daily, and noticed (how could I not!) that my weight was dropping by about 700g a day. Of course, that's not fat, it's probably liquid and partially digested food. It did however, make me wonder whether I had chosen an energy value which was too low. I'd hate to start off with a value too low, then struggle and be hungry while I lose weight as my body fights to keep on the weight.

Because I am uncertain about what value is 'safe' and what value is 'unsafe', I decided to go for the safer option and have 8,500kJ a day. That's quite a difference, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a temporary increase in weight, but I'm curious what my body will do with it. Obviously, there are three options, lose, stay the same and increase. Given that it's been so long since I've been at goal weight, I'm prepared to invest the time and see how it goes.

I've calculated what my body should consume (both now, and at goal weight) to stay at a constant weight, but really, I'm skeptical. The reason for that is because if those values are out by say 10% in either direction, that has quite an effect on how fast you can lose weight. I'll just go with the 8,500kJ and see what happens. The main thing is that it's not going to mess with my metabolism, which is what I'm concerned about.

On a less positive note, I only managed 4 days without sugar, before I decided to go and get a coffee and slice. Becky's birthday is on Sunday, which means three days maximum before more sugar. How long can I go without sugar after that? As long as possible hopefully.

An update and another non-weigh in

2010-02-23T20:02:00.002+13:00

Anyone reading my blog in one or two sessions will notice that my methods are likely to change, and do so frequently. I'm not sure why that is, but again, it's the case today. First, how did my going off the sugar experiment go? 115 hours without sugar. That's less than I thought it would be, and given the negotiations in my head, I have to say that yes, I am addicted to sugar. After that experiment, a few days before my birthday I pretty much stopped trying to lose weight. This happens to me each year, so it's not unexpected. My birthday involved eating reasonably, and having some treats, but the birthday cake choice was either small or large, and since I wanted to share the cake with Becky, I chose the large size. I wish that birthday cakes came with nutritional information, but they don't, thankfully birthdays only come once a year.

After finishing the cake, it was time to get back into the weight loss game. Recently I've been reading dire stories about how people are screwing up their metabolism by eating far less than they should be. Could that happen to me? Who knows, but it's better to be safe than sorry, which is why I yet again change my weight loss methods.

Starting today I aim to eat 7,000kJ a day. This is just really a guesstimate about how much I should eat, I'd rather aim for too much than too little. I very much doubt that I will put on weight at that intake. One issue to consider is that although I am counting kilojoules and weighing stuff, there seems to be a difference in energy values of the food I'm eating depending on the source I look up. Usually this is within about 10% but even so, that's quite a bit. I'm hoping that it will all average out to zero but of course there is no guarantee that will happen.

I don't intend to post daily lists of how much and what I'm eating, but today I have eaten: peanuts, whey protein powder, mixed veges, tuna, apples, bananas, peas, carrots, olives and Special K. Generally speaking, the less energy dense the food, the more of it I'll eat ie I'll eat 243kj of peanuts and 1,300kJ of apples.

I know that I absolutely hate counting energy values of food, but given the recent slowdown of losing weight, I have one choice presented to me:

Start counting kilojoules or start exercising.

Given that I want to say that exercise is not necessary to my having lost the weight, I need to start counting.

On to the usual motivations that I have. On my birthday, we went to see Avatar, but it was sold out, so we went to see Shutter Island instead. It was ok, I've seen better films though. Yes, I am allowed to see a film on my birthday (and on Becky's birthday too), although I have no idea when I will be able to see a film based on the normal rules that I have. Yesterday, I was too scared to weigh myself (that starts tomorrow) so out goes a shirt. That means I've thrown out ten shirts! I didn't know I had so many. Because I have chosen to slow down my weight loss, by eating this amount of food, I've decided that I won't be throwing out any more shirts, so long as I stay at 7,000kJ. However, the other motivations (buying coffee from the supermarket, swimming, seeing a film) stay, I need to get below what I was the last time I did these.

I'm trying to see how long I can go again without sugar, the last time I had it was Sunday afternoon, so I'll post in a week to say how that went. I've given up on the trying to lose 100g a day, at least temporarily, because I have a fixed energy intake now, I can't really expect to lose at a certain rate when I am eating a certain amount. It will be interesting to see how much I lose, and from that, make inferences on how much energy my body is using. I'm guessing now that my body will be non-linear, in other words, if you were to do the calculations, you'd end up with lots of different values that didn't make sense.

Today being day 1 of the 7,000kJ trial, I have to say that I feel just a little bit hungry, although I seem to have been eating for a lot of the day. Generally speaking, I'm a grazer, I don't have specific meals (with the possible exception of breakfast).

Back in the game

2010-02-16T22:05:00.003+13:00

I seem to have shrugged off any issues with not being able to lose weight that I had, and now I'm counting kilojoules and staying between 5500 and 6000. Hunger is just noticeable but not having sweet things (the no sugar pledge is going well) is something that I miss quite a bit, but I wanted to see if I was addicted to sugar (it looks like I'm not).

On Monday I weighed in at 87.7kg, again more than I'd previously, so again one more shirt to be thrown out. I'm running out of shirts, but I don't see that as a particularly big problem.

I've been talking endlessly about how I am supposed to be able to lose 100g a day, but I have yet to actually prove it. So today I start, my new system is that I've got to lose 100g a day before I can see a film/buy coffee/go swimming. I've got both my own birthday on Saturday and Becky's 8 days later to deal with, I'm hoping that they will not be an issue for me.

So what happens if it's becoming obvious I can't do it? I'll drop it down to 95 grams a day loss, something that would delay reaching goal by about 2 weeks, nothing to worry about.

This whole thing has been a bit disappointing, the struggle that I've been through, I guess the answer is keep away from sugar, count kilojoules, and make sure that I go for a swim/see a film at least once a week.

Stay tuned.

Update and two week challenge

2010-02-12T21:49:00.003+13:00

Yes, it's been a while. I weighed in at 87.6kg on Monday, which is 1kg higher than the lowest I've weighed in on a Monday, so again a shirt gets thrown away. In case you haven't noticed, I'm having a bit of difficulty with this losing weight thing. I'm sure I'll get there, but it's taking a while.

On a positive note, I bought some new jeans recently for $12! This has to be the lowest price for jeans I've bought in at least the last 20 years. They were really tight to put on for the first day, thankfully they've stretched somewhat due to wearing, and are easier to do up. Of course I've thrown out the old jeans.

In just over a week, I've got my birthday, and Becky's birthday eight days later. Because of this, and having watched a video recently on sugar addiction, I've challenged myself to do the following:

Go without sugar for the next 15 days except for a birthday cake, and the typical foods you have on your birthday
Count kilojoules
Aim for a maximum of 6,000kJ each day, except my birthday and the day after my birthday, when I'll finish off the birthday cake

As you may know, I've got a system where I'm allowed to see a film every 3 months. I've extended this to buying coffee from the supermarket and also going to have a swim, so I went for a swim and bought coffee on Wednesday, even though I'm not at a new low.

So all in all, this isn't the greatest update. But I'm getting there. Slowly.

Struggling (just a bit)

2010-02-05T15:58:00.004+13:00

I seem to be a bit stuck in terms of losing weight, excepting the fact that I went from low carb to high carb (with a subsequent gain of about 1kg in a few days), I haven't really lost weight recently. Eating, or rather the excess of eating is the problem. From today I'm trying to properly get into the whole 6,000kJ each day. I'll have to seriously go without sugar, but I've done that before, a whole month in fact, so I know I can do it if I really want to.

I weighed myself today, now I'm doing a 40 day test to see if I can manage 100g a day loss. If I can, I'll aim for that rate until 71kg. If I can't, no problem, I'll start again and see if I can manage 90g a day. I've got both mine and Becky's birthdays in that 40 day period, hopefully it won't make much difference. Usually Christmas results in a gain (except last Christmas, I was extra good), but birthdays don't have the same effect.

It's a new month which means that I have now got, with my blog project a list of people who have lost weight for three successive months. Oh how I wish I'd done this a long time ago. One woman has lost an amazing 18 percent body weight! These are the people who I need for inspiration. When my list is whittled down to 10 (which will happen in two months I think) I'll hold it at that, and see how they all go. I'd say at least half will reach goal. Of course, from the original 270 blogs that I started off with, hopefully many others will reach goal eventually. More good news: I have proved that weight loss is not random! If you lose one month, the next month you are more than randomly likely to lose as well.

Yesterday I went to see The Lovely Bones. It was an ok film, nothing special. As you may know, I'm allowed to see one film every three months, even if I haven't reached a new minimum. I'll probably be allowed to see another film in a few weeks.

An update and a non weigh in

2010-02-02T10:30:00.002+13:00

For the last week, I have been visiting my father in another city. It's been an experience. I've always wondered about how much personal detail to put in the blog, reading other blogs, there is a lot of information which could be considered personal. Mine, not so much. I'll try to increase that amount somewhat.

The objective for the trip was to divide the household property. That house has been a part of the family for 35 years. We moved in when I was 10, I left when I was 21, I wasn't sure what would happen when my mother died 8 years ago, but my father (who is 85 this year) decided to stay. Now, as his health slowly gets worse, it has been decided that he'd stay at a flatette which has been built next to where my sister lives with her 10 year old son.

Any household that stays in one place slowly accumulates material. Over 35 years, that's quite a lot of furniture, numerous little ornaments, and a multitude of things that mean absolutely nothing to strangers but have a lot of memories attached to them. It's sad to say goodbye but it has to happen eventually, I'd rather it happened now rather than after my father dies.

Having a complete household with Becky, it really wasn't worth taking a lot of stuff that would have to compete with my current stuff in terms of room here. So my brother and sister had the majority of it, I got just two boxes: one full of aircraft books (which I enjoy reading about), the other of mounted photographs. Speaking of photographs, it was the culmination of about 100 hours of work in scanning the family photographs and putting the scans onto DVD for distribution.

I was really upset when my father decided to throw away all the negatives about 4 years ago. How could someone make such a stupid decision? I still don't understand it. However, I decided that we would go through all the photos and scan them, then actually write down who was in what photograph before there weren't any parents to tell us. That has been done, amazingly there are 2,000 scans. This includes such things as my brother's wedding (which none of the family went to because we were living on the other side of the world at the time - my parents didn't even meet his wife until about 9 months later) and trip to India 22 years ago. All in all, there's about 75 years of history there. Going through the photos, I learnt a few things: my mother could be considered attractive (I had never really thought she was, growing up); when I was a baby, we went overseas for 2 years then came back to the same house; and I had forgotten what my cat - that I'd gown up with looked like (there are only two photos of her).

Losing weight while there was difficult. My brother and his daughter were there as well, so I decided that I'd just try my best, and deal with the aftermath later when I got home. My brother didn't care that I was trying to lose weight, he offered me lots of junk - some of which I accepted, some of which I declined.

So I'm back home now, and having to deal with the inevitable weight gain. I've decided to not weigh myself until next Monday. I'm aiming for 6,000kJ a day, which is entirely achievable for a week. I know that avoiding weighing myself is entering a diet "danger zone", but I think for a week, it'll be fine. That means I forfeit a shirt, I can't buy coffee, nor go to see a film until I can prove I weigh less than what I weighed previous to each of those. I'm also resetting the whole relative to what weight I should be system (the green and red lines) early next week. I need to prove to myself that I can lose 100g a day before I start making it a requirement.

Weigh in

2010-01-25T11:57:00.002+13:00

This week started off well, then I suddenly started gaining weight. I'm not exactly sure why, I have a few guesses, but I'm hoping that because I'm "good" at the moment, things will improve.

On Thursday I had a swim and then saw Paranormal. It was a boring film, I wouldn't recommend seeing it. However, that night and the next one I was a bit scared about going to the toilet in the middle of the night. On Thursday I was 4.5kg above what I should be.

Friday I bought coffee, I was 4.4kg above what I should be. Then I suddenly started gaining, I'm 87.6kg now, which means I throw away a shirt (a gain of 300g from last week). That makes a total of 5 shirts so I'd better keep control of things.

I'm wanting to see The Lovely Bones so I'd better maintain control of things.

Weigh in

2010-01-19T18:04:00.002+13:00

I weighed in yesterday at 87.3kg, which of course is up from the previous Monday, due to my changing to high carb from low carb. That's expected, so my whole motivation system is stalled while I readjust everything. If I go back to low carb (I may do so in March) I'll just add an amount to my low carb weight, to stop having similar problems when I go back to high carb.

What differences did I notice from the change? Not much, feeling bloated due to all the volume, it was nice to have a full stomach feeling again. Also, on the downside, my mental clarity doesn't seem as good. It's impossible to explain, so I won't bother.

I have decided to slow down the loss when I am close to goal, initially the idea was to go to 70g/day loss for the last 5kg, I've decided to keep that and add the last 2kg I'll lose by 30g/day. That adds about a month to the weight loss, and unfortunately means that my whole weight loss will (hopefully!) take just a bit longer than a year. I'm confident that everything will go to plan, as I'm now I've done the longest continuous weight loss is the last 10 years (4 1/2 months). However, of course, I'm not even half way, so who knows what will happen?

From low carb to low fat

2010-01-16T11:51:00.002+13:00

Halfway through the week I decided to stop doing the low carb thing, and see how low fat is in comparison. There is really nothing wrong with low carb, except it's boring and I never really feel full. I'm sure low fat has its faults as well. Because I'm switching over, I'll be gaining weight (but not fat) so this means that Mondays weigh in will not count as I will assume I'll be heavier. I'll go back to 100g of protein again, just in case I need it.

Weigh in

2010-01-11T10:48:00.005+13:00

Well, I did it. I wasn't sure if it would happen this week, but I weighed in less than previously, so no throwing away shirts. 86.6kg. The low carb has done what was needed. So I now have a new motivation system as said earlier, I currently am 2.9kg above what I should be right now. That's quite a bit, effectively a month behind. The three main motivations (coffee, swim, film) are now based on that value, if I am above what I was the last time I did one of those three things, I can't have/do any. I have to lose 100g each day, effectively. As to how much that excess value will drop, and how fast, I have no idea. I'll just see what happens.

The whole blog project is going really well. I'm seeing people now who have lost consecutively for two months. Ok, that's not a long time, and over half didn't make it (which is really sad, I can't think of any other thing which is 95% unsuccessful) but it's nice to get a list of people who are losing consistently. I just wish I did this ages ago, before I started losing weight, so they could give me encouragement. Maybe I'll post the list when it is 5 or 10 long.

I have decided to reduce the amount of protein I have each day to 95 grams from 100. The reason is that each day I move 125g of whey powder from the large container that it comes in into a smaller container. Well, that smaller container is now full. I could still have 125g a day and not run out for the rest of the 100g protein a day for 100 days challenge. It also means that I save $80 over the next 220 days.

Rewards and things

2010-01-09T12:12:00.006+13:00

As you probably know, I have a reward for each kilogram lost. Because I have 28 kilograms to lose, that means 28 rewards, quite a lot to decide on. I think that's why I haven't had the seven so far, simply because I can't decide what to get. Anyway, in the last few days I have got two rewards, I've only had one reward before (a new pair of jeans to be worn at goal), early in the week I bought a new watch. My old watch had a battery that was about to die, so when I saw the new watch, I decided to buy it, it's not a 'proper' reward, in the sense that I would have bought a new watch eventually, but because I have a few rewards to use, I decided to buy it now. As you can see, it's just an average digital watch, but it's totally white, which is something I'm not used to having. Just a bit of a change, really.

A few months ago, I attempted to walk up the hill overlooking my city, quite a high hill, something I haven't done before. Half way up, it started raining, so I abandoned the walk and left it for a bit. Well, I did it to completion on Thursday. It took longer than expected, 4 1/2 hours, and because I started late in the day (about 6pm) by the time I was nearly finished, it was getting pretty dark. However, I'm really pleased to say that I've achieved it! Whenever I see that hill now (which is almost daily) I can say to myself that I have walked up it. I've done bits over the years, I went for walks about 20 years ago with my former partner, who died about 7 years ago. Some of it I remembered, some I didn't. It was well worth it, although my legs are pretty sore, and probably will be for a few days. I want to do this again, 10kg lighter, and again just before goal. I'm hoping that I won't be so sore then. I really want to have more experiences as rewards, the sort of thing I say to myself "one day I will do that".

As for the losing weight thing - things aren't as good. I haven't weighed myself since Monday, which is not a good sign. However, I am doing low carb for 3 days before the next weigh in on Monday. By then my weight would have stabilised. That's the problem with low carb, your weight fluctuates so much when you eat/don't eat carbs. I went to see Bandslam on Tuesday, but because I hadn't weighed myself then, I'll take the option of every 3 months, I'm allowed to go and see a film even if I haven't lost weight. I also went swimming on Tuesday, I haven't gone in at least a month, so no problems there in terms of my motivation system. I've run out of coffee, and will get some on Monday. I'm thinking of swimming on a Monday, Tuesday will be when I usually see a film, and Thursday I'll usually get coffee. As I've said in a recent post, I can't be further away from green line in a previous graph, before I can have a swim/see a film/buy coffee. The green line drops by 100g a day.

Weigh in

2010-01-04T12:12:00.003+13:00

This week hasn't been that good in terms of losing weight (I gained 300g), I seem to have slightly lost some focus. Maybe because I haven't been swimming or seen a film lately, which I plan to change. I guess if I choose to not go swimming or see a film (when I am allowed) then it removes motivation. Lucky for me, there are some films that I want to see in the next two or three weeks. Also I'll be throwing away one more shirt, I have three shirts that need to be thrown away.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-01T11:53:00.004+13:00

I have a number of things that I want to achieve this year, one of course is losing weight and reaching goal. Someone on another blog posted these questions, I'll fill them in as time permits as I'm working today and on the weekend.

How much weight do you want to lose?
I want to lose another 21kg

What is the timeframe for reaching your target weight?
It should ideally be done in 230 days, but I'll be happy by the end of 2010

How do you want to accomplish your goal (what methods do you want to use)?
Motivation is 80% of my losing weight, the rest is what I eat (mainly high protein)

Who or what can support you in reaching your goal?
Just me I guess, plus this blog and my motivation system

How realistic is your goal?
Very, since I was at goal for a year when I was 34 (then I broke my arm...)

When will you start?
I started at 3rd September 2009

What is your current height and weight?
You're not going to calculate BMI, are you? Sneaky. You knew that BMI is for large populations, not individuals, didn't you? And the height should be to a power of about 2.6, try doing that on a four function calculator.

If you were at an ideal weight now, what would that weight be?
66kg, but I reserve the right to go lower (or higher, if needs arise)

At what weight would you like to be at four months from now?
4 x 30 = 120 days, at 100g/day that's 12kg loss from my current 87kg = 75kg.

Why do you want to lose weight?
A number of reasons, probably the greatest is that I like being slim.

Do you want to lose weight for a specific life event such as wedding or reunion? If so, when is that event?
I did want to lose weight for a high school reunion, but I blew that idea. See my theory on weight loss in my first posting on the blog.

What obstacles could get between you and your weight loss goals?
Any number, I hate to think of them all. I have decided that if I have a stay in hospital, I won't try to lose then.

Why do you think that you now have a weight problem?
The hormonal feedback mechanism in my body is broken. It's not like I was eating a large amount extra, it's equivalent to an extra apple a day.

What lifestyle changes do you think would help you lose weight?
Cutting back on food, that's pretty much it.

Have you lost weight in the past? If so, what has worked in the past to help you lose weight?
Yes, eating protein helped, also having a scale in the middle of my bedroom helped, but since I'm sharing a bedroom I don't think it's a good idea.

Why do you believe that you did not lose weight or you gained the weight back?
Being around someone who ate junk food continually doesn't help, and unlimited supply of free junk food, I've never been in that environment before.

What, if anything, has not worked for you in the past in helping you to lose weight?
Lots of things, but the wrong motivation isn't good.

Why do you think it did not work?
Because it's wrong...

Would you try writing down all food and drink consumed for a given period of time?
I've tried it, and I hated it. I only last a few days.

Do you cook at home often? If so, what do you cook?
I hate to cook, I can't see how people can lose weight when they cook often.

How often do you go out to eat? Where do you go?
I enjoy a coffee and slice of cake far too often, just go to local cafes etc.

What are your three favorite foods?
Apples, ice cream, mixed veges.

What are your three favorite restaurants?
I'm not a restaurant frequenter really.

What are three things you can do differently when it comes to food?
1. Eat less 2. Eat less 3. Eat less.

If you woke up tomorrow and your body was exactly the way you want it, what would be different?
My weight.

Do you eat when you are not hungry?
Who doesn't?

Do you binge eat (large amounts at a time)?
No.

Do you hide your food or eat in secret?
No.

Do you eat when you are sad, nervous, or depressed?
Who doesn't?

Do you eat as a reward?
Yes, too much.

Do you eat while watching TV or using the computer?
Yes.

What do you normally eat for a meal?
It varies substantially.

What type of snacks do you eat?
It varies a lot.

In terms of exercise, what, if anything, are you currently doing?
None.

Where do you go for exercise? A local public gym? School/work gym? Home?
See above.

What, if anything, are your three favorite types of exercise?
None.

What is your daily/weekly/monthly/yearly motivation to move towards your goals?
I have a 4 day motivation system to lose weight, see my first posting.

Do you have rewards for certain goals?
Definitely.

Proof that my motivation system is working

2009-12-30T12:51:00.004+13:00

Everyone who starts a new diet wonders whether they'll reach goal. I am sure that there have been people who have lost 50kg, been 1kg away from goal, then put it all on and more. How do I know that my new idea is going to work? I don't. But I can make a reasonable conclusion. Since starting the weight loss, today I have lost the greatest amount of weight continuously in the last 9 years. Today I have lost 7kg continuously (my definition: I gain 1kg or more, and reach a recent maximum. I start to lose weight, with occasional increases here and there. I reach a recent minimum, and put on 1kg or more. The continuous loss is the difference between the recent maximum and minimum), my previous best was just under 7kg, in the first half of 2005. Before that, in 2000 I lost 11.7kg continuously, so I'll break that in about 2 months.

Yesterday I posted about how I was going to use running as a motivation, and how I was going to use it. I could not have been more wrong about that idea. I considered deleting it, but decided to leave it in because I want people to see my motivation mistakes and how I figure out how to correct them.

First, I was going to use 30 days as a length of time: if I am further away from the horizontal axis of the last graph in the posting 30 days later, I start running. This goes against my statement in the first posting of the blog: Most people can lose weight for something 4 days into the future. So why am I using 30 days? It's far too long. Second, running is not a good disincentive to lose weight, simply because it's too easy to ignore. Things that are easy to ignore should be used as incentives, rather than disincentives. I can choose to ignore buying coffee at the supermarket, or ignore going to see a film. These are much better disincentives because they are passive.

A much better solution is to use the normal three motivations stated at the start of the blog (coffee, films, swimming) with the graph. Am I further away from the horizontal axis than the last time I (bought coffee, saw a film, went swimming)? If yes, I can't do any of them.

I guess I am caught between two issues - I want to not take years to finish the weight loss. If the longest I can go without a haircut is probably 4 months, then the haircuts at specific weights (90, 85, 80, 75, 70, 66 kilograms) which means that losing weight could take 24 months. That's far too long for me. On the other hand, I know from experience that telling myself that I have to lose at a specific rate will result in me 'rebelling' and giving up. I don't really know if 100g a day loss is achievable long term, if I find myself struggling I can drop it back to 90 or 80 grams pretty easily.

Lowest weight in over a year

2009-12-29T22:28:00.006+13:00

Yes, it's been a while. I should have been posting every week, but I haven't posted in over six weeks, so my apologies for that. It's just me being disorganised, for some reason I don't always do what I had planned to do, I can put off things and then the weeks turn into over a month.

I've been losing weight, as the graph above shows, but not nearly as much as I should have, as the graph below shows. Anyway, today I was lowest weight in over a year, something to be pleased with. It's taken so long! Nearly 4 months.

The graph below shows the point where I should be (green line) and the red line shows where I should be running. I've only done about 6 minutes of running, where I should have been running for 30 minutes each day I'm above the red line. The reason of course is that I dislike running, at least initially, and it was unrealistic to expect that I just started at 30 minutes. Also, I'm really hoping that I can do this whole weight loss thing without exercise, to prove that it really isn't necessary. I'm trying to show that what motivates people is far, far more important than exercise or even what you eat.

However, I really have to do something to motivate me, because I've just been spending the last month just cruising along, and hardly losing any weight. The shirt motivation isn't working particularly well at the moment, because I need to throw away two more shirts. I suspect that it's just me deciding that I need to reduce the number of shirts I own, and just taking that way.

On a plus side, I've been having 100g of protein for about 10 days, I started on the 18th of December. I've pretty much decided that my holiday at Piha will have to wait until summer, it won't be warm enough 90 days from now to go camping, or rather I'd prefer it to be warmer. I'll just go about a year from now. All I have to do is eat protein consistently.

I still want to use running as a motivation, but I'll use the graph below, which is the difference between daily measurements and the green line in the graph above. So long as I move towards the green line, however slowly, that's fine. But if I'm further away from the green line than I was a month previous, I'll need to start running, starting off one minute at a time, rather than large amounts that I can't do. I'll figure out the exact method of punishment.

The whole blog thing (where I try to find people who are consistent losers) is interesting. Initially, I found 270 weight loss blogs. Of those exactly 100 posted their weight in November (weight tickers don't count, because I don't know when it was updated), and it's now almost the end of December. Quite a few have gained in December, so I'll let you know next time I do a weigh in (Monday) how many have lost in December.

I'm relieved that I've achieved this lowest weight in over a year. I'm almost 1/4 through the loss, so I've got a lot to go still. I have a feeling that I'm going to make it. I just don't want it to take ages.

Weigh-in

2009-11-23T22:56:00.004+13:00

The past week has gone really well, I lost 500 grams, which was about what I expected to lose.

On Monday I watched 2012, the film was okay, nothing special but it's the first disaster film I've seen which had a bit of comedy in it.

Wednesday I saw My Sister's Keeper, this upset me a bit, so I felt like a treat, so had a coffee and slice (flour 8). Then I had dinner with a group that I haven't been with in about a year, so I didn't feel bad having pasta (flour 9). After that, I went home and surprise, surprise, had 3 stale biscuits that Becky had lying around (flour 10). I consider that to be brainless eating. It's been a long time since I did that, hopefully it won't happen too often. Because I had flour 3 times on Wednesday, I'll count each individually, since if I don't it's possible for me to have a brainless binge session.

My weight increased by about 1 kilogram after that meal, and stayed that way until about Saturday. The graph shows a maximum daily change of 200 grams (excepting sudden drops such as on Sunday), which is why the whole kilogram is not shown. By the way, I worked out on my spreadsheet that I've been heavier than what I weigh now for over 500 days!

The 100 day challenges are going well, I'm ahead in terms of weight (I should bank it up and use it for Christmas, maybe) and protein is going okay at the moment as well. I've also decided to try the Shangri-lah diet again. You probably won't know what this is, basically you consume extra light olive oil two hours either side of food consumption, holding your nose. Sounds crazy? Sure, but the idea is that since your brain doesn't "know" you have just consumed food, but does notice that you have more available energy in your system, it suppresses appetite. Does it work? I tried it a few years ago, and yes it does work. But being poorly motivated, I didn't really give it a proper go. Now that I'm consuming a lot of olive oil as an energy source (due to being on a low carb diet) it makes sense to try it again. Also I go through periods when I'm really hungry, and those times I get a bit scared that I'll screw up badly.

100 day challenge

2009-11-20T16:19:00.003+13:00

Back in September I decided to do a 10 week challenge to lose 9kg. It was unsuccessful, but that was before I was not having flour on a regular basis. Since the removal of flour, things are easier now, because simply, there is far less choice of food to eat, and those foods I do eat are less enjoyable.

I've decided to do two 100 day challenges. The first is to eat 100g of protein each day. I've tried before, and wasn't successful, but I'll just keep trying. If I succeed in eating 10kg of protein consistantly, I'll give myself a holiday in the place I used to go when I was a child.

The other challenge is to see if I can lose 100g a day for 100 days. This is not necessarily hard, but the issue is consistancy, which I am not good on. I'll still have the Monday weigh-ins, but I really want to finish this whole weight loss next year, and I'm starting to slip in terms of the finishing date, which at the moment has moved on to 27th July at the earliest.

How would it work? Simple: today I weigh 88.9kg, I need to lose 100g a day each day. Over that period is both Christmas, New Year and my birthday. What happens if I am over what I should weigh? 1kg or over, I have to start running, 3 hours a week. I've done that before, with no problems. I can also abandon the project but I have to announce it 10 days before stopping. Let's see if I can do it! I'd say that I can do it, the question is will I?

List of rewards

2009-11-19T22:36:00.003+13:00

As you may know, about 6 weeks ago I went for a walk up the local hill, the walk was a reward (I haven't done that walk in years) but it started to rain, so I didn't get to finish it. I want to have a reward every kilogram lost, which means that I should have a total of 28 rewards. I've lost 5kg so far, and should have had 5 rewards by now, but it just hasn't happened for some reason. Last week I got my first reward, which was a new pair of jeans. They were on special and I just couldn't resist, I'd planned to get them further into the weight loss but given that they were cheaper than usual, I just decided to start with them. Of course, I can't wear them at the moment, I consider them to be goal jeans. I have the same type and size sitting in my wardrobe, which I haven't worn in 4 years! Has it been that long? They were rather tight when I did buy them, just 9kg over goal. I only wore them for about a month then started gaining. Now I have two pairs, the jeans that I'm wearing now probably won't make it to goal, but that's ok, since I'll start wearing the skinny pairs 9kg/4 months before goal.

What else is planned as rewards? Again, I plan to walk up that hill three times (about 18, 9, 1kg above goal). An eye test, new lenses for my glasses and sunglasses (which I haven't worn in about 4 years) so that's three rewards, going to the local pool and having a ride in the hydroslide (which I haven't done in about 10 years) at 1kg above goal. I also want other experiences, go to a meeting of a group that I've always wanted to find out about, going for a ride in a go-kart (at two different weights), a new digital camera (my current one is great but it's too big).

The biggie at goal weight is an overseas trip. I've never been overseas, which at the age of 45 is crazy. So I want to go somewhere where it is hot, close to the equator. Nearby too. I'm thinking maybe Indonesia, Australia, that sort of thing. Frankly, the hotter the better. I have yet to decide where, it'll be based on a number of factors, which I'll talk through here no doubt. To be honest I'm a bit scared of the whole idea of going to an overseas country where I don't speak the language. No doubt I will get used to the idea, and enjoy the whole experience. Although I am living with my partner Becky, I will be going alone. The reason for this is that it is a reward to myself, for the work that I have done. Also, if we were to decide to go together, then rather than on my own, then weight loss would turn from something I did for myself, into an obligation. My fear is that I would not reach goal, thereby wasting all the money that we'd spent on tickets. As it happens Becky doesn't want to go to somewhere hot, so it's not an issue. I'd love to go overseas with her, but this trip will be for myself.

An overseas trip is quite a reward, but it's not making me lose weight. I know because I've had this idea for some time, and guess what? I put on weight. Unless proven otherwise, the whole four day system of weight loss motivation is the only thing making me lose weight.

Annoying co-worker

2009-11-17T05:12:00.002+13:00

On Sunday at work I had an annoying conversation with the woman who sits next to me. I think it started with me asking her how much she thought a young man who also worked there what his age was. Later on in the day she made a statement about him, saying that she thought he was underweight. I was really surprised by this, since he isn't. Sure, he's skinny, but I really don't believe he was underweight. Anyone comparing him with other people at say a university wouldn't think that. How would he compare with me when I reach goal? I have to say, I have no idea. It's been so long since I've been at goal, I just can't remember that much about how I looked. Anyway, so I have been thinking about what happens if she accuses me of being underweight in the future? It's a possibility.

I hope she doesn't because I'll feel insulted if she does. I don't know if that is an over reaction on my part, but if she does, I almost certainly will move to another desk so I don't have to be next to her. I guess that it's a sensitive issue for me because someone is making a judgement about me which is wrong and also of course I don't like. I've been having weight problems for the last 16 years and if she makes a decision about what weight I should or shouldn't be just makes me feel really annoyed. Losing weight is hard work, and for her to make that statement debases that hard work. She has no medical background, her judgement is based on her own experiences and environment. I have been skinny for the first 25 years of my life, no doctor told me that they were concerned about my health due to that, and I have had a few relationships at that weight, where women have found me attractive and wanted to see me naked, neither of those women made any comment about my weight.

I also need to stop drawing attention to myself at work, in regards being on a diet. People are asking how I'm going with it, which in itself is fine, but I need to not show people the level of protein I'm having, since maybe they'll be making judgement comments in six months. This is an easy problem to solve, I'll just have protein in the car just before and after work, with one or two times during work.

Weigh-in

2009-11-16T13:14:00.004+13:00

It's Monday, which means that it's my first weigh-in. The last week I have been all over the place in terms of weight, I started having olives, which contain a lot of fat and salt, and had them about 3 days. They are really nice to eat, and because I'm doing the low carb thing at the moment, it's safe for me to eat them. However, my weight increased dramatically, due to unknown reasons (maybe water retention, maybe not) so on Friday it was a mad rush to eat properly, due to having watched Surrogates the previous Sunday, and wanting to watch a few films early on this week. I think I should eat olives every day, any water retention problems would not show themselves if I did that. I'm thinking that my weight will increase this week, because I'm trying to train myself to have 500g of veges each day. Of course I'll lose as well, so the net change will probably be a loss.

I lost 400g this week, weighing in at 88.6kg.

On Thursday I had flour 7 having spent a lot of money on a scanner (the old one died about 8 months ago). I guess I just can't help myself, can I?
I also bought coffee on Thursday.

What to do at maintance?

2009-11-10T22:44:00.002+13:00

I've been thinking about how I'm going to stay at goal, given that most people who reach goal eventually bounce back to some degree (myself included, of course). Given what I know about motivation, I think the best way to stay at goal is to use the same motivations that I have been using when losing. Going to the cinema, swimming, coffee and haircuts. I've decided that I am allowed to do all of these only when I am below goal. That may change, but I'm hoping it won't. People who are successfully at goal usually have some weight value that when they reach it, it sets off warning bells, so I'm thinking why not just use goal weight? Being a kilogram or two below goal weight isn't a big deal. I need to weigh myself regularly of course, based on my own experience, when I don't weigh myself, I gain, it's a reasonably good correlation. So if I buy coffee at the supermarket, go to see a film, go swimming, or have a haircut, I need to have weighed myself that day and been below 66kg.

On another subject, I've been struggling with caffeine addiction for a long, long time. It makes me tired the day after I have some, it's addictive and it generally isn't worth it. Yesterday I had some Coke and I'm hoping that is the last caffeine I have for a long time. The longest I've been without caffeine is 2 years, that was 10 years ago. Can I do it again? I'm sure I can if I control cravings. Last time, I controlled cravings by eating chocolate. When I say to myself "just one drink can't hurt" it's time to go and buy a small block of chocolate. Previous experience shows that the cravings can last up to 6 months.

5kg lost, 23kg to go

2009-11-09T21:35:00.002+13:00

Another kilogram down. I'm really getting into the hang of things, and I don't see any reduction in motivation, which is really great. I've been wondering when I'll finish this weight loss, I really tried to not work it out, since I've been doing this for the last 9 years and haven't been successful. Anyway, mid July is the current earliest date. I did think about exercising to speed up the process, but in order to cut out 90 days of waiting to reach goal, I'd have to exercise by my calculations, about 140 hours, it's just not worth it.

I have decided to have a weekly weigh in, rather than when I lose each kilogram. That day is Monday, which coincides with this current kilogram loss. I saw a few films, nothing special though, although I really enjoy going out and seeing them, it makes my day really.

Things about the last kilogram are:
28th Oct had flour 3 due to celebrate the end of stress (yay!)
29th Oct had flour 4 due to a six monthly thing that helps me a lot (can't say what, sorry)
31st Oct had flour 5, helped someone shift, and we had bread and sparkling wine afterwards. I didn't have much bread but it still counts
7th Nov flour 6 felt like a treat because I had a large purchase

So it the last month, I've had flour 6 times! This is much, much more than I expected. I'm not sure when the next time I'll have flour is, but it'll hopefully not be in the next month.