The heat is on

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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...

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

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...

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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.