Lowest weight in over 7 years

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

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

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.