Halfway (second time)

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...

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

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

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.