All about control

My father died 4 days ago, and the funeral is tomorrow.  4 1/2 weeks after he fell, he died.  As for me, I'm highly stressed.  It's family and finances related.

I'm not enjoying life, I feel as though I have no control in my life, and I want to change that.  I want to have one thing that I can control, which is my weight.  I want to have full control over what I eat, and also what I don't eat.  So today I'll have some sugary food, then go no sugar again.  I'm going to the gym daily, and I'm very slowly running faster each second day or so. 

I want to post at least weekly, at least for the next month or two.  I haven't weighed myself in just under a week.

My Dad...

About 4 weeks ago my father, who is 93 fell over and broke his femur.  There have been problems with his condition ever since.  He's in hospital, and he probably won't leave.  I'm heartbroken.  I didn't expect this to happen.  His condition has declined over the last couple of weeks.  Anyway, I continued with my weight loss, then I stopped, then I started again.

I weighed 82 kg a few days ago.  I'm trying to maintain my motivation for weight loss, but it's hard when your Dad is dying. 

I'll keep this post short.  I don't know when I will post again, hopefully not too long from now.

Weekly weigh-in 16

83.75 kg, a huge drop since last week.  I don't know why, a combination of natural variations probably.  Anyway, that's good.  I'm pleased with it.  I've still got a lot to go, though.  I've decided to ditch the weekly weigh-ins, it's a bit of a hassle and there isn't much to talk about.  I want to post at the start of a month, and at the middle of the month.  That's enough for me.  See you mid November.

Weekly weigh-in number 15

So today I weighed in at 85.35 kg, a loss of only 200 grams from last week.  I'm kind of disappointed with that, but a loss is a loss, so I'm not worrying or concerned too much.  Let's see how I go next week.  Lowest weight in 218 days.  Still on track for my desired goal-day.

Weekly weigh-in number 14

85.55 kg, the lowest weight in 213 days.  I'm doing quite well, although my appetite has come back.  I'm off the sugar still, and I would (theoretically) reach goal weight in 160 days.  That's all for now, it's short I know, but there's not much to say.  See you in a week.

Weekly weigh-in number 13

85.95 kg, finally under 20 kilograms to goal weight.  Three and a bit weeks into no sugar, and I'm doing well.  My weight dropped every day for almost two weeks. then gained a bit, and stayed constant until now.  I don't know why, I'll let my body decide what's going on.  The good news is that I'm less than 20 kilograms until goal weight, a sort of emotional barrier has been broken.  Even better is that I'm the lowest weight in 203 days.  That's almost 7 months.  But that really means that I've wasted the last 7 months, just waiting until I could go off of sugar. 

Now for the fun stuff, when will I reach goal weight?  In the last three and a bit weeks I've lost just over 3 kilograms, and I would expect to reach goal weight in 146 days.  Of course that's not going to happen, but a dieter can dream, can't they?  I really want to reach goal weight before 15 November next year, and I think that's "very achievable". 

See you next week.

Weekly weigh-in number 12

86.5 kg, a loss of about a kilogram from last post.  I'm still off sugar, but I don't want to jinx it by saying how great it is.  It's been about 2 1/2 weeks now.  My appetite has come back somewhat, but it's not the same as when I was consuming sugar.

My biggest issue regarding weight loss now, is the feeling of how long it will take.  Over a year, probably.  That makes me sad.  There's nothing I can do about it but avoid sugar, and diet every single day.  Let's hope that things go well for me, especially with the no sugar thing.

Weekly weigh-in number 11 (again, brief)

I'm really sorry to be so short with these posts.  87.55 kg, and I'm 6 day without sugar.  My headaches have gone away, no appetite yet (but I'm not caring about that).

Weekly weigh-in number 10 (brief)

Just a few lines here, I'm rather busy.  I weighed 87.85 kilograms today, lowest weight in about a month.  I'm also about 79 hours without sugar, I'm having headaches every day for 3 days, and I've lost my appetite.

Weekly weigh-in number 9

88.5 kg, a loss of 1.0 kilograms from last week.  So I'm going well, eating below maintenance for the last week.  I'm back in my 86.5-88.5 kg range which I've been for the last 6-7 months.  I've given myself a new challenge - to eat below maintenance each day until December 7th, the day I fly off to see the Philippine lady.

So what number is maintenance?  I really don't know, but I'm finding out.  Since the 3rd September I've been recording my intake and daily weight, which is the perfect recipe for finding out how much energy my body is consuming every day.  Of course it has a degree of error, but I'm fine with that, it's not likely to be more than 10% off the true value.

I'm using a spreadsheet, and I've got two numbers.  The first is the average of a daily (previous day intake less gain the next day) which is 10,093 kJ.  The other is achieved by graphing daily intake vs next day gain, and using a linear trend line to see where the trend passes through the y=0 line.  That number is 9,290 kJ.  I don't know why the two numbers are so wide apart, the question is which is a better method?  Who knows right now.  I'm hoping that the two numbers will move together after a while.  I was hoping that it would be definite by 12 days, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

Apart from that, everything is going alright.  I'm losing.  Catch you next week.

Weekly weigh-in number 8

89.5 kg, a gain of 500 grams from last week.

I happened to eat quite a lot of chips last night, which is the likely cause of my gain this morning.  That's fine, but I am eating more than maintenance.  Not a huge amount, but it's having an affect on my weight.  I need to keep my intake below maintenance, and I need to plan my meals better.

Another thing which I need to do is reduce my sugar intake.  I calculated my intake today as 94 grams, which is way too much.  I need to cut that back to zero, ideally.  By sugar I mean sweet food made from corn or cane stalks or whatever.  I don't mean the sugar in an apple, as an example.

I'm estimating my metabolism, and I'm on day 6 so far.  I was hoping that my average number (calculated from what I ate yesterday minus today's gain multiplied by 30,500) would have stabilised by now, but the number is all over the place.  Hopefully it'll be relatively constant in a week or two.

See you next week.

Weekly weigh-in number 7

89.0 kilograms, a gain of 1.1 kilograms since last posting.  My weight is kind of variable right now, it's going up and down probably because of variations of salt intake each day.  That doesn't bother me, it'll even out over a few days or so.  My weight is slowly inching upwards, and that's because I am trying to wean myself from going to cafes as referred to in my last post.  That's not a big worry, I just need to keep it in check.  I've decided to not go cold turkey regarding sugar, rather slowly phase it out over weeks or months.  So I'll be having sugar every day for a while yet.

About a week ago I did something I'd been delaying for about a year.  I have 180 days of kilojoules consumed data, and I have some weight records at the start and end, and I decided to see how the two related.  I did the calculation (lost weight x 30,500 kilojoules per kilogram) and then used the average daily intake to calculate my estimated metabolism, how many kilojoules I was meant to consume every day. 

I don't know why I did it then, I guess I was worried that the number was worryingly low meaning my metabolism had gone to crap because of all of the dieting I had done over the years and so avoided the calculation much earlier.

Thankfully the number was normal, or at least it seemed to be normal to me.  So I've decided to measure it again, and see what number I get.  I'll keep you informed.

I'm also unsure what amount of food to eat each day.  I've decided to have a system: my average daily intake has to reduce from a reasonably high number.  How quickly or slowly it reduces will be up to me, it just has to reduce.  Let's see how that system goes.  I'll give you an update next week.

Weekly weigh-in number 6

87.9 kilograms, a loss of 100 grams from my last post.

Not much change, right?  I'm still hovering between 86.5 and 88.5 kg.  Still having the occasional 'blowout', mainly due to that dreaded white stuff, sugar.  However, I'm really trying my best to go off of sugar.  Currently I'm about 47 hours without it.  That's not a lot, but it's better than nothing.  I'm kind of dreading my cravings, however.  About 5 1/2 years ago, I stopped having caffeine.  I have to say that I'm quite proud of my achievement.  Anyway, I haven't counted how many times I've craved a Coca Cola, but it'd be in the hundreds or thousands. 

I hate to think how many times I'll crave sugar.  I just don't want to know.  Sugar is less 'addictive' than caffeine.  But I really love going to a cafe, having a coffee and slice, reading the newspaper and enjoying the whole process.  My brain has become acclimatised to the whole experience and pumps out those endorphins when I do it.  I'll miss it.

Anyway, enough rambling.  Let's talk about food intake.  I'm counting kilojoules, and have a 10 day total, the last one was 7,120 kJ per day.  Ideally, I should be losing weight on that.  But I do know that some food values will be wrong, some weights will be wrong, and other unknowns to worry or think about.  But let's assume that I'll be losing on that.

 My weight is a function of about half a dozen variables.  Water seems to be a major item on this list, you can expect major variations depending on how much salt I eat.  I've seen this effect numerous times.  However, no matter how much salt I eat, eventually I'll start losing weight if my intake is less than maintenance.  I just don't know how quickly it'll happen. 

So really, it's just a waiting game.  See how quickly or slowly I'll lose weight.  Slowly reduce how many kilojoules I eat, and see if that makes a difference.

I've also decided to not go low carb.  It's great, low carb, mainly because you don't feel hungry (or I didn't).  But I don't want to go below 6,000 kJ per day, it's my hard limit.  I have just decided that I love fruit more than I love not being hungry.  Really, if I could only eat fruit, I might just do that.

Bit of a long post today, if you got this far, congratulations.  See you next week.

Weekly weigh-in number 5

Rather late because I have been exceptionally busy at work, and just didn't have the spare time to make a posting.  When I'm busy, I'm not concentrating my efforts to lose weight, and unfortunately that's the case this week.  I weighed yesterday 88.0 kg, which is a gain of 200 grams from last week.  My weight is hovering around 86.5-88.5 kilograms with no change.  I've got a few plans to change things, but I'm not prepared to tell you all what those are yet.

Catch you next week.

Weekly weigh-in number 4

87.8 kg, a gain of 400 grams from last week.

So how am I going?  I was going well, except the day, on Friday when I woke up in pain and spent most of the day in pain as well.  It turns out that I have low self control regarding food when I am sore, it was unexpected and I didn't have the mental resources to keep things in check.

So what happened?  I ate my normal food, then I went to a cafe to have a 'treat', then I have more yummy food at home.  I went crazy.

I guess I spent most of Friday in bed, or at a cafe, or briefly at work, or eating.

I dutifully logged all of my food on the Lifesum app.  One problem.  You know how some cities have built a tall structure in the middle of the city, often called a "tower"or "needle" or similar?  It's basically a very tall, thin building with a rotating restaurant at the top.  The problem is that my graph on the Lifesum app looked like a skyline photo with a tower building at the far right end.

I cringed whenever I saw it.  I did the only thing I could do.  I deleted 10 weeks of data so my graph would not contain that damn tower building.  It really did look awful.

So I'm doing a refresh now, starting new.  I'm hoping to still go low carb, that plan has been in the works for a while now. 

I haven't lost weight, realistically since February.  Time to get started, go low carb, get off sugar and lose some weight.

See you next week.

Weekly weigh-in number 3

This morning I weighed in at 87.4 kg, which is a small loss from last week.  A loss is a loss, no matter how small it is.  I'm counting kilojoules using the Lifesum app on my smartphone, and that's going well.  I am slowly going low carb still, yesterday I ate about 112 grams of carbs, which is not yet low carb.  I'm hoping that there are no problems around the corner regarding low carb.

This morning I weighed the lowest in 2 weeks, which is a small, very small accomplishment.  But I haven't lost weight in the last 6 months.  That's pretty bad.  I could be shacking up with Miss Philippines in 616 days, which means 35 grams a day, totally achievable.  However, that number was 28 grams a day 6 months ago, slightly easier. 

Weekly weigh-in number 2

87.7 kg

I'm starting to believe that it's 'true', over eat and you'll gain weight.  I know that it's true, but I've overeaten one day, only to see the scale show a loss the next to know that it's not always true, at least in the short term.

Anyway, I've been on my trip to see my father and his 93rd birthday, and now I'm in Christchurch again.  How did my eating go for last week?

Not very good.  I averaged a whopping 8,003 kJ.  That's way too much, in fact half a kilogram of fat too much.  Hence my weight gain from last week.  Travelling had a lot to do with it, I just can't get into a proper eating routine when I'm away from home.

I'm going low carb, but I want to transition very slowly.  I want that because in the past I've gotten very tired as my body has gotten used to not having any carbohydrates to nibble on during the day.  My carbs per day has so far been: 216, 200, 176, 165 grams so far.  I can reduce it as much as possible, and as slow as I can tolerate.  I'm not in a hurry.

I'm hoping to check in next Sunday with good news.

Weekly weigh-in

Well, it's been almost a month since I've posted, and how am I going with my losing one kilogram a month idea?  As of a few days ago, I weighed about 86.7 kilograms, which is pretty much the same as my last posting.  I still want to lose about a kilogram a month, but I think that I'm okay with losing faster.  Honestly, I don't know what to do.  I just don't want to be not at goal weight before I move in with Miss Philippines.

I'm counting kilojoules and that's not too much of a hassle, but I realise that even if I stay almost exactly at 6,000 kJ all it takes is one 'blowout' to ruin that and as a consequence, I've decided to have a weekly average that I'll aim for.  For this coming week, it's between 6,300 and 6,400. 

I don't want to do any exercise at the moment, although that may happen, who knows.  I'll try my best to check in every week and say how my diet and weights are going.

A weigh-in and a change of plan

So only 2 weeks ago I posted on how I planned to lose weight relatively quickly and then slowly drift into goal weight over an extended period of time.  I also said how my plan might change, well, guess what?  It only took 2 weeks for me to change my mind about things.

Losing weight is hard.  The faster you lose it, the harder it is.  Why am I losing weight?  Fundamentally, because I like being slim, and I have been slim up until the age of 25-29.  I'm not a muscular guy, and the hormonal weight regulation system I was blessed with meant that my 'natural' weight was relatively low, meaning I didn't have a lot of fat on me.  Not a lot of fat, and not a lot of muscle meant that I was thin.  That's a reasonable description of my body up until my late 20's.

I have decided to just lose one kilogram a month, until I reach goal weight.  That's 21 months away.  March 2020.  There is a lot of risk in this method, because if I gain weight, it'll make it harder to reach goal weight in March 2020.  But I've decided to use this method well - because it's easier. 

Although Miss Philippines (I've referred to her a few times in the blog) aren't officially in a relationship yet, I'm thinking that it's likely that her and I will live together in 2020, probably in April.  We're not in a relationship because there aren't many relationships where the couple stay two years apart, or even one year.  With the exception of my going swimming, she's the only person who'll see pretty much how my body looks under my clothing. 

Because she's elsewhere, there doesn't seem much reason to lose weight quickly.  It'll be much easier to just lose weight linearly over a 21 month time frame.

However, I absolutely want to get to goal before we live together.  I don't want her to go through what I put Becky and Gill through. 

Apart from that, I'm doing okay.  Counting kilojoules.  Today I weighed 87.2 kg.

I'll post an update, probably in a week.

Another plan

It's been a while since I last posted, how am I going?  Well I gained probably a few kilograms, and then I lost probably a few kilograms.  My last weight was 88.1 kg, about a week ago.  I've restarted using a kilojoule counting app called Lifesum, I have used it in the past successfully, for a whopping 6 months between January and July last year.  I'm aiming for about 6,000 KJ per day. 

One of my big concerns is what happens when I reach goal weight.  Will I rebound?  Well, I really don't know.  I've been at goal weight 5 times I think (I don't have my spreadsheet installed so I don't exactly know).  That's 4 times too many.  One time I was at goal weight for only a few days.

My idea:

So the idea I've had for a while (and I maybe even wrote it on the blog somewhere) is to smoothly cruise into goal weight so slowly that I barely notice it.  If I'm always 3 months away from goal weight, I will reduce my weight loss rate as I get closer to 66 kg.  Eventually I'll get tired of not being at goal weight, and just lose normally for a few weeks or so.

Why 3 months?  In my opinion, that's the longest period where I still feel I am not very far away from goal weight.  In other words, it's not too bad.  6 months is too far away. 

If I assume that I can lose 100 grams a day, that means 9 kg left to lose at 75 kg.  That's 13 kilograms away, or 130 days.  That's mid October.  So once I hit 75 kg, I won't slow down my weight loss, but I'll keep track of how I'm going and plan things.  Of course I could change my opinion tomorrow, but I'm hoping that doesn't happen.

I'll try to post at least monthly, maybe even weekly.  I also want to post graphs from the food intake app.

Day 3

Things aren't going particularly well for me at the moment, I'm having trouble getting off of sugar, something that has happened numerous times since starting the blog.  I'm doing the only thing I know that works - extending the number of hours/days between sugar consumption.  So right now, I'm at about 25 hours and I'll have more sugary goodness tomorrow, extending it to about 28 hours.  See you tomorrow.

Day 1

So yesterday I didn't have much carbohydrates after my posting.  However, this morning, what did I have?  Yes, carbs again.  I really don't know what's going on in my head.  Anyway, I'm back in low carb territory again.  I just wasted a day in getting to goal weight.

I'm going to challenge myself to have at least 2 tins of tuna (or equivalent in other meats) which means 50.4 grams of protein.  That's not a lot.  I could easily stop eating meat, I just don't crave it. 

I'll update tomorrow again about how the low carb operation is going.

Update

Well, about 6 months later, how am I going?  First, I saw Miss Philippines, who I talked about in my trip to Singapore in late 2015.  I travelled to the Philippines, saw her for 4 weeks, and had a great time except for getting a lung infection. 

If you've never had a lung infection, basically you're coughing all of the time, day and night, and let's just say that you're coughing up a yucky liquid as well, coming from your lungs.

That took a month to get rid of, we had one week without the infection keeping us company.  We had a good time together, and hopefully I'll see her in December this year.  It's a bit of a long project, her and I.  It's too early to say whether we'll see something serious or not.

How is my weight loss going?  I continued losing weight, then after my trip to the Philippines I started gaining again.  That's why I'm posting here again, to restart the weight loss.

I'm going low carb, actually I went low carb about 30 minutes ago.  At the end of each day I'll post how many carbs I ate.  I'll likely get tired as is normal with going low carb.

See you tomorrow.