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.

Counting down the days...

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

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

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

Lowest weight in 5 years

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

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

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

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

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

So why am I'm doing so well?

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

I'm eating exactly the same thing every day.

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

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

Here's what I'm eating:

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

Eggs

Meat patties

Bananas

Apples

Frozen vegetables (the 5 vegetable variety)

Cheese

Whey protein powder

Added to that is a multivitamin/mineral tablet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another loss this week

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Perfect eating.
• Start, and continue exercising, every day

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

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

These goals start tomorrow.

A walk up the hill

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

Time for some photos:

What the walking track usually looks like:

Panorama from the top:

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

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

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

Halfway

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

When I was at 94kg:

No visible change at 80kg:

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

Now looking at my body:

Before:

After:

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

Side view:

Update:

Changes not so visible with the side on view.

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

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

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

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

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

Half done, half to go!

The pool has reopened, exercise begins

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

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

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

6 months to goal

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

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

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

Lowest weight in over 4 years

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

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

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

Weigh-in

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

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

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

Weight: 82.2kg

loss in the last week 600g

loss in the last month 1.4kg

loss in the last year 6.9kg

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

Weekly weigh-in

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

This week I lost 300 grams.

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

Consistency is the key

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

It's bumpy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Earthquake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now.

14th April 2014

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar free challenge

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

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

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

My birthday

Becky's birthday

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

Becky's sister's graduation day

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

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

I'm struggling

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

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

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

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

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

Tuesday update

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

84.3kg

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exercise:

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

21st: 22 lengths

20th: 30 lengths

19th: 30 lengths

18th: 52 lengths

Eating plan

84.1kg

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

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

My eating plan starts today.

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

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

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

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

Exercise:

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

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

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

Exercise goals

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So here is what I've achieved so far:

20th Jan 30 lengths

19th Jan 30 lengths

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

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

The heat is on

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.