My last post

It is with regret to inform you that I am now back to where I was at the start of the blog, back in 2009.  Thanks to lockdown and subsequent weight gain, I've gained enough weight to get me back to 94 kg.  That's sad, disappointing and depressing.  I've decided to not post anymore.  I don't know how long I'll keep the blog online, maybe a month or two, maybe forever.  My other old weight loss blog from 2006-2007 is still online.  Thanks for all the views and comments.  I hope I have inspired some over the 11 years it's been going.  If you're losing weight, good luck.  

3 kg a month challenge - on pause

Today I weighed 95.5 kg for the third day in a row.  Why?  Probably because I had Subway, and that is riddled with salt.  Pretty much every food item in a Subway filled roll contains salt, with the exception of vegetables.  But it's disheartening to see the scale not shift, and not know exactly the reason.  Especially at the start.  So I've decided to put the whole 3 kg a month thing on pause, until I see what's going on. 

My new plan is to just keep my intake at 6,000 kJ (yesterday I ate 6,012) and exercise ideally at 30 minutes a day.  However, I currently am not fit at all, so I want to do a gradual increase of exercise over the next 10 days.  So that's an increase of 3 minutes per day.  I may break up the sessions into two per day if I'm struggling with one session. 

Once I reach 30 minutes of running a day, I'll start calculating my metabolism.  That's how many kilojoules my body uses every day.  That's going to take 2-3 weeks. 

What I need to find out is whether I can lose 100 grams a day while eating 6,000 kJ and running 30 minutes a day.  I don't know whether that's possible or not.  If I can't, I'll see whether I can lose 80 grams a day, for a long long time. 

My new challenge is to eat at or less than 6,000 kJ.  What I've been doing is eating slightly more than 6,000, but that has to stop.  Less than, or equal to 6,000 from now on.  My exercise has to start today at 3 minutes of running, and increasing by 3 per day.  I'll post tomorrow on how it's going.

3 kg a month challenge - day 3

Today I didn't lose weight as the graph shows, so I'm below my intended 100 grams a day goal.  That means I need to exercise today, but it's raining, so I decided to skip my exercise.  Let's see what the weather is tomorrow.  I ate 6,004 kJ yesterday, which is ideal.  I wasn't hungry which is probably because I overate the day earlier. 

3 kg a month challenge - day 2

I missed a post yesterday because I was busy, but I've been thinking about speeding up weight loss.  The eternal dream of having fast weight loss.  Can I do it?  I don't know.  I've done it in the past, but not for long periods of time.  Can I lose 3 kilograms a month?  I don't know.  Or rather, how long can I lose 3 kilograms a month?  I decided to have a plan.  One of many, as you no doubt have observed about me.

I want to have three stages of weight loss.  I want to lose weight at 3 kilograms a month, for a certain number of days.  Aiming for 6,000 kilojoules of food intake a day, and up to 60 minutes of exercise a day.  If I'm losing weight too quickly, I'll reduce the exercise.  Tracking my weight every day, am I losing at 3 kg a month (100 grams a day)?  If yes, everything is fine.

One day, I'll be exercising 60 minutes a day, eating 6,000 kJ, and I will be slowly edging below 100 grams a day weight loss.  I'm just not losing fast enough.  The thing to do then is to have a bit of a break, and drop it down to 2 kilograms a month.  Maybe I'll drop the exercise to 30 minutes, and then increase/decrease my food intake so I'm always at 2 kg a month.  Who knows.

I think that I can probably continue at 2kg a month until goal weight, however I do want to live with my girlfriend when a vaccine has been made, but when we live together I'll drop my intended weight loss to 1 kilogram a month only.  That's because I won't have access to the gym, and the Philippines doesn't have numerous parks that New Zealand has.  Running on roads/footpaths is definitely unsafe, so there's not going to be any exercise in the Philippines for me.

Today I weighed at 95.5 kg and I weighed 95.6 yesterday.  That's 100 grams a day, which is what I want.  Let's see how I go tomorrow.

2 kg a month challenge - day 2

A slight gain from yesterday, 100 grams.  Slightly disappointing, but it's probably due to increased salt intake.  Yesterday I ate 8,158 kJ, which is roughly around maintenance intake.  

2 kg a month challenge - day 1 restart

I continued gaining weight after my last post, but I've finally stopped.  I still want to lose 2 kg a month, so I'm going to see if that's achievable.  Let's see how that goes.  Anyway, I weighed 95.2 kg today, which is really high but that's because of all of the salt I've been having.  I've been using my intake tracking app for about 25 days.  I want to post daily if at all possible.  I'll check in tomorrow.

2 kg a month challenge - day 1

I got distracted by the pandemic, so I gained weight relatively quickly and really, I'm fine with that.  This last happened 102 years ago, on the scale of things gaining a few kilograms (or so!) is fine.  Today I feel safe.  A year from now, I may not feel safe.  The virus has such a fast transmission rate (25% increase per day) that it's hard to make decisions.  The NZ government hasn't been perfect, and no one could expect that.  Initially, they refused to disclose testing numbers, and there's been a general shortage of PPE.

I want to lose 2 kilograms a month, and I want to post daily for as long as possible.  How long can I post daily?  Who knows.  I stopped counting kilojoules, and today I start again.  I stopped on the 10th April, which is a shame.  But that's the way it is.  I can't go back.

My weights are:

Friday 93.2 kg
Saturday 93.2
Sunday 93.1

Currently, my trend on my spreadsheet is 50 grams a day, but it's way too early to worry about that.  One thing that I definitely have to do is eat salt every day.  That's because when I haven't been eating salty food for a while, my weight is lower and then I have a salty meal.  Suddenly my weight increases dramatically.  This has a destabilising effect on me and I tend to eat more as a result.  So I need to eat a salty meal every day. 

90 day challenge day 3

Today I weighed 89.1, a rather high gain from yesterday but of course it's not fat.  Food, water, whatever.  I'm not bothered.  Today I ate healthy but I ate too much.  I need to develop an actual eating plan, rather than just 'grazing'.  I ate 8,393 kJ and 121 grams of protein. Tomorrow I want to spend some time on developing a plan, let's see how that goes.

90 day challenge day 2

I never weighed myself today, because I had something to eat during the night, as I was hungry.  That's totally normal after eating a lot of sugar, in fact it's to be expected.  I kind of delayed weighing myself throughout the day, until it was obvious that my weight would be affected by my earlier eating.

I had an awfully large amount of fruit, which is something that I enjoy.  Plus some vegetables, a bit of cheese, and some tuna.  It was a pretty healthy day although I want to change things in the future so I'm not eating huge amounts of fruit.

My intake was 7,658 kJ and 99 grams of protein.  I wanted my intake to be less than yesterday, and my protein was higher than expected, but that's fine.  I'm going to tweak each day what I'm going to be eating, and slowly develop an organised system.

90 day challenge day 1

I got distracted by the impending doom of a global pandemic caused by COVID-19, it's something that I'm worried about.  I do actually feel looked after by the New Zealand government but people are losing their jobs and the government is basically trading off money vs lives, with emphasis on saving lives right now.  The government wants the New Zealand group of islands to be virus free, whether that is possible I have no idea.  With a doubling period of 4 days (10 times in 10 days) it's hard to make decisions since every minute counts, basically.  I remember being shocked when NZ closed it's border to anyone but citizens, permanent residents and their immediate families.

I happened to watch a Youtube video of a 90 day challenge by a woman who runs a website called Bloglates.  She seemed to know what she was doing, and had a positive experience, so I've decided to copy her.  Every day on this blog I will post how I'm going, my intake and my weight.  I might miss a day or two, hopefully that's all.

I want to lose 100 grams a day, so 9 kilograms in total.  Today I weighed 88.2 kg, so by the end of the challenge I want to be 79.2 kg.  If I can't do that, hopefully I can do something near that.

I'll post my intake number at the end of the day.

End of the day intake: 8,389 kJ, 22 grams of protein.  So today, as is pretty much compulsory with me and weight loss restarts, I ate a lot of sugary food.  It's a habit I've gotten used to, I doubt that's going to change anytime soon.  I had chocolate, soft drink, apples, chocolate biscuits and cheese.  Not particularly healthy but I'm fine for one day.

2 months later

Yes, 2 months without posting.  Never a good sign.  However, I haven't gained much, although I'm not sure exactly how much I've gained.  I'll tell you in a few days.

I want to post daily for a while, to get back in the swing of things.  I'm going to have green and red squares, more on that in the next few days.  It's Friday evening now, tomorrow I'll aim for under 6,000 kJ.  Should I achieve that, I'll get a green square.  Otherwise, I get a red square.  See you tomorrow.

Update

So it's been 3 months since I posted, which is never a good sign.  How is it going?  I gained a bit, then I lost a bit.  I'm still struggling to get off sugar.  I arrived back from a holiday seeing Miss Philippines, 4 weeks in the Philippines and 1 week in Singapore.  We hadn't seen each other in 2 years.  That's an awfully long time, due to my father dying.  I'd planned on seeing her after 12 months but my father falling, and subsequently dying put an end to that.  I would not recommend going 2 years (actually 23 months) apart.  You start to forget things.  But you're chatting and Skyping this person who you've forgotten a lot about.  It's a strange situation.

After we met it did not take me long until I'd remembered all the things that made me feel that she was worth waiting 5 1/2 years for.  We get on very well together.  Plus I finally got to meet her daughter, who just turned 18 a week ago.  Things are looking good for our future together, but I'm old enough and experienced enough that things could change for the worst at any moment. 

As for my weight loss, I arrived in New Zealand on the January 1st (if you're wondering whether the turn of the decade is celebrated in a Singapore Airlines flight, the answer is a definite 'no').  The immigration arrival card for NZ is rather long, compared to the Philippines and Singapore.  You notice stark differences between the immigration systems of all 3 countries.  If you're travelling soon through Singapore you'll be pleased to know that you'll probably not wait in line when you leave Singapore, compared to say the Philippines. 

Anyway, when I arrived in Christchurch, I didn't eat anything until late in the day, when I had a large pizza.  As a result, my weight on January 2nd was a bit high, 89.2 kg.  I didn't weigh myself today but yesterday I weighed 87.3.  I've decided to try and lose 100 grams a day, using a combination of sticking to a specific level of food intake and exercise.  Let's see how long that happens, currently I'm losing at higher than that, but I don't expect it to last forever.

No more sugar...

Today I have stopped having sugar.  That's a very hard challenge to achieve, I'm failed dozens of times.

My plan is - I'm allowed to have sugar whenever I want, but I need to eat 3 bananas first.  That's because after eating the bananas, I (hopefully) won't want to eat the sugary food.

I'll give an update in a few days.

Most recent weight: 88 kg.

Update

Well, my weight has been hovering around 20-21 kg for the last month or so, it turned out that there was a bit of scale error at the gym, or gyms which I used, so I don't really know how much I weighed 6 weeks ago, or even a couple of months ago.

That's changed, today I weighed at 86.9 kg, which means I have got 20.9 kg to lose in about 300 days.  I'll try and do a weekly update.  Catch you next week.

Update...

Yes, it's been a while.  Nearly 4 months in fact.  I'm not entirely sure why that's the case, but I'm back and ready to tell you how I'm going.  I wasn't eating particularly well, slowly gaining weight, so I decided to challenge myself to see how many days my daily intake could stay below maintenance.  Initially, I just wanted to get below maintenance, and that was successful.  I've been losing weight, rather slowly, but I'm losing.  Or rather, I assume that I've been losing, I haven't weighed myself in about 6 weeks.  It's going to be another 4 weeks until I weigh myself, but I'm alright with that.  I trust the accuracy of my record keeping of what I'm eating.

That's pretty much it for my weight loss, still struggling to get off sugar.  I know that I have doubts that I'm actually losing, but those doubts are small.  My scales are in storage and I don't have much desire to get them.

20 kilograms to goal

Today I weighed in at 86.0 kilograms, a weight that I've been bouncing around at for 3 months.  That's due to my father dying, so I'm not feeling guilty or annoyed at myself for 'wasting' 3 months.  I'm trying to get off of sugar again, today I lasted 5 days until I decided for some reason to seek it out.  That's fine.  I'm not sure how often I'll post here, it could be a while before I do one but hopefully it'll happen when I've lost another kilogram.

Christchurch...

You may have read far earlier in the blog how here in Christchurch we went through a series of earthquakes, in 2010 and 2011.

Three days ago, eight years after the large earthquake hit Christchurch, causing 185 fatalities, an Australian man who was living in Dunedin (the city I grew up in, 400 km south of Christchurch) travelled to Christchurch, and in an act of terrorism killed 50 people who were in two mosques here in the city.  I just don't know what to say.  It's that feeling where you are in a dream, and you expect to wake up.  I've been living in Christchurch for over 30 years, and no way would I have believed anyone who said that in 2019 such a terrorist attack would occur.

I don't know what to write, apparently the killing was similar to some extent of the terrorist acts done by Anders Behring Breivik who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011.  The most popular New Zealand news website (https://www.stuff.co.nz/) is filled to the brim with stories about what the man has done.  I've been trying to not read too much, it's heartbreaking.

So my father died at the start of December, 3 1/2 months later, this happens.

Anyway, I'll leave it here, I've been trying to lose weight, with not much success.  I gained weight after my father died, I've been dieting but in reality, my weight has just maintaining, which is not a bad thing.  I guess I'll start posting again soon, perhaps twice a month.

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.

Another "no more buying" post

It seems to be a habit now, posting about things I'm not buying.  Well, add potato chips to the list.  I'm talking about the type that are cold and sold in bags.  From the 4th October, I've stopped buying them.  I can't buy any until goal weight, whenever that happens.  I don't think that this challenge will be particularly hard.  I'm going alright with not buying the chocolate and soft drink.

I haven't weighed myself in a few weeks.  I think that I've stalled, since my eating seems to be higher than required to lose weight.  I'll probably have a weigh-in in the next week.

No more buying chocolate

About 6 weeks ago I posted a "No more buying soft drink" post.  You'll be pleased to hear that I haven't had any soft drink since, except diet type.  I'm kind of struggling with weight loss, so I decided to help move things along by banning the purchase of chocolate (both normal and white) until reaching goal weight.  People are allowed to give me chocolate if they wish, but that's so infrequent it won't have any real affect on my weight loss.

That's all for now, I'll probably post next month when I added another month of losing weight every calendar month.  See you then.

15 kilograms to goal

I weighed myself today, and I weighed 81.0 kilograms.  I'm very pleased with that, I started counting kilojoules again, and trying to stay at around 6,000 per day.  Of course it's early days yet.  I've lost 11 kilograms in the last 7 months which, although not blindingly fast, is roughly consistent.

Another thing is that I'm losing weight 7 calendar months in a row.  As you probably know, that's my new goal.  Lose weight every month.  I have no idea when I will reach goal weight, I try to not think of that, since almost always my estimates are seriously wrong.  After all, I was last at goal weight in September-November 2012, 5 years ago.

That's all for now, I'll try to post reasonably regularly.

Another month losing, but...

So I've lost weight again in August, that means 6 months in a row (yay!) of losing.  The sad news is that on the 22nd of August, I weighed 82.3 kilograms, a loss of 450 grams from July.  A loss is a loss, but yes, it's pretty tiny.  At this rate, we're talking years to reach goal weight.

It's kind of obvious that low carb isn't my thing, so I'm going high carb, and forgetting low carb for a while.  I don't know when I successfully did it for more than a week, that would have been at least a few years ago.

No more low carb attempts until at least January next year.

Now that's out of the way, tomorrow I start counting kilojoules again, aiming to eat healthy and setting my goal intake at 6,000 kilojoules a day.  That's achievable.

As for the soft drink, well today I did buy some, but it was diet soft drink.  I'm okay with buying diet soft drink.  I do consider it to be a bit of a waste of money, but it's not "empty kilojoules".

I'll check in as often as I can.

No more buying soft drink

I've decided to stop buying soft drink.  I don't actually drink much, but I really want to speed up the weight loss, and stopping buying soft drink is a way to get the weight loss back into my mind more.  Also, getting off sugar.  So from now on, I'm not allowed to buy soft drink when I'm alone.  When I'm seeing someone, I'm allowed to buy it in their presence, but that is likely to be months away.  People can buy it for me, should that ever happen.

Sorry about the brevity of this blog posting, I'm not very talkative right now.  Catch you later.

Monthly goal achieved

So good news, I lost weight again in July.  I didn't lose much compared to June, but every little bit counts.  I weighed 82.75 last Monday.  That's a loss of 750 grams in a month, hardly anything but still greater than zero.  I'm still struggling to go low carb, who knows why.  See you soon.

Well, I did it

I haven't really lost weight in the last 4 weeks, the reason was that I moved, temporarily, and that meant that I didn't have easy access to the gym or a scale for that matter.

My own personal goal is to lose weight every calendar month, I peaked in February and lost weight in March, April and May.   Could I lose weight in June?  The easy way to ensure that I could was to go low carb, and the water weight loss would ensure that I would be a new low in June.  Mission accomplished.

Of course it's not fat loss, but that's not a big issue for me.  I just want to lose weight every month.  Today I weighed 83.5 kilograms, 17.5 kilograms above goal weight.

I really want to see if I can go low carb, 100 days in a row.  Let's call it my 100 day low carb challenge.  Starting the 1st of July.

Sorry about the brevity of this post, not much to tell you.  I'm consistently losing weight, sometimes fast, sometimes slow.  But I'm consistently losing, which is the main thing.  See you soon.

Lowest weight in over a year

So it's been a while since I've posted an update, which is never a good sign, however I've been losing weight almost consistently.  I've broken through that threshold that is lowest weight in a year.  It's a moderate achievement, nothing great but alright.  Today I weighed in at 85.0 kg, 19 kilograms to goal weight.

I admit that today my weight dropped a massive 550 grams, a huge amount.  I'm not sure what the cause is, it could be because I didn't have tuna yesterday, with the associated salt.  It could be something else.  I've been losing weight rather slowly in the last 7 days, and it could be a 'rebalancing' or whatever you want to call it.  Let's just see what happens.

I've been running in the gym, currently I'm doing three sessions of 7 minutes at 5.0, 5.1, and 5.2 km/hr, slowly lengthening those three groups until they join together in my 30 minute session (the rest of the 30 minutes is walking at 4.0 km/hr).  My ankle still seems not 100% but it's slowly, slowly improving.

I'm still on the sugar, I'm having trouble getting off that white powder.

As you can tell, I'm having trouble checking in here on the blog.  I'll try to post every kilogram, but I can't make any promises.

See you soon (hopefully!).

Less than 25 kilograms to goal

I had trouble getting off sugar.  I think that sugar is my main problem, right now, and has been for a year.  So I took simple steps.  I had sugar, then waited a while and had some more.  I extended the gap cautiously by a few hours or so.  It's very slow, very simple and it worked.  I've also actually gone (well, almost gone low carb).  A few days ago I weighed myself and got 91.5kg.  That was the same as 3 weeks ago, so I wasn't gaining, that's good.

Today I weighed in at 90.35 kilograms, or 24.35 kilogram to lose.  I know that I can do it, I did it before with people watching, I can do it again.  I treated myself to a coffee and slice, which I will probably do once per kilogram.  That's likely to extend my goal day by 24 days.

One thing about low carb, especially my version of low carb is that food has been converted from a form of sustenance, pleasure and enjoyment to ... a form of energy and nutrients that keeps me alive.  Well, that may be a slight exaggeration, but doing low carb is exceedingly boring.  That's not necessarily a problem, but it's noticeable.

I'll keep my posts short, and will check in when I reach 89.x kilograms.

Goin' low carb

So it's been a while, almost 2 months.  I'm not sure what happened, my weight loss after getting my cast removed kind of stopped, and I started coasting.  Yes, I have gained, and my last weigh-in was 91.9kg, a gain of 2-3 kilograms from when I last posted.

I won't bore you with all of the details, but I'm back on track now and heading in the right direction.  Still struggling with my sugar dependency, I thought that I'd go low carb in an attempt to lose weight quicker and keep away from the sugar.

I'm still recovering from my accident 3 months ago, I'm still improving (a 20 minute walk resulted in pain 2 weeks ago, 2 days ago it didn't) but I didn't expect that my progress would be rather slow.  Anyway, I'm walking with a limp right now, I certainly can't run, and I have to walk down stairs one by one usually.  It's a case of seeing how I go before I head to a physiotherapist and get some exercises.

As of 2 hours ago (midnight), I had my last carbs.  I want to go into my eating the same thing every day thing, which has been successful in the past.  6,000 kilojoules per day.  I'll try and delay weighing myself for as long as possible.  How long can I go without weighing myself?  We'll see.

Weekly update #6

Things are going well, although my ankle is really sore and weak, walking is very slow even using crutches.  I am recovering but it's quite slow, I can see myself using the crutches at least for the next 3-4 weeks.

How did I go with my eating?

Saturday 5,555KJ excess 9,505

Sunday 6,874 kJ excess 10,379

Monday 5,570 kJ excess 9,949

Tuesday I had some nice food eaten away from home, I probably lost fat but not much

Wednesday same as Tuesday I had some nice food at a nearby mall, I probably lost fat though

Thursday 6,108 kJ excess 10,057

Friday 5,986 kJ excess 10,043

So I ate out twice in the last week, and I over ate the equivalent of about an apple.  I still need to not eat the equivalent of about 25 apples in order to get back to where I should be.

As for weighing myself, it's quite painful because I need to go somewhere where I can get an accurate reading, so I don't want to do that every day.

Even so, here are my weights:

Saturday  89.0 kg

Sunday  89.1 kg

Monday  89.0 kg

Tuesday  88.6 kg

Wednesday  88.5 kg
...
Friday  88.3 kg

So there is a bit of fluctuation from day to day, but a general downward trend.  At the moment I don't know what my loss per day seems to be, it's too early to calculate a number that is going to be accurate.

Weekly update #5

Just another update, I seem to be regular with my weekly updates at the moment, I'd really like to be consistent with them until goal weight.

Saturday 6,050KJ excess 10,599

Sunday 5,736KJ excess 10,335

Monday 5,956KJ excess 10,291

Tuesday 5,659KJ excess 9,950

Wednesday
3,652KJ of normal food eaten, and as well I went out to post the wifi modem, my first time outside my home in 20 days, a lifetime record.  After posting the modem, I treated myself to a coffee and slice, something that I hadn't had in 29 days.  So I'm okay with having that, what I noticed was though that the slice was extremely sugary.  I tasted like it was pure sugar.  Given that most slices aren't like that, my taste senses had been dulled by constant sugar intake, and after such a delay, I was now sensitive to any sweetness.  I have had problems with constant sugar consumption, and being unable to go as much as a day away from sugar, so it's nice to experience not having sugar for so long, and knowing that it doesn't affect me adversely.

Thursday
4,176KJ of normal food eaten, in addition I went to the hospital to have my x-ray and get my cast removed.  I was releaved to hear that the x-ray was showing normal progress and it was nice to get rid of the cast.  I still need crutches though, and some movements are painful.  So after 6 weeks, my first (and hopefully last) cast gets removed.  I then head to a mall (by taxi) and have some nice food as a way to celebrate being able to walk again.

Friday
2,752KJ of normal food eaten, I had to go out to something, afterwards I treated myself to another coffee and slice, third day in a row.  Don't worry, this won't be typical.  Then I went to the cinema, I usually go once a week but I really missed going, I hadn't been in at least 6 weeks.  I missed the cinema more than I missed sugar, no doubt about it, and I decided to not see what was showing because I didn't want to know what I was missing.  I was able to drive so that helped a lot.

Saturday
Today isn't finished yet, but I was able to weigh myself.  89.0kg, so I definitely have lost weight in the last roughly two months since I weighed myself.  I will weigh myself daily to get a feel for how fast I am losing weight, at least for the next week.  Then I'll progress over to every second day and then third and see how that goes.

So this week I've eaten treats three times, and under eaten for the other 4 days.  I tend to think of weight loss as watching what I eat, and watching my weight, I can do both now.

The plan is simple - aim for 6,000KJ each day, and weigh myself often.  Of course, I know that problems can occur, usually stress related, and that's what causes over eating.  Stress or depression.

So there you have it, I'm almost back to normality.  Approximately 23Kg to lose, not a large amount.

Weekly update #4

Another boring update, not much to say, still stuck at home and travel is quite difficult, unfortuntately my wifi modem failed which means internet browsing 24/7 is severely curtailed, while watching my favourite Youtube channels (or any Youtube videos for that matter) is completely off the list.

I ate slightly more than I should have this week, not a lot though.  Some days I am hungrier than others, even though I am eating pretty much the same thing.

Sunday 5,440KJ excess 8,790

Monday 5,385KJ excess 8,175

Tuesday 7,695KJ excess 9,870

Wednesday 6,465KJ excess 10,335

Thursday 5,936KJ excess 10,271

Friday 6,278KJ excess 10,549

So my excess kilojoules is slowly marching up, about 1,000KJ (roughly 2 apples worth) in a week.  I went against my desire to not eat ice cream on Tuesay, but I did manage to slow down the effect of it before then.

Being stuck at home for 5 weeks (except trips to the hospital for x-rays, and an exam) has had an effect on my mental health, no doubt about it. I'm just so unmotivated.  Lying in bed tricks the brain to think it's time to do nothing important.

Theoretically, I'll have my cast off on Thursday.  This coming week I've got lots of things to eat, Monday I'll be taking the wifi modem to the post office to send away, and I'll treat myself to something nice in a cafe just near the post office.  Tuesday I'll have more ice cream, and then Thursday I'll have (I really hope so) my cast off.  That means I'll treat myself, and Friday, a special project starts and I'll treat myself then too.  I don't expect to lose much weight next week but really, I don't know if I'm losing weight at all right now.  I'm almost certainly not gaining.  I don't know if I gained weight in the hospital, maybe a little bit.

See you next week, assuming that I can weigh myself, I'll post my weight on Sunday after weighing on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Weekly update #3

Just another update of how I'm eating, although this week I've skipped the actual items since I'm not in a mood to be judged for eating too much of something and not enough of something else.  In other words, my diet is not perfect!  I'm still bedridden, feeling bored and unmotivated.  It's hard to do things when you're always in bed.

I was 6,840 kilojoules in excess of what I should be eating, as shown last week.  Let's see how I did:

Saturday 5,984KJ excess 6,824

Sunday 5,696KJ excess 6,520

Monday 5,786KJ excess 6,306

Tuesday 9,387KJ excess 9,693

Wednesday 5,987KJ excess 9680

Thursday 6,102KJ excess 9,782

Friday 5,770KJ excess 9,552

Saturday 5,798KJ excess 9,350

You will notice that there were only two days where I was above my allowance of 6,000KJ.  Want to guess what I had on Tuesday?  You guessed it, ice cream, like last week.  I think that I should really just give up on ice cream completely or buy small ice creams rather than tubs.  It's just not worth it.

It did occur to me that maybe I'm eating more than expected because typically manufacturers put a greater quantity than stated in their food to allow for variations of weight and only a small percentage are less than the stated weight.  I don't know what I'm actually eating, probably 5-7% more than what I think, who knows.  I don't have a kitchen scale with me.

At the moment, I'm 9,350KJ above my food allowance.  That's quite a bit, it's going to take about 3 weeks to get rid of that.  I don't want to get it so high that I need to "wipe the slate clean".

See you next week.

Weekly update #2

A week after my previous posting, I'm still bedridden at my little room with not much to do.  I went to the hospital for an x-ray but apart from that I haven't been out, nor do I want to because I feel unsafe walking on crutches with just one foot plus it's exhausting.

I have controlled my eating well in the last week, with one exception.  I had my support worker arrive on Tuesday and do some things, I got him to buy ice cream, and I consumed it just that day, because my freezer section in my refrigerator isn't worth using.  The ice cream was 8,000KJ, and in addition I ate other food as well.  I am currently about 6,000KJ over my allowance which equates to about 160 grams of pure fat that I wouldn't have lost.

This is of course assuming all kilojoule calculations are perfect, which they are unlikely to be.  I could be losing faster than expected, I could be losing slower.  I really do think that I am losing something, but who knows how much it is.  I can't weigh myself until my cast is taken off, 3 weeks from now.

I am experiencing hunger each day but that's 100% normal, and doesn't mean that I'm going to starve.  I'll just hang on for the next 20 days and then see what I weigh.  Fingers crossed that I've actually lost something.


Saturday 7,500KJ excess 1,500
Apples 842
Tuna 948
Beetroot 1,035
Special K 806
Orange juice 3,232
Sardines 637

Sunday 5,815KJ excess 1315
Special K 806
Apple 842
Milk 865
Tuna 680
Peas 780
Chickpeas 1203
Sardines 639

Monday 6,200KJ excess 1515
Special K 1612
Apple 1684
Milk 865
Tuna 680
Peas 780
Beetroot 579

Tuesday 11,541KJ excess 7,056
Breakfast Special K 806
Ice cream 8660
Apple 421
Tuna 948
two new apples 706

Wednesday 5,646 excess 6,702
Breakfast Special K 1612
Apples 706
Tuna 948
Tomato juice 1250
Orange juice 1130

Thursday 6,375 excess 7,077
Breakfast Special K 1612 (new packet)
Apples 1059
Orange juice 1130
Tuna 948
Peas 1626

Friday 5,763 excess 6,840
Special K 1612
Orange juice 2260
Apple 1059
Tuna 832

Bedridden

About 2 weeks ago I broke my ankle.  I slipped over in the wet wearing jandals.  I called a taxi while lying on the ground outside my home, and went to hospital.  There I stayed for a whopping 6 nights/7 days.  That does seem a long time for a broken ankle, I had my foot in a cast and entered a child-like state when I was totally reliant on other people for a long time.  I stayed in hospital for so long because it was a holiday weekend, meaning the holiday was on a Monday and people (ie physiotherapists and occupational therapists) take the long weekend off work.  Also I live alone and needed to be trained up on the various tools they gave me when I left the hospital.

After leaving hospital I crammed for my mathematics exam (it's not realistic to study in bed while in hospital), had my exam (foot propped up on another chair with my pillow underneath) and I applied for an aegrotat because of the reduction in study time.  Because of my living situation, I am in one smallish room with everything that I need inside this room.  Food, water, and toileting are all here with me.  So much fun!

Once a week someone comes and does what's needed, and buys my food.  This is where I have control over my weight loss.  I haven't bought a lot of sugary items although everything that I'm eating can't be refrigerated so goodbye to fresh vegetables although I am eating fruit but not too much fibre please.

Starting today I'm aiming for 6,000 KJ per day, I should be losing weight at that amount, although it may be rather slow.  I can't weigh myself so that's a negative.  When I have my cast taken off, and don't need crutches I can see how much I weigh.

I will post a weekly summary of what I'm eating, see you next weekend.

Week 1

It's been 4 months without postings, what's been happening?  I gained weight (no surprises there), roughly at the rate of about one kilogram a month.

Last Friday, 26th August, something clicked and I started weighing myself and losing weight again.  Currently it's day 5.  Day 1 I weighed 24.0kg above goal weight (90kg) and today, day 5 I weigh 23.0kg above goal weight.  I was the heaviest weight I'd been in probably 5-6 years.  It's hard to imagine (and hard to understand why) I was only 4 kilograms from my heaviest weight ever.

I really don't know what's going on inside my head about why I continually gained since my Singapore holiday almost a year ago.  I don't want to psychoanalyse myself, it seems like weight loss motivation is almost random.

I don't like looking backwards as it always makes me feel sad.  Let's look forward.

I want to weigh daily for the next month or so until I get a rhythm going with weight loss.   That means, the most successful weight loss method I have ever used, eating the same thing every day.

18 weeks of continual weight loss is rather uncommon.  That happened to me when I used that, I want it to happen again.

I want to exercise, every day, without fail.  Let's see how many days in a row I can exercise.  Today, I want to run 2 minutes, and walk 3 minutes, for an effective run of 3 minutes in terms of energy used.  One minute run, 3 minutes walk, one minute run.  Tomorrow I want to increase that by 2 minutes, and every day after that, until I reach 30 minutes a day of running equivalent.

I want to post on the blog weekly, ideally on a Sunday.

Week two update

A slightly late update of now my weight loss is going

Wednesday 13th April 19.8kg to lose
Thursday 14th 19.4kg
Sunday 17th 18.9kg
Monday 18th 19.1kg

So I am definitely losing weight, but it's rather slow, and I haven't gone low carb yet.

Of course, it's taking longer than I would like.

This is just a short posting, more later on.

Week one update

So I have weighed myself and the results aren't pretty.  They aren't atrocious, just something that I didn't want to see again.  I hit 20+kg above goal weight.  I am the definition of a yo-yo dieter.

Friday 8th April 86.4kg (20.4kg above goal weight)
Saturday 9th 86.25kg
Monday 11th 85.6kg

I haven't reached full low carb, and I am having a reward meal whenever I lose half a kilogram, so I have had one so far, plus also I have something nice on a Sunday, the end of the working week for me.

So I am losing weight right now, and that's good, but I have a long, long way to go.

One motivation is that I won't have a haircut until I weigh less than I did at the previous haircut, I am overdue, so there's that to help me.

I will probably update once a week, plus exercise will happen in the next couple of week.

Things aren't going to plan...

It's been a whopping four months since I have posted.  That's really long and I look back and see a number of issues, and subsequent weight gain.  This blog is about weight loss!  Not weight gain.  But we've all been there.

I won't blather on about the whys and what fors, basically I worked out what was the problem with my eating pattern.  From now on, I will post what I am eating regularly here on the blog.  I managed to lose weight using this blog, and I don't see why that can't happen again.

Weigh-in is on Sunday morning, I'll be going low carb until then.  I think that I have reached a level of sugar dependency that is unhealthy and costly, too.  Low carb should be able to control most of that.

So yeah, I'm back, ready for action, and about to lose weight and get back to goal weight.  I will post an update on Sunday.  See you then.

Brief update

It's been about 6 weeks and I haven't posted.  What's going on?  Not much, except I've been eating too much and not caring too much about it, unfortunately.  So I'm posting here, I've had my last meal of carbs for a while and I'm going low carb now.  I'll post an update in 4 days when I've lost the low carb water weight and know exactly how much I weigh.  See you in 4 days.

Restart (~100)

Current weight: about 77kg, 11kg above goal weight

Back in Christchurch, after my 2 1/2 week trip to Singapore to meet the lady I met in the Philippines.  How did it go?  Mostly okay.  Our meeting in Singapore didn't go to plan due to multiple mistakes on both of our parts.  Our planes arrived 90 minutes apart and the plan was to go through immigration together. Sadly that didn't happen and all number of issues came along to stress me out. She literally disappeared and I didn't know where she was or which country she was in.  So I was in a major grump for the next 12 hours.  Anyway after I got over that we had a great time together.  18 months apart and next meeting planned for 2 years from now.  So every moment counted. Miss Philippines (let's call her) had never been out of the country so I wanted her to see what another country looked like.  Singapore is just your basic large city in a wealthy country with no countryside.  The MRT (commuter rail) was incredibly easy to use and efficient and low cost.  Also our hotel was only 10 minutes walk from the nearest MRT station which made life easy.

We did the usual tourist things. Gardens by the Bay would happen to be the best tourist attraction I have ever come across.  I saw it in a film about 4 months ago and decided to go there simply because I never visit major film locations, being in the Southern Hemisphere.  It exceeded expectations by a wide margin.  We had a great time there.

I got sick for 5 days (3 days of a cold and having some vomiting & dizziness for the other 2 days).  Apart from that everything went swimmingly.  Our future is rather uncertain though as she has family commitments in the Philippines.  Expect to hear about her in 2 years time.  Maybe.

I didn't actively diet in Singapore, nor did I expect to.  I may have gained maybe half a kilogram while I was there.  Not a big deal.  I also had about 40 hours in Melbourne, Australia on the way home.  I have never been to Australia before so it was nice to finally see what it was like.  Very similar to New Zealand.

So I am back home now.  Dieting.  My body has been "emptying out" so to speak so I am losing weight quickly at the moment.  I will be going low carb and seeing how that goes. As a guesstimate, goal day is about 100 days from now which would mean February 2nd next year.  Tomorrow I return to the gym.

I will check in again in the next week to month.

Quick update...

Currently I'm stressing about planning and doing stuff for my holiday in Singapore, but I wanted to post my weight.  Currently I am about 9-11kg above goal weight.  So my weight has been not dropping for a while.  Once I get home again, I'll start losing, no doubt.  I want to reach goal weight by the end of the year.

See you again once I'm back home.

Update

So it's been a few weeks, I still have my cough unfortunately which means that I haven't been going to the gym (although I went today, my first time in about 3 weeks - just for 30 minutes on the elliptical).

A few days ago, I weighed 76.3kg, which is certainly a gain, but it's probably due to water gain due to my consuming so many carbs lately.  Yes, my diet has stalled, and I've gone on the carb wagon.

I've also been eating (and spending) too much lately, which is a bit of a worry.  I'm definitely gaining a bit of fat.

Why?

It took me a bit of time to work out why I was doing this, and the reason was simple: stress.  I'm going to Singapore for a holiday, and as has happened before, my stress and anxiety (and depression) has caused a mix of procrastination and eating more than I needed to.  I'm also seeing someone there who I feel responsible for, which doesn't help either. Someone from the Philippines who I met after Miss Miss Mindanao left, we got on well together so I suggested we meet up in Singapore.  She's never been overseas, so I kind of feel responsible for pretty much all the organisational things.

Anyway, that's all part of life, I accept that, and need to continue with the diet and unhitch myself from the carb wagon.  Starting now.

I'll be posting what I'm eating, exercise and what I weigh from now on (I won't be weighing daily as I don't feel it's totally necessary right now).  Low carb plus 'reward' meals every half kilogram.  I'm kind of wanting to aim for goal day to be the 1st of December, although I don't actually expect it to be that day exactly.

Weekly update

75.1kg, 9.1kg above goal weight

Trying to get into the swing of posting weekly.  I still have my cough, so I'm not going to the gym right now.  Unfortunately my doctor only works 2 days a week, and she's fully booked out this week, so it looks like I'm going to see her next week.  I'm still losing weight though, which is nice.

I have noticed a psychological change in terms of how I'm feeling about my weight loss and my body.  I think that's because I've reached the 3 months until goal weight.  That's the point where based on normal rates of weight loss, you can pretty much say in 3 months you'll be at goal.

I am wary of stating a specific date when I should be at goal, I've definitely been burnt in the past with my endless spreadsheet calculations.  This year would be nice, even if it were December 31st.

I'm working on a motivation system for maintenance.   Obviously I'm not good at maintenance, I was at goal weight back in 2012 for about 3 months.  That's not long enough!

When I started this blog back in 2009, I had a motivational system of no supermarket coffee, haircuts or cinema viewings if I wasn't at a new low weight.  I think that I should do something similar now.  I think that:

I can't get a haircut, I can't go to the cinema, I can't buy coffee from the supermarket unless I'm at goal weight.

There are exceptions to every rule, the trick is to have these exceptions relatively rare so I don't become dependent on them, and let things slide.

I also don't want to rebound and gain, only to go through the same thing yet another time, endless weight loss.

Update

It's been a while - maybe 3 weeks?  Anyway, how is my weight loss going?

Today I weighed in at 76.4kg, a loss of 1.1 kilograms off my last blog post and 10.4 kilograms above goal weight.

I went to Dunedin to celebrate my father's birthday.  That stalled my weight loss by about a week, I pretty much don't attempt to lose weight when I travel, routine is good for weight loss, and travelling means no routine.  I'm happy with no gain.

I'm currently 6 days into a cough/cold.  It's sapping my energy (I'm also off work), I'm not exercising obviously and any minimal weight loss is going to be slow.

But being 10 kilograms or less above goal weight is going to be a nice feeling.  It won't be "true" 10 kilograms above weight loss, since there's another 1.5 kilograms of fat that I need to lose, due to doing the low carb diet, but I'm fine with that.

As for when I'll reach mythical goal weight, I'd say 70 to 140 days from now.  That's 18th October to 27th December.

See you next weekend.

Weekly weigh-in #7

77.5kg, 11.5kg to goal weight.

A loss of 1.2 kilograms from last week.  That's quite a lot, I'm not sure if it's all fat loss but I'll pretend it is.

Diet: I'm eating half a kilogram of veges a day, rather than the previous kilogram.  The reason is that I'm not sure if I'm in ketosis and if halving the veges does, that, I'm all for it.  I made the mistake of buying a block of chocolate on Tuesday with the plan to break it up into 40 little pieces and eat them over the next 40 days.  Of course, you can imagine what happened.  So I gained weight on Thursday.  I'm okay with learning that I have zero self control when it comes to food (well, I kind of knew that anyway) and I won't be buying a block of chocolate with hopes and dreams that will never happen.

Thursday I almost certainly lost fat, although I had a Subway filled roll and the subsequent carb gain will be hard to see when I weigh-in today.

Exercise: at the gym, I'm just using the elliptical.  I know that it's not the best use of my money that I pay there, but it's such a great machine.  If I run, I'm going to get tired quite quickly, but if I use the elliptical that's not going to happen, and the amount of energy that I'm going to expend on it is going to be pretty much the highest optimal amount I can get (assuming the difficulty rating is not set too low or high).  Currently I'm using about 2,800 kJ per session although I do wonder about how accurate that number is, even if I set my age and weight on the machine.  Currently I'm doing 80 minutes per session (with difficulty set at position #14).  Up to 10 sessions a week, that's a lot of energy (ie fat) lost at the gym.

Weekly weigh-in #6

78.7kg.

Quite a big loss from last week, of course it's not fat loss and last week's gain wasn't a fat gain anyway.

I'm going low carb, as I have said many times in the past.  I'm not 100% sure whether I've lost the glycogen based water weight or not, it's only been about 30 hours since I had carbs, so who knows.

How is it at the gym?

Generally, okay.

I went for an evaluation (which was really just a blood pressure measurement), my blood pressure was normal which was good.  I was also shown how to use the various weight machines.

It was with extreme shame that today I didn't go to the gym.

I lost my access card today, it turned out it was at home.  I could have gone to the gym after finding it but the desire to have a nap after work was too strong.  Some days after work, I just feel like a nap.

I did keep a diary of my exercise activities at the gym, but I kind of stopped.  Since my first day after joining up, I've gone every day until today (Saturday to Wednesday).

Here's what I've been doing:

Elliptical - I love this machine.  It requires very little brain power.  Back in 2011 I would do a 2 hour session just on the elliptical.  Get up to speed, switch off.  Because I'm not fit right now, I can't do that yet.  I'm not sure if I will even.  But it is my ideal machine, if I had to choose just one.

Treadmill - it's winter here.  If it were summer I may not even join the gym.  But walking around at 5 degree C weather is just not fun.  I don't like to run in the dark after work for obvious reasons, so that's why the treadmill is a good machine.  I'm running for the day of the month in terms of minutes.  So tomorrow I'll run for 10 minutes.  I'm not fit yet.  By the end of the month, I will be.  Walking on the treadmill is pretty easy, but I would prefer to have some form of exercise that is more energy intensive.

Weight machines - I am using these for the first time.  I'll explain why I'm using them later on.

Generally speaking, a gym session finishes when I run out of energy.  Usually that's when I finish my run on the treadmill.  That's happened a few times now, I go for my run and then head home for a nap.

Ideally, I would have 10 gym sessions a week.  That's a lot.  If I lose my access card, or have an appointment (ironically, I had my evaluation at the gym that caused me to not have two sessions that day) then that will cause me to drop the number of sessions per day.

The days that I'm not working, I plan to do two gym sessions.  I've done this before, going swimming twice a day, back in 2012.  I loved it, but I'm working more this time which means less days doing multiple gym sessions.

Diet - this of course is the biggie.  I'm going back to the coloured charts that I've used in the past.  Green is "ideal" and red is "not ideal".  I'm allowed "nice food" every kilogram or every week.  Apart from that, it's veges, sardines/tuna and olive oil.  That's it.

Yesterday I walked from work to the car (only about 17 minutes walk away) in the freezing cold.  It wasn't actually freezing, but it was blowing a gale and very cold.  What happens when you're cold?  The eating reflex kicks in and you buy a hot meat pie just to warm yourself up.  I'll buy myself a hot liquid container tomorrow for reaching the car and having something warm just to prevent any food cravings.

So for the next few days, I just need to continue avoiding the carbs (except the one kilogram of vegetables that I'm eating) although I'm allowed nice food when I hit 78.0 kilograms.

Two sessions at the gym each day I'm not working.  Leaving the gym run until the end of the session rather than the middle.  That makes sense.

Weekly weigh-in #5

80.0kg

I gained about 500g this Thursday, I'm not entirely sure why.  Maybe it was carbohydrate water gain.  Who knows.  I probably lost a bit of fat this week, but I'm not 100% sure on that.

I have started exercising.  Wednesday, I walked one hour, Thursday I walked for 52 minutes and joined the gym.  It's the third time I've joined a gym.  While I was signing up, one phrase kept going on and on in my mind:

"I have failed"

I reached goal weight almost 3 years ago, and then gained about 18 kilograms.  I have about 13-14 kilograms left to lose.  That's failure.

I gained.  I probably promised myself to never join a gym for weight loss ever again, and guess what?  I'm doing that one more time.  It's not the money, it's the fact that I'm losing the same kilogram over and over again.

Anyway, I'm going to post my exercise and what I'm eating from today onwards.

So far today I've had a tin of sardines and opened a 1 kilogram bag of frozen veges.

Weekly weigh-in #4

So last Thursday's weight wasn't lower than the previous one, sadly, and unexpectedly, I gained.

79.6kg.

That's disappointing, breaking my 6 week streak of losing every week.

I thought that I would try exercise, to speed up the weight loss.  Also I'll be posting what I eat here from now on, as a motivation.  Of course, when I restart a diet, I always have nice food to eat.  Today is no exception.  I'm not working today, so my goal today is to go for a run, and also go for a walk.  The run only needs to be one minute long, not a big deal.  After a month, I'll be running for 30 minutes in one go.

I'll also be posting daily for a while.

Weekly weigh-in #3

So this week my weight was 79.1, a loss of 600 grams from last week.  I'm still splurging, but the frequency is getting less and less.  About half of the time I'm eating well, the other half I'm not.  Six weeks of losing in a row, which is good, but not a significant achievement.

I'm sorry that this post is rather short, as well as previous posts.  I guess I'd rather have a short post than no post.

I think that I am going well, in general.  But you never know when it comes to weight loss.  You would be fine for 10, 100, 1000 days in a row (unlikely...) then one day your switch inside your head flicks and you lose motivation.  I don't understand why it comes and goes with such unpredictability.

At the moment I have it.  Let's hope it continues for some time.

As for maintenance (the name of this blog, contains the word "maintenance", after all), I'm thinking of a motivation system that I created at the start of the blog, about 5 1/2 years ago.  No cinema, haircuts or supermarket coffee unless I'm at or below goal weight (measured at 30 day average).

It'll be a while before I can test that out.  I have a date in mind, but I've decided to not share it with the blog.  My ego is a fragile creature and sharing my goal date with too many people might send me over the edge, resulting in a loss of confidence and losing hope and motivation.

We don't want that, do we?

See you next week.

Weekly weigh-in #2

I'm doing well at going without the sugar.  I have splurged in the last week, but it seems to be leveling off somewhat and reducing.  Another loss this week.

79.7kg, a loss of 900 grams since last week.  I'm into the whole veges, sardines and olive oil diet that I've tried in the past and been successful with.

Not much to say, see you again hopefully next Thursday.

Weekly update

Trying to get a regular flow of posts going.

Here are my Thursday weigh-ins so far

7th May 82.1kg
14th May 81.7kg
21st May 80.9kg
28th May 80.625kg
4th Jun 80.617kg

You'll notice that I lost only 8 grams in the last week!  How did I manage to weigh something that small?  Just a simple method I've been using so far, it was pure luck that it was a loss and not a gain.  I fully expected to gain in the last week, not lose.

I've been struggling to get off sugar.  I did manage about 4 days without it a week or two ago, but then I'll get back into it for a while and stop losing.  I'll try again and go about 4 days again.  Ideally, I would like to go at least a week before having sugar, we'll see how that goes.

Another update...

Yeah, things aren't working out with the regular weigh ins.  But I'm losing weight, or I have been for at least the last 2 weeks.

7th May 82.1kg
14th May 81.7kg
21st May 80.9kg

So I've lost weight for 2 weeks in a row.  Yeah, not a big deal but it is a slight accomplishment.  Still a long way to go.  I'll try posting weekly updates and see how long that goes.

Update

So what happened?  What happened to the weekly weigh-ins?  I found out that I was going to lose my job, then I developed an eye infection (well, both eyes), then I found out that I was keeping my job (they were going to move premises to another city, but decided to keep some staff here in Christchurch).  My eyes have got better (via two trips to the doctor for antibiotic prescriptions) and now it's started to get worse again.

I just haven't been working on my weight loss.  I've started a "crash" zero carb diet to get into ketosis.  After 3 days, my weight will drop because of water weight going, and I'll do my veges and sardines plan.  I'm a sugar junkie, that's for sure.  I screwed up a cafe loyalty card where I normally go.   My weight is ever slowly increasing, not a lot, but it's there. I want to get to goal again.

Next post on Thursday.

Weekly weigh-in #1

80.8kg.  That's 14.8kg above goal weight, not a particularly huge amount of weight to lose, but it seems to be taking ages to lose it.  The fact that I gained about 7kg due to my antidepressant makes it all so much more annoying.

Because I will be posting weekly my weight and what I'm eating, that kind of makes for boring reading.  So here are some photos for a bit of light distraction.

The plane that I had my first overseas trip on, Airbus A330, at the humbling age of 49, Auckland to Singapore (just under 12 hours in the plane) - this was about 22 months ago

Maruia falls, New Zealand taken about a month ago on a short trip along the South Island

One of the many old bridges in Nelson province, NZ

That's all for now, see you next week with an update listing my weight, as well as what I've eaten during the week (and whether I've stuck to a budget!).

Restarting the weekly blog weigh-ins

I've been freewheeling in terms of weight loss.  A little bit here, a little bit there, a bit of a gain and a bit of a loss.  I haven't achieved much weight loss (or any) in the last couple of months.

I have done weekly blog weigh-ins in the past, I did find it useful, although there was often not much to say in each post.  Well, I'm going back to the weekly posts.  Thursday will be my chosen day of the week, because that is the day of the week when my father's 90th birthday occurs and I don't want that event to cause any subsequent gain a few days later.

In terms of what I'll be eating, one kilogram of veges and as much (or as little) of sardines and tuna as I want, plus olive oil.  Nice food for every half kilogram lost.  That's bound to be modified as I see fit.

As for what's been happening since my last post, well a few things but the biggie is my skin disorder turned near-critical.  Skin is one of those "you don't notice it until it turns bad" things on your body.  Itching, rashes, that sort of thing.  Uncontrollable scratching.  Pretty bad.  Thanks to a trip to the doctor, things are on the mend.  It was getting progressively worse, and those 5 days between making and having my doctor's appointment were tough.

See you Thursday with my first weigh-in.

How long can I go without sugar?

Current weight: 80.0kg

I don't know why, but I stopped dieting just after the last post at the start of January.  Or maybe I do know why, sometimes I get burnt out with dieting, and need a pause.  That has happened numerous times in my weight loss history and may continue to happen.  One thing that I noticed for January was my dependence of sugar.  I was having it pretty much every day.  I was also setting myself up for the sugary meal to be quite enjoyable, providing a feedback loop that maintained itself for some time.

Of course this is all bad news for trying to lose weight.  So my question is: how long can I go without sugar?  I'll have some sugar just before midnight and see how long I can go in February.  I don't want to guess how long it'll be, I have a birthday later on in the month, for which I will definitely have sugar, but apart from that, who knows.

Monthly update

Just over a month since I last posted, how are things going?  Good.  After I last posted, I stopped dieting briefly, gained a bit, then restarted again.  I also had enough with my medicine and the cravings that it produced, and gave up on them.  I kind of miss the higher quality sleep, but it just wasn't worth it.

Without them, losing weight is much, much easier.  I currently weigh 79.9kg, I've been losing for over a month now.  I seem particularly motivated, I'm not entirely sure where that came from, but I'm making the most of it for now.  I gave up on the idea of not buying clothing until I was at goal, and came across another idea, something that seems to relate well with me.  I'll see how I feel about it, and maybe post when I feel good about it.

I am thoroughly sick and tired of dieting.  I think that I've got about another 20 weeks to go at my ideal rate, and I'll reach goal weight.  I really hope I don't regain, I want to change my eating style and not have to care about gaining and then subsequent months / years losing to get to goal again.

Kind of a short post, but I felt that a short post is better than no post for a while.

See you in about a month.

Mannie.

October update

So the good news is that I've started losing, I've lost 3 weeks in a row so far and it all seems to be going well.  The bad news is that after I posted the last blog entry 6 weeks ago, I put on another 2 kilograms.  Currently I weigh 80.3 kilograms, a whopping 14.3 kilograms above goal weight.  As referred to in my last post, the antidepressant I'm currently on is causing me to eat more.  Even now as I am losing I have days where I spend quite a bit on food.  That's a bit of a financial worry, not too much but I don't want to waste money.  Nor do I want to gain weight.

I've gone back to the doctor for a repeat prescription of mirtazapine.  I'm pretty sure that it's not going to do any good, but I really want to give it a proper go before stopping.  In total it'll be 6 months of use, any change in mood is bound to have been discovered by then.  I'm just over halfway.

Not much to say apart from that.  The whole gain was totally unexpected, I've never had weight gain as a side effect before, I'm hoping no other medicine I ever take will have the same reaction.

I'm starting to wonder how I'll handle maintenance.  I'm totally sick and tired of dieting.  I just want to get to goal weight, weigh myself daily or every few days, and go for a monthly average of 66 kilograms.  What can I do to make myself still want (good enough) to stay at 66?

Currently, I don't have any useful answers.  I thought of having a container where I put $1 per day into it, a reminder of my struggles and a little ritual for me to say to myself "keep maintaining Mannie".  That's as good as I can get so far, when I hit $1,000 or so I'll do something with the money, who knows.  Also I've decided to not buy any clothing until I'm at goal.  The exception being clothing that I need (ie for job interviews etc) or when I've only got one of something, and it needs to be replaced.  I guess that could work.

Anyway, it'll be at least 3-4 months until I reach goal weight probably.  I was aiming for my birthday (mid February) but have since calculated that it's pretty much impossible.  More on that later.

September update (bad news...)

So it's September, and what's the bad news?  I gained.  Not just that I gained a little, I gained a lot.  5 kilograms.  Why so much in so little time?  My new antidepressant, that's why.  Basically, being on Mirtazapine, I think about food differently.  I had some coffee and peppermint slice for lunch, so what's wrong with eating it for dinner too?  Stuff like that. I'm currently 13 kilograms over goal weight.  That's a lot.

Like is full of learning experiences.  The truth of the matter is that I never expected to gain with my new antidepressant.  The reason for that is I've had about 7 before Mirtazapine (none of them were effective in reducing depression, by the way) and I've never had weight gain as a side effect before.  I've been gaining about one kilogram a week, that's very quick.

I've had all sorts of strange side effects with antidepressants over the years.  Excessive yawning, murderous thoughts (yes! - it's listed in the side effects of one which is why I recognised I'd had it), a flickering of my vision when I walk into a dark room, inability to have an orgasm (sadly a common side effect).  Now weight gain.

Mirtazapine also improves my sleep quality significantly, which is something new.  To say that I've had broken sleep is an understatement.  Not any more.  Not even a middle of the night trip to the bathroom.

But weight gain was unexpected.  Also I sort of (really - definitely) was in denial and didn't weigh myself for about a month.  That's never good.  But normally I'd expect to gain one kilogram in a months time, this time it was about 5 kilograms.

Most problems have solutions, and my solution is simple.  I now photograph everything that I eat.  I've been doing this for a few days so far, it's helped in diverting me from going to the supermarket and buying lots of nice but fattening foods.

I won't post the photos here, simply because I don't want to clutter the blog with a 200-300 photos of every single thing that I buy or get given.  But people do get to see the photos, which helps.

As for what I'm planning, back to basics, which means the best diet I've ever been on.  Unlimited vegetables and unlimited sardines.  I'll also have reward meals every half kilogram.

I'll leave it at that and update you all on how it's going soon.

Sugar addiction

74kg, about 8kg above goal weight

I'm still struggling to post once a month, but also, right now, I'm struggling to lose weight as well.  There are a number of issues that are happening with me right now, and I guess with all of the stress that they are creating, I'm finding it difficult to lose weight.  In fact I'm slowly gaining weight because of eating large quantities of food, well maybe not large but more than it takes to maintain.

Another issue is sugar, I'm eating it every day at the moment, yes that's not a good thing to do when you're trying to lose weight.

I'll keep this post short.  Probably too short, but from today onwards, I'll be keeping a record of days I'm losing and days I'm over eating.  I still want to lose weight, I still want to reach goal weight again.

Hope to post more often, I'll keep my posts short and see if that helps.

Yeah, it's been a long time!

10 months is a really long time!  So what happened?  I don't know really, I caught a chesty cold that was rather bad, that threw me, then my laptop died, then Yolanda came and went, causing problems with the Internet in the Philippines.  But really, I just got out of touch with the blog, and just couldn't get up the motivation to start posting.

In case you were wondering, my weight has been stable, currently about 8kg above goal weight.

I'm back in New Zealand.  It's good to be back!  Although I am grateful for my year in the Philippines, some parts of it were tough, and my inability to cope particularly well didn't help.  Mainly we're talking depression and anxiety.  Problems that I had in New Zealand followed me to the Philippines.

Anyway, I have decided to post now and then about my experiences, and try and get into the routine of posting every calendar month again.

Just a few notes about how things went while I was there:

• My relationship with Miss Minadano was "okay" but she had to go back 3 months early because she didn't look for a job, as I was running low on money towards the end of my stay
• I never got used to being stared at.  Although white people are there in the Philippines, the numbers vary considerably depending on where you are.  Highest concentration that I came across would be Bo's Coffee in Ayala mall, Cebu where about 25% of people would be Caucasians.  I took a few boat rides where I was the only one of 500 people who weren't Philippine.  Being stared at constantly tended to sap my mental energy so I taught myself to not look back at the person staring at me.  I don't know if it's a problem with other visitors, but I constantly felt like I was on display
• As Caron asked in the comments, Yolanda came and went, there was one fatality in Lapu Lapu, the city where I lived.  The winds were strong there (you could hear the metal roof buckling) for about 4 hours but I never felt unsafe.  Of course it was different elsewhere along the main path
• I did feel unsafe when the Bohol earthquake happened.  After all that my home city of Christchurch had gone through in terms of earthquakes, to be sitting upstairs and starting to notice that the bed was shaking, reminding me of all that Christchurch had experienced, was rather unsettling
• The heat was amazing.  I got sweat rashes, stood in heavy rain and didn't feel cold, and generally loved the heat.  Surprisingly, where I swam the water was cool.  Highest temperature was my upstairs bedroom at 38 degrees C, lowest was 26 degrees which actually felt cool.  Ha ha!  But it wasn't so much the heat, as the humidity which had an equal effect on how you felt

So that's a brief summary of some of the things that have happened in the last year.

I found it rather difficult to lose weight in the Philippines, mainly because I use vegetables as a way to lose weight and the veges that I came across in the local supermarket were rather sad looking.  Open air markets would have been different, but I was too far away from them, and it would have been too costly to travel regularly to buy them.

Now that I have easy access to quality vegetables, it's time to lose weight!  Getting back to goal, I want to lose about 1kg/month, resulting in my reaching goal weight in late December.  I really don't think I'll have trouble getting there.  From then, it's staying at goal weight for 2 years then applying to join the National Weight Loss Registry.  I am eligible to join now, but I feel two years at goal is sufficient time to show I'm capable of staying there, I don't want to shame myself by joining and then putting on 5kg or so.

See you next month.