The Great Challenge - how long can I last?

About a year ago I watched a television series called Thintervention. It was your basic lose weight through exercise and diet programme with a few differences. First, the people trying to lose weight weren't very heavy. Overweight and obese, yes. But not in Biggest Loser category of size. Secondly, it used 'real world' situations, or at least as much as they could find. Take about a dozen people, train them for 6 weeks on diet and exercise, then leave them alone for another 6 weeks, and see how they did.

I learnt two things from this programme. First, there isn't a linear relationship between weight and how fast you lose. It's actually a square relationship, which means that if you weigh double, you can lose weight 4 times as fast. If you weigh 10 percent heavier than someone else, you could expect to lose 20 percent more than them.

I also found out the mythical equation for how fast you can reasonably expect to lose weight. If you go as hard as you can, but you're not staying somewhere where exercise is your only activity. Here's how you calculate it: take your weight in kilograms (say, 90kg). Divide that number by 60 (1.5). That's the percentage you can expect to lose per week (1.5% of 90kg is 1.35kg). Of course, as you get thinner, the percentage drops.

You can read my post about the show here.

So what is this great challenge I hear you asking? I've decided to see how long I can last losing weight at the rate that the Thintervention people were able to. Starting today. I'll be concentrating on exercise and totally accurate eating for as long as I can manage. I don't expect to be able to continue until I reach goal, I guess it could happen, but I'd say it's not likely.

One reason why I wasn't able to do this until now is that for me, whenever I do significant exercise, I need sleep (or at least a lie down) immediately afterwards. Living with Becky made this rather tricky and not worth the hassle or trying to get her out of the bedroom for 2-3 hours. Now that I'm living on my own, coming home and needing a rest isn't going to be a big deal the way it would have been before.

Today I weigh 82.3kg. I'll go for a walk tonight, which will be the start of the exercise. I'll have my usual coffee and slice as a send off, I always do this so please don't try to convince me otherwise! I'll be joining the gym on Wednesday.

So what progress can I expect?

After 10 days I'd be 80.7kg

After 30 days 77.6kg

After 2 months 73.5kg

I'd reach goal in 124 days

Like I said, I don't expect to reach goal using this method. I'll crash and burn sometime earlier. The experiment is not to see whether I can reach goal. It's to see how long I can manage.