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.