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.

The rainy season has arrived

71.0kg, 5kg over goal weight

In the last month, it's been raining quite a bit.  That's good for me, because before that started, I was finding it just a bit too warm here in the Philippines.  It's noticeably cooler.  Usually here, it rains at night, and it's not just a light drizzle.  We're talking loud rain, water everywhere rain.  Over the next 9 months, it will rain less and less, until the cycle will repeat itself.

I've always known that it's hard to get started with weight loss, and you need to have the right mindset to get started, and to continue.  You can't force it.  I gave up on the 1kg/month goal, and decided to just do the easy thing - lose weight every week.  I did that back in 2011 and made it for 18 weeks, I decided to just try and do that, losing weight every week, and see what happens.  Currently I've achieved 3 weeks in a row.  I'm weighing daily, which is a good sign.

I really believe that after achieving goal weight back in September last year, I was pretty much burnt out of the weight loss thing, it's hard work, draining, and sometimes you just need a rest from it.  That's why I stopped weighing myself regularly.  It's nice to know that I can handle daily weighing again.

Life here in the Philippines is nice, but there are a number of things from back home that I really miss.  Probably the biggest thing would be my car.  The ability to get in your car and drive 1km or 100km is really powerful.  People in the Philippines have not yet developed a taste for maps for their public transport.  So there is a bit of "I don't really know how to get to where I want to go".  There is a lot of guesswork involved.  Plus the fact that I don't really know where north is.  I've lost my sense of direction.  That's because back in NZ I knew which direction was north was, just by looking at the sun.  Being on the equator has its disadvantages.  That's why I bought a smartphone, with GPS a few days ago.  I'm sure that it will be very handy, it's nice to see a map showing where I am.

Life with Miss Mindanao is good, we have fallen into a routine, and we're having a good time together.  Going to karaoke, shopping together, that sort of thing.  One thing I wish we could do, but it seems to can't, is go for walks together.  There is a serious lack of green space here.  Parks.  Christchurch has a heap of parks, including a huge one in the middle of the city that was gifted to the city back when it was first founded.

Philippine people have yet to discover certain aspects of urban living, as well.  The road near my home is being dug up, and replaced by concrete slabs.  So what did they do with the old chunks of tarseal and gravel?  Leave it by the side of the road, that's what.

Caved in and bought a scale

Yeah, it's one of those old style spring scales.  Although I had the intention of measuring myself with a tape measure while I was here in the Philippines, measurement is such a pain compared to just standing on the scale and taking an average.  So I just went to the local mall to buy one.  Even though the Philippines is a '3rd world country', there are a surprisingly large number of people here who are overweight.  Not many who you'd class as obese though.  Being overweight has been common for a long time though, I remember reading about research done on peoples weights 100 years ago in the US, and 1/3 were overweight.  That number hasn't really changed, although the number of obese people in affluent countries has ballooned from just a few percent to about 1/4-1/3.

Life here is the Philippines is fine.  I do have a bit of trouble enjoying it as much as I'd like, mainly due to depression and anxiety issues.  Also, the wildlife inside the home is a bit of an issue.  Mosquitoes, ants, other creepy crawlies of varying sizes (a few cockroach sized animals that I don't know the names of).  But the worst would have to be the lizards.  They come inside the house and can't figure out how to get out.  There is a nest of lizards a few metres outside the bedroom window.  I could catch them and take them elsewhere, but the idea of catching lizards (the biggest are about 10cm long) sort of freaks me out.  Generally I see a lizard inside the house once every few days.

Things are going fine with being with Miss Mindanao, she's commented about coming with me to New Zealand a few times, but there are a number of reasons why that would be a bad idea.  For one thing, I can't afford it.  I'd have to support her for a year or two before she gets a work permit, I just don't have the money.

Currently, I'm at 72kg, which is about 6kg above goal weight.  I've decided to take the easy route and lose weight about 1kg a month, until I reach goal.  I've done the 1kg/month thing before, and it must be 10 times easier than losing say 1kg a week.

Update (long)

Yes, it's been a while.  Nearly 2 months, actually.  I'm in the Philippines now, but first how has my weight loss gone in the last 2 months?  Not so good.  Just after my last post, I realised that I made a critical error in my spreadsheet.  Spreadsheets are very useful things, but tend to be error prone.  I made a mistake in editing my spreadsheet that made me think that I had it easier than was actually the case.  As a result, it came to be point where it seemed impossible to reach goal weight by May 14th, the day I left New Zealand.  So what was I to do?  Break my promise to myself where I said that I'd never go overseas unless I was at goal weight, or postpone the flight.  I decided to go overseas and break my promise.

Getting overseas has been a challenge.  Being significantly depressed makes it hard to do most things.  After giving 3 weeks notice it was a challenge to do more than 4-5 hours of work a day.  Big jobs like doing the gardening or covering the dirty stones with nice clean stones were a real challenge.  The bathroom was a bit of a worry, but in fact it turned out to be pretty easy.  Cleaning carpets, cleaning floors, walls, replacing things that were broken, hiring a water blaster that never worked (that's 2 hours and $95 I'll never get back).  You know the story.

Shifting sucks.  As it turned out, I was 12 1/2 hours late for moving out.  That's not too bad.

Then it was a case of merging all of my stuff stored in 2 storage units into one storage unit.  That sounds easy but you end up walking an incredible amount (from trailer to storage unit and back, 100-200 times), you have to move stuff out of the destination to give room for the new stuff, but you have to estimate how much to take out, how long it will take (in case one of your storage units closes), deal with trailer hire, booking the free trailer that the storage unit provided and then forget to attach it properly (while in haste), resulting in the trailer falling off the tow bar, resulting in a loss of 2-3 days due to a domino effect of this and that.

After that I visited my family in Dunedin for 3 nights, and then headed north, my trip ending with about 5 days with my brother while I prepared my computer gear and all of the other things that I needed in the Philippines, prepared stuff that I was leaving with my brother, banking and emergency money.  The 11 1/2 hour flight from Auckland to Singapore went better than expected.  The 3 1/2 hour flight from Singapore to didn't go so well.  It turns out that taking $700 with me in emergency Philippine money was a bad idea, resulting in worrying about what would happen at immigration because I hadn't applied for permission to take such a large (!) amount. The upper limit of non-declaration was $300.  It turns out that the immigration lady was really nice about the situation, she seemed fine with things and I was apologetic about the situation which I guess helped as well.

After that, I was officially in Manila.  No searching through my bags for contraband or threats to the food industry, surprisingly (actress Hilary Swank famously got fined $200 when visiting New Zealand when she failed to declare an apple and orange she was carrying as a comparison).

Then it was time to meet the lady I've been Skyping for 6 months.  Miss (I'll call her) Mindanao, the island that she's from.  A family member and friend were there as well to meet me at the airport.  The meeting went well, and we all got on well, but I have to admit that I wasn't really happy having an extra two unexpected people to share the small apartment that I'd rented for 6 nights.  It was pretty cramped, there was a general lack of privacy and lack of time for Miss Mindanao and I to get to know each other.  I wasn't happy.

Manila is seething mass of people.  The malls, roads, buses, jeepneys, supermarkets, even public toilets are chock-full of people.  I would hate to live there permanently, it's just too congested for my liking.

After 6 nights just the two of us went to our current home, Cebu.  Although the population density is still high compared with my home, it's a lot easier to do pretty much anything compared with Manila.

So what do I think of Miss Mindanao?  I have to say that she's.....lovely.  I do accept that it's an unusual situation, from Skyping every 2-3 days to shacking up effectively on the first date, but she cares about me, I care about her, and it's all pretty genuine.

I guess there are two main issues between us.  Miss M's English skills aren't perfect, I'd put them at about 70%, which means that 30% of what either of us says, the other doesn't understand, resulting in a "what do you mean?" request. Over the year that I'm here, that's going to be a non-issue.  The other issue is that I went to the Philippines for the heat, it's probably 33 degrees C right now, with 90% humidity.  I'm sweating, and loving it.  Miss M. hates the heat, comments about it more than once a day, and craves air conditioning, causing a few disagreements at our hotel in Cebu city.

Our rented place in Cebu doesn't have air conditioning.  That's probably a good thing for our relationship, because electricity is phenomenally expensive here in the Philippines, and being cold makes me grumpy.

If you made it this far in my post, congratulations.  I am officially on a diet (we shared a yummy chocolate cake to celebrate moving into our new home) now, with my unlimited fish and vegetables diet.  I don't have scales (yet), but do have a tape measure.  I plan on updating the blog once every 2-3 weeks, about how life in the Philippines is going.

March update

It's been a while.  It's my intention to post every calendar month, and I seem to be doing a moderately good job at that.  I'm not reading any particular blogs regularly, just looking at my blog roll and seeing if there is anything interesting.  I guess my interest in weight loss blogs has diminished, that's fine and to be expected.  I really enjoyed it, but I'd never intended to be an active reader and writer of weight loss blogs for the rest of my life.

My weight has been relatively consistent  about 5kg above goal weight.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  I'm not getting on that plane unless I'm at or under goal weight.  My plane leaves in 45 days (I freak out whenever I calculate how many days it is, due to anxiety about the year away, not the weight loss), which is fine to lose 5kg.  Worst case scenario, I'll change the date of my ticket.

I've known for some time that I'm happier and more content in a relationship, than being single.  I'm fine with that, but the last 20 months of being single have been hard on me, because of all of the obvious things that I'm missing out.  Given that I have had depression (while being in a relationship) my mood has taken a dive since becoming single.  As a result, I have had extreme difficulty getting motivated to do things.

Today I give 3 weeks notice that I'm moving out.  I'll really miss this place.  If I had the money to buy the place, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.  I guess I get attached to some places, and I have no doubt that I'll be driving down the little lane and looking at it while sitting in my car, for years to come.  I still do that with the family home #1 in Dunedin, and we moved out in 1974.

Living in one place for some time (in my case, 7 1/2 years) you start to learn what, and what not to do.  Life is a learning experience.  You learn to rake the leaves on stones because you can't get rid of the organic matter in between the stones (it's a trade off between 50 hours of cleaning stones, or just spending a couple of hundred dollars and getting clean ones to cover the old ones).  Apart from that, the house is in good condition, although the garden needs 15 hours to make it perfect, I guess.

20 days and 5 hours a day is fine for getting everything done.  100 hours to do every single task, plus allowing time for a few unexpected things to come along.

Oh, by the way, in January I went to Queenstown, a town of about 20,000 about 6 hours drive from Christchurch.  It's been labelled "adventure capital of the world".  Not being an adventurer  I'm not sure if that's correct, but heading into the central shopping area, two things were evident.

1. 80% of the people in the central shopping area of Queenstown are tourists (apart from identifying them due to race, have you ever seen a tourist wearing old clothing?  Me neither).

2. Very few tourists in Queenstown are obese.  I guess that makes sense, being a place for adventurers, and most of them are young, so they are less likely to be obese.  Sort of like going back to pre-1980.

Some photos:

At the top of the Queenstown gondola, I drank my last bottle of Coke.  Yes, I'm 10 weeks off that demon drink.  Coffee too.  I'm hoping that drinking it at a place that I haven't been to in 25 years made it special enough, that I won't indulge again.  I want to break 2 years without caffeine, I did that in 1999, I want to do it again.

Apart from that, there is not much to tell you.  Learning Cebuano (the local language) has taken a back seat (I just can't get into it when I have trouble doing other, more common things) but I'm certain that I want to be an okay speaker after one year.  The lady I'm in contact with is a native speaker, no doubt she'll help me.  One thing is certain though: learning a new language sucks.  There are thousands of spoken languages on our planet, and I really wish there were only a handful.

Blog diversion - 79 days

An update on how I'm going on my organisation towards going overseas.

It would be fair enough to say that up until today, I haven't really achieved anything of value.  That's because I've been seriously depressed (and have been in the last 18 months since becoming single, it's been harder than I thought it would be).  Currently, that's just the way it is, and I have to accept it, and go around the problem.

I've been trying to achieve things, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.  Today I tried (and succeeded) to achieve 4 hours of doing things of value.  Here's what I did:

1:00 going out to do things - this is a regular occurrence, probably every 2-3 days

0:30 supermarket shopping - something I try and avoid, so I've bought 1-2 weeks of food and essentials

1:00 I'm not sure if I said that in the Philippines, I wanted to revise my mathematics courses done a number of years ago, for achieving my other goal in life (after reaching goal weight) - finishing my degree.  So that's the plan, 20 hours a week for a year, relearning first and second year mathematics.  I did them a while ago (and passed) so it won't be too hard to relearn and get up to speed for future courses.  I was planning on scanning one textbook, all 1200 pages (I don't want to take any books on my trip, just digital files) but decided to check and see if someone had (illegally) uploaded the book to any file sharing websites, and to my surprise they had.  I have mixed feelings about this, the author is deprived an income but I don't have to cut the book apart and then spend 20 hours scanning the whole book.  I did however need to check that the book didn't have any missing pages, the scanner had forgotten to scan the myriad of equations at the end of the book (not that big a deal, it's just for reference) and there were a few pages that were there twice, and a few that were not straight, but on an angle.  It did take me a whole hour though to check that everything was there.

1:10 something I've been avoiding, adding weight loss blogs to the blogroll here, I want to max it out at 250 and also only show weight loss blogs that are similar to my blog.  I'll do a bit every day until it's done.

1:20 photographing the notes from one of my many courses.  About 120 pages.

4 hours a day is not a lot.  I do have trouble with my big distraction (the Internet) and so I want to only spend an hour a day browsing webpages.  Plus I need to tidy and clean my place (and the garden: 5-10 hours work maybe) and basically get my life organised before I leave, so it's not a big hassle when I come back to New Zealand.

Blog diversion - trip anxiety and 102 days

71kg, 5kg over goal weight

Today is the first of February.  That means (hopefully) in 102 days I'll be leaving Auckland.  I've got a hell of a lot of things to do before I leave, and I'm suffering from the stress and anxiety about the trip. As a result, yesterday I did exactly zero hours of work on "stuff", the things I need to do before I leave.

I wondered what to do about this potential crisis (and yes, it could turn out to be a crisis) so in the middle of the night I decided to post on the blog about it.  For the next 3 1/2 months you'll be reading about what I'm doing, totally unrelated to weight loss.

Sorry about that.

Today I want to achieve 4 hours of doing things.  Most of that is tidying (a tidy place is welcoming to doing things, an untidy place is not in my experience).  I also want to start working on:

1. Getting a tow bar for my car (essential because I need to put all of my stuff in storage, and remove a dead couch out the back collecting leaves)
2. Make an appointment for essential medical tests
3. Start working on getting a passport (today, just a phone call is all I need to do)
4. Print out the form for travel insurance when I go to the doctor next week

The last one is what I'm dreading.  I keep hearing of awful tales related to travel insurance (probably because I read a lot, should cut back on that, right?) and potential life and death situations.  I know I'll probably be alright, but the anxious person in me is starting to worry.  About all sorts of things.  Half of them are related to travel insurance.

Living in New Zealand is like living in a cocoon.  State funded medical care and ACC.  ACC is a compulsory accident insurance system we have here.  It's been around for about 50 years.  What that means is that if you have an accident, ACC will (supposedly) take care of you and pay you money and your expenses etc.  Yes, there are issues and complaints but I'll take that over the alternative any day.  The downside is that you cannot sue.  I'm fine with that.

I just worry about what could happen if....  You get the idea.

So the goal today is to do 4 hours of work.  It could be anything.  From now on, until I've finished all of my tasks, this blog will turn into a motivation blog.

Sorry about that.

Christmas gain

70.0kg.

It's been a while and my weight has slowly marched upwards, then Christmas came along and there was another gain.  I've been slack at posting here on the blog as well.

4kg to lose.  That's about 13 percent of my total weight loss, so I'm not worried.  I started yesterday with my unlimited sardines and vegetables diet.  I had a huge headache yesterday, caused by going low carb.  But I've started.  So doing that diet (the best I've ever done, in my opinion, lack of hunger) I'm very confident that I'll get back to 66kg.

I made the mistake of upgrading to the beta of Internet Explorer 10, which caused numerous blue screens of death whenever I used it, so I downgraded and they didn't go away.  So in the last couple of months I've basically read zero weight loss blogs, as they are all listed on the RSS reader on IE.  I'll be doing a reinstall in the next week and the problem will go away.

It's a bit sad that there will always be a 4kg blip on my graphs for the rest of the lifetime of the blog, but that's life, it was fair to say that most of my motivation left me when I reached goal weight.

My trip is still in the planning stage (I've yet to get tickets, passport or travel insurance) because I've got so much to do before I leave.  It's all overwhelming, which is why I'm thinking of leaving mid May, giving me hundreds of potential hours of time to do things.  I've taken voluntary redundancy at work early February which is good because it gives me both more time and more money to play with.

I've been in contact with a nice lady in the Philippines but I do wonder why someone would want to date a guy who'll only be there for a year.  I'll guess I'll find out soon enough.  It looks like we'll have a great time together but I'm a bit worried about the inevitable heartbreak at the airport 12 months later.

Sorry that this post has just seemed like a 'checklist'.  It's really just a catch up post.  4kg above goal.  That's not a lot, it's not awful, and it is definitely manageable.  One thing is certain, I won't be getting on the plane unless I'm at 66 or less.

Learning a new language...

... and that language is Cebuano.  Things are progressing well for my year overseas.  Never having been out of the country though, I'm finding it all rather stressful.  I'm sure that once I arrive in the Philippines, get a place and get settled, the stress will go away and I can enjoy myself. 

The Philippines has a lot of languages.  Being a country with so many islands, there was a lot of geographic isolation which caused lots of languages to develop over thousands of years.  Even within one large island you can have one language used in the majority one side, and another language the other side.  As a result, many people are bilingual and some trilingual. 

English is one of the two official languages.  It is used in official documentation.  Apparently, you can get by pretty well just by using English in the country.  The majority can speak it, although the degree of fluency by those who do use it varies.  The national language is Tagolog, which is used throughout the country, although more predominantly in the north, where the capital Manila is.

I plan to go to central Philippines, where Cebuano is based.  About 20 million people speak this language, and I thought since I'm going there for 12 months, why not learn the language?  I have no idea how I'll go with this challenge.  I plan to leave New Zealand late March, which is 20 weeks away.  I'm hoping to do at least 15 hours of study a week.  That's 300 hours, which probably is enough to make sure that I don't make a fool of myself, but not enough to prevent misunderstandings.

About 3 months ago, I told someone about my blog.  I've only told one person about the blog, which was probably a good thing, so I can have a bit of privacy and make weight loss mistakes without thinking that someone was looking over my shoulder at what I was eating.  My plans for the future have changed (related to my time away), and subsequently I want a bit of privacy.  You can draw your own conclusions, and I have to say that any guesses you make probably would have a degree of truth in them.

For this reason my blog has moved addresses.  I know that I have lost a lot of readers (I peaked at 857 views last month, my highest ever) but really, my blog had entered a maintenance stage where I promised to post at least monthly and not share too much about what was going on in my life.  There are at least 500 weight loss / fitness blogs out there with about 3 new ones each week, so there is a lot of choice.

I've given myself the challenge of turning this blog for the year I'm away into a living in the Philippines blog.  That means lots of personal information (scary, huh?), lots of photos and hardly any graphs.  I still want a graph at the top of each post but that's about it.  After I get back, it turns back into a boring maintenance blog again.

6 weeks at goal weight

Yes, it's been a while since I've posted.  You may recall how I'd planned to weigh myself daily from my goal day.  Six weeks later, that did not happen.  I've only weighed myself half a dozen times after my last post a month ago, and surprisingly for me, didn't even bother to enter most of them into my spreadsheet.  I have to say that for about 10 days, I was on a goal high, and life was sweet.  I treated myself to going to the cinema a huge number of times, certainly a record for me.  The films I saw were:

Wednesday 19th On the road - an unusual film about life hitch hiking in the US in the early 1950's.  Life on the road included working low skill jobs, as well as reading and writing poetry and short stories.  A bit arty, but that's okay in low quantities.

Thursday 20th The Expendables 2 - just a string of explosions, air crashes, and gun battles where the good guys (almost) never get killed.  Pretty much you had to disengage your brain when the film started.

Friday 21st Hit and Run - it's never a good sign when you completely forget what this film is about, and have to watch the trailer again.  An escapade type film about a couple who are on the run from some baddies who want some hidden money.  Forgettable, obviously.

Monday 24th Total Recall - a remake about someone who has memories implanted into his brain in a futuristic society.  Quite good, lots of action and a plot that isn't dumbed down.

Tuesday 25th Ruby Sparks - a successful author creates a character in one of his stories and she comes to life.  They have a relationship and he learns that he can change the way that she acts just by typing some words on a piece of paper.  Quite enjoyable.

Wednesday 26th Hope Springs - essentially a dramatic documentary about how the fire in a long-term relationship can burn out and how to reignite it with a trip away and some couples counselling.  Some of the acting sucked.  It was however, interesting showing the counselling and I'll be buying a DVD of this when it comes out because I have lived this film and don't want to live it again.

Thursday 27th Looper - using time travel to dispose of unwanted bodies, hit men come across expected and unexpected problems when they take on a profession with a finite life expectancy.  Well made although there were some huge plot holes.

Friday 28th Savages - my favourite of the bunch, marijuana growers who have to join up with a Mexican drug lord which results in horrifying deaths and kidnapping.  Very well made and has what I would call razzmatazz which is when everything comes together perfectly.

Monday 1st Savages - worth seeing twice.

Tuesday 2nd Pitch Perfect - in a nutshell, two hours of Glee but with more comedy and no backing band, instead using a cappella (which is making instrument sounds using your voice).  Anna Kendrick was great in Up in the air but she won't get any Academy Award nominations for this, sadly.

Wednesday 3rd Resident Evil: Retribution - some films (Lord of the Rings, Coyote Ugly) were made for 13 year old boys.  This film was made by a 13 year old boy.  The script, plot, set and pretty much everything was shallow.  If you play first person shooter video games on your Xbox 360/Playstation 3, you've played this film.

Thursday 4th Two little boys - it's been a long time since I've walked out of a film.  Probably 5-10 years.  I wasn't the only one to walk out of this.  The fact that it was made in New Zealand makes it worse (I've been to some of the locations in the film), but this film really wasn't funny and the production quality was worse than NZ's long running soap Shortland Street which is pretty bad. 

So there you have it.  12 films in two weeks.  Definitely an enjoyable experience, celebrating 3 years of weight loss and 12 years since being at goal.

So where to from now?  I have to say that maintaining has been easier than what I expected.  I sort of expected that my metabolism would have diminished somewhat and I would need to boost the level of protein that I was having.  As it turned out, that hasn't happened.  Obviously I can't eat whatever I want to, but I'm not that hungry and I don't seem to be needing to optimise the level of protein that I'm having.  I haven't been cold,  nor have I been lying around feeling listless and tired due to my light weight.

Blogging.  I'm proud of my weight loss, and yes, I'm proud of my blog.  Reading other people's blogs, they like to share a lot of what is going on in their lives.  As it happens, I'm more of a private person and don't do that.  However, I still need the blog and have decided to make posts at least every calendar month.  That's not a lot, but I can maintain that level for pretty much indefinitely, so it will be interesting to see how long I can go. 

Commenting on other people's blogs.  I need to work on this.  I do think that it helps with my own motivation and also it's only fair to support others as other people have supported me.  I've whittled down the number of blogs that I'm commenting on, but that means that I can remember more about the person I'm reading rather than just going by what I read on that particular post.

Exercise.  I've stopped exercising.  I knew that would happen.  I also need to start again because I really need to improve the quality of my sleep, and maybe exercise can do that.  We'll see.

Food.  I've started to eat foods that I haven't had in a long time (we're talking years).  One of which is tortellini, which are little pasta things filled with cheese.  The good thing about these is they are easy to prepare, just add boiling water and throw in the microwave.  However they have a high energy density which means that it's been at least 4-5 years since I've had them.  There are a number of other foods which I plan to have, but this one happened to come to mind first, so I decided to buy a packet and give it a go.

I need to be vigilant with my weight, so I'll see how weighing weekly goes in terms of safety.

A small milestone

First, a big THANK YOU to all of you who left messages on my Goal Weight post just over a week ago.  It was sooo nice to get them all.  You'll notice a few changes.  I will be skinny has turned into The Art of Weight Loss Maintenance.  I guess it's more relevant to what lies ahead, and it turns out that I'm not skinny anyway.  I've also changed my Blogger name.  Me has turned into Mannie, which is not my real name but is close to it.  I guess I got tired of using Me, perhaps a bit too arty for my tastes.

The milestone I'm referring to is that back in 2000, I was at goal weight for exactly 9 days, which I'm sure you'd agree is not a particularly long time.  Now is actually the fourth time I've been at goal, the other periods being 6 ('94) and 12 months ('96).  I've now been at goal for 10 days, breaking my previous shortest duration.  You can see that the above graph that my weight gained for just over a week before getting back below goal.  I expected that.  You know how when you first start dieting, you typically lose a lot in the first week?  Well, this is the opposite effect of that.  When you start eating "normally", the weight of food inside you increases and so you weigh more.  I need to lose a bit more fat to get back to just a tad below goal weight consistently.  That will take 2-4 weeks.

I plan to have these graphs on every post for at least a year or two.  When I think about how long the blog will be active for, I've got mixed thoughts.  I really want it to last a life time, but is that realistic?  Probably not.  Very few blogs break 6 years.  The blog has definitely helped me in losing weight, but I'll share a little secret.  Promise not to tell?  This is not my first weight loss blog.  It's actually my third.  The other two crashed and burned.  The first one started off 10kg from goal (sigh) and ended up 20kg from goal (an even bigger sigh), 18 months later.  The second blog started off 25kg above goal and stayed that way for a year.  Mindset is everything, and it takes time to build that.

A few people have been noticing my weight loss at work, I had my yearly evaluation a few days ago and my supervisor said that someone had asked her if I had some health issue which caused my weight loss.  She'd noticed my loss just before I became single last June and complimented me on my losses.  Anyway, at the evaluation I told her no, I was fine, I just wanted to lose weight.  She handled it well, wasn't judgmental and we joked about how the company gave out chocolate as a reward for many things.  As an example, we were requested to do a company culture questionnaire and as a reminder, of course there was a small bar of chocolate as a thank you (the previous culture survey results got canned due to an earlier CEO being asked to resign for unknown reasons).  What is weird is that the comments I've been getting have been the week and a half surrounding my reaching goal weight.

My goal emotional high hasn't started to wear off, I thought that it would only last a few days.  I admit that losing 28kg (with a few rebounds added in - maybe 17kg) has been a tiring, draining experience.  More on that later.

Goal weight!

This morning I weighed in at 65.6kg, which means that I've reached my goal weight!  It feels so great to be finally here.  Yes, it's taken 3 years 3 weeks, but in reality it's taken 10 years because the last time I was at goal weight was 10 years ago (and I only was there for about 8 days).  I'll keep this post short because it's after midnight and I'm tired, today has been a busy day, I took the ferry to Diamond Harbour (a 10 minute journey from Lyttleton).  There I walked up the hill, and had an ice cream at the local store. 

I haven't taken a photo yet for the comparison shot but really, there isn't that much difference between the photo at 79kg and what I look like at 66kg.  The only 'issue' I have is my knees, I've noticed this in the past when I've been thin, my knees don't have any fat on them and it can be annoying when I'm trying to sleep because I can't lay one on top of the other.  Anyway, I knew that would be a problem. 

There is a sense of relief that I'm finally here, but also a lot of regret.  Why did I rebound 10 years ago?  I think that because I went up all the way to 94kg, I may well have mucked up the hormones which regulate hunger compared to if I had just stayed at goal.  Anyway, that is in the past now, I have no control over it. 

Because I'm at goal now I ordered my 32GB mp3 player, which should arrive within a week.  A few other goodies I'll be getting as well. 

I just want to say a big THANK YOU for everyone who commented on my blog in the last 3 years.  It has helped immensely.  I guess when you look at it, losing weight is a solitary experience.  It is extremely difficult to find someone who is at your stage of the 'journey' who you can buddy up and will help and support you.  Because I really didn't have that, comments helped a lot.  Also thanks heaps to those of you who have put me on your blogroll.  That seems to substantially increase views.  That's why I've maxed out (at 250) my main blogroll because I believe that WL bloggers out there need all the help and views they can get.

I've said in the past how I plan on a system for maintaining: if I'm over my goal weight then no dinner.  That starts tomorrow.  Because of the carbs I've had today I'll no doubt not be having dinner tomorrow.  That's cool by me.  Over the next 2-4 weeks I'll reintroduce carbs which means I get to eat fruit again, which is something I've missed a lot.

So what's it like to be skinny, a reference to the blog title?  Well it turns out that I'm not skinny, when I started this blog it had been 9 years since I'd been this weight and simply didn't remember what I looked like.  Also after about a year I got sick of the name but decided to keep it until I reached goal, so I'll change it soon to something relevant to maintenance.

It's been a great day reaching my goal weight.

Lowest weight in over 15 years

If you've been reading my blog for a while now, you've seen these a few times.  Lowest weight in .... years.  This will be my final one.  15 years ago my life was quite a bit different.  Living with Gill.  I'd just bought a new (second hand) car, which I just sold 6 months ago.  Back in 1997 I would break my arm in March, something that would cause a rebound that would last for 3 1/2 years.

I can't believe that my "journey" is almost over.  I feel all sorts of emotions.  More on that in my next post.  Last weekend I've had two comments at work about my weight, one day after the other!  Sadly, they haven't said that I look great, it has been more a sort of being concerned about my weight, and maybe I'm getting too low.  I just want to be the weight I was back in 1996.  Back then no one said I was underweight.  So why are they getting concerned now?  Way to spoil my fun, thanks.

Anyway, before about a week ago I was having rewards every half kilogram, but that has stopped.  I'm not having them anymore.  The reason is that I want to finish by about the 10 year anniversary of what I call "my 2002 madness" or "the worst year of my life, excepting the year I die".  10 years ago, my partner was dying of breast cancer.  My mother was also dying of pancreatic cancer.  Gill died on the 19th of September, we had her funeral on the 21st, and that night I drove to Dunedin, 5 hours away.

My mother was in a bad way, but I'm so glad that my brother and father came up for the funeral.  The next morning I had the following conversation with my mother: "Do you know that Gill has died?" "Of course I do".  That was the only words we said.  I really wish that I was able to have a proper conversation about Gill dying, because my mother was very fond of Gill, but she just didn't have it in her.  The next morning my mother died.

As you can imagine, that was really tough on me.  I still think of it a couple of times a week, 10 years later.  Gill was always supportive about my weight problems back then, she must have heard "I've lost another kilogram" so many times!  Unlike my last two girlfriends, she never showed resistance to me wanting to lose weight, never made one negative comment.  Actually, this is the first time I've realised that, having typed it.  I never had the need to question what she said about my weight.  She was my first girlfriend and we had a long-term relationship, and for some people you get really strong feelings for someone even years after the relationship has ended when they are your first girl/boyfriend and it is long-term.

So yeah, I want to finish around the time of the 10 year anniversary.  Not a month later.  Nowish.  But I'll make sure that goal day is not the 19th or the 23rd.  I don't want to have a happy occasion on a sad day.

On a lighter note, I'm wondering how the blog will be different when I'm at goal weight.  My two favourite maintenance blogs are Fit to Finish by Diane and At Goal Weight Watcher by Caron.

Diane has been at goal weight for 14 years, but she really knows how to look back and discuss the issues that were important to her when she was heavier, as well as now that she's at goal.  Her posts are a derivation of "Let's talk about ...".

Caron has been at goal weight for a couple of years now.  She regularly posts her weight, as well as what is happening in her life.  It's nice to get a feel of who she is as a person, rather than just words on a screen.  She gets to go to Weight Watchers meetings for free because she's at her goal weight.

You'll notice that my blog consists of posts such as:

   Lowest weight in n years
   I lost a bit this week
   I gained a bit this week
   n weeks in a row of losing
   I'm starting a new self-challenge
   That self-challenge really didn't work out but...

So let's imagine what my blog in (ideally) maintenance would be like:

   My weight is stable
   I started exercising
   I had some nice food this week
   I stopped exercising
   My weight is stable

Kinda boring, right?  I really have no idea what the blog will turn into, I guess we can wait and see.

August goals recap / September goals

68.1kg

New month, new set of goals

My goals for August were:

• Low carb for almost all of the month.  I gave the number of days that I wanted to eat low carb at 27 and yes, I was able to achieve that.  That was how many days there were, the exceptions were the 1st, 11th, 23rd and today, the 31st.

• Reward meals when they happen, not before.  Done.

• Red/Green squares to show when I ate perfectly or when I didn't eat perfectly.  My current diet is unlimited meat and unlimited vegetables.  It means I can have a reward meal (3200Kj) when allowed.  I know that some people might think that having so many reward meals (every half a kilogram) is a bad idea, but really, my goal is to lose weight.  No loss, no reward.  I do feel somewhat deprived when I'm on this diet, so it's nice to have treats now and then.  Once I'm at goal weight I'll probably eat out once a week (not a meal, just a snack.  I rarely have a whole meal eating out).  Here is the last month:

        So that's 5 days when I ate more than what I should have.

• Become fit.  Done.  I can run for 30 minutes without a break, which is my definition of being fit.  Sometimes after an exercise session I need a lie down, sometimes I don't.  My sleep quality is still what I'd consider poor.

• Exercise every day, except the 1st which I missed.  Done.  I only had to run in the rain once.  

So there you have it, what I've achieved in August.  I'm reasonably pleased with what I did.  So how much weight did I lose?  Exactly 4 kilograms.  That's not bad.

Now for September goals:

The main one of course is to:

• Get to goal weight.  I really want to achieve that in September.  My weight loss seems to be speeding up in anticipation of getting there.  Only 2.1kg to go.  Unless something bad happens such as a health related issue or some type of conflict with another human being (I don't handle stress very well, who does?) I fully expect to get there this month.

• After reaching goal, start the transition to high carb.  One of the things about going high carb is that you gain weight due to the amount of water in your muscles increasing.  This is called "glycogen related weight gain".  Because I want to stay under my goal weight I will need to gradually increase the amount of carbohydrates I'm eating.  That will take 2-4 weeks.  So I'll continue losing fat for a while, and that means continuing to eat less than my body needs.

• Start my maintenance system.  For me that means watching what I eat and watching my weight.  At least initially for the first year or two.  Daily weigh-ins, which is fine for me, I prefer it that way (who knows, in the second year I might be weighing every second day).  I happened to read about someone who maintained by a simple method: if they were at goal weight, they could have dinner.  But if they were above goal weight, they couldn't.  I'm going to have my 'red line' weight as my goal weight.  It seems simpler that way.  I need to stay under it.  That way I don't have to choose a value of regain, and decide how much risk to take, ie 1, 2, or 3kg.  The first week I'll be taking each morning's reading as an indicator as to whether I can have dinner that evening.  After that, I'll take a 7 day average.  I know that a lot of people wouldn't go to this much detail in planning, but I enjoy this sort of thing.  I've weighed myself thousands of times in the last 20 years, so I like fiddling with numbers and stuff.

• Start figuring out how much protein to eat.  Back in my 20's I was a vegetarian.  But I really didn't eat the foods that a vegetarian should have eaten.  Oh how I wish that I'd kept a food diary back then, of course I didn't because I was at a stable weight.  I didn't even know how much I weighed!  I didn't know what BMI or glycemic index meant, how many grams of protein/carb/fat I was eating, or how many kilojoules of energy I needed each day.  I was slim, my weight was totally stable.  The only time I overate was at Christmas and my birthday (or that's what I can remember).  I don't remember overeating because I was upset (although it might have happened).  My plan is once I'm at goal weight, I'll start off at 100 grams a day of protein, and see how my hunger is.  Drop it by one gram a day.  Probably 1-2 months later I'll have to taper it off.

Phew, long post!  If you got this far, congratulations.

Back in the 60's (kilograms) and a smartphone reward

69.2kg

The last time I was in the 60's was back in 2001, in February just after my birthday.  That's some time ago.  Five months ago I bought a smartphone which was on special, the Motorola Defy.  I chose that because it was waterproof and also the screen had special glass that wasn't easily scratched.  It's been waiting in its box ever since, I put it out of sight and promised myself that I wouldn't open it until I was "almost there".  I've never had a smartphone before, so I really don't know much about them, apart from the fact that they are 'little computers'.  I won't be using it to make calls, I prefer a smaller phone, rather I'll do it for computing tasks and also an attempt to increase something which is important to me - my intelligence.

Some time ago it was discovered that you could increase a persons intelligence by performing an exercise called dual-n-back.  That's where you listen to numbers being spoken and also look at the words on a screen.  You have to remember what's happening and whether the two are related, and the time difference between the two slowly gets longer and longer.  Someone discovered that it increases your intelligence, although more recent research seems to think that the effect is statistically insignificant.  I'm thinking that it helps for some, and doesn't for others.  There's no harm in trying it to see if it does help.  An increase in intelligence is always helpful for my university studies, as I'm doing mathematics and engineering.  Sometimes it's hard, sometimes it's really hard.  This sort of thing is ideal for using on a smartphone, a really portable computer.  Like exercise it's a case of "use it or lose it", you stop doing the activity and the effect goes away.

I had saved up 3 years of Christmas and 4 years of birthdays gifts from my father, totaling $225.  I just told my father to keep the money and wait until I asked for it.  I'm going to Dunedin next week (for another reward) where I'll collect the money.  The smartphone cost me $299 so that's a real cost to me of only $74.

Just over 3 kilograms to goal.  The funny thing is that I'm actually speeding up in my weight loss.  The reason is that really, I'm tired of it all.  3 years and 25kg so far.  Constantly thinking of weight and energy and protein etc is draining.  Oh by the way, I've been estimating my body fat percentage.  There are lots of methods, but they are all rather inaccurate to some degree, so I thought that I'd try the simplest method: comparing my body with photos of known percentages.  Current estimate is about 17%, which is the heaviest of the 'fitness' range.  I'd guess that will only change a few percentage points as I reach goal weight.  My thighs still rub together (not really a concern) and I've still got a double chin (something I'd like to get rid of).

Weekly update

70.2kg, a loss of 0.8kg in the last week.

This past week has gone really well.  I've managed to exercise every day, and my eating has been good as well.  I have decided to have reward meals every half kilogram as I head towards goal.  That sounds extravagant but in my experience if you have some type of reward meal, you don't end up eating the same amount of food as you normally would, you eat less after the reward meal.  Once I hit 69.9kg, I'm allowed to open the box that contains my new smartphone that I bought back in March.  Has it been that long?

In other news I'm working out when I will reach goal weight, and what I'll do on Goal Day.  I want to try go karting, plus a few other things.  I'm not sure if I've ever done it, I vaguely recall something happening in the past, but if I did do it, it was 20+ years ago.  There are a few other things I'll do on the day, so I have to plan it so I'm not working that day.  Should be easy enough.

Once I reach goal weight, I'll book tickets for my year overseas.  A long time ago I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't go overseas until I was at goal weight.  Well, that moment is about to arrive.  I'm so nervous!  I've never been out of the country.  Whenever I think about it, I get butterflies in my stomach.  I'll cope, I guess.  Also I told my brother years ago to just give me an IOU for one of my birthday presents, and buy me a passport when I asked for the money.

That's it for me, will check in when I'm in the 60's.

Weigh-in update

71.0kg, 5kg to goal weight.

Just a short update to say how I'm going.  I try as much as possible to give some important story or say something interesting, but I sadly not much is going on in my life at the moment so I'll just give you a weight update.  I'm losing consistently at the moment.  I'm 83% to goal, and I really really want to get there (for a multitude of reasons) so I'm definitely not slacking off or pulling back a bit.

I'm exercising consistently too, but I really find exercise a bit of a burden.  I'm not sure if that's because I'm not fit yet, and whether I'll ever get to enjoy it, time will tell I guess.  When I started running back in 2004 there was this magical period for about 2 weeks when my sleep was perfect.  I've had middle of the night waking for the last 20 years since becoming unwell but when I started running back in 2004 I'd go to bed, fall asleep and wake up what seemed 20 minutes later, in the morning.  Unfortunately it only lasted for a few weeks, I guess my body got used to the level of exercise and the sleep regulation inside my brain decided that it wanted middle of the night breaks again.  Such is life.

Unless I stop eating I'll almost certainly reach goal weight after the third anniversary of starting my weight loss / starting the blog.  It would have been nice to achieve goal weight at the start of September but it ain't gonna happen.  Current estimate of when it'll happen is about mid-September.

One unusual thing I've started doing was using Google Street View to follow my weight loss.  I started when I was 3/4 to goal weight.  I've lived in Christchurch for about 25 years, and have been to Dunedin (where I was born and some of my family live) at least 80 times.  Unless I'm busing (which I prefer not to do since it means no transport while I'm there) I'll drive, which means that I don't get to see a lot of the scenery.  Anyway, I'm taking the last 1/4 of the trip using Street View, and matching the distance with how much I'm losing, and arriving at the family home (now sold) when I reach goal weight.  I find it really relaxing.  It's like watching a film very very slowly.  Usually it's about 10 minutes a day.

That's all for me, I know I have trouble doing so but I'll try and post updates every week.

August goals

There's something about a new month which means - a chance to start over.  So how am I going?  Not great.  I've sort of stalled in my weight loss.  I haven't back slided - which is a good thing.  Currently I'm just under 72kg.  However I have suffered that annoying high carb glycogen weight gain which takes about 4 days to get rid of.  So I really don't know what my low carb weight is, it'll be 4 days until I know.  It's time to start making some monthly goals.  These goals will be checked at the end of the month to see how I did.  Let's start with the easy ones:

Eating:

• Low carb for almost all of the month.  By "almost all" I'll give say 27 days.  That means one day a week maximum that I can go high carb, although I'd really prefer to not have any days.  Sadly, today the 1st is a high carb day which means that the maximum number of days would be 30.

• Reward meals when they happen.  I have reward meals for losing each kilogram, and a few other things.  That means once a month when I pay my bills I have a reward meal as an example.  I can't have a reward meal in advance, because there is too much risk that I'll end up having it twice.  No reward meals in advance.

• The return of the eating green/red squares.  This was something that I have used on the blog, it's quite easy to see how I'm eating.  I last used it here on April 2011.  That was a while ago!  It's just a green square when I've eaten properly and a red square when I haven't.

Now, the harder ones, exercise:

• Become fit.  That means, to me to be able to run for 30 minutes without stopping.  I achieved this back in 2004 and I'm hoping that it won't take me more than a month to achieve, like it did last time.

• I exercise every day, except the first of August.  It's almost midnight now and I'm not in the mood to go for a run.  But starting tomorrow, yes, it's going to happen.  Even if it's for a minute, it's going to count.

So there you have it.  5 goals.  These aren't hard goals, I know that I can do them, it just takes a bit of perseverance to do it as required.  

Lowest weight in over 10 years

I posted last week that I was lowest weight in over 9 years, well guess what, I'm the lowest weight in over 10 years.  I've had a lot of milestones in this journey, and the two greatest so far would be reaching halfway (April last year and again following the breakup in October) and lowest weight since mid 2002.  The reason for that is back in 2002, I was struggling.  I was living with my ex who had breast cancer and it was terminal, sadly.  My mother had been diagnosed with cancer of the pancreas in 2001 and her condition was getting worse as time went on.  Amazingly, I was still losing weight.  How I achieved that, I really have no idea.  I remember visiting my ex in the hospice, then having a coffee and slice at a nearby mall and then going home for a carb induced sleep, depressed.  Even now, 10 years later it still depresses me when I think of it.

Slowly over the first 9 months of 2002 I lost weight.  We're talking of about 2-3 kilograms over that whole period.  Then I stopped, and started wondering why and if I could lose the rest.  I'm here 10 years later and know that I can continue losing, so it's nice to know that, I've been wondering about it for 10 years.  As it happened, my ex died on the 19th September and 4 days later my mother died in Dunedin, 5 hours drive away.  Six weeks later a range of issues came along that caused me to rebound - I gained 7kg in the space of a few months or so.

My ex and I had to move into a new home as the old one was being demolished about 3 months before she died, I have a memory of weighing myself back then and thinking that maybe I was 'stuck' at 72kg, and couldn't get any lower.  Well as it turns out, the answer is no.  I can continue losing,

On a lighter side, I have just finished my reward for this achievement - I am allowed to eat my chocolate Easter bunny.  We got them at work and I wrote "lowest weight in 10 years" on it.  There is something about writing it down that makes it stick in your consciousness, rather than just saying it in your mind.  It tends to work better.

Thank you for reading, this post has been a special one for me, I've been thinking about it for the last 3 years, and it's good to finally write it.

Three quarters to goal

I've reached three quarters of the way through my journey!  Just under 7 of the original 28 kilograms to go.  This is another milestone (I've had a few along the way) that I'm really pleased to have reached.  I've also noticed that my attitude to weight loss has changed in the last week.  I'm getting excited.  It also means that I'm trying to speed things up by eating better.  There are a few exceptions to that - each kilogram I lose I get a reward meal, but back in October I won a block of chocolate at work.  I wrote on it "lowest weight in 9 years" and it's been waiting since then.  Actually a workmate offered to take the original block and give me an IOU because it may have gone off in the meantime.  There is another reward at lowest weight in 10 years, an Easter egg that's been quietly waiting at work.  "When are you going to eat it?" I've been asked a few times.


Below shows the graph of the last 9 and a bit years.

Looking at this graph sometimes makes me cringe.  It's all over the place, the longest stretch of flatness is in 2004 and was because I lost some weight data I'd had in another spreadsheet that got deleted accidentally.

As a reward for reaching three quarters I'll be going up the hill again for a walk.  It's roughly a 5 hour trip.  I'll probably do that on Tuesday if the weather is good.  I'm not sure when I'll reach goal weight. I'm hoping before the 3 year anniversary of my weight loss and starting this blog on the 3rd of September.

Another week, another loss

I'm trying to lose weight every week, and yesterday (Monday) I lost another kilogram.  73.7kg.  Not long now, only 7.7kg!  I'm starting to feel my ribs.  My immediate thought is omg I'm starving and getting too thin but then I remember that I've got a muffin top and my thighs rub together.  My chest and stomach still "jiggle".  Bits of fat are deserting me at different rates all over my body.

I think about how I would have done things differently if I started again.  If I had known that it would take 3 years to lose 28kg, I would have just aimed for 1kg a month, and had some financial system to keep things working (set up an automatic payment for $10 or so into my father's back account, and getting it back at goal date).

Oh by the way, I had a memory flashback to when I was about 17 or 18.  I was slim back then, of course.  I went to the local shop and bought a packet of chocolate fingers.  Why is that a big deal, you wonder? Because I hardly ever bought packets of biscuits.  I know that it's kind of obvious but I ate differently back then.  Sure, I ate sweets and packets of chips, but it was extremely unlikely that I would have eaten more than say 2000kj in one session.  Sadly, that has changed.  I know that I can get back to my old habits and behaviour, it just takes effort.  Before my breakup, I lost or maintained for about 2 years, 3 months.

Speaking of the breakup, time for a little sharing.  I don't like being single.  I like the sharing and intimacy that having someone special in my life gives me.  Given that I have planned to go overseas for a year, that makes dating here before I leave a bit iffy.  So I never bothered looking for a girlfriend.  As a result I've gotten quite depressed lately.  That's in addition to my normal level of depression.  Recently I've been in touch with a lady who I may meet up with overseas.  Communicating with women using just the Internet is harder than if they are in the same city, you've got so little to go on and wonder what they are really like.  I guess they are thinking the same thing about me.  Anyway, so that's something to look forward to.

Oh by the way, we just had an earthquake here.  Not a biggy.  Anyway, I've realised that I know the feel of an earthquake (I should, having felt thousands of them).  A little bit of shaking, then there is a big shake at the end.  Why that happens that way and not the other way around, I have no idea.  But I'm always expecting the "last wobble", knowing it's the biggest.  It doesn't always happen that way, but it's often enough.  Then I just go on twitter hashtag #eqnz and see where it was located, usually 50 or so people tweet how strong it was and their location.  In todays case, it was a 5.0.  That means that there probably wasn't any damage (typically the easiest damage is bottles of wine falling off supermarket shelves), but most people notice it and pets can get scared.

I'm back, with a new diet

It's been about six weeks since I've posted.  What's happened to me?  Well nothing really, my weight has been stagnant, a little bit up, a little bit down.  Currently I'm at about 74.3kg which is where I was when I last posted.  But I haven't really lost weight in the last 2 months.  That's changing.

I've chopped and changed my diet so many times!  High carb, low carb, medium carb then high carb again.  I've been reading about a diet where you have unlimited vegetables and meat.  It's generally a low carb diet, and that's what I've decided to try for a while.  For meat I'll generally be having fish like sardines.  Not many people would say that they are appetising, but that's the point!  I can overeat on ham, chicken, even meat patties maybe.  But fish?  No way.  The veges I'll probably stick to my usual 500g a day, which is fine for me.  I enjoy veges but it's unlikely that I'll ever have a vege binge.

Exercise.  I struggle with this.  It has occurred to me that maybe it'll take a while before I actually enjoy exercise.  I'm not talking a couple of months, I'm talking about a couple of years.  I guess it's like mathematics, which is what I've been studying recently at university.  It's hard, no one denies that.  But if you're doing the same level after a while, you start to enjoy it.  Crazy I know.  Maybe that will happen with me with the exercise.  After a few years I'll start to enjoy it.  It would be nice to have exercise to give me more energy and a better quality of sleep.  I'll try, I really will.  I'm not fit at the moment, but the upside of this is that the only way is up!

Losing weight each week.  I've had this as a goal before and it has worked really well.  Currently I'm on my third week.  The losses haven't been stunning (0.2, 0.3, 1.0kg) but I'm headed downwards, which is where it counts.

I'll definitely try and post more often, and also comment on the blogs that I follow.  I'm 70 percent finished on this journey.  I want the last 30 percent to be just as social as the first 30 percent.

No more sugar

For a while now I had been thinking about going without sugar in June.  I've been noticing that I've been having more 'rewards' (typically when I lost weight) or having a weekly meal when I'm having something sweet.  But the number of meals or times I've been having sugar has been ramping up recently.  Rather than waiting until June, I decided to start now.  I've been about 5 hours without sugar, and as to when I have some again, who knows?  As long as possible, hopefully.

I've also decided to go without sugar substitutes.  I don't believe that they result in an increase in eating but I'd just like to tone down the sweetness in the food that I eat.

I know that I flip-flop so often, but I'm back on a high carb diet.  I just couldn't get into a low carb diet, this has happened before, I think that the more often I swap from high to low and high again, the less tolerant I am of a low carb diet.  There is a subsequent water gain of about 2 kilograms.  This coupled with the fact that I haven't lost any weight in the last week means that I'm changing the goal day on this blog to 10th August 2012.

I don't know how long I can go without sugar.  There are 'social issues'.  I'm not sure what to do about that, I'll figure it out, and blog about it.  I have no problem declining sugar at work.  Actually at work there are a lot of obese people.  More so than the proportion of the population who are obese.  I was sitting next to one obese woman and saw for a split second a memo that she got about a "healthy weight initiative".  I also saw the words Weight Watchers.  I decided to not talk to her about it.  It's great that my company is doing something (what they are actually doing will probably remain a mystery to me) but what I was wondering was - who decides to get the memo, and who doesn't?  So many issues right there.

Aiming to reach goal in July...

It's been a while.  Nearly a month, actually.  What's been going on?  Well, I haven't been gaining.  I've been losing, but glacially slowly.  Today I weighed in at 74kg, which is 8 kilograms away from goal.  My eating has been okayish.  What that means is that I haven't been having blowouts big enough to gain, but I haven't been eating "properly".  Exercise stopped about 2-3 weeks ago.

Why?

I've known for years now that the human mind has a mental energy generator.  Mental energy is the thing that allows you to do things day in, day out.  I don't know what the scientific name for it is.  Anyway, your brain generates it, and your environment and mental state use it up.  When I started exercising with the Kinect things were going well.  Suddenly that stopped.  I don't enjoy exercise, which is probably the main reason why I have trouble doing it.  I think that my mental energy levels dropped to low enough levels so that I just stopped and didn't have it in me to carry on.  I stopped posting on the blog too.  Fortunately, I continued to eat well enough that I continued to lose weight.  In the last 2 weeks I've lost just under a kilogram.

Tonight on a whim, I was going through a Kmart (yes, we have this chain store in New Zealand) and I was going through their online catalogue and came across a exercycle for NZ$79.  That's good value.  Checked other websites and found prices that were in some cases 3-4 times the amount.  Decided to buy it.  Why not?  I can sell it for $50 on Trademe (the NZ equivalent of ebay) when I'm at goal.  I'm not after anything special.  I've decided to watch television while exercising with it.

One of the problems with exercise is that it's boring for me.  If anyone reading this doesn't find it boring, then I'm envious of you.  Exercise has three components that I have trouble with:

1. It's tiring.  This depends a lot on whether you're fit or not (my definition of being fit is being able to run for 30 minutes).  But even if I'm fit, I'm at a point of partial-exhaustion when I'm doing it.  That's just the way it is, and I accept that.

2. I need a rest/sleep afterwards.  I know that a lot of people don't have this problem, but I do.  My energy levels are low.  If I have two exercise sessions a day, I might have to have two sleeps, or drag myself around after the second session before I go to bed for the night.

3.  Exercise is boring.  Yes, you can listen to music.  But that is not totally distracting.  What I need is something better, watching television.

So from now on, I'll be exercising whenever I am watching television.  And watching television whenever I'm exercising.  I haven't tried this before so fingers crossed it goes to plan.  It also means that I don't have to rearrange the furniture in my living room (the Xbox Kinect requires a large distance between you and the TV, and my living room is simply not wide enough, but it is long enough).

I'm only eight kilograms from goal weight!  Lowest weight since 4th December 2004.  I have to admit to being a bit worried about the whole body size issue.  You see, because the last time I was at my goal weight (66kg) was in 1997.  15 years ago.  I've simply forgotten what my body looked like back then.  I know that it's not a lot for a man.  Currently, there would be roughly 4-5 litres of fat on my chest and stomach (that is a rough estimate based on the jiggle factor).  When I was doing star jumps on the Kinect game (star jumps involve jumping up, and spreading your arms and legs, jumping again and closing them - extremely energy intensive) the thing I noticed most was the discomfort of all of my fat in my torso pulling down when I landed on the floor.  I don't think that should happen.  My thighs also rub together still.  So I know that I could still lose 5 kilograms of fat and not feel as though I'm underweight or have issues when I look in the mirror.

At work I've decided to ditch the low carb and eat fruit.  The reason is that some people there know that I'm losing weight, and I don't want them to comment about how I'm getting "too thin".  I want them to quietly forget that I lost all of that weight.

The highlight of the post though is that I'm aiming to reach goal weight in July.  It is theoretically possible.  I'm not sure when in July I'll reach goal weight.  Plus of course it requires diet, exercise and lots of mental energy.  No issues coming up that could derail my progress.  I've placed a widget on my blog counting down the days until I reach goal weigh.  Currently I've set that to the 15th of July, each new post I'll probably update it a little bit.  Just having a widget on my blog doesn't mean I'll reach goal weight at the date stated, of course.  But I'll try.  That's all I can do.

Breakup gain lost - 8 1/2 months later

In June last year I started gaining weight, just before I became single. In total, I gained about 10 kilograms, which for me is a substantial amount of weight. The reason for the gain was my difficulty adjusting to the single life, and worries about money, which starts off a junk food buying reflex. I have pleasure in saying that I've lost that weight. This graph shows how I handled it:

As you can see there is a bit of a gain at the start of December. That gain resulted in an delay of about 3 months in posting that I've lost all of this additional weight. 8 1/2 months in total wasted, which is a long time. But it's gone. I don't dwell on the past, so I won't here. It's gone and that's the last I'm thinking about it.

However, because I am now at a new low, I've pleasure in saying that I'm at the lowest weight in over 8 years, as this graph shows:

Back to early February 2004. That's a long time ago, and it's nice to be going back to the weight that I was then. But there is still a lot of weight to lose. I'm 2/3 through my weight loss. But there is still 1/3 to go. I'm dawdling through this trip, with no real system or control. That has to stop.

Today.

Let's talk about food. I haven't been eating to plan, I've been having too many 'treats', and I really don't need them. I have two planned treats a week. That should be enough. Further more, my Tuesday treat has included a small chocolate bar, well that has to stop. It never used to be like that, I started about a year ago and have just been carrying on since. I don't need it, I can go without it for a short time I'm sure. I did it before, I can do it again.

Let's talk about exercise. I plugged in the Kinect extension for my Xbox 360, and started playing the game Your Shape, Fitness Evolved. I have to say that it's a good game. Really good. I don't think I'll ever join a gym again. Not that I was planning to anyway, but I'm canceling my gym membership (even though I haven't used it this year...). The game has a number of sections, but the personal trainer section is the one I use. You just do things such as jumping, squating, all sorts of things. I haven't done any of these before in my life, so it's new to me.

The best part of it is that I can have three exercise sessions a day. For me, that's really important. In the first half of last year I was going to the pool twice a day. That takes up a huge amount of time. At the moment, playing the Kinect takes up an equivalent amount of time, because I'm not fit, and after an exercise session I need a sleep. I really was unfit, there is an energy used counter and I have to say that I feel a bit sad that I needed a sleep after exercising 120kj - about one quarter of an apple in food equivalent. But the longest I can go is ever increasing, and I'm not yet finished. I'm hoping that I won't need a sleep after each session, so I'll keep my profile set at "Beginner" and hope that it won't be too hard for me. In case you were wondering, yes I have energy issues (health related).

Let's talk about weight. In the last week I've lost about 300 grams and in the last month I've lost a couple of kilograms. That's really not enough. I'm on a time schedule, I'm meant to be leaving the country in August, but also I'm meant to be doing other things before I leave. I need to get my act sorted.

So the plan is to just get started with eating properly, and exercising as much as I can. 9 kilograms to go. I'll try and make it as fast and consistent as I can, starting today.

New challenge - Ready for Summer

I have decided to join up to this challenge. Okay, I'm in the southern hemisphere so really it should be called Ready for Winter, but hey, I'll take it anyway. The last challenge went well, and I'm hoping that this one will too. We have to set goals. Here are my goals:

Weight loss: get to goal weight. This is theoretically possible in a 10 week challenge. I'll leave it at that.

NSV: wear my Auckland pants. When I lived in Auckland I'd just finished polytechnic and was about to go to job interviews. I bought those pants (I still remember talking to the salesman, for some reason) at the age of 23 (25 years ago). They should fit at goal. Maybe. At least I hope to be able to zip them up. Fingers crossed.

Exercise: Play my Xbox 360 fitness game with my Kinect. I bought it about 4 months ago and have yet to use it. I want to use it every day, for at least 15 minutes. Not only theoretically possible, actually probable given enough time and effort.

Nutrition: Use my green/red squares to represent perfect/imperfect eating here on the blog. Aim for at least 90 percent green squares. Be in ketosis every day of the challenge. The challenge starts on Monday (NZ time) so I hope to be there by then, if at all possible.

Oh, one other goal. Try to enjoy losing weight! I know that this is a bit of an unusual goal, but really I haven't enjoyed my weight loss journey so far. In terms of a journey, it's like a car ride where the radio has a lot of static, there is a seat spring sticking into your back, and something in the dashboard is rattling. Sure, I've enjoyed arriving at 2/3 towards my destination, but am I enjoying the weight loss? No. I think it's depleting my mental energy stores. I'll have to work on that.

Less than 10 kilograms to goal

75.7kg, lowest weight in 8 months 11 days

I've got less than ten kilograms to lose. Single figures. That's a milestone, no more thinking in double digits about how much I have to lose. Yes, I was at this point back in June last year (and posted about it too...) but sometimes life events come along and you gain weight. Back then I went to the cinema and got a large popcorn, and I'm doing it again. Imagine me, buying popcorn at the cinema twice in one year! Crazy. I'm not sure which film I'm going to see, I usually see one film a week (sometimes it's twice, as during the summer break there are more children's films, and when the children go back to school there is a surplus of films that I actually want to see). It feels good to be back here, although I'm still only lowest weight in just over eight months, when I go past my breakup gain, I'll feel a lot better about things.

My body still has a lot of fat in it. Stomach, chest (probably a size A cup) and thighs. When I drive over a judder bar on my private lane where I live I still feel my chest moves up and down. I keep detailed weight records and I've been heavier for a whopping 10 years in total (11 different periods, starting in 1993).

Now that I'm in single figures, I'm thinking about my overseas trip. I'm starting to stress out a bit, my first overseas trip and I'll be gone for a year. I was thinking of going to Australia briefly to break-in my passport and experience life in another country (NZ and Aus. aren't that different really) but there aren't any concerts that I want to see in the next 6 months. I'll check out aquariums and science museums there and see if there is a good enough excuse to have a week long trip there.

Oh, how is my commitment to weight loss going? Eating: good. Exercise non-existent. I really need to get into the exercise, at least with walking.