Brief update

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

Restart (~100)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quick update...

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

See you again once I'm back home.

Update

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

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

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

Why?

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

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

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

Weekly update

75.1kg, 9.1kg above goal weight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you next weekend.

Weekly weigh-in #7

77.5kg, 11.5kg to goal weight.

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

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

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

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

Weekly weigh-in #6

78.7kg.

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

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

How is it at the gym?

Generally, okay.

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

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

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

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

Here's what I've been doing:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly weigh-in #5

80.0kg

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

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

"I have failed"

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

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

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

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

Weekly weigh-in #4

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

79.6kg.

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

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

I'll also be posting daily for a while.

Weekly weigh-in #3

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

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

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

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

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

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

We don't want that, do we?

See you next week.

Weekly weigh-in #2

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

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

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

Weekly update

Trying to get a regular flow of posts going.

Here are my Thursday weigh-ins so far

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

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

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

Another update...

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

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

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

Update

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

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

Next post on Thursday.

Weekly weigh-in #1

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

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

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

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

One of the many old bridges in Nelson province, NZ

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

Restarting the weekly blog weigh-ins

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

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

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

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

See you Thursday with my first weigh-in.

How long can I go without sugar?

Current weight: 80.0kg

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

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

Monthly update

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

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

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

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

See you in about a month.

Mannie.

October update

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

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

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

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

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

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

September update (bad news...)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sugar addiction

74kg, about 8kg above goal weight

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

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

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

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

Yeah, it's been a long time!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See you next month.

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.