Weekly Weigh In 16: Swings and Roundabouts

Weight after thirteen weeks of dieting and one week off the reservation:

22stones/308lbs/139kg

Gain:

1lbs/.5kg

Probably my metabolism having a small turn about the sudden requirement for extra muscle mass and more activity. I expect to see a reduction, possibly significant, next week.


Until then, keep moving. The chair is death.

Weekly Weigh In 15: Normal Week

Weight after twelve weeks of dieting and one week off the reservation:

21stones 13lbs/307lbs/139kg

Loss:

4lbs/3kg

Looks a lot better than it is. One thing that's striking is that if you have an "off" week your body seems quite keen to get you back on track. I think there's a certain amount of metabolic inertia in play. It's easy to start losing weight but once you're on the track your body kicks back a bit. However, the good news is that if you fall off the wagon temporarily it seems your body is quite keen to get you back on the straight and narrow again.


So to see 21 stones at last is a great thing, especially as it means I'm circa 8lbs away from another peanut kitkat milestone. Next week I will finally be looking to e-bike to work at least two days out of five. I have a new seat cover, some cycling gloves (essential in this weather) and reflective armbands (at the behest of Mrs Monkey). We shall see how that goes.


For now, happy slimming!

Weekly Weigh In 12: Pretty Good

Weight after eleven weeks of dieting:


22stones 3lbs/311lbs/142kg

Loss:

3lbs/1kg


I should point out that the data point yesterday evening at about 8:30pm was a new lowest weight. So I am expecting to be a couple of pounds heavier today.


Steady as she goes I guess. Let's see where I can get to by next week in preparation for the birthday-ocalypse...

Midweek Check In - Dieting In Winter

It's been nearly a month since I began my diet. So on Saturday I will include not only my weight loss for the past week but also a summary of dieting progress made in the month of January. This month begins the first full month of weight loss.

Obviously, many people begin diets in January, but in our case it didn't have much to do with Christmas, it was more to do with it being a new year. We hadn't eaten that much over the festive period and we felt no more bloated than usual (our New Year buffet, though, was a calorie fest, and we did eat quite a lot of Chinese duck and pancakes, not traditional Christmas fare but the fat doesn't care). What I don't think we were expecting, I certainly wasn't, was how much better our respective diets would make us feel.

If I'm honest so far I'd say that the Cronometer diet is seeming to work out a little better because I have not only dials measuring how many calories I'm eating but also dials measuring how much of all the major nutrients I'm supposed to eat which seems to have the effect of a psychological buttress. When you've eaten over 130% of the necessary protein, carbs and fat for the day you feel reassured that you have done well and you don't need the 300 calories you have left in your calorie budget for anything. I have not gone to bed hungry during this diet, or felt pangs of regret for cake or ice-cream.

The one problem of the Weight Watchers approach is the fact it boils everything down to a simple variety of points. They changed their system a short while ago to make fruit and vegetables point free, the fruit, in particular is controversial. The apparent reasoning behind it was that people were skipping a one point banana to save points for a seven point chocolate bar and in the end it would have been better if people had eaten the fruit and the chocolate bar.

The new problem is that people are now eating twelve bunches of grapes in a week and wondering where the sugar pounds are coming from.

Even so, as I have to remind myself I like dials, numbers and statistics and a lot of people find them tedious in the extreme so the main heading has to be "everybody's shrinking over here".

There's light in the mornings now, just a little, and light in the evenings. The seasons are slowly shifting just as the weight is slowly melting away. I think once you've entered the third or fourth week of a process like this you can start to feel in tune with these natural processes as your weight decreases and it appears to be in tune with the waking world. You can look forward to spring and summer, months away and consider how many pounds you might be lighter by the time its shorts and t-shirt weather. It's a more poetic kind of motivator.

For now, back to cold mornings and hot porridge. See you for the weigh in!