Author: latepaul

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diet L3 lesamy Less is More

L3 Week 15 – Odious Comparison

Sorry about the lateness of the post – I stayed up late last night finishing my latest book and so put off writing this.

One of the things I noticed recently was that I’m constantly comparing myself to how I was doing back when I first started dieting. So I finally gave in and added a comparison graph tab to my spreadsheet. Basically I took my stats from the first year of Lesamy and lined them up with my current efforts. By ‘lined up’ I mean I chose week 3 of Lesamy to be the equivalent of week 1 of L3 as that was the closest to my start weight this time around. Long story short, I’m doing a little less well (39lbs vs 44lbs) but close enough for it not to be a big deal (so I can stop worrying about it and obsess over something else!)

The other thing that came out of this was to fix in my mind the number 231 – which is not quite my lowest ever[1] that would be 226 – but it’s a low that I reached a couple of times and hovered around during summer 2009. Once I’m back in the 230s I’ll feel like I’ve really made up the ground I lost. And, that’s now nearer than my start point.

A big loss this week. Below 19st – yay! A fair bit was dehydration though – very hot yesterday. I’ve got a weekend away this coming Friday so I’ll be happy to stay level next week.

Lost: 4.2lbs
Lost so far: 39.2lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.6lbs
Weight: 265lbs (18st 13lbs)

[1]by “ever” I mean since I started dieting/post-2000. In 2000 I was ~17st (=238) and I was only ever going up until I started Lesamy in Sep 2008.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, True Grit -Charles Portis (pages 3509-3732)

True Grit

I decided to read True Grit after hearing it recommended on a podcast around the time of the recent film version being released. The John Wayne film version is one of the few Westerns I’ve watched and enjoyed so I thought it was worth a read. Was I right? Read on.

True Grit is the story of Mattie Ross, a fourteen year old whose father has just been killed by an outlaw called Tom Chaney. Leaving her mother to grieve and look after her younger siblings, Mattie makes a trip to sort out her father’s business affairs and find justice for his death, since Chaney has fled to lawless Indian Territory and no-one seems too interested in pursuing him.

So she secures the services of Reuben ‘Rooster’ Cogburn and sets off to capture, and kill, Chaney. They are soon joined by a Texas Ranger called LaBoeuf who is after Chaney for crimes committed in Texas and for the reward.

The plot moves forward in a fairly straight-forward A-follows-B manner. What really draws you in is the main character and her relationship with Cogburn. Her determination and “grit” are what define her and what I suspect would be a very annoying tendency in real life of nagging til she gets her own way, makes you admire her.

The book is written in her voice, and at first I thought that Portis had cleverly captured that childish simplicity of speech. Then I realised that this was written as an older Mattie looking back. I did find the style a little wearing at times but I suppose it does work as a not overly-educated woman of that era writing her memories of these events.

Even so I think you have to take this style, along with her tendency to go off point and talk about religion (complete with scripture references), politics and unrelated history, as tongue in cheek. I’m not sure it was hilariously funny but it occasioned the odd wry smile and chuckle. However it also illustrates the “nasty, brutish and short” nature of life at that time and place, which was a counter point to any humour.

However the book was very readable and not too long. So overall I found it a good read.

7/10 – a good read, probably still prefer the movie though.

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6000 pages reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, The Last Continent – Terry Pratchett (pages 3093-3508)

Finishing The Last Continent brings me up to the point where the next Discworld book is Carpe Jugulum which is Ship of Fools book group’s July book. I should have finished it quite a while ago but I seem to have taken a three week gap in the middle.

Anyway, The Last Continent is about what would be the Discworld equivalent of Australia, called FourEcks (XXXX as in those old lager commercials, still going strong at the time this came out). It’s also a Rincewind book, and I like Rincewind.

Rincewind finds himself in FourEcks doing what he does best, staying alive. Meanwhile back in Ankh-Morpork the Librarian has caught some sort of magical disease and keeps changing shape every time he sneezes. The wizards want to change him back to his orangutan form but need to know his name in order to perform the requisite spell. Rincewind, having worked with the Librarian is likely to know his name so if they can find him they can ask him. So they embark on a journey, via magic to FourEcks, or somewhere not entirely unrelated to it, to track down Rincewind.

Meanwhile Rincewind is being guided in his sequence of adventures i.e. serial escapes from various dangers, by a talking Kangaroo, who has told him that the Continent is out of whack, mystically speaking and only Rincewind can put it right. Rincewind reacts to this in the way you’d expect, by running away.

So there are two plot strands – the wizards on a mission to find Rincewind, and Rincewind on a mission to stay alive and avoid his destiny.

Remember how I said that when I first read Equal Rites I was disappointed that it didn’t feel quite the same as the first two Discworld books, but that later I realised that it was the first real Discworld book because it was the first one with a real story and plot rather than just a collection of jokes? Well the Rincewind story is a bit like that – the jokes mainly being various parodies of Australian stuff. I preferred the wizards story because the jokes are funny but I think I prefer a story. Although having said that I do like the character of Rincewind himself, even, especially since he’s developed a bit since the first couple of books.

In the end of course the two plotlines join together and get resolved in what I’ll call one of Pratchett’s “flights of fancy” – where he attempts to be lyrical and mythic. Which sounds like I didn’t like it but I did, just not so much perhaps as I might have when I was younger and had read so many of his books. It was also a little confusing but I just decided not to worry about the bits I didn’t quite get and take in the general sweep instead.

7/10 – No Worries.

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diet L3 lesamy Less is More

L3 Week 14 – Back on Track (I Think!)

So my goal for next week – whether I lose weight or not – is to keep to the diet every day.

Weeeellll. I sort of did this. I had what would have been, any other week, a perfectly fine week. I stuck to my diet every day apart from Friday when we went to the pub for lunch (Fish and Chips and beer) and it was raining too hard for me to do my evening walk. I thought about the stepper – and the thought was something like, “God no, not the stepper!”. But apart from that I’ve been good.

The numbers seem to reflect that. In fact I’ve got a pretty respectable two-week average. Which me being me make me suspicious about the scales. But I’ll take the new low figure and change the battery in time for next week.

Lost: 3.8lbs
Lost so far: 35lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.5lbs
Weight: 269.2lbs (19st 3lbs)

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diet L3 lesamy Less is More

L3 Week 13 – It’s Not the Numbers

So, I was all prepared to be explaining a significant gain this week. But, whilst there’s a gain, it’s small. So I think I’ll keep this post short.

However you can safely assume from that that I didn’t exactly follow my diet to the letter last week. In fact far from it. And whilst I’m relieved at the small increase and will probably back to losing by next monday, I am more concerned about getting and staying back on track. So my goal for next week – whether I lose weight or not – is to keep to the diet every day.

Sometimes it’s not about the numbers, it’s about not losing the discipline or, when you inevitably do, about regaining it.

Lost: -0.8lbs
Lost so far: 31.2lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.4lbs
Weight: 273lbs (19st 7lbs)

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diet L3 lesamy Less is More

L3 Week 12 – Do NOT Try This At Home

Here’s an interesting and unorthodox way to lose weight:

  • Mon-Thu follow diet and exercise regime as normal
  • Fri – go out for lunch with big boss over from America. Since this is likely to be a big deal count it as a freebie.
  • Since it turns out not to be such a big deal and you somehow feel short-changed, extend the freebie to the evening. Eat and drink too much.
  • Sat – you’re now hung-over so don’t bother with any exercise and comfort-eat even more once you get to the part of the day where you can actually face food.
  • Sun – weigh yourself first thing to discover you’re 5 pounds up. No big surprise really. However – and this is really the key part of the whole plan – now you get sick with some flu-like virus which means you spend 80% of the day in bed and eat almost nothing.
  • Sun/Mon – fail to sleep but do lose a good amount of water through sweat.
  • Mon – wake up, weigh yourself to discover…

Lost: 1.2lbs
Lost so far: 32lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.7lbs
Weight: 272.2lbs (19st 6lbs)

However I was not kidding with the title – this is not how to lose weight. I’d much rather be writing about how I need to knuckle down and lose the pounds I put on due to a bad weekend and not (still) be feeling a bit rough right now.


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diet L3 lesamy Less is More

L3 Week 11 – One Week=One Meal=Two Hours=One Pound

So last week I only lost 0.6lbs and was a bit down about it. However I knew it was just a blip and partly to do with timing and so on (both the day before and after I’d had weighings significantly less).

However yesterday I was faced with a dilemma. I haven’t had a freebie since my birthday which is over a month ago and co-incidentally the same time I last saw M. And she’s going on holiday at the end of this week for two weeks. So the question was whether to meet up and when, and the best day was looking like yesterday. But that would imply a freebie the day before I weigh myself. I had a few choices

  • weigh myself yesterday (before going) and count that (Sunday is the new Monday)
  • put it off until another night, possibly after M.’s holiday.
  • go, weigh myself today as normal and just go with it on the basis it’s a long game, it’s just a number etc

I wasn’t really too happy either of the first options. The whole point of a meal out with M. being a freebie is that I don’t want people around me to have to change their behaviour to accommodate me. By switching to a less convenient day aren’t I doing that anyway? Plus it is just a number in what I know is a downward trend. And a freebie at this stage is reasonable.

So enter secret option number 4 – part a. I weigh myself yesterday, not to have it replace today’s reading but just so I can say (to myself and on here) “well maybe I put on weight but that’s just the freebie”. So I did and yesterday’s weighing was 273.4.

Anyway I went, met M., ate, drank and had a lovely time[*] and that was that. Weighed myself this morning expecting/fearing that I’d put on a little – 274.4lbs – i.e. last week’s number!

But of course whilst that could be my official weighing as it was today, usually I take the reading after my walk. Secret option number 4 part b – which I only just came up with half-way through the meal last night was to extend my normal walk a bit, just to make extra sure that I pushed that number down a bit. And sure enough at the end of my walk I was 273.4lbs.

So what have I learned? That I can put on in a single meal what I lose in a week’s sticking to the diet (scary, though I think I already knew that really), and that I can lose it all again with two hours of exercise. And that all this is just 1lb. I need another 49 of them to reach my (first) goal.

Mostly it just re-inforces what I knew which is that sometimes the timing throws out the numbers but so long as the trend is still down, take the long view.

Lost: 1lbs
Lost so far: 30.8lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.8lbs
Weight: 273.4lbs (19st 7lbs)



[*]and not (just) because of food and drink. It was nice to see M.

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diet L3 lesamy Less is More

L3 Week 10 – Only A Little Down

I’ve played on the double meaning of ‘down’ before now but well it’s appropriate again.

I’ve had various thoughts throughout the week about what  might write about, mostly to do with the fact that it’s getting tougher again. However I fully expected to be another ~2lbs down to cap it off and as you can see I’m not.

However one of the things I have been inspired by this bloke is the fact that it really does vary and there are plateaus and bounces back up even when you are sticking to the diet pretty well. So in that context a little is better than nothing when the direction is still down.

Lost: 0.6lbs
Lost so far: 29.8lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.98lbs
Weight: 274.4lbs (19st 8lbs)


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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, Persuasion – Jane Austen (pages 2788-3092)

Persuasion by Jane Austen

I’ve been a fan of Jane Austen TV and film adaptations for years but Persuasion is the first book of hers I’ve actually read.

It concerns Anne Elliot the daughter of Sir Walter Elliot, who at the age of 19/20 was persuaded to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth given his lack of wealth and status relative to her own. Now, eight years later, Captain Wentworth, rich and respectable enters her life again, but does he still feel the same way about Anne? And if he does will they able to be together or will events and other people conspire to keep them apart?

I think you can guess the answer.

Since I started 25 Books I’ve intended to read an Austen novel and I had chosen Persuasion because it was one of two where I did not know the story already. The other Northanger Abbey, is I understand, very different to her other books and so I thought I’d leave that until later. I have a feeling that Persuasion is not considered amongst the best Austen, so I don’t know how much of my reaction to it is from that or other factors.

My reaction being that it was very enjoyable but not up there with my experience of the TV/film versions of Pride & Prejudice , Sense & Sensibility or Emma. Part of that I’m sure is the language, which is archaic enough for me to have to work at it. I’m sure my pages/hour stat has taken a hit during this book. Certainly there were several times when I had to re-read sections, particularly great long convoluted sentences with several semi-colons. However it improved towards the end. Partly I got more proficient at on-the-fly-in-my-head-translation-into-modern-English and partly there was more dialogue which tended to be more straightforward anyway.

The story was full of what I consider Austen standard fare – a good-hearted sensible slightly put-upon sister with pompous and/or silly relatives, apparently honourable men who turn out not to be so, apparently cold or indifferent men who turn out to be far from it, misunderstandings about who may or may not “be attached to” (which either means fancy or be engaged to depending on context) whom, various secrets and of course the happiness of being suitably married – which equates to respectability and financial stability.

I think the plot works well in introducing all the various misdirections and obstacles to Anne and Wentworth’s romance. It certainly seems to all shift into gear significantly in the final third of the book. There does seem to be more of an inevitability to their eventually re-uniting than I would have expected. In that sense it’s less of a dramatic reversal of fortunes as in P&P and S&S – but maybe that’s just the way those were edited by various modern writers/producers. Overall though it works – the good end happily and that’s how it should be!

8/10 – a good (very) old-fashioned rom-com.

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6000 pages book reading reviews

6000 Pages 2011, A Game of Thrones – George R R Martin (pages 1954-2788)

A Game of Thrones

Normally I start these reviews with a brief synopsis of at least the first part of the story, to give an idea of what the book is about as well as what I think of it. That’s tricky here because there’s so much to cover. Let me try…

Set in a fantasy world that’s similar to but clearly not medieval Europe/Asia, most of the action of A Game of Thrones takes place in the land of Westeros a.k.a “The Seven Kingdoms”. Some few centuries previously these were distinct kingdoms but they are now ruled over by a single monarch from the “Iron Throne”. This monarch, King Robert Baratheon took the throne by conquest from the previous “mad” king and has been ruling for 20 years or so.

As the story begins there is trouble brewing with threats to the throne from within – political machinations, assassination and intrigue at court and without with the remaining heirs of the old kings who are trying to raise an army to attack from overseas. There’s also a possible threat from the frozen north beyond a huge wall to defend against outlaws and the mythic White Walkers, zombie like creatures which many believe have been extinct for thousands of years, if they ever existed at all. The outlaws and wild animals though are real and it’s the job of the Night Watch to guard the Wall and defend the Seven Kingdoms.

A Game of Thrones is one of those books that switches point of view with each chapter headed with the name of a character. We follow about 6 or 7 characters in this way. I have mixed feelings about this. On the on hand it’s good to get the perspective of different characters with different loyalties and motivations. To start to empathise with someone who is on the opposite side of a war to the character in the previous chapter is good in that it stops everything being a kind of black and white morality – which some fantasy suffers from. However the action is then split across different places and Martin plays that trick of building up the tension nicely, coming to a cliff-hanger at the end of a chapter and then switching to a completely different story, which slowly becomes engrossing, tension builds… and so on. It’s a style that has its merits but can be frustrating too.

I definitely enjoyed this book and it was easier to finish than say Under the Dome. In this book whilst there are fantasy elements – the White Walkers, talk of dragons (once again presumed extinct), magic and years-long seasons (“Winter is Coming” is the slogan of one of the Northern kingdoms) – most of the story is to do with the intrigue and politics of gaining or retaining the Iron Throne. With a slight change of wardrobe it could be a 21st century political thriller. But it is engrossing and the characters are well drawn and sympathetic.

A Game of Thrones is part of a series – A Song of Ice and Fire – which is currently up to five books with at least one more on the way. So the story does not so much end as it does find a convenient place to break off. In fact there are plots unresolved, characters missing in action and so on. That said it did feel like a natural place to put a pause but given this I’d’ve been just as happy if that pause had been at 400 pages rather than 835. Still good for the page count.

Will I read the next five books? Perhaps. I’ll read some shorter ones first though.

8/10 – Good solid fantasy with sympathetic characters, an intriguing world set up and lots of intrigue.