Weekly loss: 3kg (6.6lb)
Total loss: 25.5kg 56.2lb or 4st)
Current weight: 118.6.9kg (261lb or 18st 9lb)
Wow! 3kg is big. It’s more than I’ve lost since week two. It’s big enough to make me suspicious. As you’ll recall I did have some problems with my scales before Christmas, giving me silly low numbers, but I replaced the battery and it seemed to be ok again. Also I’ve checked it with smaller items against the kitchen scales and it seems to be accurate.
Actually I suppose I have stepped up the exercise slightly and this is the first week in quite a while when I haven’t had a meal out or a pub lunch or something. Anyway I’m choosing to go with it on the basis that if it’s wrong it’s a bit like an estimated reading on the gas bill – it all works out correctly in the end.
I guess Christmas is always going to be a significant event for any dieter, for me it had at least three important aspects this year. First Christmas means Christmas dos, which mean alcohol and food. Second Christmas means Christmas at home (my parents home that is) which means food and various chocolatey treats. Third, Christmas was a kind of milestone – it was where I initially hoped to lose 10% by, and it was also the end of the first page of my spreadsheet*.
My Sister, Watcher of Weight
One of the first things I found out when I got home was not just that, as expected/hoped for, I got the “Ooh you’ve lost weight” reaction, but that my sister is also dieting. She’s doing Weight-Watchers and has been for the last 5 weeks. She’s lost 8lbs and has another 8lbs to go before she reaches her target. She’s also become a little obsessed with it – which is how come I got this entire story before I saw her – she’d been telling anyone who would listen, including the family, all about it.
I mention this partly to tell a funny anecdote about my dad. He was sure (rightly as it turned out) that she’d tell me all about it as soon as we met. He wanted me to reply to the news that she’d lost 8lbs with “That’s nice, I’ve lost 50.” I didn’t. It would have been funny, but a little too mean.
The other reason I mention it is because my Sister exhibited a mild form of something I’ve come to recognise, which is the apparent need to give advice. It’s happened to me a few times now. I happen to mention I’m on this diet and the person I’m telling asks me how much I’ve lost. I tell them. Then they ask me how I’ve done it. I tell them. Usually at some point during the details of this they feel the need to let me know how I could be doing it better. Which I find odd. I’ve lost 50lbs in 15 weeks. I must be doing something right.
Now it’s not really fair to put this all on my sister. She has a mild case as I said, and she really wasn’t telling me what I’d done wrong so much as congratulating me that by sheer luck I’d managed to replicate the principles that underlie the WW method.
It works for her. I’m glad of that. This works for me. :0)
Christmas Week Weakness
So how was Christmas itself? Well it was always going to be a ‘holiday’ from the diet. My way of handling times when I need to be social so far has been to take a break from the regime. I can get away with this because it’s so infrequent. This was a whole week (well five days) though. I learnt a few things.
I learnt that alcohol is bad for dieting. I already knew that I am able to have chocolate, deserts or other calorie-filled goodies in moderation as a treat. I have the self-control to have just one piece of chocolate and leave the rest. However if I have alcohol, itself full of calories, my resistance to temptation is severely compromised.
I learnt that given the chance to come off the diet I will take the opportunity to pig out. This is not great. It’s good that I can say “after Friday I’m back on the diet” and stick to it. It’s not brilliant that I use the intervening time to swallow all the calories I can.
I learnt that this diet is for the long haul. OK I sort of knew that but emotionally it sunk in. Consciously or otherwise I’d allowed this week to become a sort of milestone that I was heading for. I’d told myself (and others) that this needed to be an indefinite change in lifestyle but secretly I harboured a hope of “once I get to Christmas I can relax abit”. This was at least partly because I expected to have made more progress than I have. Or rather I expected the progress I have made to look more significant. Also I’d gotten used to a frankly unrealistic rate of weight loss. If I extrapolate my current weight loss I’ll reach my target weight somewhere around the one year mark. That’s ok. I just need to keep going.
Any Good News Misery-Guts?
This all sounds a bit negative but there is actually good news. Not only have I not put on weight over Christmas but I’ve even gone down a little. These are the results based on last time I weighed myself properly (i.e. week 13):
Loss since week 13: 0.7kg (1.5lb)
Total loss: 22.5kg (49.6lb or 3st 7lb)
Current weight: 121.6kg (268lb or 19st 2lb)
A Graph
Here’s a graph from the first (now complete) page of my spreadsheet.
A Graph
The 10% reduction is self-explanatory. The “milestone” is a mini-target that I kept moving (usually it went down in 5lb intervals) every time I hit it.
[*]Yes I know a spreadsheet can scroll and therefore doesn’t need to have “pages” – but I designed mine in sections so a section (or “page”) would all fit on the visible screen. The first page ended with 29th Dec.
So in about 30 mins (or however long it takes me to shower and pack) I’m setting off for the long drive to my parents for Christmas. I will have limited internet access (i.e. my mobile) and so this was supposed to be where I post a brief Lesamy update with my pre-Christmas weight-in stats. “Supposed to be” because it didn’t quite work out that way.
You’ll recall that I’ve had two Christmas dos this week and that I was worried about what impact that would have on the diet. So last night, after midnight to satisfy my anal side, I went and weighed myself. The scales read 96.7kg. I tried again. 96.7kg. I tried several times and still got the same result.
Now this can only mean one of three things:
I miraculously lost 50lbs in a week.
All this time when I’ve been weighing myself and going down in small decrements my scales have been wrong.
The scales are wrong now.
3 seems most likely. I tried again this morning and I was down to 96.3. Now 0.4kg is within a plausible range for the normal variation but I suspect what’s happening is that the battery is fading and as it does so the readout it gives gets less and less.
I’ll be able to get a better reading from my mum’s scales when I get home.
Since this week is not a SlingInk deadline week and in order to get ahead of the curve I thought I’d do a brief get-it-out-there blog post.
It’s traditional at this point to add some blather about the process of dieting/exercise itself before the big ‘reveal’ of the numbers. Well I don’t have a lot to blather about but just to add to my ‘shocking wrist fat loss’ theme of yesterday, I would just like to whinge say that I find it odd where my body decides to go for its missing calories. i.e. where it chooses to burn fat. My wrists I mentioned and I think my face (though is that just a decent haircut and a shave making me look tidier rather than thinner in the face?)
But one other, um, area, where I think I’ve noticed a change in my behind. Ok, now before you think that I literally must be disappearing up my own rear-end to have noticed this let me explain that the evidence is secondary and I’d quite happily be wrong. Thing is I’ve noticed lately that after sitting down (at work or at my desk at home, like now) for a while I start to feel like my bum is a little sore. It feels like the bones of my whatever-you-call (not the cocyx the other bits) are digging into the chair seat. Now I never noticed this before and my sitting habits haven’t changed all that much, so I conclude that whilst I’m still relatively heavy, but have lost some weight, if I’d lost some on my backside it would explain why my bony parts are pinning me to my chair.
Or it could just be lack of visible progress frustration mixed with my normal paranoia and hypochrondria.
Oh well, here’s the stats.
Weekly loss: 0.6kg (1.3lb)
Total loss: 21.8kg (48.1lb or 3st 6lb)
Current weight: 122.3kg (269lb or 19st 3lb)
I was expecting this to be honest. Last time I had a whole weekend off the clock the effects were carried over into the next week so I was partly expecting that this time. Also I had a lunchtime at the pub on Friday which was also off the clock. (I had virtually no evening meal to compensate but still, alcohol’s nearly pure calories you know.)
I’m not gutted, it’s still going down. The challenge is to make it through the next two weeks (Christmas work do this week and Christmas itself the next) without going up.
First week of Rymor. Like Lesamy my blog update has been delayed by the after-effects of handing the latest SlingInk story. Which I did almost exactly on time. i.e. very little time to spare.
It was an interesting week. I managed to do my 45 mins every day apart from Sunday, but then on Saturday I counted time reviewing others’ work. But I came out of the weekend swinging, mostly because I had to with task 6 deadline looming.
So what are the stats?
Well during week 1 proper (thu 4th-wed 10th Dec) I spent 470mins writing and wrote 4,935words. Almost 5 hours (293mins) of which was in the last two days. Overall (I started recording how much I was writing on 1st Dec) I’ve written for 605 mins and put down 7179 words. Of that roughly 3/4 has been on my Slingink story (458mins, 5760words)
Week 2 is looking less impressive so far. I’ve not written anything, aside these two blog posts, since Wed night.
Well once again the impact of a story due in for SlingInk meant that I didn’t update my blog.
It’s almost week 13 and it’s been a tough two weeks. I’ve had a few days when I went “off the clock” as far as calorie counting went. These were semi-deliberate and I did do something to pull it back – more exercise mostly – but it left me feeling that I’m vulnerable to temptation. My confident feelings that I can keep this up indefinitely have been shaken a little.
I’d still like to see more visible progress. I know, I know it’s there if you look for it, but you really have to look and most people don’t. And if you never met me before well, then I still look like a fat bloke. One weird, vaguely frustrating thing is that I’ve gone done a notch on my watch strap. Yes, I still have a big old belly but I’m losing that all important wrist fat!
Weekly loss: 1kg (2.2lb)
Total loss: 21.2kg (46.7lb or 3st 4lb)
Current weight: 122.9kg (270lb or 19st 4lb)
Rymor is my new project in the spirit of Lesamy. It’s paul-speak for “Write More”. I know I’ve tried in the past to come up with a consistent writing regime. I’ve had some success with it actually. Even with things being more sporadic the discipline of needing a story delivered every two weeks (for Slingink‘s Eurofiction competition) has kept me honest, more importantly it has kept me finishing things. (I’m beginning to think 90% of writing is holding your nerve long enough to finish the first draft.)
But even with all that I wanted to bring some of the rigour and consistency, some of the discipline and frankly, the results of Lesamy to my writing. Now I know there’s only so far I can take it. With Lesamy if you burn more calories than you eat you will lose weight. All you have to do is find a diet and exercise regimen that achieves that and stick to it. The process is simple the hard part is in keeping going. I’ve proved I can do that. With writing there’s something else. You not only have to keep going, be consistent, work hard, you also have to find and express good ideas, you have to be smart and, depending on subject matter, it helps to be funny. There’s no simple formula to learn to be smarter and funnier.
So I know that there’s only so far hard work will get you. But on the other hand, the work is an enabler. If you have any talent (and I’m beginning to believe maybe I have a modest amount) then it takes work to make the most of it. In a pep talk email for NaNoWriMo Philip Pullman said:
The question authors get asked more than any other is “Where do you get your ideas from?” … What I usually say is “I don’t know where they come from, but I know where they come to: they come to my desk, and if I’m not there, they go away again.”
Seriously, What is Rymor?
So to the specifics. Rymor is simple. I will write for at least 45mins or 750words a day, every day. No varying it according to what day of the week it is. No days off. Every day is regular and consistent and habit-forming and that’s what I need.
Now when I say “no days off” I mean days when I’m at home. If I’m visiting friends or out all night straight from work then that’s ok. The main point is to not have a complicated weekly schedule.
Of course there will be days when I will work more than that – immediately before a deadline I imagine. That’s ok too – but Rymor defines the minimum.
The other part of Rymor, like Lesamy, is regular measurement. So every Wednesday from now on I’ll be posting a weekly word-count. I’ve worked out ways to count when I do a revision of an existing draft rather than writing from scratch. I’ve even done a basic spreadsheet. The idea is to see how much I’ve done and what I’ve done it on. I’ll probably have at least two or three things on the go at any one time. Lots of what I write, even now, is sort of brain-storming, mental clearing the throat stuff that never makes it directly into my stories but which seems to be necessary. Keeping track of all this I hope will be not only encouraging but will allow me to see where I’m spending my time and alternate so I don’t get bored or disillusioned with any one thing.
Anyway that’s the theory. I’ll let you know how I get on next Wednesday.
So this week the big news is I bought a stepper. It’s an exercise machine that you, er, step on. It’s got pedals and you sort of ‘walk’ on it against the resistance of these hydraulic rods.
Naturally it’s my new favourite toy.
Except that I have to be careful. As I said in a previous post, I’m really too heavy for it. Its stated maximum weight is 100kg and I still exceed that by nearly 25%. However my reasoning was thus:
It was cheap – £25.
As long as it didn’t break as soon as I got on it – and it didn’t – I can use it occasionally until I get closer to (then below) 100kg when I can use it more often.
This is fine since my main motivation was to get something I can use when the weather’s too foul to contemplate walking outside. (I have done at least one session walking around my bedroom. That was a little dull)
Like all these gadgets these days it’s got a calories-burned display (as well as steps done and time etc). And on Sunday, when the weather was in fact inclement I used it “in anger” for the first time. I decided to aim to match the calories burned on my usual weekend-day walk with is ~650 as measured by my trusty pedometer. However I soon downgraded this to 450 (a weekday amount) when I realised how difficult this was.
In the end I did 71 1/2 minutes of exercise over the course of an hour and a half (whilst watching Return of the Jedi) by which time I had allegedy used up the magic figure of 4-5-0. I say allegedly because I normally walk for ~63 minutes and do that much. So do I believe my pedometer or the stepper? Well I suspect my pedometer because it takes into account my weight whereas the stepper just (I think) measures the number of steps and probably has a set formula as to how many calories that is.
Anyway it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that I have a baseline, an arbitrary, though consistent measure for my progress. I’ll only really compare my stepper performance with previous stepper sessions.
Having said that it is tempting to count these calories as real for the purposes of trading against food. I confess that on Saturday, having hit my limit for the day, I did take to the stepper for twenty minutes to earn enough calories for a block or two of chocolate. But I won’t be making a habit of that. Mostly because it’s such hard work that it’s easier to not have the chocolate.
One thing’s for sure and that is the stepper’s more ‘cardio’ type exercise, which I believe is what they call it when it raises your pulse, you’re panting heavily and sweat profusely. Walking no longer does that for me (and I’m not quite ready to transition to running, I’d quite like to be carrying less bulk first). So for that reason I may try to make sure I do one stepper session a week even if the weather does not make it essential.
Oh and the results for this week:
Weekly loss: 1.5kg (3.3lb)
Total loss: 20.2kg (44.5lb or 3st 2lb)
Current weight: 123.9kg (273lb or 19st 7lb)
Pleased with that as it’s another milestone – I’ve now lost over 3 stone!
On Chesil Beach is the latest book by Ian McEwan and I read it recently. Now I know what you’re thinking, why on earth do you trust him after Atonement? Why spend your hardly-earned cash on one of his books. Well in my defence it was a 3-for-2 deal, plus I had heard good things about it. Anyway bought it I did and read it too. And you know what? it’s good.
But it’s not completely – how shall we say? – unproblematic. It has at its centre an idea, a pivot to the story, not quite a plot twist but certainly a, erm, plot kink, that is inherently frustrating. I don’t want to give too much away but it has a somewhat downbeat ending. The structure of the book also lends itself to a certain disappointing dilemma. The heart of the book is about sex. The central event in the book is the wedding night of a couple in the 1960s. We meet them first on this night as they enjoy their dinner together and look forward (or not – he’s eager, she’s fearful) to the consummation of their relationship. Then, in various flashbacks we get the story of their lives and their meeting, everything leading up to this point in fact.
Now as I said about Atonement McEwan writes about sex well. It feels real and therefore carries a certain erotic charge. Plus the building anticipation of how that key moment will play out creates a drive to know what will happen. So unfortunately, the rather well written passages about their earlier lives, which are actually most of the book, feel at times like a distraction from what I really want to know.
Maybe I’m just shallow.
Still, even with this and the not-so-happy ending, I still prefer On Chesil Beach to Atonement. It’s well written and evocative. I think it should be required reading for anyone who thinks sex education is a bad idea.
8/10
So once again Lesamy is late due to concentrating on getting my Slingink Eurofiction entry in on time.
Oh well, I was going to wax lyrical on whether it’s actually still getting harder, talk about how now, after 10 weeks, willpower issues are surfacing that I didn’t have in week 1, and talk about how I was happy with 10% as a target until I beat it and realised 10% didn’t look as different as I thought it would.
I was going to do that then I came across an old photo and realised maybe I do look slimmer. Bear in mind that before starting Lesamy I was heavier than in the picture on the left.
I smushed my face for a tiny bit of privacy, though you can still tell I think that I look thinner in the face.
In terms of numbers –
Weekly loss: 1.5kg (3.5lb)
Total loss: 18.7kg (41.2lb)
Current weight: 125.4kg (276lb or 19st 10lb)
On Chesil Beach is the latest book by Ian McEwan and I read it recently. Now I know what you’re thinking, why on earth do you trust him after 