Category: diet

…to eating the calories that is.

The simple reason being the numbers below. I can cope with a flat week, I expect them to some extent, it doesn’t devastate me – but only a couple of weeks after a 3-weeks off the diet? I should be losing and losing quite a lot.

Don’t get me wrong, eating the calories was fun and I did like the fact that I was able to go the pub or join in with a work celebration without making it a freebie. A freebie is often too open-ended whereas with this I at least got to have a little extra – a pint, a cupcake – but still have a fixed limit. That felt more in control.

However I am disappointed at not losing weight and I don’t really like the way it skews my behaviour. I’ve pushed myself to do a couple of extra long walks because I know I’ll be able to eat back the calories. I prefer to stick to my limit and do a regular length walk.

I’ll stick with MFP because I like it as a place to record my calories but I’ll stop recording my exercise there so that my calorie limit will be fixed.

Lost: 0lbs
Lost so far: 40lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.43lbs
Weight: 264.2lbs (18st 12lb)

I’ve started using myfitnesspal.com as my one-stop-shop for tracking my diet and exercise. It has a blog facility so I’ve written up my week there.

I didn’t want to completely abandon this blog though, so here’s a link.

Whether I carry on this way, revert to blogging here or only over there I’m not sure yet. I’ll try it for a few weeks and see how I feel.

Lost: 2.8lbs
Lost so far: 40lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.48lbs
Weight: 264.2lbs (18st 12lb)

So after giving myself a stern talking-to last week I got back on track… for most of the week. It fell apart a bit at the weekend. However I didn’t completely lose the benefit of earlier in the week so I am at least still going down.

Lost: 1.6lbs
Lost so far: 37.2lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.43lbs
Weight: 267lbs (19st 1lb)

OK. Three weeks behind on this and one simple reason. I’ve got bad news to report so I’ve put off sharing it. Writing the blog is like getting back on the diet. I put it off because I’ve gotten behind but sooner or later I know I have to get back to it. So here goes.

Week 23 – was a combination of an evening out and days with M. I expected this to be off the diet and given that the amount I put on, 5lbs, was not as much as it could have been.

Week 24 – was a continuation of being off the diet when I was supposed to be back on it. However I’d decided that since I was on holiday from work I’d be on holiday from the diet and get back on it when I went back to work. I put on another pound.

Week 25 – was a half-hearted attempt to get back on the diet but ended up with a weekend of pizza, no exercise and alcohol.

Lost: -10.4lbs
Lost so far: 35.6lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 1.4lbs
Weight: 268.6lbs (19st 3lb)

Obviously those are not great numbers but I’ll lose it back. I wouldn’t be writing this if I wasn’t already ready to get back on track.

Well, to within a rounding error on the nearest pound, I am back where I was two weeks ago. Which puts me at an average loss of just over 2lb a week for the last three weeks. Which is good going.

See how I’m taking the longer view, you’ve got to do that, dieting is a long game. Keep that in mind.

I have a decision to make about how I behave for the next week. See this week is potentially a difficult one to lose weight in. Tomorrow I have a games night with a few friends that traditionally involves beer and fish and chips. Then from Wednesday through to Sunday I’ll be staying with M. This will probably involve a few meals out and probably not as much exercise as I normally get.

Part of me would really like to try to at least maintain this week’s weight. Another part of me thinks that whatever I gain, like last week, and like week 17, I’ll lose again pretty quickly. This is a fairly rare co-incidence of two events – a night out or a few days away happens every few weeks, but not both together – and whatever I try to do to maintain a loss may well end up negatively affecting my time with M. and I don’t want that. The only problem is that I don’t want to feel like I’m making excuses and this is the beginning of a slide into eventually giving up. So the real test is whether I get back down to it the following week.

Lost: 3lbs
Lost so far: 45lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.05lbs
Weight: 259.2lbs (18st 7lb)

Before I typed up last week’s results, whilst I was still out on my walk in fact I got a rather worrying phonecall. My dad had had a heart attack. He’s fine, they got him to hospital and did an angioplasty and inserted a stent and he’s doing well.

But obviously it was a worrying for a time there. Also, I was due to go up for the Family Reunion (basically a meal out at a hotel) anyway – which I did, and it was nice to see dad and see he was doing ok.

At first I tried to tell myself that this is the sort of thing where I need to continue the diet because if I let these sort of “events” throw me off course then it’s a slippery slope and there’s always something to worry about (hopefully not many so major though). Even knowing that though, and I think knowing that I’d be going home and having basically a freebie weekend anyway meant that I sort of gave up really. I didn’t even weigh myself yesterday as I’d spent the day travelling back and was too tired to want to think about the consequence of weighing (i.e. writing this)

So I weighed myself this morning and, all-in-all, it’s not so bad. I have put weight back on, but I’m still 3stone down.

But I do need to get back on the straight and narrow. Particularly since in a week’s time I’ve got a night out followed by a week spent with M. If I make the whole week a freebie I won’t lose weight, but I haven’t traditionally been great at staying sensible whilst going to these social things. But it’s unlikely that’ll I’ll have two things together like this for a while, so I may just take the hit and start again the week after.

We’ll see. Overall I am still determined that L3 will be a success but it’s about a downward long term trend and that sometimes means being a little relaxed about individual weeks.

Lost: -1.5lbs
Lost so far: 42lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.0lbs
Weight: 262.2lbs (18st 10lb)

Another week of gain. Not unexpected since I had three official freebies and one off-the-reservation Sunday. A few salient remarks:

I really need to manage the freebies better. Sometimes I’ll have a string of with-other-people events that I can’t/don’t want to completely avoid, so I need to be able to eat and drink sensibly because I can’t declare them all a freebie.

This is where it gets dangerous. Because what could start to happen is that I have a few weeks of losses cancelled by gains and basically bouncing along around the same weight. And that in turn leads to disillusionment which leads to stopping.

BUT I am determined not to give up this time. Which means I need to be determined to getting back to losing more consistently.

Lost: -1.2lbs
Lost so far: 38.6lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.03lbs
Weight: 265.6lbs (19st)

Well after last week I guess I can’t complain about not losing quite so much this week. Still a loss, so still good.

Not much else to say, so here’s the numbers.

Lost: 0.6lbs
Lost so far: 39.8lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.21lbs
Weight: 264.4lbs (18st 12lbs)