Tag: dieting

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Less is More

Less is More Week 6 – Weekends are my Weakness

Week 6

Lost: 1.2lbs
Lost so far: 16.1lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 2.7lbs
Weight: 278.6lbs (19st 13lbs)

…that and ankles apparently.

Which means this: I had a good week. By friday night after my exercise walk I was down 5lbs on last week. I knew the final number wouldn’t be that low because it was partly dehydration from the heat+exercise. Saturday I battled with myself over whether to have some alcohol – not so much the thing itself as what it says about my will-power. I compromised and had a few beers. Plus some extra treat items – but stuff I had in already rather than stuff I’d bought – so relatively low in calories compared to what it could have been. I was determined to still lose weight so yesterday was a regular diet day with, if anything, a longer walk than usual. After that I was about 2.5lbs down. I was happy with that.

Today I awoke with what felt like a lightly twisted ankle. Basically fine but not good to walk on. So the extra 0.5-1lb that can disappear in sweat as a result of a long walk didn’t happen. So I’m down on last week (good) but still up on two weeks ago (not as good, but oh well). Still that means if I have a good weekend next week I should be up for a reasonable loss.


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lesamy Less is More

Less is More Week 5 – Actions

Week 5

Lost: -1.6lbs
Lost so far: 14.9lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 3lbs
Weight: 280lbs (20st)

So it’s not been a great weekend. A misjudged attempt at a ‘freebie’ after 4 weeks of keeping to the letter of the law. A pizza and a bottle of wine seemed like a reasonable treat. But that turned into a pizza and a bottle of wine on both Friday and Saturday and some other left-over treats on Sunday.

I had a lot of time to think about what to say about this, how I feel about it, as I was pounding out the laps around the park, trying to make up as much as possible with tonight’s exercise. But in the end I thought there’s a lot I can say but it’s my actions that will tell. Next week I will lose it back. I need to in the same way that I need to stick to my daily calorie count or not stop at 5 laps when I’ve said I’ll do 6. Because once I start to let myself slip where does it stop?

In a way that’s the problem with ‘freebies’ they’re too undefined. I think my next treat night will have well defined parameters.


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lesamy Less is More

Less is More Week 4 – This Time Last Time…

Week 4

Lost: 3.8lbs
Lost so far: 16.5lbs
Average Weekly Loss: 4.1lbs
Weight: 278lbs (19st 12lb)

So I don’t plan to make a habit of this but as I finished my first (lunar) month I thought I’d compare my progress with last time. On Lesamy Week 4 I had lost a total of 21lbs although I was at 296 – 2lbs heavier than where I started this time. Whilst I’d lost more I hadn’t quite gotten up to the same levels of exercise. I was doing a 22min x 2 walk during the week and 30min x 2 at weekends. Currently I’m doing ~80+mins a day (including walk to and from work) weekdays and up to 2 hours at the weekend. I’m not sure I’ll keep that up (as mentioned last week) but the fact I’m even able to shows that as well as not quite putting all the weight back on, I hadn’t quite lost all my fitness.

The really effective period of Lesamy – from the start to my lowest point – was about 9 months – 37 weeks. I got down to 226lbs – averaging about 2.4lbs a week. So we’ll see where I am in another 33 weeks/8 months. My goal is to hit 224 in a year and average 1.5lbs/week.

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Less is More Week 3 – Unsustainable?

Week 3

Lost: 3.4lbs
Lost so far: 12.7lbs
Weight: 282lbs (20st 2lb)

Gotta love these early weeks and the big weight loss.

So I’ve been concerned about a couple of things this week. One is that I repeated my weekend bonus scheme from last week (2300cals on Fri, 2100 on sat and 1900 on sun). The other is that I was doing 6 laps of the park for my evening walk – combined with walking from work and back to my house that’s 1.5-1.75hours.

So on the one hand I’m concerned I’m doing too much exercise whilst eating too many calories at the weekend – hang on you’re thinking, don’t those two sorta cancel each other out? Well sort of but they have something else in common – they’re both probably unsustainable.

1.5+hours is a lot of time every day. On the one hand it’s not like I’d be doing a lot with the time otherwise but on the other it also wipes me out for the rest of the evening. I think it needs to settle down to 1hour/day.

The problem with the weekend bonus scheme is that I can get away with it at the moment because I’ve got that early big loss, I’m doing a lot of exercise and I’ve had virtually no freebies. In a month or two when an hour a night is what I’ve settled down to and I may have the odd meal out or whatever I may struggle to still lose anything if I’m also having extra at the weekend. So I think I need to phase it out. Certainly the next time I have a freebie I’ll have to give it a miss that week.

Still, hard not to be pleased with the progress.


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lesamy

L.i.M. – New Units, New Goals, New Look

So I’ve re-vamped my spreadsheet and I’m now officially working off pounds as my main unit of measurement for Less is More.

I’ve also decided on a few specific goals, to wit:

  • Target weight is 168lbs (12stone) by June 2012, 224lbs (16stone) by this time next year.
  • I’m aim to keep my average weight-loss at 1.25-1.5lb/week – actually slightly more than I need.

OK, so it seems “a few” is really “two”. I did have others but they’re really the how not the what. Plus they haven’t changed that much (1800 cals/day except for an occasional treat day of 2300  unless I’ve had a freebie that week).

I’ve also created a new ticker & graph. I’ve used tickerfactory again because I wanted to get on with it and the one other site I found after a brief search was taking too long to load. It’s up on the “weight graph” page right now and I’ll be putting on my weekly weigh-in posts.


Not really related but something I did at the same time was to tinker with the appearance of my blog – changed the theme, adjusted the widgets on the side and added back the old banner pic (it’s a time-delay shot of Canary Wharf I took.)

That’s all for now – just didn’t want to wait until monday to announce it.

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lesamy

Less is More Week 2 – Keeping At It

Week 2

Lost: 2.3kg (5.1lbs)

Lost so far: 4.2kg (9.3lbs)

Weight: 129.4 (20st 5lb)

A good week as you can see. Obviously a lot of the success is down to the “early windfall” that you get when starting/re-starting a diet. However I am pleased that I keep to my regime much better. First week truth be told I had a bit of a binge at the weekend and was fortunate still to lose weight. Since that pattern of keeping the diet+exercise during the week but letting go at the weekend was what killed off Lesamy I knew I had to address that. I did so by tweaking the formula a little. I allowed myself a higher budget of calories on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (2300,2100 and 1900 respectively). More important probably was that I made sure I did my exercise (I have the blisters to prove it!).

I don’t know if I’ll carry forward the same thing next weekend and in the future. I may just allow myself one higher budget day if I’ve had no freebies that week, or I may have say 500 “weekend calories” to distribute as I see fit. The important thing is to set it in advance (even if only a day) and stick to it – not constantly adjusting it upwards.

I’m also thinking of creating a new ticker/graph. I may see if there’s better sites out there. Also I’m considering dropping Kg and measuring in overall pounds for a number to graph and stones and pounds for my own readability.

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lesamy

Less Is More (is Lesamy mk II) – week 1

There’s a line in the first episode of Studio 60 where Danny Tripp, the recovering addict who’s just failed a drugs test talks to his partner about slipping up. He says,

I had twelve years, now I’ve got eight days

(or something like that I may have the numbers wrong)

Anyway I sort of know how he feels.

Which is to say I have become the cliche.

Which is to say that about 3 months short of 2 years after I started Lesamy I’m almost back to where I started. Ok I didn’t put all the weight back on. But I am back to wearing a lot of my ‘fat’ clothes (which I only still have because I never got around to giving them to the charity shop) and crucially I’m back to getting out of breath when I climb the stairs.

*sigh*

*shrug*

I was going to post all about how it happened. About the point where my motivation failed me and the stages of decline after that. But, well all that’s in my blog really. You can take it that since my last Lesamy update I more or less went back to eating how I used to two years ago. And of course not exercising.

The crucial thing now is to somehow find that motivation, that commitment, that stubborness to not give up that I managed to maintain for several months but haven’t had for longer.

Anyway I’m starting again. I’m counting from where I am now(*) which I think will help me “start over”.

So:

Week 1

Lost: 1.9kg (4.2lbs)

Weight: 131.7 (20st 10lb)

(*)ok, technically where I was last week.

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Lesamy Week 73

So I’ve supposedly been “back on the diet” properly since the new year and here we are 6 weeks in and I’ve put on weight in total.

Starting tomorrow I’m going back to counting calories. I don’t think it’s the answer per se. The answer is that I need to find some self-discipline again. Maybe being stricter with myself will be a way to do that.

loss this week: -1.4kg (-3.1lb)
loss this year: -1.1kg (-2.4lb)
Total loss: 22.8kg (50.3lb or 3st 8lb)
To target: 26kg (57.4lb or 4st 1lb)
Current weight: 121.3kg (267lb or 19st 1lb)

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Lesamy Week 71, Not Counting

This week I’ve achieved something that I’ve been trying to do for months. I lost weight whilst not counting calories. Sometime around last autumn I decided that I didn’t really need to count every calorie because I knew what my meals should look like. I am a creature of habit and so I have relatively few variations of meals. So I ought to be able to do my diet without the counting part. I tried this for months but I kept slipping up at the weekends and eating more. Not a fault of not counting but frustratingly not allowing me to prove it could be done.

Well since I’m now back on the straight-n-narrow I have shown it can be done. It’s mainly about sticking to regular reasonable meals and not having in-between snacks. It’s also about getting the exercise habit again. I’m back to walking every day which I think helps a lot.

Here’s the numbers:

loss this week: 2.4kg (5.3lb)
loss this year: 0.8kg (1.8lb)
Total loss: 24.7kg (54.5lb or 3st 12lb)
To target: 24.1kg (53.2lb or 3st 11lb)
Current weight: 119.4kg (263lb or 18st 11lb)


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Lesamy Week 70, Zigging and Zagging

Don’t really want to spend a lot of time on this because – bleugh – I put on weight this week. It was all going so well until the weekend. Same old story of the past few months – although I thought I’d pulled myself out of that with my new year resolution re-start. Oh well. Start again…

loss this week: -1.7kg (-3.7lb)
loss this year: -1.6kg (-3.5lb)
Total loss: 22.3kg (49.2lb or 3st 7lb)
To target: 26.5kg (58.5lb or 4st 2lb)
Current weight: 121.8kg (268lb or 19st 2lb)