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Lesamy Week 14 – The Big What?

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:

  1. I miraculously lost 50lbs in a week.
  2. All this time when I’ve been weighing myself and going down in small decrements my scales have been wrong.
  3. 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.

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Lesamy Week 13 – My Bony Ass

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.

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Lesamy Week 12

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)

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Lesamy Week 11 – A Tale of Two Calorie-Counters

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!

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Lesamy Week 10 – the pictures

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.

side-by-side

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)

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Lesamy Week 9 – Now At Last The Truth Can be Told

So the observant amongst you will have noticed something about yesterday’s blog update. No, I’m not referring to the fact that I promised a non-Lesamy post and didn’t deliver[1], I’m referring to the fact that I slipped in an extra little bit of info, almost without comment. I gave my current weight[2]

Well aside from the fact, as M. pointed out that with my references to 10% and how much I’d lost you could work it out anyway, I just felt that maybe it was time to own up. I wanted to use this blog to track my progress, but my vanity/embarrassment was such that I didn’t want you to know how fat I actually am until I was a lot nearer my target weight. It’s easier to admit to having been 22 1/2 stone from the vantage point of say, 16, than it is to say this is what I am now.

Anyway, that and the fact that I was re-reading Lesamy posts, and that it’s monday and I need some words to go alongside my figures for this week, made me decide to take a look back at Lesamy so far and review against my original goals:

I’m doing a few minutes worth of exercise morning and evening. I intend to start slow and build up, so maybe in 3-4 weeks I’ll increase the number/duration of that.

Exercise is one area where I’ve made the biggest changes. I started off walking up and down the stairs 5 times, morning and evening. I did that because I was embarrassed to do anything outside and I had no equipment or anything. I expanded to doing walks into town, then around the park, then longer walks. At a certain point – after a fall actually – I gave up the stair walking and I added in 10 press-ups and 10 sit-ups every morning. These days I average 60-70mins of walking a day.

I’m cutting out snacks and having just the two meals a day that I theoretically already have – lunch and evening meal. I plan to add breakfast in at some point but it’s never been a major meal for me and I don’t want to change too much all in one go so I’m leaving that one until later.

I have stuck to this. I added in breakfast fairly early on when I discovered that the sit-ups were easier after I’d had something to eat and drink. I’m also eating better now, eating more fruit and veg and cooking properly some rather than none of the time.

I’ll aim for ~1800 calories a day most days with the occasional (no more than weekly) cheat day of 2300.

I aim for exactly 1800 calories a day. I will avoid going over by even a few[3] but do my best to use up as many of my calorie ‘budget’ as I can. Usually I’m within 10. I haven’t had any cheat days per se, though I’ve been out for a couple of meals when I go ‘off the clock’ (though with a vague eye on portions).

I’ll expect the progress to be slow, aiming at no more than about 1-2lbs or 1kg loss a week.

I’ve averaged 1.9kg or 4.2lbs a week. My lowest loss was 0.6kg and my highest 3.2kg. I am starting to drift downwards to that mythical 1kg/week figure.

I’ll only weigh myself once a week (and more and you get discouraged with progress or frustrated by fluctuations)

I’ve only weighed myself on one day a week, but sometimes more than once on that day and then taken the best reading. But I’m sort of over that now. I’ve found the best time to weigh myself (after my evening walk but before eating) and I’ll stick to that.

I’ll expect the occasional set back but won’t be phased, will carry on, and will seek support and encouragement.

I haven’t had any real set-backs. The week after my weekend away when I’d apparently lost nothing was a bit of a shock but mostly I’ve lost more than expected each week. Support and encouragement has been mixed. Here and on the Ship I initially received affirming comments but I think people got bored with me. But knowing I’m going to post every week means something to me. The other source of encouragement has been M. who asks me how it’s going and is always pleased when I’m doing well.

My goal initially will be a 10% reduction. Doing this by Christmas is achievable.

I hit 10% (130kg) around the end of October. My next milestone was 127kg because that brings me beneath 20stone. I hit that today (yay!). By Christmas? Well it depends on how much I slow down but I think I’ll be under 19stone and possibly nearer 18 than 19 by then. We’ll see.

It’s been both different to how I expected and in some ways not so different, easy in ways I thought it wouldn’t and harder in ones I didn’t think of. But I know I can and will keep going. I’m in a rhythm now and it’s working.

So, as I said above, I’m now 127kg or 279lbs i.e. 19st 13lbs. That’s a loss this week of 1.5kg or 4.2lbs and a total loss since I started of 17.1kg or 37.7lbs.

[1]or did I? Actually I wrote the update but haven’t posted it yet. I’m trying this new thing where I treat reviews like proper writing and so that means editting which means I don’t just through it up straight away.

[2]Except of course that since it was yesterday, it was really the weight on my previous weight day. I didn’t lose 4lbs in sleep last night.

[3]I allowed myself to go over by 36 calories today as a treat for hitting my target milestone. That allowed me to mop up the gravy from my yummy beef-in-ale casserole with an extra slice of brown bread.

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Lesamy Week 8 – Motorway Driving

Firstly apologies for not writing sooner. Weighing day is Monday and so it’s almost Lesamy week 9. There are reasons for missing the first couple of days (celebrating M’s birthday and wanting to get a competition story in on time) but after that I just got lazy.

Secondly apologies for not writing any non-Lesamy in such a long time. I do plan (famous last words) to do a review later today.

Motorway Driving

I managed to make it to my mid-twenties before starting to learn to drive. It took two years and four tests to pass and then, because I decided that a computer was a better waste of money than a car, I didn’t drive again for six years. At that time I’d just got a new job and was about to move ‘down south’ and I figured I’d need a car. So I got one and took a couple of refresher lessons. Fortunately it all came back pretty easily.

However on the day I was due to actually move I got up at 6am. Why? Because I wanted to make it out of the city before the traffic got too bad, and also to get as far as I could before the motorway traffic got too hectic. I remember joining the motorway for the first time, it was deeply scary. Everyone was going so fast and there were huge lorries everywhere. But I eventually calmed down and got used to it. After a while I was zipping along, moving in and out of lanes as needed. Motorway driving it turns out is easy.

And on my regular trips back up north I experience a small version of that first experience. The first few minutes are a shock to my system (the rest of the time I pootle around town and make runs to the supermarket but not much more) but after that it becomes easy again. In fact it becomes boring. It’s usually a trip of at least four hours and ninety minutes in you can guarantee I’ll be thinking, ok I’m bored with this now, I just want to be at my destination. To keep myself busy I’ll mentally calculate my average speed and my expected arrival time based on that.

And this – I know you were wondering – is where it is like Lesamy. Initially I had some fears and some issues – look back at my first post about results and how I agonized that I was going to miss comfort eating – but then it sort of became easy. I got into a routine, I was exercising and enjoying it, I was getting to recognise that feeling ‘full’ was not the same as feeling so stuffed like you couldn’t eat another thing. But, it’s a bit boring. I can walk down the supermarket aisles and not worry that I’ll falter with all the things that are nice but that I can’t really afford (calorie-wise), but there is a sense that I’m just faithfully carrying on, day after day, focussed on targets, constantly re-calculating expected dates of reaching such-and-such a weight, or expected weight at Christmas.

Many Miles to Go

I’m sure part of this is the same as with the driving. I’ve still got a long way to go before I get there. Getting there, means something different with Lesamy anyway as I’ll then be faced with the challenge of maintaining, which while I’m not quite sure what it’ll look like yet, will I’m sure still involve some walking past nice food a lot of the time. Another thing is that whilst I cherish my spreadsheet there’s a lack of visible progress. At least to me. I have lost more than 10% of my bodyweight, had to go down a few of belt-notches and abandon at least one pair of trousers, but I look in the mirror and I don’t see much difference. M. says she does, and that should mean something because she doesn’t see me every day.

I’d love, though, for someone who doesn’t know I’m doing this to stop me and ask “have you lost weight?” Hasn’t happened yet but I think it will. It’ll probably happen when I start to have to seriously down-size my wardrobe.

But lest I seem too pessimistic I know I can do this. It’s just a question of keeping going, not giving up. I have given up on a lot of things in my life, but I never once turned around, left the motorway and came home.

This week I lost 1.1kg, 2.4lbs. Total loss so far 15.6kg, 2st 6lbs. Current weight 128.5kg, 20st 3lbs.

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Lesamy Week 7 – now with extra week 6!

Yes so you’ll’ve noticed I didn’t post anything for week 6. That was partly due to the fact that I lost nothing last week. In I thought about doing a post just entitled “me” (i.e no “less-o-“)

At least, when I first stood on the scales they read exactly the same as they had the week before. I’m not sure what it was – probably a delayed reaction to eating more at the end of week 5. I then did the usual things, went to the loo and re-weighed myself after my daily walk. Leading to an “official figure” of 0.6kg loss. That really doesn’t amount to much more than a full bladder.

So I worried about that, calculated how many calories I must have over-eaten and so on. But at the end of the day it just made me more determined to carry on.

Which I did and I’m happy to report that I’m back on track. My final figure for week 7 are:

this week’s loss: 1.9kg (4.2lb)

culmulative loss: 14.5kg, 32lb or 2st 4lb.

So, just because I can I’m adding a poll. I promise to strictly ignore the results and do what I would’ve done anyway [polldaddy poll=1072598]

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Lesamy Week 5 – Weekend Away

Firstly apologies because I know I’m a day late with this post. All I can say is I was busy.

Secondly apologies because I know I need to post some reviews or some other non-Lesamy stuff for those of you who just-don’t-care-about-the-diet. I’ll get to that, I really will.

The Land of Temptation

So I spent the weekend at M.’s place. Something I do about once every six weeks, two months, or so. But this was the first time since I started the diet. On the one hand I was determined not to let my diet affect her so I wanted to eat normally (or close to it) whilst I was there. By which I meant I would not count calories just keep an eye on portion size. On the other I knew this would still be more than my usual amount and set my expectations low as a result. Back on the first hand again, when I started this adventure I decided I could have a 2300 calorie pig-out day once a week and so far I’ve had none. So this could be five weeks of treats in one weekend.

How Did I Do?

Well the good news is that I pretty much stuck to the eat normally part. The keep an eye on portion size part went out the window and I was back to the old me portion wise. But I did avoid eating between meals. Mostly.

Friday we had a takeaway, Saturday a home-cooked meal and Sunday a meal out (I had starter and main). In between I had toast and sandwiches and water. We did a fair amount of walking around.

A Gift that Counts

Whilst I was there M. bought me a pedometer which was cool. It’s my new favourite toy. Now my spreadsheet has all sorts of extra info on it. I’ve discovered my normal walk in the park is 3 miles and that I expend ~500 calories doing it (fewer than I thought). I’m using it to make sure my weekend walks, which are non-park and can be a bit random, are roughly equivalent.

I Can Eat What I Want?

Anyway, once I got back from a great, if indulgent, weekend I weighed myself and here’s the shock: not only had I lost weight (I’d’ve been happy breaking even) I lost exactly the same as last week. I lost the average amount I’ve been losing these past 5 weeks. Weird huh?

So that means I lost 2.4kg, 5.3lbs and in total have lost 12kg, 26.5lbs or almost 2st. It means I’m a few pounds away from my 10% reduction milestone. I’d originally planned on hitting that by Christmas.

Time to Slow Down?

This raises the big question of whether I should slow down. I’m still averaging over 5lbs a week, more than twice the recommended amount. And what’s interesting is that my extra exercise probably only accounts for about a pound of that per week. So am I going to slow down, do less, eat more? Probably not. I am starting from a high base and I’m sure the rate will slow. I haven’t done the maths but I suspect that my old diet was something like 3,500 calories a day, or higher and so dropping to 1800 is a bigger change than it might have been. I’m inclined to take advantage of this rate of loss whilst I can. I’m in this for the long haul anyway and it’ll still be next year before I’m at my ideal weight and I’ll be consciously maintaining it for the next year or two. (hopefully after that I’ll have learnt enough good habits to not put it all back on).

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Lesamy Week 4 – Exercise

So week 4 was a week when I was back at work. This presented an interesting challenge – when to fit in my daily exercise walk. At first I tried in the morning before work. This was a 40min walk rather than the 2x30mins I did when I was off work. I did it for a couple of days but it was hard going. Then I tried after work, but walking around the park as the sun is going down is not ideal. In a couple of weeks when DST ends I’d be walking in the dark, don’t fancy that. Thursday I did a special expeditionary walk. Work is moving to a new build a mile or two down the road sometime before the end of the year and so I thought I’d go take a look at it. That made 2x16mins. Friday I decided what the heck and did a walk into town and back (2x22mins).

So perhaps it shouldn’t have come as a shock but after only a week of less (not no) exercise when I went back to my 2x30mins park walk on Saturday I found it tough going. I found it even tougher yesterday. It was foggy when I got up and so I went out wearing my coat. Ten minutes into my walk and the sun came out. I think it was that as much as anything that caused it to be tough. Oh and I painted my bathroom yesterday, which turned out to be more exercise than I thought.

Too Fat to get Fit

In the midst of all this I thought about buying some kind of walking machine, a treadmill or cross-trainer. You can get a cheap one for under £100. I could do as long or as little as I liked and watch TV whilst I was doing so. I saw one they had in Tesco and despite my normal on-a-whim purchasing habits I decided to see what else was available online. I’m glad I did.

It turns out that these machines go from £70-80 to £3000+. It also turns out that the cheaper ones have a weight limit that I’m over. In fact I’d still be over it when I hit my 10% reduction target. I guess it makes sense, cheaper materials means less sturdy means weight limit. As you go up the price scale you get machines that can take more weight but I had to go to £800 to find one that I could be confident of not breaking.

A bit of a depressing irony to find I’m to fat (and poor) to get fit. Actually after checking out ebay I found I could probably get a treadmill for £250ish that would do, but by now I’d completely gone off the idea. Walking into town as exercise may be a bit odd but it’s free.

A Nice Surprise

So after all that lesser exercise I was fully braced for a smaller loss this week. Instead I found I’ve lost 2.4kg (5.3lbs) a total loss so far of 9.6kg (21lbs). I’m down a half a belt notch – by which I mean I can fasten it one notch down but it’s more comfortable at the original one.