Another bad week results in…
It seems my lack of will power right now is getting the better of me. The gutting thing is I’ve nearly put back on 50% of the weight I lost in the first half of the year. I’m still hopeful that I’ll see the year out at 100kg though, I just need to get some discipline.
On Monday I did my usually weigh in and…
I’m starting to fall way behind now.
What to do about it though?
At the end of week 2 of phase 2b I’ve lost the weight I gained last week.
So good news then. Thankfully! Last week I really got back into the swing of my gym routine. It’s been a while since I made it to the gym 4 times in one week but last week I managed it. I even got back to a Thursday spin class and remembered why I love it so much. Having said that, goading the instructor probably wasn’t my finest moment and I was hurting a little bit on Friday.
Since I put on weight and then had to lose it again I’m around 2kg away from where I should be right now. The timelines I’ve set myself in the run up to Christmas are pretty tight so if I slack off again then I may not make my goal.
I also need to get round to setting out my goals. I’ve decided what the goals are, 102.5kg, 100kg, 97.5kg and 95kg and I’ve decided that the rewards will be a CD, a threadless t-shirt, a piano lesson or two and a martial arts lesson. All I need to do know is figure out the details so I know they are solid rewards. I need to decide which CD, which t-shirt, who is going to give me the piano lesson and when and how I can squeeze a martial arts lesson into my day which already has a massive commute in it.
So here’s looking forward to another good week this week. I’m aiming for 103kg but I think that might be a bit too much so my fall back withh be 104kg.
Wish me luck,
Sid.
For the regular readers of this blog you’ll have noticed a distinct lack of posts in the last month. You probably also noticed that my last posts revolved around lack of motivation etc. Well about a month ago I reached the point where I didn’t really know what I was doing with this weight-loss thing anymore. Combined with a bit of a busy time at work and a very busy time at home trying to get the garden finished and I made a conscious decision to just drop the attempts at weight loss for the time being.
My hope was that I would miss it enough to want to start again. And the hope was that when I started again I’d have some renewed vigour about the attempt. I also hoped to wipe the slate clean a little in terms of the efforts I was going to. I seemed to go into a very analytical mode, calculating things that weren’t really helpful. It detracted from what I was trying to do and while the counting of calories and the food diary I’ve kept previously were helpful I think they were a little counter-productive.
The good news now is that I am ready to get right on it.
I’ve been missing the time I spend in the gym and I’m been noticing my motivation for losing weight has been steadily creeping up. Unfortunately my weight has been steadily creeping up with it.
So here it is…12 weeks until the New Year. The new year seems like a good place to stop don’t you think? The aim is to get to 95kg by January. That would mean in total a 20kg loss this year, something I can be really proud of.
At the moment I’m weighing in at 105kg, 5kg over my 30th birthday target and 10kg off of my new target. That means I’ve got to lose close to a kilo every week to hit my target. That’s going to be tough! To help me along I’ve got some learnings from my previous attempts. I’ve got an understanding of what I should be eating and how much of it I should be eating. The what is more protein and less fat. The how much is a fair sized portion but cutting out the unhealthy snacks and spreading things out across the day a little more.
The other things to help me will be my goal breakdown. I plan on rewarding myself for every 2.5 kg lost. I’m not sure what my first two rewards will be but my second two are going to be something along the lines of a music lesson, piano probably, and a martial art lesson, not sure what yet though. I’m also going to be putting together another motivational montage. I put together one in video form that I never finished but it helped me gather my thoughts a little more when I wasn’t posting.
I’m also going back to charting my progress in a simple weight loss tracker graph. I’m switching away from Google Docs and back into my spreadsheet of choice. Why? I like the social elements of Google docs but their chart design sucks and I need to have the graph look nice in order for me to pay attention to it.
So here goes another stab at losing weight. Wish me luck.
It’s taking quite an effort to sit down and catch up with my blog. I didn’t manage to write a post last week on my progress because I was pretty annoyed with myself. Things haven’t been going well and I’ve really slipped off the pace.
Last week I just let it all go and slipped back into something that feels a bit more natural. I wanted to try and figure out why after a successful first half of the year I’m having such a bad second half of the year. I’m not sure I know what it is yet but it definitely has something to do with my diet. The exercise is going quite well and I’m enjoying the results of doing more weights in the gym. The diet though is making me feel stuffed all of the time. It makes me feel bloated and uncomfortable. I’m not sure whether it’s the quantity or the ratio of foods but something is out of kilter.
The plan for next week is to eat quite healthily, get one weights work-out in and then a CV workout too. Then I’m off to do some serious R&R. Bestival is next weekend so I shall be forgetting all about this weight loss thing and hopefully when I come back I’ll be ready to rock it to the end of year goals.
Howdy everyone. Apologies for not posting yesterday. We were a bit busy getting a monster tree stump out of our garden and when we were done we we’re a bit knackered. It meant that all weekend we were getting a fantastic workout. I’ve never been so knackered for ages. I’m not sure how many calories I got through but it was a lot. When we moved into our house we had a 60ft conifer tree which we had chopped down to get more light into the back of our house. The tree went rather quickly but the stump has been there taunting us for a few years. Combine a tree stump and loads of flint walls under a load of soil and you’ve got a lot of work to do. Thankfully it’s out now.
Anyway, onto my progress.
Basically, it sucks…
Not so much weight loss there rather than weight gain. From the 100kg target I hit on my 30th birthday I’m now 2.5kg heavier. I know I’m not focusing on weight loss this time round but I do still want to lose weight overall.
So I’m struggling with my regime this time round. On the one hand I’m adding muscle. I know I’m adding muscle because I can see it and feel it. I’ve got better muscle definition round my legs and arms. I also feel like I’ve lost fat off of my chest. The only problem is I think I’m putting it on round my waist and hips. And since that’s where I want to lose it the most I’m pretty pissed off.
I’m not surprised I’m putting on weight. The extra calories and the extra protein are making sure I do that. My worry is that I keep putting it on and don’t get to lose what I want to lose when I want to lose it by.
So, what to do? I’m not sure to be honest. One thing I’ve been thinking is that I’m just not accurate enough with my measurements. The skin calipers are easy enough to use but depending on where you pinch and how you pinch you can vary the measurement by 4-6mm. That’s just not accurate enough for me. The other measurements with a tape measure are also subject to discrepancies. Take for instance my thigh measurement. If I move the tape up or down a couple of centimeters then the measurement varies massively. Again, just not good enough. So I’ve been wondering about bdy fat analysers and it just so happened Oli Mell left a comment about them too. So I’ll be doing a little research into those this coming week.
On a good point my food intake is getting much better. There’s a couple of days last week where I got it spot on. It’s tough to do but I managed it a couple of times and can do it again. The sticky point is the fat intake. It’s so easy to go over my intake.
Anyway, wish me luck for the next few weeks. I think I’m going to give this regime until week 10 before I decide to change it if my weight is still going in the wrong direction.
Sid.
After a few troubles with my website I’m back to report week 4 progress… NO CHANGE!
It was a little frustrating to get on the scales and get the tape measure out and not see any difference this week. In fact after 4 weeks of more weights, more protein etc etc I would’ve liked to have seen more measurable effect.
Having said that I do think things are moving along but I’m not too sure I’m measuring things well enough to spot it. I feel a lot better. I feel as though I am losing body fat and gaining muscle. I can see a little more muscle definition and friends are commenting on how much better I look. But there’s no measurable difference.
So we’ll give it a few more weeks. I’ve really started to get a grip on diet this week. I’m still struggling with fat intake and will need to figure out how to lower that but I’ve got my protein intake up with the help of some protein shakes.
Wish me luck.
Sid.
For the last week I’ve been tracking what I’ve been eating to a degree that I’ve never done before. I usually hate calorie counting but for some reason this week has been fun.
The outcome…
The graph above is normalised so that what I’m aiming for is that 100% line for all the other lines. Basically I’ve been tracking calorie, carbohydrate, protein and fat intake. I’m aiming for 2800 calories per day which is 15% less than maintenance calorie level for someone my size. Then I’m aiming to get 60% of my calories from carbohydrate, I’m aiming for 160g of protein intake a day and then the rest of the calorie, about 17% of my intake, should come from fat.
The increased protein is because I’m doing more weight-training and need the extra protein to help build and maintain muscle.
Over the last week I didn’t eat much differently than I normally would, I just kept track of it. The numbers are as close as I could get based on the information on the packets of food I used and what’s online for all the things that weren’t in a packet.
You can see from the graph above there is a general trend. Calories, carbohydrate and protein are all on the low side while fat is always on the high side. So it looks like I’m going to be changing a bunch of stuff. The fat has to come down and the protein and carb has to go up.
For the fat it means cutting out pretty much everything that is the least bit unhealthy. Cakes, biscuits, any form of treat is out the window. To give you an idea…a tuna and sweetcorn sandwich with a bit of mayo has about 50% of my daily fat allowance. That isn’t a lot.
For carbs it basically means eating more cereals etc and for the protein I ordered some whey protein from www.myprotein.co.uk. I didn’t particularly want to supplement my protein but there’s o other way I can figure out to get the extra 60g of prtein without stuffing my face with aduki beans, chicken or tuna.
Next week I’m going to have a week off tracking but I’ll track food intake again in a couple of weeks to see if I’ve made the necessary adjustment.
The good news is that I’ve lost weight since last week but the bad news is I’m not sure whether it’s fat or muscle. I think the measurements I’m taking this time round are subject to a lot more variation. You can check them out on my google spreadsheet page.
Wish me luck.
Sid.
Well it’s the end of week 2 and I’ve just updated my progress charts. The on I’m going to put up here is my weight loss one…
As you can see on the right my weight has gone up 0.5kg. Very annoying. At the moment I’m willing to let it slide a little bit but not for long. I’ll be really disappointed if it goes up again over the next week.
As for the rest of my measurements I think they’re still bedding in and it’ll be interesting to see how they develop. There’s obviously a lot more error that can occur in these types of measurement and I still need some practise at taking them.
What else has been going on this week? Well the gym work has continued. I managed 3 weights sessions and 1 step class this week. I wanted to get out on my bike this weekend but my improving of the kitchen has got in the way and I’ve been fitting skirting boards and sealing worktops instead. The main thing that happened this week though was my new scales arrived.
I picked them up from Amazon for about £12 and they are pretty neat. What I’ve been doing over the past couple of weeks is just generally increasing the amount of food I’ve been having but I haven’t taken another measurement to see if I’m hitting the right amount of calories, protein, carb and fat. These little bad boys are going to help me do that.
One of the things I was looking for in a set of scales was the abiity to easily tare them. I wanted to be able to put a bowl on and zero the scales, then add cereal, take a note and zero the scales, then add milk, take a note and zero the scales. It’ll make it so much easier to count calories compared to trying to weigh everything with the old school scales we had.
My goals for next week… Get in some good weights sessions. It’s my final week of “beginners” weights so I want a good one before I move on to more advanced weight-lifting stuff. I also want to get rid of that extra 0.5kg I put on. Other than that it would be nice to see the general trends start to develop.
Wish me luck.
Sid.
It’s the end of week 1 and I think I’ve done alright.
The graph above is my skin fold measurement and it’s taken a good dive. It reminds me of my first weeks weight loss. I’m not paying much attention to it just yet though. For the first few weeks it’s more about the transition so I’ll probably see some big changes for not much effort. Once things settle down I think the changes will be more modest. The other thing about these first few weeks is trying to get a feel for the error in measurement. When you’re measuring weight you just step on the scales and there’s pretty much not a lot that can go wrong. With skin fold measurement it seems like there is a bit of an art to it.
So what have I changed this week? Not much other than I’ve got back in the gym and I’m starting to get back into my weights routine. I managed to get 2 weights sessions in, a step class and I got out on my bike for a couple of hours yesterday. All good but I need to get an extra weights session in and an extra CV class in too during the week.
The other thing that’s change is the amount of food I eat. I seem to be stuffing my face. I’ll write a separate post on that later.
For now I’m off to plan next weeks menu.
Sid.