Diet

[fleetfootmike]

You were supposed to nag me, you lot! Remember?

Ah well. Anyway: started again properly on Aug 1, weighing 289lbs. As of this morning, weigh 267lbs. Not bad, huh? Another 70 or so to go.

Comments

Hooray!

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Well Done Mike!!!!!!

Congratulations! Are you on a particular diet (Atkins or someone), working with a medical dietician, or just being sensible and having Anne feed you low calorie dog food? <big grin> It can be so hard working from home since the kitchen is just there, and (for me at least) I find it easier to keep going on a many-hour session at the terminal if I have something to keep my blood sugar up!

It reminds me that I too need you lot to nag me <grin!>, well, within limits anyway! Sometimes I just need a little sugar fix to get me through the day :-(

My peak weight was achieved when I was 23, when I hit 23.5 stone (really!) which is 329 pounds (gasp!!). From the age of 15 (when I was 15 stone) I put on a stone a year (which is just over one pound a month, and one pound for one month isn't much, but consistency is important!). Managed to get down below 20 stone in 1988 for a short while (but that was the year that my "big" relationship ended and the weight didn't stay off, definitely got back up to nearly 22 stone sometime after that)

Was weighed a few weeks ago (fully clothed at the doctors) and got 125 kilos, which I make 276lbs (under 20 stone!). Mike, I think a race up to Christmas is in order! Rule 1: slow and steady weight loss, no crash diets, no fads. Rule 2: there is no rule 2

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Well Done Mike!!!!!!

Congratulations! Are you on a particular diet (Atkins or someone), working with a medical dietician, or just being sensible and having Anne feed you low calorie dog food? &lt;big grin&gt; It can be so hard working from home since the kitchen is just there, and (for me at least) I find it easier to keep going on a many-hour session at the terminal if I have something to keep my blood sugar up!

It reminds me that I too need you lot to nag me &lt;grin!&gt;, well, within limits anyway! Sometimes I just need a little sugar fix to get me through the day :-(

My peak weight was achieved when I was 23, when I hit 23.5 stone (really!) which is 329 pounds (gasp!!). From the age of 15 (when I was 15 stone) I put on a stone a year (which is just over one pound a month, and one pound for one month isn't much, but consistency is important!). Managed to get down below 20 stone in 1988 for a short while (but that was the year that my "big" relationship ended and the weight didn't stay off, definitely got back up to nearly 22 stone sometime after that)

Was weighed a few weeks ago (fully clothed at the doctors) and got 125 kilos, which I make 276lbs (under 20 stone!). Mike, I think a race up to Christmas is in order! Rule 1: slow and steady weight loss, no crash diets, no fads. Rule 2: there is no rule 2 <grin!>. Prize: a small piece of christmas pudding and all the sprouts you can eat (steamed, no butter, no gravy!) For me, that's about two sprouts, and only if I'm forced to!

My theory is that when people start exercising they put on muscle and muscle weighs more than fat, so it's possible to start exercising and actually weigh more ... therefore if I put together a strict regime of sitting in front of the telly between now and Christmas, I can convert some of this muscle to fat and actually lose weight! What do you think? Should I write a book about it? &lt;big grin!&gt;

I don't actually have a final goal, since I'm going to just see how I look and how I feel and how things plateau and go from there. But my current goals are:

2lbs a week from now until Christmas, and assuming I didn't put on too much while I was in Florida, that means 12 weeks=24lbs. So my goal is to step on a scales on the 23rd of December and see 252lbs. Actually my internal goal is to hit 250lbs (or even better 113kgs which is about 4 ounces lighter!) by Christmas.

And then to continue the good work (two weeks off for Christmas/New Year and two more weeks to get rid of the Christmas excess!) and lose about the same again before my birthday on April 8th. Now a good goal is to say that it's about 15 weeks between New Year and the Eastercon, so if I can start with my weight at 113kg at New Year, then a target of 100kg (221lbs or 15st 11lbs) at Easter is sensible (again it's about 2lbs a week) and that may actually be enough. I'm six foot tall, fairly broad in the shoulders and chest, and with good solid legs, so getting to 15stone may well be a struggle and may well be close to a final target, but let's get to Easter and see &lt;grin!&gt;

If all this actually works, then I'm going to have to buy a lot of new clothes (though many of the t-shirts will probably be ok, if baggy &lt;grin!&gt;)

What I intend to do is book a monthly weigh-in with the local doctor (well, actually it will be the surgery nurse) just to see how I'm doing, and I'll see if I can get it scheduled for the same time of day on the same day of the week each month. And I'll plot the results up here. My home scales is rubbish (it can vary by a stone depending which foot you put on it first, and even then the numbers seem weigh off (pun intended!)) so the purchase of new scales at some point would be an idea, but the generally held opinion of "experts" in the field is that daily weighing is actually actively counter-productive.

Mike, we'll have to get you, me and Phil together at easter and have someone shout "who's that fat bastard standing between Mike and Chris?" &lt;grin!&gt;

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

Mostly it's eating sensibly. I do, though, strongly recommend the Hacker's Diet, simply because it explains the principles behind losing weight in a geek-friendly and scam/fad-free way, as well as having a sensible exercise program which you can start *slowly* on.

Daily weighing is fine as long as you don't obsess on the daily changes, but the trend. THD provides a nice spreadsheet for plotting your weight trend, which I find very useful (although having said that, my weight is remarkably well-behaved from day to day, without many sudden jumps: part of the trick is weighing yourself at the same time in the same clothes every day - I do it first thing in the morning, after I've come back upstairs with two cups of tea for Anne and I and before I drink 'em). Weekly is fine if it works for you - personally I think monthly is too infrequent for you to provide any useful feedback into your consuming/burning calories system.

The scales we have are excellent: Tanita "Ultimate Scale" ULT2000/2001. Available from Argos, price about 40 quid, *very* precise and repeatable as long as you stand on them properly (as evidenced by the days I get on the scale, look at the result, go 'I don't believe that', and get on again for a best of 3 or 5 - multiple attempts rarely differ by more than 1/2 lb).

I was 14 stone (196lbs) when I graduated, and by general consensus a shade overweight, and definitely unfit. My first target is 200lbs, after which I'll see how I look.

As far as eating sensibly goes, my usual day's intake is:

Breakfast (8am)

A bowl of muesli, with semi skimmed milk

A mug of tea with milk and sweetener

Lunch (1pm)

Salad - cottage cheese, tomato, lettuce, mushrooms (raw), cucumber

A low fat yoghurt

Mid-afternoon (4pm)

Mug of tea as above

Supper (8pm)

Whatever Anne's cooking: usually chicken or pork with veg plus a jacket potato, or pasta.

Dessert varies but nothing overly calorific

And, the important bit: snacks. Through the course of the day, when I feel peckish, I'll probably have a total of about four snacks, two of which'll be fruit/grain bars (Jordan's Fruesli, or Kellogg's Special K bars), one'll be a handful of Hula Hoops, and one a cream or cottage cheese sandwich (two slices of bread, lowfat spread).

Anyway, it works for me: i'm not suggesting it'll work for everyone, but thIt's how I've lost 22 pounds in two months.

exercise

[fleetfootmike.livejournal.com]

Forgot to add, re exercise.

Weight training kinds of exercise will put on muscle mass, this is true. But what you need to be doing with a weight-loss program is some form of aerobic exercise that ups your basal metabolic rate, i.e. the rate at which your body burns calories, as well as toning exercises to unstretch the bits of you that don't have as much flab to hold in as they did.

Again, I like THD's program - it's a ladder, and you start on the first rung, which is basically 2 stretches, 3 crunches, 4 leg lifts, 2 cheats' pressups and running on the spot for 120 double steps, interspersed with 7 jumping jacks. Each rung adds a little more, and the idea is that you go up rungs when you feel that the rung you're on is easy enough that you're up for it.

[owlrigh.livejournal.com]

Congrats :D Yay! I know how cool it is to step on the scales and see those kilos shedded.

[quadrivium.livejournal.com]

Congratulations!

I can't lose weight unless I exercise. Exercise doesn't just speed up my metabolism. It makes me feel healthier, more energetic, and more optimistic -- in short -- more like doing sensible food-things as opposed to chocolate fixes.