It’s so close I can smell it… or is that just my feet?

Last week I didn’t lose any weight.  I stayed at exactly the same weight.  And I was fine in that, for the reasons mentioned in that post.  I did point out however, that I was going to tackle the week in exactly the same way I have been approaching this whole ‘Mid-Year’s Resolution’ and that I was going to weigh and log everything.

And that’s what I did, even though I had a ‘hungry’ week.  Throughout most of the week I ate more than I should have.  I constantly felt that I wanted something to eat.  Most of the time I wasn’t hungry, I just wanted to eat.  I made sure I was drinking water, in case I was mistaking ‘needing to eat’ with ‘needing hydration’, but, whatever, I ate more on most days.

However, I stuck true to my plan and I weighed and logged everything.  I did.  Hence, why I know most days I went over my calorie limit.

Did it make a difference?  Well… yes it did...

So… I’ve lost some more weight.  Granted, only another 500g (1lb), but given how much more I ate in the week, a loss is a loss.

Woo-hoo!!!

*Ahem*

So, yes, I’m so close to getting under 100 kgs, I am so excited, you cannot believe ! Or maybe you can, because you’ve been there too :D  Maybe you are nearing a milestone mark in health or fitness or weightloss and you’re feeling that beamy excitement that’s going to be in the forefront of your mind to keep you going. 

So technically my next weigh-in is in September, being next Monday, but I think if I make it under 100kg, I’ll claim it as an August victory.  After all, all the ground work happened in August.  And I don’t really feel the need/compulsion to hop on the scale on Friday to see if I made it.  Okay… maybe just a little.  But! If I hold out until Monday that means not only that

a)  I made it under 100kg in August but also

b)  I’m starting off my next month in a new decade

Both are wins as far as I am concerned. : )

P.S.  You can check out my table of progress so far on the Weigh-in page

So, a Saturday reflection... ...noiƚɔɘlʇɘɿ yɒbɿuƚɒƧ ɒ , oƧ

Okay, so I know I just posted earlier, but this I felt was more relevant and to the now.

I was thinking about how I didn't lose weight last week, and thinking on what I've done this week for that.  I mentioned that I was going to do the exact same as I had been in the first place, weighing and logging everything.  Which I've done.

I've also eaten a bit more than my calorie limit on most days.  Sometimes only 50kCal over, sometimes as much as 400kCal.  I noticed that my eating has been more erratic this week and I've been reaching for the higher energy foods.  I think there were a few factors for this.

1. Busy, busy week at work this week. We've all felt it.  Many of us had mid-project reports due in and the stress/tension was making us all go a little nutty.  We had a pretty explosive department meeting; Last minute changes to our programming that were not communicated; The bloke who works next to me teaching himself a new computer system; I myself on Friday went a little silly by 'mooing' at my co-workers (hands as horns and all :-D ).   The two women who sit behind me (our chairs back onto each other) ate an entire 800g bag of Minties in one morning.   They cracked it open at 8.30am and by 11am they were all gone.       O_O
2. Long, long hours.  I've been waking up early in order to get into work and do stuff before most others arrive.  It becomes a noisy workspace when we're all in there in the half hour before we start our day.
3. The weather turned.  We've been having unseasonably warm weather this winter.  Some Most days have been much more like late spring/early summer.  So this week when we got our normal late winter weather, it's been a surprise.  And maybe a bit of a shock to the system so the body is trying to compensate by consuming/craving more calories. 
4. I think my body might have been trying to make up for the fact that I ate way under two days ago.  So, whilst last week I managed to not over eat to compensate, this week it seemed I did.
5. I didn't do my grocery shopping on the weekend, so I didn't have much in the way of fruit, or salad ingredients, or even vegetables to steam.  I had enough food in the freezer that I had stuff to eat, but I portioned up those foods in such a manner that I would eat them alongside a salad or vegetables (lasagne for example.  Not enough on its own, but with vege - makes a meal!).  My lunches were pretty sorry for themselves.  

So... I ate more this week.  *sigh*

I'm pretty determined to not jump on the scale before Monday morning though.  I have always been pretty adamant that your body has too many fluctuations from day-to-day, hour-to-hour even, that it just doesn't make sense to weigh yourself every day.  I've never understood the appeal or motivation factor of daily weighings.  Of course what you put into your body certainly does leave an effect the next day (alcohol, I'm looking at you...) but really, it's that cumulative effect that I'm really going to notice.  Hence, the big drops for previous weeks.

It's Monday!

Man.... I need to work out a better system to updating. I really love sharing what I've done in my week, but I never seem to get it all down "on paper" in time Monday evening.   Hmmm.... anyway!

Surprise surprise, no weight change this week.

I weighed in at exactly the same weight as last week - 101.2kg (223.1lbs).

The surprise surprise was sarcastic by the way.  I was kind of expecting, after losing so much so quickly in the last few weeks, that there wouldn't be a big change this week.  On top of which, there were some days in the past two weeks where I was sick and I ate barely anything.  Sometimes, not even half the calories I was supposed to.  If that happens 4 days in a row, of course there is going to be a flow-on effect from that.  I doubt my body "went into starvation mode", but it certainly wouldn't have metabolised as efficiently as it should have in the days following.  So, no loss this week.

At this stage, I'm not panicking.  If in another week I'm the same again, well, then I'll consider what I need to look at.

I think this week, I'll continue to eat as I have been, weighing and logging everything.  I've been making use of the recipe tab on MFP (myfitnesspal) as much as possible when I've been cooking.  The only downside is working out how many 'servings' I've made.  For some foods it has been easy, because I have been able to portion the food up straightaway, and weighed each one to get an average.  Other food has proven more difficult, for example the pesto salad I made myself for lunch today.

I made the pesto myself.  It was my first time ever trying to make it - just chucked everything into the food processor - whee! - and hey presto; pesto! (I love puns!) and then I cooked up some pasta and used some tomatoes and tuna to make a pesto salad.  It was definitely yummy!!  Yesterday I ate only 100g of it, as a taster, today I had 300g for lunch.  Easy enough to average those two amounts out over the last two days. But this amount you see here, it's 470g and I haven't worked out if this is a whole portion, or half a portion or even if I am going to split into 3 amounts.  Very frustrating

Aaaaaand, I'm going to leave this post here, and continue my thoughts in a follow-up post later today.  It makes more sense as I'll be writing it from Saturday's perspective, not Monday evening's.  

Measurement Monday - Round 2

Urgh! I always plan to get online more frequently and to blog more, but it never seems to happen.  It takes me long enough to just log in my food to MFP.  I get so distracted by other webpages or TV that I don't seem to ever complete any writing.  :-S  So, I did actually take my measurements Monday and I didn't get around to posting them.  Oops

Anyhow, I've been logging some more this week.  Admittedly, my eating's been really poor in the last 7 days.  Thursday/Friday I was home sick from work.  Barely ate either day.  Saturday and Sunday were similar.  It's only today that I've started to eat "normally" again - still not great, but better than I was.

Start:               107.6 kg

Last week:        103.0kg
Current:         101.2kg
Weekly change:      -1.8kg

Total Loss:           6.4kg

As a result, I have lost weight since last week.  Not entirely sure how accurate it is.  Well, of course, it accurately reflects that I didn't eat for 4 days, but it doesn't really reflect my focus on good eating choices and watching what I eat.  It's a much bigger result than I was thinking.  Hopefully I can take something away from this week and concentrate on not overeating.  I don't want to compensate for the four days of not eating by eating too much this week.  I'm going to stick to my target as closely as I can and hopefully not such a drastic drop next week.  I'm definitely happy to lose weight at a slow pace, but a steady downwards trend.

At this point in time, I'm starting to feel that I am losing weight too quickly.  I only want? expected? to lose somewhere between 0.5-1kg per week.  (1-2.5 lbs).  In seven weeks, I've lost 6.4kg (14 lbs).  AND.... I'm an idiot.  I've just worked out the maths (my breain is so not switched on today).  If I average out my loss across the seven weeks since I started, I'm actually doing okay. 0.9kg/wk average or 2lb/week. Carry on...

Oh. My. Word.

I now weigh less than I did when I started at my new job at the start of the year.

I've only just worked that out as I am writing this post. Flicking back through my diary, I noticed I entered in my weight in January the day before my first day. I now weigh under that. That is completely unbelievable to me. I was 103.9kg that day (229lbs). (The week before was 104.1kg, so very much the same)(229.5lbs). And now I'm at least 1.5kg lighter than that (3.3lbs). Un-frelling-believable.

Originally when I started today's post, I was thinking I might reach under 100kg (220.5lbs) by the end of the month. Now, I'm wondering if I'm going to end up at my "starting weight" of 97kg (214 lbs). That's how much I weighed when I first started the blog, way back in April 2012. It's what inspired the orginal name, 27 Years Old and 27 Kilos Too Heavy.

Look, I'm not going to push for 97 kilos, but I definitely think I will be under 100. In only two weeks left (of August weigh-ins anyway), it's pretty unlikely to be 97kg. But I'll definitely be expecting less than 100 kg.

Amazing!

Measurement Monday - Round 1

Okay, moment of truth time.

How has the last five six weeks of getting 'reserious' about my weightloss efforts gone?
 

 



On June 24th, I reached a new point, where I decided once again, to make a difference in the way I feel and the way I look. 

 

I weighed in at 107.6 kgs.  (237 lbs)  There on in, I started to be super careful with logging everything I was consuming.  I logged eveerything using MyFitnessPal and I was aiming for 1610 Cal a day.  I bought a notebook to write everything down and I used a digital food scale to measure everything.  I even took my digital food scale with me when I visited family for the week!  In that week, I didn't quite stay in my calorie limit, but across the week, I believe it averaged out that I was just under. 

The following Monday morning, back at home, I weighed myself and the scale flashed up 105.2kg (231lbs). 
Really?  Wow, I wasn't expecting that.   Did I really lose weight already? After just one week of trying to stick to a lower calorie level? Nah... Couldn't have!  In this week, I was much more careful about sticking to my calorie limit and I also managed to do some exercise - trying out the Couch to 5K program.

Monday 8th July, next weigh-in.  103.5kg (227.7lbs).  O_O     Hmmm... Okay, perhaps this lower calorie limit has some merit to it afterall.  This week I wasn't as careful with meal planning and logging.  I let myself get tired and hungry and then when I got home, I didn't make good food choices.  Or I picked up some fast food on the way home.  I didn't properly plan meals, lunch was a lazy affair, breakfast was skipped.  It was not good.  The next week followed much the same pattern. 

And it showed. 15th July I weighed in at 104.0kg (229lbs).  I didn't do any exercise in this week either and I had some sick days from work.  By 22 July I was sitting on 104.9kg again (231.2lbs).  

But, of course, on the 21 July I watched the Fat and Back documentary and it reinforced for me just how hard this journey is (urgh! what a cliché) and how easy it is to fall into bad habits that will not help me in my efforts to get healthy again.  

Started tracking & logging diligently again.  I've noticed that my tracking is becoming faster as I re-use many of the same foods in the database.  I'm only using the webversion, so there's no scanning of barcodes.  I just have to look everything up.  But stuff like steamed veges are usually floating around in the first three pages of recent food because I eat the same type of veges often.  And I'm getting better with portioning my food straight away, weighing those portions and putting it into the freezer straight away.  And I don't need to weigh everything out each time anymore.  My coffee for instance, I made & weighed enough times that I have a standard formula now of coffee:sugar:water:milk.  The milk varies slightly (±10ml), but I'm not quibbling over it, because a) long term I feel those wobbles balance out, and b) nearly half the time I make myself a coffee, I never finish it. 

Now, completely by accident I forgot to weigh-in last Monday.  I was really excited and looking forward to it too, because I'd just finished a week of careful tracking again.  I only remembered once I was halfway through breakfast.  I was going to weighin the next day, but I forgot then too, and by Wednesday I felt it wasn't going to be an accurate picture of the week. 

So I left it to this morning.

I weighed in at 103.0kg (226.6lbs). 

Woohoo, I think I'm losing weight. :) Finally. After 15 months of this blog and not really getting anywhere or doing anything. This calorie counting thing seems to be the way to go. I've lost this weight just by weighing and logging food. I've not done any real meaningful exercise in the past four weeks either. Just one walk of 40 minutes. It seems it's going to be possible and I can do this. I can lose weight and get healthy.

Excellent! :)