Big Fat Loser

Friday, March 31, 2006

Rubbish scales and travel

Remember earlier this week, when I got all excited (and a bit confused) by an apparent massive weight loss over the week of 9 pounds? Well is seems the scales were lying to me - that is, unless I've subsequently put weight back on again.

When I bought these scales, I thought they were the dog's danglies, because they not only looked good, but could also cope with my mega-weight. But now I'm not so sure about them. Lots of reviews on the net praise them for their accuracy, but I'm having all kinds of trouble with variable readings. I'm guessing it must be due to the uneven floor in my bathroom. But even in my kitchen, which has a flat lino floor, the readings can still vary by a pound or two.

Anyway, so I did a weigh-in this morning (on a Friday - not my proper day) because I'm due to be away over the weekend, and I was at 23 stone, 2 pounds. Which I can either count as a 4 pounds gain since last Sunday (with its anomalous reading), or a 5 pound loss over two weeks. I think I'll go with the second one.

Starting weight: 24 stone, 3 pounds
Current weight: 23 stone, 2 pounds
Ideal weight: 14 stone
Weight lost so far: 1 stone, 1 pounds
Weight still to lose: 9 stone, 2 pounds

I mentioned that I'm away over the weekend. Well, actually, I'm due to be traveling for short periods quite a bit over the next month or so. And it's all a bit worrying. Being away from home, I feel that I won't be in control so much when I eat. There'll be a lot of eating out at restaurants, which is often fun, but also high calorie. And my normal exercise routine will be disrupted too. So I'm trying to think of tactics I can employ while away that will keep me on the straight and narrow.

I'm even considering something brand new to me - that is, going a gym. In all these hotels that I'm due to be staying in, there's bound to a gym of some kind that I can use. And I'm guessing that the running machines can be set to a slow enough pace that's suitable for walkers like myself. So I might give that a go.

And when it comes to eating out in restaurants, I'll just have to be 'good' and pick the healthy options.
Friday, March 31, 2006 | 0 comments

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Pizza party

We has a pizza party at lunchtime in the office today. One of the girls made some bases, and brought a whole load of different toppings in. And we all got to design our own pizza, that was then cooked in the oven. It was great fun, but a massive temptation for me to go over the top. However, I did try to moderate myself.

My pizza was jam packed full of veggies, and only a bit of meat. I also resisted the urge to drown the whole thing in fistfuls of cheese, as that would have really piled on the calories. But it was still a really tasty meal, and didn't seem to be any different to the heavily loaded deep-pan pizzas my colleagues were creating.

Unfortunately, my good work was thrown out of the window when someone turned up with a tray full of chop-chip cookies - counted out so that there was one cookie each. Well, I didn't feel able to refuse (not that I tried too hard), and it did taste lovely. But it threw me way over my calorie count for today, leaving me with just about enough for, say, half a stick of celery for dinner tonight.

My only option is to hope the weather holds off, and I can get a good long walk in on the way home from work.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006 | 0 comments

Monday, March 27, 2006

Before and after

I was playing around with My Virtual Model at the end of last week, creating 'before' and 'after' images of myself at my starting and target weights, and I thought I would let you see them.

I have no idea why the system decides to give the slimmer version a tee shirt to wear. Maybe the programmer likes the view of some big saggy man boobs, but doesn't like the look of thin guys. I don't know.

But it's freaky for me to look at the two photos together. The thin version seems such an alien image, and I can't ever image looking like that. I've been the fatty version for so long that I can't even remember what it's like to be thin.
Monday, March 27, 2006 | 1 comments

Variable readings

My weekly weigh-in was not so much fun this Sunday. Not because I didn't lose weight - because I did - but because my super-dooper digital scales were playing silly buggers, giving me all kinds of random readings. This was not a small variance of a few pounds either way - some readings were a whole 10 pounds out from others. And so, this all rather knocked my confidence regarding the accuracy of all the other weigh-in readings from previous weeks.

However, I think the strange readings must have been down to having a slightly uneven floor in the bathroom, because by shuffling the scales around a bit, I did finally manage to get a set of consistent readings. And the news was really good. During the week, I managed to massively over-shoot my 2-pound loss goal, to end up losing a massive 9 pounds. Bringing me below the 23 stone mark for the first time (in a long time), and adding up to a total loss this month so far of 19 pounds.

Starting weight: 24 stone, 3 pounds
Current weight: 22 stone, 12 pounds
Ideal weight: 14 stone
Weight lost so far: 1 stone, 5 pounds
Weight still to lose: 8 stone, 12 pounds
Monday, March 27, 2006 | 0 comments

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Drunken Sunday

Sunday was a bit of a blow-out day. I've been off the booze since I started my weight-loss at the start of the month, and managed a whole 25 dry days. But today was definitely a drunken day, where I didn't so much fall off the wagon, as enjoy a pleasant planned rest-stop.

Actually, I drunk a hell of a lot more than I would normally have, just on a normal weekend day. And so it ended up that over half my calories for the day (about 1,200) came from booze - which is probably not the most healthy thing on the planet for anyone - but it certainly was fun to let my hair down for the day.

And I did (just) manage to stick within my daily allowance of calories - helped by the fact that I fitted in 30 minutes of walking (admittedly between pubs), and because I skipped dinner (because I was in the pub). I also avoided the chip shop on the way home, because I knew I would be sorely tempted to indulge in something soaked in fat - and that would have thrown me massively over target.
Sunday, March 26, 2006 | 0 comments

Monday, March 20, 2006

Fruit and veg

A girl in my office leant me a book recently about healing foods. It goes into quite a lot of detail about the effect on the body of different types of food, and has advice on what I should be eating to maintain a healthy balanced lifestyle. I've read a couple of sections in detail, skimmed another, and skipped most of the rest. But what it seems to be saying, overall, is that I need to eat shed loads of fruit and vegetables. Hardly a revelation then!

I looked for the section that recommends pigging out on bacon rolls and potato crisps, but couldn't find it. Likewise, the section on trying to stuff your face at Chinese "all-you-can-eat" buffet restaurants seemed to allude me as well. So I suppose I'd better do something about those fruit and veg.

I've never been a big fruit and veg eater. It's not that I dislike them - they're perfectly tasty, and I eat them all up when someone else prepares them for me - it's just that other things (such as meat and potatoes and bread) appeal to me much more. In the past, when I've cooked something like a roast dinner for myself, I've tended to only bother with the meat and potatoes - and not have any greens at all. When I've been hungry for a snack between meals, I'm more likely to make myself a sandwich or have a slab of cheese, rather than a piece of fruit. But this is something I now acknowledge needs to change.

So over the weekend, I loaded up my basket at the supermarket with all kinds of veggies and fruit. And I've been using many of them since then. Sunday lunch, for example, included quite a sizeable portion of cabbage and carrots. I've also been snacking on apples, bananas, grapes, and raw carrots. And while it's not quite as satisfying to my taste buds as a ham sandwich, it is by no means a hardship. And, of course, the fruit and veg are much lower in calories than the other stuff, which is great.
Monday, March 20, 2006 | 0 comments

Sunday, March 19, 2006

Body image

One of the major motivational factors in my drive to try and lose weight is to become more attractive to women.

I'm sure there are women out there that don't mind (or even quite like) the look of fat men, but I haven't yet found one. I've never ever had a proper girlfriend in my life. And although I have a full, active and happy life, I still yearn for the same things that everyone else wants - someone special to share my life with. Most other people my age are married and have children. Whereas I've never had a proper relationship - and that can be lonely sometimes.

It's not just about sex - but I guess that's part of it. It's about having someone to share things with. Someone to listen to my moaning when I've had a bad day. Someone to go out to dinner with, or go to the cinema with, or to go on holiday with. Being permanently single really sucks, and I've had enough of it.

But you see, before I'm able to try and find that someone special, I feel I need to address my weight issue first. It's not necessarily because I would never stand a chance of pulling a girl when I'm fat. It's more about my own personal sense of worth. You see, I don't find myself attractive, and therefore I can't imagine anyone else finding me attractive. I have a really poor self image of my body - and I therefore have a crippling lack of confidence.

I realize that I might be attaching too much significance on my weight. You never know, I could end up in a couple of year's time being thin and still lonely. But I can't get the idea out of my head that if I were a thinner person, then happiness would automatically follow.
Sunday, March 19, 2006 | 0 comments

Nineteen days in

It's Sunday today, so it's weigh-in day. I jumped on the scales after my shower this morning as usual, to find out that I have lost three pounds in the last week. That brings me to a total of 10lbs lost since I started two and a half weeks ago. I'm pretty pleased so far, and am now wondering whether I can lose another four pounds in the next two weeks - as that would take me to a whole stone within the month. I guess we'll see...

Starting weight: 24 stone, 3 pounds
Current weight: 23 stone, 7 pounds
Ideal weight: 14 stone
Weight lost so far: 10 pounds
Weight still to lose: 9 stone, 7 pounds
Sunday, March 19, 2006 | 0 comments

Friday, March 17, 2006

Anomaly or not?

I did something today that I told myself I would never do. I got on the scales on one of my non weigh-in days. My official weigh-in happens on a Sunday morning, and for the first few weeks of my weight loss, I was also allowing myself an unofficial weigh-in on Wednesday too. But today is Friday and I got on the scales today too.

My excuse is that I got a bit of a scare on Wednesday. The official weigh-in on Sunday had gone rather well. I had lost a further 2 pounds since the Wednesday, bringing my total up to 7 pound (half a stone!) since I started. But then on Wednesday, rather than seeing that I had lost maybe another pound or two, the scales said that I had put weight back on. They said that I had gone from 23st 10lbs on Sunday to 23st 13lbs. And to be quite honest, I was quite shocked about it. I had been sticking religiously to my calorie quota every day, and so I couldn't understand the anomaly.

It kind-of bugged me for the next couple of days, till this morning when I couldn't resist finding out what was going on. Was it just a random reading, or was I beginning to put weight back on? I had to know. So, as usual after my shower, I pulled the scales out and jumped on. Thankfully, I was down again - this time it read 23st 8lbs. This is a huge relief, because I can now continue believing that it's working - even if it doesn't count as an official weight.
Friday, March 17, 2006 | 0 comments

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Walking

One of the things I do, in addition to watching what I eat, is to do a bit of gentle exercise. I'm not sure I have the balls to sign up to a gym -- in my mind's eye I see them as being full of thin healthy people, with not a hair out of place, hardly breaking into a sweat. Whereas, I just know that I would be a sweaty wreak of a man within about 2 minutes of entering the place. And I also have a fear that my weight might also break the machines - and that is just too embarrassing a prospect to even consider.

And so, my exercise of choice at the moment is walking. I read a while ago about that thing where you're meant to do 10,000 paces a day to be healthy. I hear it's about equivalent to 5 miles, which seems a lot. But I decided to give it a go. I got myself a pedometer off eBay for a few quid, to help record how many steps I do, and I log them all in a spreadsheet in my computer (I do love the stats).

I've been doing it for a while now, and at first I found the 10,000 target really hard to achieve. You have to invest quite a lot of time each day to walk distances that far - at my plodding 3mph pace, it would take about an hour and forty minutes to do the requisite 10,000 paces. However, as I've continued walking, I've found that my pace has gotten a little quicker, so that I can maintain a 4mph pace now. And I've also found that I can fit the walking into my regular routine.

Gone is the bus pass, as I now walk to work and back every day. That's about 2 miles each day. Also, most days I also go for a bit of a constitutional walk before lunch - normally just for about 20 minutes - but that's enough time to fit in another mile. And if I go out at all in the evening, I also walk wherever I'm going, which adds a few extra miles on the total.

With walking everywhere, there are certainly some drawbacks. It takes much longer to get anywhere that it would have been in a car or on the bus, so you have to plan ahead a bit. You also run the risk of arriving at places all hot and sweaty from the walk. At first, I worried about this - about whether I would smell of body odour at work - but as I've continued walking, I've become fitter, and don't get so hot and bothered along the route. And I know that I can walk to work without ending up as a dripping red mess at the end of the journey.

Over the last few weeks, even despite the recent horrible weather we've had here in Britain, I've managed to maintain a daily average of about 11,000 paces - which equates to about 80 minutes of aerobic exercise. On WLR that gives me about another 470 calories I can consume each day on top of my daily allowance. However, I'm trying not to eat these exercise calories at the moment, as I want to get good (above target) start on my weight loss over the first few weeks.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006 | 0 comments

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

After one week

It's seven days since I officially started dieting, and it was time for an unofficial weigh-in. I've decided that the 'official' weekly weigh-ins will be on Sunday mornings. But for comparative purposes, I might also hop on the scales on Wednesday instead, to see how I've done in comparison to my start date.

I hadn't actually weighed myself for quite a few years before starting this current diet, and I didn't have any scales in the house. But I decided that I needed to be able to monitor my progress over time, to see if it was working. However, a standard set of household scales can't really cope with someone as heavy as me, so I had to explore a bit on the net and find a some high capacity models. Althought I had no idea of my exact weight before going scales shopping, I knew I was way over 20 stone, and therefore I wanted to get scales with the highest capacity available, in order to prepare for the worst.

I ended up ordering the Tanita High Capacity Scales, which are quite expensive, but look quite good too. And, most importantly of all, they have a capacity that goes up to 28stone, 8 pounds (that's 180 kilos in new money).

Anyway, so this morning, after drying myself off after my shower, I pulled the scales out and stepped tentatively onto them. The digital display flickered for a bit, and then displayed the figure. I was 23 stone, 12 pounds - a whole 5 pounds lighter than my starting weight a week ago. I stepped on again, just to make sure, and the same figure came up. It was official. I had lost some weight - probably for the first time in about 5 years.

As I walked to work, I realised that I had a smile plastered all over my face. I felt happy that I was doing something positive about my weight, and I was even happier that it appeared to be working.

So, here's the updated figures:

Starting weight: 24 stone, 3 pounds
Current weight: 23 stone, 12 pounds
Ideal weight: 14 stone
Weight lost so far: 5 pounds
Weight still to lose: 9 stone, 12 pounds
Wednesday, March 08, 2006 | 0 comments

Friday, March 03, 2006

Support mechanisms

I don't really talk to a lot of people about my weight. I'm the first one to make jokes about being fat with my friends - mostly as a self defense mechanism. But I don't really talk to anyone seriously about my weight - even though it's something that impacts upon my life every day. There's only really two people I've talked to about it - my mother, and a girl at work. This colleague of mine is trying to lose weight herself. But her target loss is something like one stone, which seems like a drop in the ocean compared to what I need to lose. But I find it very supportative to be able to discuss things with her, like healthy eating and exercise. These are topics that I don't know an awful lot about - despite my 34 years of age - but she's not judgemental about my ignorance. Actually, I think she enjoys having someone to talk to as about it as well.

Despite working in the same office, our conversations are not the kind of thing we want to say outloud, so we often end up chatting using instant messenger. Because it's not face-to-face, I sometimes feel able to open up a lot more than I normally would, and I find that very cathartic.

She also put me on to a great website called Weight Loss Resources, where you basically record every single thing you consume. It has a massive database of food from supermarkets and restaurant chains throughout the UK, and can tell you exactly how many calories, how much fat, carbohydrates, and so on are in diffent foods. It happens to really suit me, because I love fiddling around with statistics. In fact, I would probably say I'm a bit anal about it. But the practice of noting down every single thing you consume, from a cup of tea in the morning to the hand full of sweets I sometimes have before going to bed, certainly has opened my eyes to just how much I eat.

The web site takes your current weight, height and sex, and gives you a daily allowance of calories you're not meant to exceed. My total, because I'm so tall (6 foot, 2 inches) and so fat is quite large at the moment: 2,414 calories. And I can up this total even further by doing exercise. The idea is that, if I stick to this amount, then I will gradually lose 2 pounds in weight every week, which at this stage seems like a really slow rate of loss. But I've read that a slow loss is more likely to be a sustainable loss, so I'm going with it for now. But at a rate of 2 pounds a week, it's going to take me till July of 2007 to attain my ideal weight - that's 17 months away.

I told you it would be a long journey.
Friday, March 03, 2006 | 0 comments

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

The beginning

On Ash Wednesday, the 1st March, 2006 I made a decision. I wanted to become a big loser. I wanted to do something about my weight problem. For the last 20 years, as I got fatter and fatter, I told myself it wasn't a problem. There were people worse than me - fatter that me. But then I realised that I was just kidding myself. I was way bigger than other fatties I saw on the street. And it was making me unhealthy and unhappy. And I'd had enough. So, with a bit of encouragement from one or two people, I decided to start eating properly for a change.

Through this diary, I hope to record my progress over time. If it ends up being of any help to other people, then that's fantastic. But that's not my main motivation. This is going to be a long hard journey, and writing stuff down is hopefully going to help me keep going.

So, let's get things started. Here's my starting point, as of today:

Stating weight: 24 stone, 3 pounds
Current weight: 24 stone, 3 pounds
Target weight: 14 stone
Amount still to lose: 10 stone, 3 pounds

Wish me luck!
Wednesday, March 01, 2006 | 0 comments