« I Count - and so should you | ::: | A little Hawaiian lesson (are you listening Jason?) »
Taking those big decisions
I’ve mentioned on my And this is me page in the past that my weight is “more than it should be, less than it has been”; meaning, I suppose, that like pretty much everyone else on the planet, I’m never really at the weight that all the diet books and weight loss guru’s say I should be.
That’s never really been an issue for me, as I’m well over six feet tall and the weight is fairly evenly spread, so I just look ‘filled out’ rather than morbidly obese. But I’ve noticed over the last few months that my weight is starting to creep up again and I think it’s time to try and do something about it again.
Several years ago, I decided that I weighed far too much; I was up to nearly 20 stone and I was creeping up in jeans sizes, to the point where I was having trouble getting clothes that would fit. So, I went on a crash diet (which is never the best way to go about these things), cutting out alcohol, giving up eating bread, having salad’s all the time, etc, and getting more exercise (walking, cycling, that sort of thing).
Over the course of three months, I went from nearly 20 stone, to just a shade under 15 stone; I went from a 42in waist, to a 34in and instead of buying shirts that had XL as a size, I could buy shirts that had M as a size.
[As an aside at this point, I should point out that whilst I was 14 stone 13 pounds, the 'experts' said that my ideal weight was 13 stone 12 pounds; however, if I'd lost that extra stone, I'd have looked like something that escaped from Belsen - as people were already telling me that I looked unwell and gaunt. If the 'experts' say you're overweight, don't believe them!]
I still have all those clothes, but I can’t get into them anymore and haven’t been able to for a while. The backsliding started within about two months of me saying that I wasn’t technically on a diet anymore. Because of the way I’d done it, I hadn’t changed my lifestyle permanently - which is the only way to do it - and so as all the bad habits returned, so did the weight. Since then, I haven’t made another serious attempt to do anything about it.
Until today.
But this time, I’m going to do it differently and I’m going to do it in stages. The first stage starts today and is the one that is probably going to be the hardest initially - no alcohol during June.
I say this one will be the hardest, but in a way it will also be quite easy, as I will have the financial incentive to keep me going. Most of my drinking is done on a Friday night and a Saturday afternoon. The rest of the week, I tend to stay off it so that I can be in better shape for work.
But during those weekend sessions, I can sometimes put quite a bit away; on a Friday night possibly not more than three or four pints, but on a Saturday, it might be three or four with lunch at one pub; move on to another for a couple more; and then perhaps three or four more at a third, during dinner. All-in-all, I probably end up spending £30 to £40 across the weekend that is on drink, or on drink-related items (pub lunches, etc). Now, whilst not every weekend, this does add up in terms of finance and alcohol units across a month to a total that neither my bank balance or my health can afford anymore. I’ve been wanting to buy a new computer for months (this one keeps locking unexpectedly, the CD doesn’t work properly anymore) and the money I’m spending two or three weekends a month could pay for a nice, shiny new 20in iMac!
So the alcohol’s gone as from today. (Well, actually as from Tuesday of this week which is when I finished up a can that was in the fridge, but today is Resolution Day!).
So that’s the first stage. That’s going to be June’s project, and I’ll probably make lots of posts about how easy or how difficult I’m finding it, or how rich I suddenly feel. Of course, I’ll have to find something else to do with my Saturday afternoons.
The second stage is to try something that we’ve been talking about at work. The company I work for sells nutritional supplements, and I take the products myself. But there’s one I’ve never tried, called Konjac Fibre. This is a product, derived from a Japanese plant, that is supposed to aid weight-loss, at the same time as balancing blood sugar levels and aiding proper digestion by giving the body a decent supply of fibre.
What we’ve been talking about is developing a project whereby we invite customers to take part in a three month programme of changing their diet and exercise regimes (permanently) to enable them to lose weight healthily and keep it off. The target weight loss for the three months is one stone.
Before launching the project on an unsuspecting nation (probably around January next year), a couple of us thought that we’d try it ourselves and this is what I intend to do from July.
For me there will be two major changes involved to successfully complete the three months. Firstly, to take more exercise (or, indeed, any exercise); hopefully, with summer coming up, I’ll be able to get out on my bike a lot, do plenty of walking, etc. The second will be to improve my diet. Whilst I eat a lot of fruit, I don’t eat as much fresh produce as I really should, and I do still fall back on convenience cooking (Birds Eye Chicken Grill, anyone?). This needs to change.
Hopefully, with the added support of the supplements I’ll be able to lose that bit of weight; I think a stone to a stone-and-a-half would be enough to make the difference. But that’s for July.. let’s get through June first!
Comments
4 Responses to “Taking those big decisions”
I think you know what to do....
Wolfs Stuff
Wolfs Helpers
-
[...] the June Project (see this post, this post and this post for more info) and so far through the July Project I had not weighed [...]
[...] written about my June Project (staying off the alcohol) in three posts so far; check out Taking Those Big Decisions, TTBD2 and TTBD3 for the full story. On the whole, I think it was a success. I had one planned [...]
[...] [TTBD 1 and TTBD 2 give the background to this post. Check ‘em out if you get a bit confused!] [...]
[...] should probably read my post, Taking Those Big Decisions, before reading this one - at least if you want to see where this started. You don’t, like, [...]