Making headway

Today was good. I’m fairly sure my staple breakfast is key to everything. When I have a good start the rest of the day falls into place more. Today I had three light meals, did allow myself a slice of cake after one and a mini ice cream after dinner, but haven’t eaten anything at all between meals. Had a walk to the local town and back too, and for the first time I actually strode back up the hill to my house with some purpose. I attacked it. It’s no longer a challenge simply to put one foot in front of the other and make it to the top, I’ve moved on a stage. I’ve taken an important step towards my fitness challenge, and it feels really good.

I also weighed myself  for the first time this year. I wasn’t planning on doing this but I needed some confirmation of my progress after a couple of not so great days. I’ve lost about 15lbs since mid December, probably almost all this month. My bad breath problem seems to be under control too, don’t know if it’s the mouthwash or whether it’s just cleared up by itself.

I have another hypnotherapy session tomorrow, which I’m looking forward to. It’s not midnight yet and I’m leaving my tax return and all the other stuff I should have done by now and prioritising looking after myself. I’ll get the return done online tomorrow with any luck, and if I don’t I’ll just pay the fine.  Sorting my health out is more important, so I’m going to bed, not a little elated. Life is good.

Re-invigorating lifestyle changes

I think one of the biggest challenges anyone trying to lose weight or make other changes in their life faces is when, after an initial positive change, they start to drift back to their old ways and have to give the change a kick start. I’m at that point now. The last few days I’ve been getting progressively worse and am not following my new rules. Yesterday was a mess, only had one proper meal but grazed most of the afternoon on biscuits and odd sandwiches, whether hungry or not. I also failed to deliver on other initiatives I had planned – in particular I hardly left my desk all day apart from to get food, when the plan was to take regular breaks and walk round the garden or something.

Why?

The only explanation I have is bad habits. I had no strong cravings, I didn’t get into a battle of wills, I just lost focus and drifted back to my old ways. It is almost like a computer being re-booted, except slowly over a few days. The new lifestyle habits are evidently still only stored in my RAM, and the old habits are firmly etched on my hard drive. I need to find a way to delete them and “save” my new life. Possibly literally.

It’s frustrating to keep taking two steps forward and one back, but perhaps I need to focus on less things at once until I can make them habits.  I’ve been going to bed much too late, and some days this has impacted in the mornings in that I’ve had breakfast too late, or not at all. That’s not good.

Today I managed my stable porridge breakfast, so the day has already started better. I’m now going to mostly try and do the following

– take a break from my desk every 60-90 mins and go outside for 5 mins

– drink water if I’m tempted to eat between means, and if that doesn’t stop the urge, ask myself out loud if I am hungry, and if so whether what I’m about to eat is the best solution.

– go to bed before midnight

I’ve also become rather lax at listening to my hypnotherapy MP3, which I’m supposed to do at least twice a week. I’ll do that on my next break.

My fitness challenge

Today I am excited. I have received my entry form for what I’ve decided will be my mid-year fitness challenge, the Yorkshire three peak walk. This is something I discussed with Wanda, my hypnotherapist, and we agreed that it would be great to have a positive goal to focus on, rather than a list of things not to do. We did some work under hypnosis on visualising myself crossing the finishing line – it seemed powerful at the time though hasn’t really stuck with me. I think now I can officially enter it’s going to seem more real though, and I have another hypnotherapy session next Friday so we may work on it some more I hope.

This involves a circular walk of around 26 miles, climbing the three highest mountains in Yorkshire (not very high, all around 2500 ft) for a total ascent and descent of over 5000 feet, with the traditional challenge being to complete it in 12 hours.  There is an organised charity event for Heart Research UK so I’m going to try and raise a little money for them in the process, but I’d be lying if I said that was the main motivation. I want to set myself a challenge that I know will take significant weight loss and excercise for me to be able to achieve.

The event is on 20 June, the day after my 44th birthday, so I’ve got five more months to shift weight and get much fitter. This gives a purpose to my walking know, and I couldn’t have a better birthday present than crossing the finishing line within the 12 hour target. I think I’ll try and round up a team from the office too – there are several ultra-fit types there who could do this any day of the week with no prep. But being part of a team would give me an extra incentive not to let the side down. The lightest I’ve been any time in the last 10 years is about 260lbs (18 st 4 if you’re British and not good at your 14 times table), so that’s my loose goal for 20 June – seems realistic, that would be 60 lbs in just under 6 months. But really if I complete the walking challenge it will be mission accomplished.

A triumphant day

Yesterday was a very good day. It’s funny, because on any of my 27 (approx) previous big initiatives to lose weight, I’d have though it was a bad day. My calorie consumption was slightly on the high side I suspect – don’t know exactly but I’m guessing at lunch as I ate in a restaurant. BUT, the old me would have eaten twice as much at least. And as I’m now concerned with changing habits for life rather than precisely how many grams of fat I may or may not have burned off in one day, there were some great positives.

#1 – Had a business lunch for the first time this year, quite an important meeting. I therefore wasn’t too focused on the food, as I had to concentrate on the meeting, and being a man, can only think of one thing at once.  Here’s the great thing. Without really thinking about it, and without trying, I just naturally put down my fork with quite a lot of Spaghetti Carbonara left on the plate, and pushed it away. Not because it wasn’t nice, it was lovely, but because I had had enough. And the lady I was meeting, who I would guess is a size 8 at most and very glamorous, ordered the same and cleared her plate!

#2 – I wore my belt on the fifth loop all day, and am doing so again today. I bought this belt on 5 Jan and was using the third loop then. It’s a bit tight now, but definitely a bit too loose on the 4th.

#3 I smashed my own world record* for walking from the station to my house (the long way round) by 6 minutes, coming in at the 34 minute mark. Disappointingly, I still had to have one puffing and panting stop 3/4 of the way up the hill, but I’m going to do it all in one go soon.

#4 I didn’t eat between meals apart from an apple when I got home late at night, or anything sweet at mealtimes.

*It’s fair to say that this particular world record is not one that is focused on by many of the worlds top athletes, as the IOC have yet to introduce “walking from the station to my house (the long way round)” as an official Olympic event. This is disappointing, but does increase my chances of hanging on to the record. I am the official timekeeper too, and operating anonymously, so that’s gotta help. Whatever, it was a personal best.

Food really IS my enemy

And tonight it stepped up its hostilities. I put some jacket potatoes in the over for dinner – you’d think that would be safe enough wouldn’t you – and one of them exploded, just as we were about to open the oven door. Splattered everywhere it did, could have took my head off if I’d been opening it a minute earlier. I bought a pineapple yesterday which, now that I look at it again, looks a lot like an unexploded bomb.  I hadn’t anticipated when I started this battle that the food would fight back. Things are getting ugly.