Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Week 41

3lb loss!

Well {insert expression of amazement and disbelief}! I'm amazed to find that I've lost 3lbs this week. Given that I had a trip away for a couple of days and the eating wasn't so easy to track, I thought I'd be lucky to stay level. I certainly wasn't expecting a three pound loss.

OK, I'll probably level out for a couple of weeks, but I'm happy for now.


Statistical summary:

Starting Weight: 19st 9lb – 275lbs
Current Weight: 14st 5lb – 201lbs
Total Weight Loss: 74lbs
Weight Lost since joining the Knights of the Round Bottoms: 9lbs

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Week 40

2lb loss!

Phew - every time I go for a week or two without losing any weight I begin to fear that I've plateaued. However, I can heave a sigh of relief I haven't this time.

Statistical Significance: having crossed the 70lb barrier, that means that I have now lost more than 5 stone since I began. I don't go hungry and I don't eat things that taste bad. I must be doing something right.


Statistical summary:

Starting Weight: 19st 9lb – 275lbs
Current Weight: 14st 8lb – 204lbs
Total Weight Loss: 71lbs
Weight Lost since joining the Knights of the Round Bottoms: 6lbs

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Week 39

*Sigh* No change.

I thought I'd been pretty good with my eating this week, but I guess with the continued vile weather we've been having, my activity levels have been pretty low. For a brief moment the scales flickered on 14st 9lbs, but then went back up to 14st 10lbs. Maybe I have lost 1/4 lb or something, but my scales don't do fractions.


Statistical summary:

Starting Weight: 19st 9lb – 275lbs
Current Weight: 14st 10lb – 206lbs
Total Weight Loss: 69lbs
Weight Lost since joining the Knights of the Round Bottoms: 4lbs

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Week 38

A 2lb loss, which counters the 1lb gain last week.

However, there is significance in reaching 206lbs: this means that I have now lost 25% of my bodyweight since I changed my eating habits 9 months ago. I'm only 3/4 of the man I used to be!

Carry on at this rate and within 2 years and 3 months I will weigh 0lbs...


Statistical summary:

Starting Weight: 19st 9lb – 275lbs
Current Weight: 14st 10lb – 206lbs
Total Weight Loss: 69lbs
Weight Lost since joining the Knights of the Round Bottoms: 4lbs

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Less Weight, Harsher Judgements (imported from Ramblings of the Bearded One)

I have just staggered about 250 yards up the road from the hardware shop with a 20kg (about 44lbs) bag of coal and only just made it. The bit that I find really hard to fully get my head around, is not that I’m so unfit that carrying 20kg causes me problems, but that 9 months ago I was 30kg (about 66lbs) heavier than I am now.

I have serious doubts that I would have made it up the road, without having to stop several times on the way, if I’d tried carrying 30kg of coal, yet I used to carry that amount extra with me every where I went. And, if I am ever to approach that mystical realm of the ‘ideal weight’, I still need to shed another 20kg.

So why then, when I am 30kg lighter than I used to be, do I sometimes feel like I’ve never been so fat?

For a while I thought it was just because I’m so much more focused on my weight these days: being more careful about my eating habits and weighing myself once a week. But I’m beginning to suspect there might be another factor in this equation, which is I’ve shifted into a different category of person.

These days I can look in the mirror, or catch sight of myself in a shop window and I look like an overweight, middle-aged guy who’s let himself go and could seriously do with losing some weight. But when I was 30kg heavier, I was so outside the realms of “normality” that the idea that I could actually do something didn’t really come into it.

When you look at someone like Johnny Vegas (British comedian – star of “Sex Lives of the Potato Men” and Channel 4’s “18 stone of Idiot”), part of his act, and who he is, is defined in the sheer size of him. It does not occur to you that he could ever be slim, or have a well-sculpted body.

The fat man and the bearded lady of the circus freak show were firmly in the realm of “other”. They were curiosities to be stared at, ridiculed, or even pitied, but they were not anything we might become. As such, we could dismiss them and move on to the next novelty item.

But when someone is like us, but a bit fatter, or a woman’s moustache starts to get slightly darker and she finds a hair or two growing on her chin, then we freak out about it a great deal more. Suddenly we will be full of well-meaning, and probably very patronising, advice. We will whisper to our friends about how they are not making an effort. We will bitch and snipe out of fear, because that person could be us, if we aren’t vigilant enough. This attitude that, if you could be normal but don’t try to be, then you deserve every bit of harsh criticism you get, is extremely common.

So it seems I have now moved into these realms of judgement. When I was buying clothes with a number of ‘X’s on the label, then I was in ‘outsize’ clothing, i.e., outside the sizes of normality. As such, I was more easily dismissed. Now that my clothing sizes are ‘Large’, I’m into that range that says I could be normal if I just tried a bit harder.

Clearly I am not fatter than I have ever been, but the irony of it is that by losing enough weight to move out of the realm of “other”, I am now in a position where I can be judged more harshly by a greater number of people.

Bizarre really.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Week 37

Nuts! A one pound gain!

However, in my defence, m’lud, it was my birthday last week and I ended up going for 2 meals out last week and had extra cake on the day. Add to that the fact that the weather has been positively vile this week so I’ve barely left the house and I’ve used up all the excuses I can think of.


Statistical summary:

Starting Weight: 19st 9lb – 275lbs
Current Weight: 14st 12lb – 208lbs
Total Weight Loss: 67lbs
Weight Lost since joining the Knights of the Round Bottoms: 2lbs