Another milestone...

Starting Weight: 19st 9lb - 275lbs
Current Weight: 10st 9lb - 175lbs
Total Weight Loss: 126lbs

I REALLY thought the last post would be my last one.

However, I hit a new, supremely unlikely milestone today when I weighed in at 10 stone, 9 pounds.

In terms of straightforward pounds or kilos, the number isn't significant, but when you use British Stones, it really is.

I'm now exactly 9 stone lighter than I was at my heaviest.

The Losing A Hundredweight title of this blog was about losing 8 stone, which at the time seemed like an impossibility, so to lose another stone more than that.

It does feel strange.

Under 11 Stone???

Starting Weight: 19st 9lb - 275lbs 

Current Weight: 10st 13.6lb - 153.6lbs 

Total Weight Loss: 121.4lbs

I thought perhaps the last post on this blog might have been the last post I would have on here.

However, the weight has continued to fall during Lockdown and I have dropped another 4lbs over the past couple of months, taking me below the 11 stone mark.

The significance of this is I don't ever remember being this weight in adulthood.

As a child I don't recall ever standing on scales or knowing what my weight actually was. I wasn't at a level my parents ever worried about, and when I look back at photos from then I look perfectly fine. However, I know I felt I was larger than I was because my siblings both had a smaller bone structure than me so seemed elfin by comparison.

It was probably in my late teens that I first ever became aware of my actual weight. And while I don't have an exact memory, I have a sense of it being two to four pounds over eleven stone.

When I set up this blog, I called it losing a hundredweight (112lbs, or 8 stone) because I needed to lose at least that to approach a "normal" BNI. It seemed so ridiculous that the title was being a bit tongue-in-cheek. I didn't seriously ever expect to reach that level of weight loss.

10 years ago, when I almost got there, but then I went back up by a couple of stone, I assumed that was probably it. It was highly unlikely I'd get back to it.

The idea of going a bit further and actually reaching that "normal" weight was definitely out of the question, so when I reached that - see last blog entry - it felt quite bizarre.

I certainly didn't expect to lose another 4 pounds and actually go below 11 stone.

Truth be told, I didn't think my body shape would ever allow me to be this weight, even if I starved myself to death.

Now, I don't know where I will end up.

Have I hit as low as I will go?

Will I go even lower?

If so, how far down could that be?

At what point might my health actually be compromised if I do?

I do have to say that I believe I'm still eating healthily. I am not doing any strange diets, or starving myself, or purging.

I'm as surprised as anyone I've lost a stone in weight since Lockdown.

I wish I could feel a sense of achievement or pride about it, but it feels like it's happened on its own, not because I put any extra special effort in, beyond not giving into the cravings (yes, I know that's a biggie, but I was already doing that before Lockdown).

I am... normal?

Starting Weight: 19st 9lb - 275lbs
Current Weight: 11st 3.6lb - 157.6lb
Total Weight Loss: 117.4lbs

About 7 weeks ago I hit the extraordinarily unlikely goal of actually losing a hundredweight – an old British measurement which is 8 stone, or 112 pounds – from my original starting point a little over 15 years ago (see last post, Finally Got There)

Having lost another 4lbs since then I have actually crossed the BMI threshold from "overweight" to "normal"

There's no doubt this feels extremely odd – like I've been told I have entered some kind of fantasy land.

The world still looks the same (well it doesn't actually, but that's because of Covid-19 Lockdown), but now, according to the rough-guide-to-health BMI – Body Mass Index – I am no longer overweight.

I was a teenager when I was last this size.

And even then I didn't feel particularly normal because both my brother and sister have smaller bone structures than I do, so were more elfin by comparison to my outsize dwarf body shape.

"If only I was as fat as I was when I used to think I was fat" is a common cry among those of us whose weight only ever seemed to climb upwards.

And yet, here I stand (or sit because I'm typing at the computer), in a position where society can no longer sneer or judge me because of my weight.

But again, like the last milestone, it isn't elation I feel.

Perhaps incredulity.

However, I also know that BMI is only a rough guide, that doesn't take into consideration muscle mass or fitness.

And the reality is, I am definitely not fit. The ME/CFS limits the amount of exercise I can do before my body gives up and shuts down.

Nor have the psychological demons, that led to me self medicating with food, disappeared. They are still there, but I have a better control over them.

I can still hear them whispering in my ear, "you know, now that you're lighter than you've ever been, surely you can treat yourself to a thick chocolatey cake..."

Finally got there

Starting Weight: 19st 9lb - 275lbs Current Weight: 11st 7.6lb - 161.6lb Total Weight Loss: 113.4lbs


At one point, about 10 years ago, I almost reached my target of losing a hundredweight - 8 stone, or 112 pounds. I was literally less than one pound away, but it was a bit of a blip and then the weight started edging back up again.

Over a couple of years I went up to 14 stone, then came back down to around 13 and a bit, where I hovered for the best part of 6 years.

2 years ago I came down a stone and have since hovered around 12st 4lbs, give or take 5lbs.

But now, during isolation because of Covid-19, the weight has started dropping again. A combination of not being able to go for hot chocolates with clients at In House Chocolates, nor being able to eat too much bread from Earth's Crust Bakery, and the fact we deliberately didn't restock the store cupboards with sweet treats before we went into Lockdown (to completely disable my ability to self medicate that way), has had an effect.

And when the tension and mental overdrive of putting weekly live podcasts together is thrown in, I've been burning up more than I've been consuming.

This morning, when I weighed myself, I was surprised to see I'm now 11 stone 7.6 pounds (161.6lbs or 73.3kg).

I have crossed that hundredweight barrier, 15 years after I started this journey, and 10 years after I almost got there.

But I think what's really surprised me is the lack of elation.

For sure, I can find a certain level of quiet satisfaction, but not the air-punching, happy-dancing, whooping-with-joy I might have expected.

Perhaps if I had hit this threshold 10 years ago, that would have been the time for celebration, because then it was still something I was aiming for.

However, for the last several years I've been relatively content with my weight. Yes I've still been officially overweight for my height, but compared with where I used to be, it's felt so much less important.

The weight loss, and the eventual achievement of losing more than 112 pounds really has been a side effect of a lifestyle change, and not a permanent struggle to try and attain the seemingly impossible.

And if I lose another 3.6 pounds I will actually cross the barrier into a "normal" weight for my size and build. I will no longer be officially "overweight" for the first time since I was probably a teenager.

But if that happens, I won't be feeling the need to celebrate with a large chocolate cake...


38 years old and over 19½ stone, vs 53 years old and 11½ stone

10 Years

It's now almost exactly 10 years since I began a lifestyle change, focusing on "healthy eating" - not dieting.

At that point I was 19 stone 9 pounds - or 275 pounds

This morning I weighed 13 stone exactly - 182 pounds

My lowest point was a few years ago when I was about 20lbs lighter than now, but then it crept back up. I did get as high as 13st 11lbs a couple of years ago, but mostly I've wavered about 5lbs either side of 13 stone.

The main thing about all this is I've kept the vast majority of the weight off.

95-98% of diets end in failure - that is, within 2 to 3 years all the weight has gone back on, and for most, they are even heavier than when they started. Diets don't work, because they do not address the causes of over eating.

I might not be my "ideal weight" according to the height-weight charts (somewhere around 147-158lbs), but at least I'm not permanently carrying an extra 90+ pounds around on me all the time and I have an eating system I can live with long term.

I guess that must count as some kind of success.


Starting Weight: 19st 9lb - 275lbs
Current Weight: 13st - 182lbs
Body fat: 24.8%
Total Weight Loss: 93lbs

Week 462

4lb gain.

Could have been worse, but not out of the fire yet...


Starting Weight: 19st 9lb - 275lbs
Current Weight: 13st 11lbs - 193lbs
Body fat: 28.9%
Total Weight Loss: 82lbs

Week 460

0.8lb loss

Pre-Feastmas check-in - although some extras have already been finding their way through, so I was probably lower last week


Starting Weight: 19st 9lb - 275lbs
Current Weight: 13st 7lbs - 189lbs
Body fat: 27.5%
Total Weight Loss: 86lbs

Week 453

7lb gain.

Half a stone up since April. I haven't dipped below the 13 stone mark all year.


Starting Weight: 19st 9lb - 275lbs
Current Weight: 13st 7.8lbs - 189.8lbs
Body fat: 27.9%
Total Weight Loss: 85.2lbs

Week 427

Not a great deal of difference...

I'm aware it's 11 weeks since I last posted, but very little has actually happened. I seem to have levelled out.

Since New Year I've not gone above about 13st 3lbs (185lbs), but nor have I gone below 13 stone (182lbs). Each week I either get excited that I've lost a bit and that will be the start of a trend, or I get disappointed that the previous week's loss didn't hold.

So unless I make a dramatic shift in my habits, this seems to be where I'm sitting at the moment


Starting Weight: 19st 9lb - 275lbs
Current Weight: 13st 0.8lbs - 182.8lbs
Body fat: 24.9%
Total Weight Loss: 92.2lbs

Week 416

1.8lb loss

That's more like it!


Starting Weight: 19st 9lb - 275lbs
Current Weight: 13st 0.2lbs - 182.2lbs
Body fat: 25.5%
Total Weight Loss: 92.8lbs