Weight loss blog 3: The new batch

Aaand 97 kilos.  Consistent.  I like that.

Food's great.  I've been trying to mix up the diet a lot lately and so far I'm having some quite surprising success, but it is a little bit severe.  The meal plan is roughly as follows:

Breakfast - porridge on weekdays, eggs on weekends
Lunch - soup on weekdays.  I'm usually eating late enough on weekends that breakfast and lunch are pretty interchangeable
Snack - protein drink on weekdays, not a heck of a lot on weekends
Dinner - at home, something sensible.  Out and about... yeah, that's difficult

And water.  At least 4 beakers of the stuff during the day.  Like, if you're not almost peeing clear, you might want more water.

I found three major problems.  I've not completely overcome them, but:

• Mid afternoon slump - about 3 or 4 pm all energy just leaves me and I'll become ravenous.
• The protein shakes help.  They're fairly light compared to a bag of crisps and they're really a fairly potent pick me up.
• Dinner - not so bad if I'm at home in the evening, but out and about, healthy dinner options are a pain to find
• Honestly, I reckon your best bet for this is those premade sandwiches in supermarkets.  They're like 500 calories which isn't terrible and they're pretty filling
• Fruit - I'll eat it and I like some of it, but eating fresh fruit regularly really upsets my stomach.  Reduces the snack options a bit
• No clue here.  I tried snacking on fruit, just ended up sticky and gassy so now I avoid it

On average, I'm knocking back 1200 calories a day.  Except for one day on Friday/Saturday which is quite often a takeaway day.  It's not great, but eating unhealthy food every now and then is kind of therapeutic.  I mean, I've got a gut full of curry at the moment.  The important thing is to get things in moderation and try to avoid the really horrendous stuff.  I reckon that much less than 1200 is going to result in low loss though, certainly seemed to have a bad effect.

I mean, I never thought I'd lost more by eating more.  That was a pleasant discovery.

Vitamin pills are a big deal, I think.  I'm not eating so much now but I still want the body to respond to the exercise in a favourable way.  And they're not that expensive for quite a large supply.

Protein powder, though.  I've got into this through a guy from work.  "You'll notice a big difference" he says.  Considering that this guy has mentored another colleague into some quite substantial weight loss, I figured I'd see how it worked out.  Well, for one thing it keeps me going throughout the afternoon and gives me a fairly large overall sense of wellbeing.  For another, I really do seem to be having an easier time with dropping the weight on this stuff.  It seems a bit counter intuitive, I thought that stuff promoted growth and muscle gain and all that, but... well, I guess it does and maybe it's just making the exercise easier.

Huh.  There's a revelation.

I guess everything else is common sense, really.  Don't eat until you're stuffed, eat more veg, less saturated fat and stuff.  I'm trying to avoid bread, mostly because nutrition-wise it's not that valuable unless you need the fibre.  I can't say enough about those soups though.  Low in fat and calories and generally full of veg.  That's a really decent lunch for under 250 calories and they're super convenient.

Can't say there's anything interesting going on here, just "eat less, make sure the stuff you're eating is valuable and keep an eye on what's going into your body".

I think the most important thing I've realised though is that after a few weeks, junk food cravings are like anything else that's addictive, you either don't get the pangs as bad or you get better at ignoring them.  Turns out that bodies are pretty good at looking after themselves if you give them a chance.

Weight loss blog 2: Electric boogaloo

So 98 kilos this week.  It's mildly discouraging after the amount of effort I've put in, but I suppose 2 lbs is what's considered healthy, right?

Wall of text this week, but I like this topic.

So, exercise.  I've read that diet is more important to weight loss, but I personally find that depends on your point of view.  See, the way I see it, committing to a diet is a constant effort, you've got to stick with it all day and if you don't, it's not going to work as well.  No surprises there.  The great thing about the gym?  Once you're there, you're there.  I'm not going to turn around and leave, it's more trouble than it's worth to leave and go home when I've made the effort to come out.

A diet is an all day, every day expenditure of mental energy or as I like to refer to it, "arse", as in "cannot be arsed".  It requires a lot of arse.  By the end of the day, you might be burnt out and want to get a pizza.  The gym boils down to a single decision point, a 10 second period where I decide to turn left and go home or to go straight ahead.  This requires little to no arse.

The other great thing?  Diets usually leave me craving more of a bad thing.  Exercise doesn't do that.  The more I exercise, the more I want to keep exercising and while the first 4 sessions are usually the ones I have to bully myself into attending, from then on the general feeling of well being takes me.

If you're having trouble with motivation, I also like to take advantage of my own mental shortcomings.  I'm a bloody terrible creature of habit, if I make plans and can't commit to them, I get irritable for hours.  It struck me after a while that by making the gym a regular thing, by making my mind think of it as "that thing you do after work", it suddenly became something that, rather like dropping a box of toothpicks in front of the rain man, I felt compelled to do and actually got a little put out if I missed.  I find ways to compensate if I miss a session now.

The gym isn't the be all and end all, though.  Really need to stress that.  While I think that the gym is really important, there are other perfectly reasonable alternatives.  I've quite taken a fancy to having a walk during my lunch break at work.  I get a good 3 miles in, I spend my lunch time actually getting fitter as opposed to eating and when I get back to work, I spend the next 45 minutes eating a casual lunch while I'm working so, tricking my mind again (which tends to become easily obsessed with statistics and numbers), I have a 1 hour 45 minute lunch break every day because my brain thinks that eating equates to lunch break, regardless of if I'm sipping on a boiling pot of soup while I'm coding.

So the gym itself.  You're going to need some supplies.  I won't go without the following:

• My kit (duh)
• A towel
• A water bottle
• Some source of loud music
• Decent shoes

Not too much, really.  But, let's step through these:

Kit - goes without saying.  I prefer shorts to tracky bottoms.  Plus, the horror of my milk-white legs and hypnotically jiggling backside gets me some elbow room on the machines.

Towel - Jesus Christ.  I've tried going to the gym without one a few times (I don't always remember it) and it's a miserable experience.  Not only is it gross for the guy that has to use the machine after you and pretty unsanitary too, there's no substitute.  I've tried paper towels, yesterday's work shirt or just my gym shirt, nothing else cuts it.  Hell, even if you've fallen behind on the laundry and have to use a floral tea towel.

Water - I can't drink when I'm working out because I cannot circular breathe and I would drown.  Some people can run and drink, God knows how, but I need a good gutful of water after 15-20 minutes otherwise, just to be graphic for a moment, my sinuses start backing up and I get a throat full of mucus.  But you've got sweat to replace, so there's that too.  I prefer to bring a bottle than to use the drinking fountain, it just seems... more sanitary and convenient, y'know?

Music - here's a controversial one.  I've read that some people swear by it, some think it throws you off your pace.  I hate working out without it, if only because it blocks out the trendy music on the tannoy and the constant "HNNNRGGHHH" from the weight area.  Getting a dedicated, up-tempo gym playlist really helps me a lot.  Get some songs for picking you up when you're completely tapped out, songs for that endurance section in the middle, whatever you need.  And the less you're aware of your own heavy breathing, the less you feel like a sexual predator!*

*Unless you're into that.  In which case, I'm going to need you to stay the hell away from my gym.

Shoes - I like the pair I got from Up and Running.  They're damned expensive but they're real durable and they check out your running style to see if you need anything to correct your gait.  I run on the insides of my feet, so now my shoes have raised insteps.  Helps me a lot.  If you don't want to commit to expenive running shoes, grab a beaten up pair of trainers.  If they're comfortable, you're on to a winner.


Then the routine.  For the first 7 weeks, I did nothing but cardio and tried to go for distance rather than intensity.  Start at 15 minutes on whatever machine you like, add a minute more every time you feel like you're not being challenged.  Thing is, it's a nice start, not too high intensity and I found it pretty good for beefing up my lung capacity which is totally a big deal.

I like a treadmill-cross trainer-stationary bike combination myself.  Get the intense stuff out of the way first then cool down.  I realise I'd benefit from a rower session too, but it plays merry hell with my back.

People will say that you should work some weight training in.  You totally can, it'll help, but I dropped a stone this year without lifting a gram so if you want to stick to the cardio for a bit, I reckon there's no harm done.  Besides, the pain you get after a session of weights can be a little hard to deal with at first, especially if you're stiff from cardio already.

I'm now trying a regime of interval training on the treadmill, high intensity on the cross trainer and then stationary bike if there's time follow by a bit of weight training.  They do say that you burn off more calories while idle with muscle.  Helps to get a bit more protein in your diet if you're going to bulk up and it does play a bit of havoc with your weight, but there are definite benefits.


I guess the last bit is the people.  You get a handful of stereotypes in the gym, some good and some bad.  The way I see it:

• Regulars - the people who actually want to get fitter and sweat a bit.  You'll know them when you see them.  They're not always overweight, they sure can be, but they tend to look serious and tend to be wearing sensible clothes. They're more than happy to stay out of your way and they're never a problem.
• Gym bunny - men and women, I tend to find it's mostly women.  The people who come in revealing designer outfits, wear designer fragrances and in the worst cases, actually have full makeup or carefully done up hair.  They're usually in with the early evening crowd and they almost always travel in packs.  I can only assume that they're in the gym to attempt to mate with others of their kind 'cause they never seem to so much as break a sweat.  Thankfully they're not too much of a problem, they rarely commit to one activity for more than 5 minutes at a time.
• The hulk - pretty much exclusively men.  Female specimens exist, and hot DAMN they're terrifying.  On their own, they're just fine.  They'll jump on a weight training machine or the free weights, do their thing and be on their way.  In groups of 3 or more, they can tie a machine up for half an hour or more as they take turns to yell at each other and do reps.  With the relative lack of weight machines but excellent variety thereof in most gyms, it's a waiting game, really.
• Socialites - if you're going to use the gym to go for a half hour walk and have a really good chat with your friends... y'know, it'd totally be cheaper to just start a walking group.  See some of the countryside or whatever.  I've nothing against training with friends, but when you've been in a cooldown phase for more than 5 minutes, I've got to question the rationale.
• That one guy who keeps dropping something really heavy in the weights area - because seriously, what the hell man?  We can hear that in the changing room and I fear that one day you may finally break through the floor and into the core of the earth.

But really, so long as you get consistent exercise, it works wonders.  I feel like a new man.  Something that challenges you with every session (and I mean really challenges you, push your limits but don't exceed them) speeds up the process immensely, but little and often's great too.

The Babel orifice

Again, another of those things that spawned from a peculiar dream. It was about wings, cultists and killing people. And lights, I think.
---
Time are changing, the population is growing. While we're getting by these days, the future may tell a different story.
In the early months of 2059, a worldwide initiative began. In order to make more room for housing, areas of beauty and historic interest would be remodelled into cheap apartment blocks. The original articles would be recreated using the latest virtual reality technology, allowing the world to experience them in the utmost comfort and convenience.
One of the last areas to be destroyed was Barden tower, North Yorkshire. A simple enough job, just run a wrecking ball through the base and watch as the upper half of the tower slid out of sight...
Wait, what?
Experts travelled from around the globe to witness and study this apparently natural phenomenon; a hole in reality, about 200 feet across hung in the sky supported by nothing. It didn't even appear to be doing anything interesting. No unspeakable horrors burst forth from it, nothing fell out, it was just a hole. Early scouting operations revealed that it lead to a curious land, a place where the sky was a perpetual, unbroken blue and the ground consisted entirely of what appeared to be discarded plastic, metal and rubber waste, spotlessly clean but damaged and bent beyond all use or recognition.
A few things happened. As word got out, the army were the first to take action, deciding to conquer this new land in the name of the crown. They set up small base camps, small strategic areas were fortified, others were destroyed. This achieved next to nothing. The army withdrew a few months after their initial occupation, leaving the site free for all manner of oddness to enter it.
The first civilians were the adventurers. People leading expeditions, trying to discover anything of interest. The regular explorers soon realised that it was rubbish all the way across. A neverending landscape of waste roughly three quarters the size of our Earth but lacking any water. Digging machines were deployed, most by wealthy oil tycoons attempting to cash in on an untapped landscpae. This revealed, several broken machines later, that it was garbage all the way down, too, but some of the metals were composed of an alloy unlike anything known to us. It could be bent slightly but seemed completely resistant to any attempts to pierce or otherwise damage it.
Second to enter was the media. For a few weeks, the news was filled with helicopter footage live from what had been dubbed "the Babel orifice". This lead to the occasional dogfight between rival sky-bound news reporters, but casualties remained minimal.
Soon after came the free spirits, thinkers and outcasts. Some were using this hole as final proof of the existence of God (or gods) almighty and would argue long into the night. Some saw it as the universe extending us a warm greeting, welcoming us to a new plane of existence, believing it to be a utopia, free from air pollution and commerce. Many believed the hole to be a god in itself and formed a number of cults.
Science, however, stood in the background. It observed all the little people flitting around the hole and it waited. Waited for them to lose interest. Science constructed a rocket. It would discover the source of this madness once and for all.
As the mighty space rocket Chronicle was rolled up to the launch structure, the assorted men, women and crazies looked on in interest. Men in severe white suits with clipboards who weren't even interested about what was in there, they were just building barricades and erecting a missile of some sort, all in complete, eerily professional silence. The rocket was built, the call went out to our world's fittest and bravest individuals and fully trained, suited and booted, they took their supplies and boarded the Chronicle, bidding a tearful farewell to their families. A flash of fire, a rush of smoke and the rocket took off, leaving a plume of smoke in its wake through the endless cerulean skies.
Up it went. Instruments and crystal clear broadcasting equipment from the rocket told the world how far they went.
10km
30km
65km (jettison the primary fuel tank
70km (the primary fuel tank fell to Earth with a thud, taking out the launching apparatus)
90km
The world looked on in awe. Another minute was all they had before they ran out of fuel and had to eject, but the sky showed no signs of ever ending. Onward they flew, ever upward, ever towards shining blue oblivion.
And then it vanished.

The rocket stood, suspended by some unseen force but still trying to spend its fuel payload. This ran out and was ejected, but the rocket rmained suspended gaining no further altitude. Instruments indicated an atmosphere was still somehow present, so cautiously they opened the airlock and peered out. Peered out at two large towers exerting some kind of invible force, holding them steady. In the near distance, a small city and below them a crowd of humans. A man broke off from the pack and addressed them through a loudhailer.
"Well howdy! Took you long enough to find us, guys."
After a long discussion, the crew of the Chronicle learned what had happened. The Bermuda triangle and almost every area fabled for causing people to vanish were actually freaks of nature. Holes that opened up onto a parallel world. People had spilled through slowly but surely into an alternate world, almost identical to ours but lacking any civilisation. Since the only people to find this place were generally explorers, thrillseekers and people looking to debunk urban myths, the population was made up of, generally, brave and learned citizens, causing technology to advance at an alarming rate. This world had already cured cancer and developed an AIDS vaccine, but was unable to return home.
"It's the holes, y'see" said their leader as the rode the train towards the city. "They're like... kinda like valves, right? Stuff goes through 'em one way but it can't go back, so people fall into this world all the time but damned if we can open the doors again. We owe you pretty big for that."
"You do?"
"Yeah! We learned how to detect dormant holes a couple decades back. We've been building the force towers around each of them now hoping to trap and object in there to keep the portals active, if you see what we mean. Kinda like a vacuum cleaner salesman jammin' his foot in your front door."
Slowly, a tunnel was built. A huge tube that was expanded to increase the size of the hole then extended to the surface where the Babel orifice lay. The constant stream of media and military attention had been enough to hold our hole open for around 16 months, since its discovery, so coming back was no trouble.

Some years later, the reason for all the waste in the garbage dimension was discovered. A hole on the other side of the world from our portal opened periodically, spewed out some waste and closed within moments. An attempt at communication was made by firing a message capsule through (sending a manned craft was impossible, the hole opened barely wider than was reuired to unleash its heavy payload then closed again). After a week, they wrote back. This world was a celestial rubbish tip, the dumping ground of the gods (or some sufficiently advanced race, at least), and while they were interested to know that people were living on their tip, they had no wish to communicate with us further.
They did note, however, that we were very lucky to have chosen to live on their non-biodegradable waste site. Apparently the celestial compost heap unleashed an odour so powerful that its strength could be measured in newtons.

Let's add yet another weight loss blog post to the Internet!

I've always had problems with weight loss.  I had it cracked a while back, when I was working in a 4 man support team and got a lot of exercise walking from building to building.  Admittedly having a dirt cheap company gym helped.  I remember most of my struggles, though.

It probably started in middle school.  I went from being a skinny, sickly kid to a pretty vastly overweight one.  I think the worst of it was at around 16 when I hit 16 stone.  Health reasons aside, being the fat kid in high school isn't really great for your self esteem, but whatever.  I think I maintained this for a few years but I'm not sure, I've always had the ability to completely block out things that might distress me, so I guess I just didn't pay any attention to my weight until I was... 21?  Yeah.

The big day was coming and I was offered a sky diving experience by my mum who, until then, was sure I was afraid of heights.  This was based on a bad experience on a large slide in Nottingham.  In reality I didn't care at all, agreed to it and probably removed a good 5 year's from my mum's life for which I apologise.  She is morbidly afraid of heights.  Her and my dad burned through all the camera exposures before my chute even deployed.

But I digress.

One of the requirements was that I needed to be below 200lbs.  14 stone 4.  Don't ask me for kilos.  I spent a few months exercising, building up from 2 sessions a week to 3.  That seemed to do the trick, but I did have kind of a physical job which no doubt helped and I reached my goal with time to spare.  One of the best things I've ever done.

I put some weight back on during my last year of university (I think better when I eat.  Always have, it reduces my mental fatigue and improves my attention span).  I graduated, got my degree and settled into a nice, easy 3 months of unemployment.  I looked for jobs, attended interviews and played Team Fortress 2.  However, my dad transferred his gym membership over to me, so with nothing else to do with my day I'd spend a happy hour and a half every other day working out.  It was the most structured, organised fitness regime I've ever adhered to and motivation wasn't a problem, I was unemployed, apart from going for a 5 minute trip to the dole office I really had nothing better to do than mail out CVs.

I don't know how much I lost.  I reached 13 stone 10 (186lbs, I guess) and for the first time in my own memory I was starting to become happy with how I looked.  Sappy, ain't it?

I got a job, moved out and started to live alone.  Again, wonderful experience and I learned a lot, but I wasn't managing my meals well (I found out what 6 months of not eating fibre is like.  Protip: don't ever attempt this) and I was working overtime at a desk job.  I was under the impression that I didn't have time for the gym, seeing as I was working from 9 'til sometimes half 6.  I'd go home, cook, surf the Internet for 2 or 3 hours and sleep.  Not surprisingly, I gained about 2.5 stone up to 16'6.

So I guess that's where I was at the start of this year.  I dabbled with a gym after work but couldn't really commit.  I made too many excuses to not go, I think.  However, somehow I've managed to convince a wonderful woman to actually marry me and now the wedding plans are actually beginning so I think, like sky diving, I've got a decent goal in mind.  I need to be able to wear a suit without looking like some kind of bearded penguin.

Plus the palpitations at night were getting to be kind of a drag.

It's strange though, 7 weeks later and I'm still feeling good about slimming down.  It's not often that I can commit to a diet for this long and still feel good about it.  Much as I hate to admit it (I prefer to think I can do these things on willpower alone), a tangible goal does seem to have lit a very welcome fire under my arse.

Started this year at, I think, 105 kilos.  I've realised since that my scales do lbs and they do kilos, but the lbs are measures out wrong.  I'm now, 8 weeks into the year, down by 6 kilos.  Not fantastically fast loss but it doesn't need to be, just so long as it stays off.

I spent a bit of time today looking up weight loss inspiration and came to the conclusion that what other people use for inspiration is a bit too pink and fluffy for me.  I don't want to join a club that'll support me, I don't need to see pictures of artistically arranged aubergines (alliteration's awesome, aye?) and I really don't need motivational pictures assuring me that I can do it.  I can, yes.  Part of the problem is that I ususally, for whatever reason, resist that kind of encouragement.  I can motivate myself, but unless I'm feeling genuinely defeated, hearing other people trying to encourage me sometimes feels really patronising and I do realise that this is a terrible approach, especially when people are being genuinely supportive, but it's not a deliberate thing.

Although if people wanna tell me I look fabulous today then that's fine, because fabulous is a great word and we should all say it more often.

I'm keeping an eye on the scales every morning.  I know people say you shouldn't, but I like to make sure that I'm not slipping and I like to consider the day a success if I've at least maintained.

So a weight loss blog?  It's not original, that's for sure, but if I do somehow succeed then it'd be nice to look back some day, see how well I did, how I did it and such.  If it helps anyone else then sure, that's great.  And I mean that with no hint of sarcasm.  However, if I do lose weight, it's going to be for me and my partner, not for anybody else.  Unless I do some kind of sponsored slim.

No goals in particular.  Once I'm happy with how I look, I'll take it easier on the diet but keep up the exercise, I think.  Seems sensible.

I'll post sometime later, perhaps.  Fridays might be good.  Silly things, the exercise I'm doing, foods I'm eating, motivational stuff that I've got going on... y'know, that fluffy encouragement stuff that I've said I don't like.

I never said I wasn't a hypocrite.  Hopefully I can at least be a skinny hypocrite.