The MacAlba

Today marks 12 months since I decided to get rid of some superfluous weight. For me it was as simple as that - on the Sunday evening I decided that the next day would be my first weigh-day, to be followed by a weight reduction program.

So, how am I doing?

Well, I’m 20 kg (44 pounds) lighter than I used to be, I’m now mid-range “normal” rather than mid-range “overweight”; and I’m exercising more.

I’ve maintained the same weight for the past five or six months, and, over that same period, I’ve been jogging the 4 km with the dogs in the mornings rather than merely walking with them. A few weekends ago I also ran an additional 6km a couple of times. I hope to continue with the extra distance after we move onto daylight savings time which gives me extra daylight in the evenings. The goal is to be able to run to a local river crossing and back to give a round trip of 11 km.

I’ve always eaten a fairly sensible diet - but probably just too much at a sitting. My “secret”? For 6 months I ate a bit less than I normally would have, and had a small tub of yoghurt for lunch instead of homemade-bread sandwiches.

Having maintained a steady weight for the past six months I feel that I could still usefully stand to lose a few more kilograms - but I won’t actually know what my comfortable weight is until I’ve gone one or two kilograms too far the other way.

So, at the end of this journey I feel pretty happy with myself. Strangely, perhaps, its been fun - I enjoy setting myself these little challenges (in much the same manner as gradually working up to running those 11 km). I still weigh myself on a weekly basis and graph the result - that way I’ll get an early warning of any deviance from the norm.

There was a period, not too many months ago, when there was what seemed like a never-ending stream of media reports from Australia, the UK, and the USA about ever-increasing percentages of the nations’ populations, and especially their children’s, being categorised as obese. And if not obese, then most definitely overweight.

I was, at that point, about mid way though my own weight reduction regime.

Over the years I’d been slowly but surely putting on weight. This was a combination of exercising less than I used to, and eating more than I needed. I would say that I was eating reasonably healthily, but simply eating too much. My BMI (Body Mass Indicator) was 27.7 meaning that I was mid-range “overweight”.

Towards the end of October last year I decided, one Sunday, that enough was enough, and that I would rectify the situation - beginning that day. My “secret” was, simply, to eat less - not differently. I steadily lost just under 1 kg each week (2 lb) for about 12 or so weeks, then, strangely, the weight loss dropped to about 0.5 kg (1 lb) each week (give or take a little) for another 12 or so weeks. The end result being that after 7 months, I’d lost a little over 20 kg (45 lbs). My BMI is now 21.5. This puts me at mid-range “normal”.

Without any conscious intention or effort, as of about 3 weeks ago, my “walking the dogs” each morning has become “jogging with the dogs”. I certainly work up a sweat - and that’s with the temperature dipping down to -6 degC (21 degF) around sunrise. I’m not looking forward to finding out what jogging’s like if we get down to the lowest winter minimums of around -15 degC (5 degF).

To be honest, I can’t say that I feel any different - before my weight loss I wasn’t feeling short of energy, or feeling tired, or ill, or suffering in any noticeable way. The only difference is, as noted above, that I’ve started jogging again. I’ve even had my mountain bike serviced and am looking forward to doing some cycling again.

The tricky thing now it to find the level of food intake required to maintain my current weight - and not put it on again. To assist here I continue to record and graph my weight on a weekly basis - any trend (whether up or down) should become fairly obvious.

Oh, I nearly forgot, one bad (and good) aspect of losing so much weight is that I now have to purchase new clothes. I’m still wearing my old jeans around the house - when I undo my belt and hold the waistband out to its former location (in front of my stomach), there’s a rather large gap It reinforces the benefit of what I’ve done to think that not so many months ago, that air gap between my stomach and the jeans was once filled with fat!

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[With thanks to Dave Slusher / Evil Genius Chronicles, and Mark VandeWettering / Brainwagon, whose talking about their own weight reduction programmes got me thinking about mine ]

Atypically, even for this part of the world in winter, it was cold and windy during the day today. The maximum temperature was about 8 degrees C (47F), with a 30 to 40 km/hr wind. Add to that the fact that I’m just at the peak of the head cold I’ve had for a few days now, and so it was a fairly miserable Sunday.

I know perfectly well that I’ll be fine in a couple of days, but it’s hard to get the energy to do much at the moment — so I haven’t.

Other than walk the dogs this morning (yes, walk, not jog), and chop the firewood for the coming week, all I’ve done with myself today is to catch up with items on the blogs I subscribe to, and tidy up my other two blog installations (having installed the latest version of WordPress yesterday). I’ve chosen to run with the same theme (or “look”) for all three blogs - at least for the time being.