Sep 3, 2015

I made it! 78.0kg, 24.9 BMI, one week to spare before I turn thirty.

Aug 8, 2015

Last week, we had our fantastic annual group holiday; Jennie, Gideon, Angus and I squeezed in to our little hatchback for the drive down to the Lake District to spend the week with school and university friends. We had loads of fun, and as ever there was loads of food, drink, and merriment. I wasn’t so foolish to think that I’d want, or be able, to keep up my 1600 calories/day diet, but I did want to keep on tracking what I ate.

Jul 13, 2015

Some weeks are just a wash when it comes to weight loss. After my 85kg post, I had a really nice downward trajectory for a couple of weeks, getting down to 82kg with no problems. And then I just bumbled around between 82-83kg, for about two weeks.

Jul 9, 2015

My iPhone, with HealthKit and a few apps, is central to my weight loss effort. I track everything I eat in MyFitnessPal, and I use Cyclometer to track my cycling distance and active calories. The phone automatically counts my steps and stairs climbed, and I aim to average over 10k steps every day, which I factored in to my calorie allowance calculations.

Jun 23, 2015

I’ll only exercise regularly if it’s in my routine, and fitting things into your routine with a two-year-old and a newborn, and a full-time office based job is a challenge. Weight loss without exercise is much more difficult, so I’m trying really hard to include it in my daily routine in sustainable ways.

Jun 18, 2015

With my previous two attempts at weight loss, I had a less ambitious goal weight - 85kg, compared to 78kg this time. I never hit it - I got fairly close, down below 90kg and was still losing weight at the time, but lost motivation when my wife stopped her diet (she had a much better excuse, in both cases she was pregnant!)

Jun 7, 2015

I didn’t diet before age 26, in part because of the huge number of faddy, commercial diets. They make weight loss seem like alchemy, as though you can’t work any of this stuff out on your own. Even big players in this industry make me extremely angry doing things like labelling food as “si[y]nful”, or picking one macronutrient and pretending that it’s bad for you. This is nonsense, but it serves to keep the diet industry going, with customers who cycle through weight gain and loss throwing money at the latest diet each time they feel bad about their weight.

Jun 3, 2015

That’s my goal to achieve by my 30th birthday in September. I started from a little over 100kg in March (but didn’t have working scales at the time.) 78kg is the top of the BMI scale’s ‘normal’ range for my 177cm height, and I don’t know the last time I was in that band.