(no subject)
I've been on a diet.
It all started when they got out the scales after Christmas. It was all supposed to be a bit of a laugh, but then I found out I was the heaviest person in the room. I always knew I was overweight, according to my Body Mass Index I was actually obese, but I wasn't able to quantify by how much. I'd always assumed, rather cruelly and without merit it turns out, that other people in my office were in worse shape than me. I topped the scales at 108kg, or just under 17 stone in old money, so that put paid for that
This was catalyst number one. The second was caused by an entirely unrelated series of events the next weekend.
I'd been playing with Jackfield Band, they needed a second E-flat Bass player for a contest at Butlins. We'd been away for the weekend and I'd been doing my usual thing of eating what I want, when I wanted, on Sunday, for example, I'd eaten every scrap of a full, fried English breakfast and washed it own with a coke. I'd resolved to eat a little more healthily that day to make up for it after my brush with the scales, but I couldn't really see myself actually doing anything about it.
We'd stopped off at a motorway service station on the way back from Skegness and While milling about WHSmiths looking for a sandwich the treasurer of the band handed me £25 as a thank you for helping the band out. I wasn't really expecting it, to be honest, they'd already paid for my accommodation for the weekend and we didn't do that well in the contest, but I wasn't going to complain. Normally I'd have put the money in my wallet and it would have been spent in dribs and drabs throughout the rest of the month but I resolved to buy something permanent with it to make sure I had something to show for the weekend.
As I was in a bookstore I began looking for something to read. There was a buy-one-get-one-half-price offer on, and I had already found a book on the Wall Street collapse, Too Big To Fail by Andrew Sorkin, when a quote by Derren Brown on one of the self-help books in the store caught my eye. It wasn't the kind of thing you expect to see given his usual pessimistic, rational approach, so I figured there must be something useful in there. I picked up the book, 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman, and decided to give it a go. I had free money after all.
I still haven't finished the book on Wall Street, but I did devour 59 Seconds. It is in essence a distillation of scientific research on certain key topics, like happiness, motivation and creativity. Instead of relying on received wisdom, which tends not to work according to the research, it relates the most effective methods to increase your chances of success in these areas.
It was in the section on motivation that I found the second catalyst. According to the book, one of the ways to motivate yourself is to write a plan and then stick to it. It sounds simple, but the number of times I've not even planned out something and it's gone awry or I've not followed through with it is astounding. The key thing for me was the sentiment 'No-one finds themselves at the top of Mount Everest by accident.' I'm thinking of getting that tattooed on my eyelids, as it just made everything sharply come into focus.
I had got by in life without planning anything, but the slow accretion of bad habits and poor judgement had led me to a place I didn't much like. I'd never gone through a period of my life when I'd lost weight, but I'd never put on weight in large amounts, it just sort of happened over the past fifteen years. I resolved to change through careful organisation and planning.
The first thing I did was look at the weekend just gone. I'd been reasonably conscientious, I thought, even given the fried breakfast. Oh, how ridiculous that thought was. Over the weekend I ate over 1,000 calories more than the recommended intake. And this was a weekend I was trying to be good! Looking back, it should have been obvious, but I have never looked back or quantified what I have done. If you took my then weight and converted the 'excess' into calories and apportioned them equally across the weeks since I turned eighteen, I'd been eating at least 400 calories a week more than I should. I realised that it didn't amount to much, but like anything, if you do it for long enough it amounts to a hefty weight gain.
My plan was/is to lose 26 kg (about four and a half stone) over twelve months. To do this I set up a series of daily and weekly goals for how many calories I should consume and how much exercise I need to do. I've got weekly targets for the weight I expect to lose based on my calorific intake/usage. I've got a spreadsheet that lists everything I've eaten and every bit of exercise I've done over the past ten weeks. I've eaten the right daily amount 93% of the time and I've always come in under the weekly target. Now, the key question is has it worked?
So far, I'm pleased to say, the answer is yes. An average man should consume about 2500 calories a day, so over the ten week period I've been dieting I should have eaten 175,000 calories to maintain my weight. I actually ate 113,818 calories. I also exercised quite a bit, burning off about 22,446 calories during the same period. All in all I came in at 83,628 calories under the required amount. The accepted figure is that 3,500 calories equals 454g, or one pound, of weight loss. Based on my intake I should have lost 10.8kg (~24 pounds), I've actually lost 10.5kg (~23 pounds). This puts me under the BMI based figure of 30, which means according to that, I am no longer obese, merely overweight. I know that these figures are a little arbitrary, but it is a small victory nonetheless.
The keen-eyed among may notice that my 26kg over 52 week target isn't quite what I am actually going for when I set my daily calorie targets, which should get me there in about half the time. The reason for this is I was initially sceptical about how much weight I would lose and I didn't want to lose heart if I missed my initial targets. I'm in a bit of a quandary as to whether or not to revise the weekly weight target. We shall see how it goes!
The most interesting thing for me is the diet/exercise split. I had always thought that the best way to lose weight was exercise, but 75% of my weight loss was due to my diet. I could have exercised more, but I don't think I would have been able to do more and keep up with it, as I am incredibly lazy, so choosing to eat less worked well for me. Because I know that if I do over eat I would need to exercise more to get below my daily target, ever the pragmatist, I quickly decided that if it was a choice between eating a pasty and going for a long walk/run or just not eating a pasty, I'd rather not eat the pasty. That said, when I do exercise I do feel like I can be a little lenient later on, but that's only because I've already made the effort, which has the effect of rewarding me for exercise, a lovely by-product that encourages me to do something.
A quick note on exercise, the majority of my exercise has been walking. I walk at least 3 miles a day during the week and try to walk up to the racecourse outside Oswestry at least once a week. That's about 4.5 miles there and back, but is all uphill on the way there. I've also taken into account the amount of time spent playing the Tuba, as it is a physical activity which, surprisingly, burns up quite a few calories. I've used Wolfram Alpha to get most of the data on how many calories I've burnt during each activity.
So, there we go. I'm still a way off my final goal, but I've reached a significant milestone, and I needed to shout about it.
It all started when they got out the scales after Christmas. It was all supposed to be a bit of a laugh, but then I found out I was the heaviest person in the room. I always knew I was overweight, according to my Body Mass Index I was actually obese, but I wasn't able to quantify by how much. I'd always assumed, rather cruelly and without merit it turns out, that other people in my office were in worse shape than me. I topped the scales at 108kg, or just under 17 stone in old money, so that put paid for that
This was catalyst number one. The second was caused by an entirely unrelated series of events the next weekend.
I'd been playing with Jackfield Band, they needed a second E-flat Bass player for a contest at Butlins. We'd been away for the weekend and I'd been doing my usual thing of eating what I want, when I wanted, on Sunday, for example, I'd eaten every scrap of a full, fried English breakfast and washed it own with a coke. I'd resolved to eat a little more healthily that day to make up for it after my brush with the scales, but I couldn't really see myself actually doing anything about it.
We'd stopped off at a motorway service station on the way back from Skegness and While milling about WHSmiths looking for a sandwich the treasurer of the band handed me £25 as a thank you for helping the band out. I wasn't really expecting it, to be honest, they'd already paid for my accommodation for the weekend and we didn't do that well in the contest, but I wasn't going to complain. Normally I'd have put the money in my wallet and it would have been spent in dribs and drabs throughout the rest of the month but I resolved to buy something permanent with it to make sure I had something to show for the weekend.
As I was in a bookstore I began looking for something to read. There was a buy-one-get-one-half-price offer on, and I had already found a book on the Wall Street collapse, Too Big To Fail by Andrew Sorkin, when a quote by Derren Brown on one of the self-help books in the store caught my eye. It wasn't the kind of thing you expect to see given his usual pessimistic, rational approach, so I figured there must be something useful in there. I picked up the book, 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman, and decided to give it a go. I had free money after all.
I still haven't finished the book on Wall Street, but I did devour 59 Seconds. It is in essence a distillation of scientific research on certain key topics, like happiness, motivation and creativity. Instead of relying on received wisdom, which tends not to work according to the research, it relates the most effective methods to increase your chances of success in these areas.
It was in the section on motivation that I found the second catalyst. According to the book, one of the ways to motivate yourself is to write a plan and then stick to it. It sounds simple, but the number of times I've not even planned out something and it's gone awry or I've not followed through with it is astounding. The key thing for me was the sentiment 'No-one finds themselves at the top of Mount Everest by accident.' I'm thinking of getting that tattooed on my eyelids, as it just made everything sharply come into focus.
I had got by in life without planning anything, but the slow accretion of bad habits and poor judgement had led me to a place I didn't much like. I'd never gone through a period of my life when I'd lost weight, but I'd never put on weight in large amounts, it just sort of happened over the past fifteen years. I resolved to change through careful organisation and planning.
The first thing I did was look at the weekend just gone. I'd been reasonably conscientious, I thought, even given the fried breakfast. Oh, how ridiculous that thought was. Over the weekend I ate over 1,000 calories more than the recommended intake. And this was a weekend I was trying to be good! Looking back, it should have been obvious, but I have never looked back or quantified what I have done. If you took my then weight and converted the 'excess' into calories and apportioned them equally across the weeks since I turned eighteen, I'd been eating at least 400 calories a week more than I should. I realised that it didn't amount to much, but like anything, if you do it for long enough it amounts to a hefty weight gain.
My plan was/is to lose 26 kg (about four and a half stone) over twelve months. To do this I set up a series of daily and weekly goals for how many calories I should consume and how much exercise I need to do. I've got weekly targets for the weight I expect to lose based on my calorific intake/usage. I've got a spreadsheet that lists everything I've eaten and every bit of exercise I've done over the past ten weeks. I've eaten the right daily amount 93% of the time and I've always come in under the weekly target. Now, the key question is has it worked?
So far, I'm pleased to say, the answer is yes. An average man should consume about 2500 calories a day, so over the ten week period I've been dieting I should have eaten 175,000 calories to maintain my weight. I actually ate 113,818 calories. I also exercised quite a bit, burning off about 22,446 calories during the same period. All in all I came in at 83,628 calories under the required amount. The accepted figure is that 3,500 calories equals 454g, or one pound, of weight loss. Based on my intake I should have lost 10.8kg (~24 pounds), I've actually lost 10.5kg (~23 pounds). This puts me under the BMI based figure of 30, which means according to that, I am no longer obese, merely overweight. I know that these figures are a little arbitrary, but it is a small victory nonetheless.
The keen-eyed among may notice that my 26kg over 52 week target isn't quite what I am actually going for when I set my daily calorie targets, which should get me there in about half the time. The reason for this is I was initially sceptical about how much weight I would lose and I didn't want to lose heart if I missed my initial targets. I'm in a bit of a quandary as to whether or not to revise the weekly weight target. We shall see how it goes!
The most interesting thing for me is the diet/exercise split. I had always thought that the best way to lose weight was exercise, but 75% of my weight loss was due to my diet. I could have exercised more, but I don't think I would have been able to do more and keep up with it, as I am incredibly lazy, so choosing to eat less worked well for me. Because I know that if I do over eat I would need to exercise more to get below my daily target, ever the pragmatist, I quickly decided that if it was a choice between eating a pasty and going for a long walk/run or just not eating a pasty, I'd rather not eat the pasty. That said, when I do exercise I do feel like I can be a little lenient later on, but that's only because I've already made the effort, which has the effect of rewarding me for exercise, a lovely by-product that encourages me to do something.
A quick note on exercise, the majority of my exercise has been walking. I walk at least 3 miles a day during the week and try to walk up to the racecourse outside Oswestry at least once a week. That's about 4.5 miles there and back, but is all uphill on the way there. I've also taken into account the amount of time spent playing the Tuba, as it is a physical activity which, surprisingly, burns up quite a few calories. I've used Wolfram Alpha to get most of the data on how many calories I've burnt during each activity.
So, there we go. I'm still a way off my final goal, but I've reached a significant milestone, and I needed to shout about it.