Morning weigh-in

112.5 kg

Morning weigh-in

Been missing these for a while

112.7 kg

Morning weigh-in

112.4

Morning weigh-in

112.2 kg

Morning weigh-in

111.7 kg

Morning weigh-in

112.1 kg

Morning weigh-in

112.9 kg

Morning weigh-in

112.1

Morning weigh-in

111.9 kg

Morning weigh-in

111.5 kg

Morning weigh-in

111.9 kg

Morning weigh-in

112.6 kg

Lunch

Approx 1200 kcal. Total of approx 1800 kcal today.

If I aim for the low bar of my required energy, this leaves me with approx 500 kcal for dinner. Interesting target.

Establishing a routine

First thing you need to do is establish a routine for weighing yourself. Get an accurate scale. 100 gram intervals are a must, and they aren't all that expensive. Weigh yourself at pretty much the same time every day. For me, I'm going with morning, after I've been to the lavatory. When you do it isn't as important as the consistency of it. Mornings are easy to adjust, and a weigh-in is only another 20 seconds.

My weight change from yesterday sounds like a dramatic weight loss. 1.3 kg since yesterday. Wow! It's really not. A lot of weight is gained and lost through liquid. These just attribute to noise. The trick to not getting all psyched up when you lose a kg in a day and then super depressed when you gain two kg the next day is knowing how the maths work. I don't have enough sampling points to show how the maths work, so I'll get into that when I do (in about two weeks).

A long time ago I stumbled across something called The Hacker's Diet. What this very detailed book (it's free of charge as a website) does is layout the basic biomechanics and maths of losing weight. It really boils down to energy management.

I'm 194 cm tall, average build, so I need somewhere between 2300 and 2900 kcal/day. If I take in less energy (food and drink) I will lose weight, as my body will use its energy storage (fat and muscles) to compensate. If I take in more energy, I will gain weight.

There are two ways of changing the energy balance - diet and exercise. If I exercise I will increase my energy requirements. The trouble with exercise is that there is not much energy being spent compared to what we eat. If you go for a healthy walk for an hour you will burn about 300 kcal. Swimming is about 400 kcal. Compared to my 2300 - 2900 kcal/day that's pretty decent, but compared to a single Mars bar (240 kcal) it isn't. That tiny 40 gram candy bar requires you to swim for 36 minutes. Or walk for 48.

While exercise is healthy, it's a lot more efficient to just not eat the Mars bar. For one thing it'll save 30+ minutes of time. Same with coke. It's easy to think "well, I've just done a really tough work-out - I deserve a coke now". Trouble is that non-diet coke (and soft-drinks) contain a lot of energy. A half litre bottle of coke is 210 kcal.

My point isn't "don't exercise", my point is to change what you put in your body. Skip the soft drinks and do water instead. I'm not going to recommend diet drinks for two reasons: 1) I hate the taste 2) Water is cheaper. At least around here, where tap water is just as good at the bottled kind. And if you're worried that you'll lose status by not drinking bottled water, just buy a couple of bottles, reuse them and then get over yourself. 

Morning weigh-in

2010, March 21st. 8 AM - 112.1 kg

Breakfast - approximately 600 kcal: Approximately 150 grams of muesli - 520 kcal, approximately 150 grams of 0.5% milk - 60 kcal.

The background

I'm born in 1977, 194 cm tall, average build.

Right now, 2010, March 20th, 13:30 I'm 113.4 kg. This gives me a BMI of 30.1 kg/m^2.

Some will criticize BMI as being imprecise, not being true for muscular people etc., but since I'm not muscular, it will work pretty well as a guide for me. My BMI should be between 18.5 kg/m^2 and 24.9 kg/m^2, and with my height that means between 69.6 and 93.7 kg. Quite a healthy margin of 24 kg.

I haven't always been fat. When I was 20 I was in great shape at about 80 kg. And if you're keeping track, that's 33 kg in 13 years. Only one thing to blame, and it's not sugar, disease, fat or anything like that. It's me. The cause is a horrible diet, but the diet cannot be blamed - it didn't jump into my mouth. I chose that diet. Granted, I didn't wake up one day and think

From now on I will eat fatty foods, shun vegetables and drink lots of coke

But that is more or less what happened.

Back in May 09 I was 116.5 kg and decided to lose weight, and it worked. Changed my diet, mostly by switching from drinking coke to drinking water instead. Added some more vegetables and home made food to my diet instead of the crap I was eating. It's amazing what removing 3+ litres of coke a day will do to your weight ;)

By mid October I was down under 100 kg. And I had gotten my cheek bones back. And then I got lazy, started drinking coke again and ... well, I suppose that's how alcoholics etc. fall off the wagon.

I'll just have one - it's not like it'll change anything.

Just goes to show that losing weight is as much about your mental approach as it is about your diet and exercise. It's probably more about the mental approach and strength.

To sum up, my goals are fairly simple:

• No more coke
• Better food
• Lose about 1 kg/week

I know the 1 kg/week is realistic, as I did that last year. And with a goal of 90 kg, it sets out a long term goal that is 23 weeks away - at the end of August.