Saturday 10 March 2007

DAY ONE

Started the day with 40 lengths at the local pool, followed by cardboard flakes and skimmed milk, with bananas, which was in the end actually tasty. I have heard that exercising before you eat means that your body has to burn off stored fat, rather than sugar from your meal. It could be a load of ol' crap, but it meant that I felt like i really was hungry by the time i got back for breakfast. Weighed myself at the Swimming pool - 93 kg - 14 st 8.6 lb.

Lunch was Tuna Nicoise wrap with oolong tea.
dinner - pasta.

it took me about 50 minutes of pure swimming to do the 40 lengths, after the swimming i felt completely knackered. Surely I can't be that unfit. Next time i think i will try and do it in 45 minutes to get a sense of progression and achievement. When I was in the pool there was a lady about 40-ish, swimming along with her mouth open, which was really off putting, i couldn't help but imagine all that chlorine, that had been around my feet in her mouth, ergh! I am sure some people would pay good money for that sort of service, 'essence of young lads sweaty foot bathed in clorine'. Maybe she knows this and was very clever about the whole thing and worked out that if she goes along to the swimming pool at 10am she can get the whole thing for free.

Apologies, if you are open mouth lady and you actually have a medical problem. If you don't then you should be ashamed of yourself, or at least bung me a fiver when you get out of the pool.

going down the pub in a mo, but i will keep to diet coke and vodka, is that what dieters get pissed on? Maybe i will just have a little tipple, not go mental.

"Rum and Diet Coke is the appealing choice for weight-watchers at about 110 calories. Rum and Coke has 240 calories" (nicked from http://www.travellady.com/Issues/Issue69/spirits.htm)
I think its really nice of coke to re-brand diet coke, for men like me who couldn't possibly buy a can of diet coke, but coke 'Zero', now thats manly and cool and all my friends won't laugh at me for drinking it. I wonder if they will provide this service in a pub so i can continue to lose weight with out feeling like a middle aged female office worker, on a diet coke break. They could even put it through the same pipe, from the same box at no extra charge. No need for messy extra buttons! profits up!

Friday 9 March 2007

The introduction...

The challenge: To lose two stone in six months.

I have always been a big chap, and come from a large family, so being rounded is perhaps part of my makeup as a uman' bean, and my mental image of myself, is as a large man. Even perhaps being over weight could be part of my personality? I like the idea of the body being a little more flexible, I have been proportionally been around the same body size, for ever, i would like to perhaps have a slightly different relation to my fleshy casing, or be able to pushed around by the wind a little more, or what ever it is that skinny people do that large people can't.

I don't have a big hang up about being over weight, i feel getting slimmer is something that i need to try, like lawn bowls or origami, I mean, there is always the possibility that I might lose weight from the wrong places, argh my shrinking rist!

If i do lose the weight, It will be a real joy to go into H&M and not feel like a right idiot when i ask, "do you have jean in a 36 waist - 32 leg?" , "erm, sorry mate we don't do those sizes , you will have to go to Marks and Spencer and look at the fat old man with beer gut range" I have to buy my jeans from Marks & Spencer, its a true story.

As a kid being large had its advantages, in replacement for strength, i would always win at bundles and grappling, I was also very good a cuddles, you can't feel the bones! According to my friends I was never huge, just erm, 'big boned'. I remember at middle school, the other kids chanting, 'co'mon Brucie show us your flab, show us your flab', in the changing rooms, but the chants were never abusive or nasty, it was friendly kid banter ( or maybe i fabricated a large fantasy world to deal with the onslaught of abuse?), in response i would dance along the wooden beams of the changing room seats doing a sort of chuffle-shuffle type dance. My belly button even had its own name, imagine that! ok, so "The channel Tunnel", ain't that cool, but at least i didn't have a werid 'outy' belly button. At least i 'my thing' that people knew about be was that i was big and lived on a farm (i didn't, it just the road it was on had lots of pot holes) it was kinda fun, this other kids 'thing' was a rumor was that his uncle was his dad, so in comparison, i was lucky with the flab and the farm.

I also had a girlfriend at the time, her name was Carly and we used to kiss in the playground, it was oh-so-cute, the other kids we're not so sure and liken my pre-teen smoochin' to 'Guerillas in the Mist', ah well, you can't win them all.

At the same time i acquired the nick name 'beef' which i didn't mind because there was another kid and his nickname was chunk, so i was rather happy with my lot (beef = crisps, OXO cubes and mummies sunday roast, chunk = cat sick). Again it was an affectionate name, which i may have actually picked for my self. (oh, dear oh dear, what was i thinking, surely i could have picked something cool like, 'Switch' or 'Ace' or something Rad, as we used to say.)

Not liking sport much as a kid, has developed into not bothering with much exercise as an adult, but very occasionally, i will go for five times in two weeks then get a cold, or go on holiday or something and forget all about going to the swimming pool and exercising which was sooo important in those two weeks. More recently, I have consumed many, many, curries during my short stint as a curry reviewer, which didn't really help the expanding buldge. But mostly, I am the way i am because i don't do any exercise, and my passion of drinking beers. Which means unless i change, one is poised to stay rotund for the rest of my years, and er perhaps earn myself a heart attack at 40, unless, of course, I do something about it! So here is my plan....

I will lose (positive thinking from the start eh!) 2 Stone = roughly 12.7 kg (just under 13 bags of sugar) in six months.

From March 10th to September 10th is 185 days or 26 weeks

currently 14.5 stone - 92 kg (ish)

means that I will have to lose 0.07 kg a day or 0.5 kg a week (half bag of sugar!)


Start - 92
end Wk 1 91.5 kg
end wk 2 91
end wk 3 90.5
end wk 4 90
end wk 5 89.5
end wk 6 89
end wk 7 88.5
end wk 8 88
end wk 9 87.5
end wk 10 87
end wk 11 86.5
end wk 12 86
end wk 13 85.5
end wk 14 85
end wk 15 84.5
end wk 16 84
end wk 17 83.5
end wk 18 83
end wk 19 82.5
end wk 20 82
end wk 21 81.5
end wk 22 81
end wk 23 80.5
end wk 24 80
end wk 25 79.5
endwk 26 79 (just under 12. 5 stone)

I will achieve this by going swimming twice a week and reducing the amount of booze and pizza i eat per week. EASY!

Wish me luck, I will need it!