The next month or so is going to be quite tricky weight loss wise – I’m not trying to set up some more excuses in advance, honest!  The next 2 weeks should be OK, and in an ideal world I can be down to 20 stone by 2 weeks from today.  But the week after that, I’m on holiday for a week.  I then come back for a week, during which I’m going to a wedding, and then I’m off on holiday for another week again.  So I basically have 3 very disrupted weeks in the last 3 weeks of August.

Taking all that into account, my goal at the moment is to be less than 20 stone on 1st September.  19 stone 13 pounds will do just fine.  I can then put on some real steam in September when life gets back to normal.  And I’ll need to put on some steam too, because I start my degree on 21st September, and I need to drop at least 1 t-shirt size or I’ll have nothing to wear on my first day.  I went shopping last week and bought 6 new t-shirts that I plan to wear at uni, but I bought them all in XL, rather than my usual XXL.  At the moment they look like they’re painted on, so I have some work to do.

In other news, I plan to run the blog a little differently this time around – it’s not going to be so strict and regimented, it’ll probably have less photo’s, recipes, reviews and other stuff like that.  It’ll just be me talking about life, and probably some weight loss stuff too.  That is of course until I get bored of doing it that way, and change it all up again in a few weeks – I’m not good at consistency!  I’ll also be trying to blog a bit more regularly too.

Your feedback is always welcomed, and you can get hold of me using the comments section below, or through Twitter or Facebook (links to both are on my ‘About Me’ page).

Until next time

Kevin

I’ve gained 2 pounds since my last update 2 weeks ago, which is nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be.  I’m still pretty poorly at the moment, but I am starting to feel better.  Hopefully within a week I should be back to full fitness and ready to pick up where I left off.

Also thanks for all the get well soon messages I’ve had on Twitter and Facebook – I am reading them all even if I’ve not got around to replying to them.

I’ll be back again soon with a proper update, hopefully detailing some weight loss…

Kevin

I don’t have anything ground breaking to report this week, as I haven’t been able to exercise because of my back, and I’ve not really stuck to the diet.

Having said that, I have lost 2 pounds, bringing my total weight loss to 26 pounds, and getting me within 2 pounds of falling below 20 stone for the first time in years:

It’s also good to see that most of the loss was fat rather than muscle, so I must be doing something right. I actually think I just generally make better food choices now, so even when I go off plan, it’s not to the same degree. If I want a treat, I’ll perhaps go for peanut butter on toast, or a bit of cheese, or some nuts, rather than chocolate or crisps. I did have some chips last night, but that portion of chips was enough to fill me up for the night, whereas in the past I’d have needed something with it.

I’m disappointed with my exercise for the last week, but that’s mainly been because my back has flared up again. I had a couple of good days, and my average daily steps wasn’t a million miles away from the target of 10,000. I need to work on increasing my aerobic steps though, as they only averaged 11 minutes a day:

So for next week, a lot depends on my back, which is still bad this morning. I also have my birthday barbecue at the weekend, but fingers crossed I’ll be a good boy, and can post another loss next week.

Kevin

Well there’s very little to tell this week that hasn’t already been told. My weight hasn’t changed, which I’m quite pleased with as I was expecting a gain after Amy’s birthday celebrations over the weekend – I think the bouncy castle saved me, as I burned about 600 calories bouncing on Saturday.

My body fat percentage hasn’t changed either.

I’m abandoning the 30 day challenge for the time being, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, my back injury flared up again over the weekend (over 24 hours after the bouncy castle, so we can’t blame that!). However, the bouncy castle is to blame for my badly bruised, if not broken, big toe on my right foot, which is making it painful to even walk.

So my plan for the next 7 days is to stick to my 2300 calories, walk as much as a I can, but not push myself just for the sake of getting to 10,000 steps, and see where I end up.

Hopefully a week of taking it easy should allow me to start the 30 day challenge again soon – my goal at the moment is to start again on 14^th July, the day after my next physio appointment. Fingers crossed.

Kevin

Friday was OK, but Saturday and Sunday were a bit of a dieting disaster, mainly because it was my daughter’s birthday. She had her party on Saturday, and it was her birthday on Sunday. So 2 days of birthday cake, barbecues, celebrations and treats. I have no idea how much I’ve eaten, but I know it was more than I should have done!

Exercise also took a back seat. I did my EA Sports Active workout on Friday, but I didn’t have time to do it on Saturday because of the birthday party. We had a bouncy castle for the party, so I got plenty of exercise using that for 4 or 5 hours, but I suffered for it on Sunday, and could barely walk! I think I may have broken my toe, or at least badly bruised it, so I’m going to struggle to exercise for the next few days.

So my calorie intake was: I have no idea…

As for walking, I comfortably did my 10,000 steps on Friday and Saturday, but didn’t even manage 4000 on Sunday, due to a combination of my bad toe, and very achy muscles. My back is also playing up again, which doesn’t help.

It’s Monday morning as I write this, and I’ve managed 2000 painful steps so far, and I’m determined to get my 10K. I’m going to give the workout a miss, as I don’t think my back could take it. But I am back on the diet. Will I be able to recover the week before weigh in tomorrow? I doubt it.

I have a feeling tomorrow’s weigh in could see my first gain since I started. Back to basics next week I think…

Kevin

This was another good day. I stuck to my eating plan all day, and did loads of walking.

For some reason I was really hungry in the evening, but I managed to resist the temptation to eat anything.

It was my EA Sports Active rest day, so no workout, but I was targeting 15,000 steps to make sure I still burnt plenty of calories. I had a really busy day, and I’d done 8000 before lunch, without actually going out for a walk. I was on about 12,000 by dinner, and went out for a nice walk in the evening to tip me over my 15K:

So for the second day in a row I was left with a calorie deficit of over 1000 calories, which if I can maintain it, should lead to a nice loss this week:

Until tomorrow

Kevin

This was a much better day than day 1. My eating was spot on all day, ended up with 8 portions of fruit & veg, 3 portions of dairy, a good balance of carbs, protein and fat at each meal, and I was about as close to my calorie limit of 2300 as you can get:

Day 2 on EA Sports Active was even more painful than day 1, and as I write this 24 hours later, my legs are still really suffering – I’m glad it’s a scheduled rest day today, although that does mean more walking for my poorly legs:

My walking was a little bit disappointing, although I still hit my 10,000 steps, and did 55 minutes of aerobic walking, my sore legs stopped me pushing it too hard, so I never managed to break into a sweat, and cut my afternoon walk short. I was only on around 8000 steps by early evening, but managed to just catch up by bedtime:

But all things consider, it was a very successful day. I ended up with a calorie deficit of just over 1000 calories. If I can achieve that every day, I should be on target to lose 2 pounds a week, which should see me hit my 30 day target:

Here’s hoping for more of the same on day 3.

Kevin

Yesterday was the first day of my 30 day challenge. For anyone who didn’t read my weigh in blog yesterday, I’ve set myself a goal of losing 10 pounds in the next 30 days, and I’m going to be posting every day detailing what exercise I’ve done, and what I’ll be eating. The main reason for this is that although I’ve been losing weight consistently, the last week or so I’ve started to get a bit complacent, so I decided it was time to go back to basics, and make myself fully accountable for everything I do every day. And what better way to do that than to detail it all on the internet?

30 Day Challenge – Day 1

Hmm… Not a good start. My eating was completely all over the place, for a couple of reasons. Breakfast and lunch were thrown off course because it was shopping, and I didn’t have a lot of food in the house until after shopping in the afternoon, so I just had to eat what was around. Dinner was a complete disaster. I plan all my meals a week in advance, from Wednesday to the following Tuesday, so I went shopping yesterday and got the following week’s food as usual. I completely forgot that we’d swapped lots of meals around over the last week, and didn’t have anything to eat for dinner last night. I finally realised about 4 o’clock.

Now, at this point, I could have walked back to the supermarket to get something (I couldn’t drive as the car is getting some work done this week). But it’s a half hour round trip walking, and I’d only just got back from there. Plus the kids like to eat at 5 or they get grumpy. And I was hungry and tired. Lots of excuses there, but what it basically boiled down to was I was too lazy to walk, and really fancied a pizza. Domino’s do a buy one get one free on Tuesdays, so we could all eat for a tenner. Decision made, we ordered pizza. Oops. I’m paying for it now though – I’ve felt sluggish since I ate it, and unspeakable things have been happening to my digestive system. Never again! Here’s the full breakdown of my eating yesterday (not I didn’t get near my 5 a day, need to sort that out):

My exercise was much more positive. I started the EA Sports Active 30 day challenge again yesterday with the following workout:

That workout really got me sweating, and as I type this 24 hours later, my legs still feel like jelly, and I’ve got to go again in a few minutes!

I also did well on my walking. I had to drive into the centre of town to drop my car into the garage, and then walk back. I also had to walk to and from the supermarket for the shopping. So I comfortably exceeded my target of 45 minutes of aerobic steps, and also the 10,000 steps target:

So the exercise saved me (this is becoming a familiar tale), and left me with a decent calorie deficit at the end of the day:

Obviously I achieved that in totally the wrong way though. Looking at all the data above, I can see that the reason I caved at dinner time was that I didn’t eat enough at breakfast and lunch. By early afternoon, I should have consumed 1400 calories, but I’d actually had less than 1000, which left me feeling ravenously hungry and lowered my willpower. That will be sorted today, as I am back into a very structured, very disciplined 700 calories each for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and 200 calories for a snack in the evening. I’m doing another EA Sports Active workout this morning, and will get my 10,000 steps again. It’s going to be a good day!

I’ll be back tomorrow with Day 2 – to avoid missing any of my 30 day challenge updates, why not subscribe to my RSS feed? It’s located in the bottom right hand corner of this screen, and will make sure you never miss an update.

Until tomorrow,

Kevin

Another 2 pounds lost, which brings my total loss to 24 pounds in 6 weeks:

And that was in a week where I had a Chinese as well! Chinese must be good for you…

There’s more good news too – of the 2 pounds I lost, only 0.3lb was muscle, so that means I lost 1.7lb of fat:

NEW MILESTONE – My body fat percentage has now fallen below 35%, and will never see those heights again!

I’ve also taken my body measurements this week:

So I’ve gained half an inch each on my biceps and calves (hopefully that’s muscle…), but lost 3 inches across my chest, waist and hips, whilst my thighs haven’t changed. So that’s a total inch loss of 2 inches in 2 weeks – can’t complain at that.

I’ve also taken my first ‘during’ photo, which I’ll be doing every 6 weeks. Here’s the comparison with my before photo:

Can you see any difference? The shirt is definitely looser, and my face isn’t as round.

How did I achieve these results?

My eating has been a bit hit and miss this week. I had a Chinese on Saturday, and sort of lost count from then on, but I hadn’t been 100% before then, knowing that Saturday was approaching! There have been a couple of days where I didn’t get my 5 fruit and veg, and I haven’t been tracking my eating, so I have no idea how many calories I consumed over the course of the week!

With that in mind, I’m surprised I lost any weight at all, and I think my saving grace was my walking:

I’m really getting into my walking now, comfortably hitting my 10,000 steps every day, and increasing my daily average by 500 against last week. My walking was far from perfect though – there were only 3 days over the course of the week where I hit my target of 45 minutes aerobic steps, and my aerobic average was only 35 minutes per day. My total steps were kept high by a generally busy week, clearing the garage and garden and cutting down hedges. Without that I would have been struggling to hit my steps target, and would probably have not lost any weight.

So all in all I think my weight loss this week was more to do with luck than judgement. And being a geek, I don’t like that, because I like my spreadsheets and calculations to be meaningful and important. So even though I lost 2 pounds, I’m far from happy with the week, and there’s lots of room to improve next week.

The plan for next week

Firstly, eating. I’m going to follow Tesco Diets to the letter this week. I know this takes me below my RMR, but I want a full 7 days of pre-planned eating where I document exactly what I’m eating and when. I’ll then be able to compare the results to last week’s unstructured eating, and decide what to do long term. This means back to a calorie limit of 2300 calories per day, split with 700 for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and 200 for a snack.

Now exercise. I went to the physio yesterday, and he’s given me the all clear to start exercising more intensely, although I still can’t cycle because it puts my back in the wrong position and could aggravate my injury. I’m back at the physio in 3 weeks, so fingers crossed I’ll be fully recovered by then, and I’ll finally be able to get out on my bike.

I’ve decided to start EA Sports Active again – it was a great workout before I was banned, and really gets me sweating. It also works my muscles a bit more with the resistance band, so will hopefully stop me losing too much muscle on the reduced calorie diet I’ll be following. So I have started their 30 day challenge again this morning, and I’m going to be posting my progress every day for the next 30 days, to keep me focused more than anything else!

The 30 day challenge involves me working out on 2 out of every 3 days. On the days I work out, I will be aiming to walk 10,000 steps as I currently do. On my days off from EA Sports Active, I’ll be upping my steps target to 15,000. I will also be looking for a minimum of 45 minutes aerobic walking every day, regardless of how many steps I have done throughout the day.

So in summary, my plan for the next week is 2300 calories a day, EA Sports Active on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Monday and 80,000 steps over the course of the week. Easy!

NEW MINI-GOAL – My 30 day challenge takes me to the 23^rd July. By then, I will have lost another 10 pounds, bringing my weight down to 274 pounds (19 stone 8 pounds). I’m also still aiming to be under 20 stone (280 pounds) by my birthday on 10^th July. I’m now only 4 pounds away from that goal with 2 and a half weeks to go.

I’ll be posting every day for the next month with my 30 day challenge updates, so make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed in the bottom right hand corner of this screen to avoid missing out on any updates. You could also follow me on Twitter to make sure you don’t miss out on any news (or impromptu music evenings like I had last Friday…)

Until next time

Kevin

I thought it was a good idea. It would give me an incentive to lose the weight, and also hopefully raise a lot of money for charity. It would be an experience, and something to tell the grandchildren about. It would be an achievement.

Perhaps I should have done some research before committing myself to it, because although all the points listed above are still true, they’re now overwhelmed in my head by another one: It’s a bloody long way!

I’ve been doing some research over the last couple of weeks to get an idea of what routes people take, how long it takes, how many miles per day people do. The best site I’ve found is this one. Amongst all the great information to be found on the site, there is a record of the route they took. I’ve copied it below to give an example of the sort of route I could be taking, but you can read the original article on the website already mentioned above:

Example LEJOG Route

So that’s a total of 1055 miles in 15 days, which averages out at around 70 miles per day. On top of that, the day before we have a 362 mile drive from Peterborough down to Lands End, which will take around 7 hours, and then the day after we finish we have a 597 mile drive from John O’Groats back to Peterborough, which will take around 12 hours!

I don’t know what I’m more worried about at this stage, cycling 70 miles a day for 2 weeks, or sitting in a car for 12 hours the day after cycling 70 miles a day for 2 weeks. None of it really appeals. Is there any chance that no one has been reading my blog and I can back out? I didn’t think so…

Until next time

Kevin