GOAL!

Well, after 12 weeks I've made it! Just over 10kg (22lb) down from this time 3 months ago. I have to say, it's not been all that difficult, especially when it's something you really want to do. I had a reasonable goal in mind, and set about trying to achieve that little by little. It's amazing what you can learn about food on the way.

So where from here? Well, now I'm a gold member (which means absolutely nothing when you do it online, you just get a certificate, and you continue to pay!), I enter the next phase: maintenance. Maintenance is a little odd - it just means that you get a whole load more points plonked into your lap, and you adjust the total up or down depending on your gain/loss for the week (1 point up or down for every pound up or down). So now I have 30 points per day, which seems enormous, given that I started with 26 points eight weeks ago, a total which has slowly gone down...and now I have to eat four more than that! I'm sure I'll (eventually) get my head 'round it soon, and not feel guilty having a biscuit with my coffee here and there! Aside from that, the training continues for the 10k run, we're off swimming this afternoon (which, incidentally means I'll probably earn another few bonus points to eat - what am I going to do with all these bloody points?!)...

Week 11

It's my 11th weigh-in day, and I'm still not at goal. This week I've lost 0.5kg, which is good, but just a shame it's a little off! I'm confident that I'll make it to goal next week, particularly as I'm going to start training in earnest for the Cancer Research UK 10k tomorrow (please sponsor me here) that's taking place on the 8th of October. You can read about my training progress and how I'm feeling on my new 10k blog, and leave comments of support!

I have, however, managed to get out to run and cycle a few times over the past week, and have earned some bonus points (which I nearly managed to eat too many of last night), which you earn through exercise. It seems no-one really knows how best to use them, but the general consensus is that you can earn as many as you want, but only eat 12 of them per week (to stop you from shovelling in cream cakes while you're on the treadmill). Some people, me included, prefer to eat half of the bonus points earned (I've yet to earn over 12 in a week). The amount earned depends on your weight, the intensity of the exercise and the length of exercise. So, for example, someone of my weight (63.3kg) would earn 0.5 bonus points by walking slowly for 10 minutes, whereas a 1/2 hour run would earn me 3.5. It's all a bit of a carrot on a stick really, I'm sure some people on weight watchers would do anything for some extra food, even if that means trampolining (sorry, I mean 'rebounding'), skipping or the obsessive completion of the Davina McCall 'Power of 3' dvd ;-) !

Onwards and downwards (a little bit)!

Weighing in

Today, like every Monday is weigh-in day. Not that I mind, as weigh-in has been quite a positive experience so far. In fact, I find it all quite exciting. Weigh-in is like the race after the week's preparation. I haven't put on weight once since starting, though did go through a period of not seeming to go anywhere, staying the same for a few weeks (see The Journey)... Generally, my weight loss has been pretty steady, never really over the 1-2lb recommended per week, aside from an unexpected first week loss. However, lately I've been getting a little annoyed with small losses. I think the fact that I decided to use metric units has made things a little more difficult, as most of the people on the Weight Watchers forums seem to work in pounds, so I can only really compare my losses to my own progress. It also doesn't help that one of the machines I've been using from the start seems to weigh a little high, so I don't feel as if I'm getting as far as I really am.

For example, today I went into uni to weigh in, and on this one particular machine, it shows my weight at 64.4kg (10st2lb), but according to this machine I've lost 400g (just under a pound) this week. However, on the other machine, which weighed me at 64kg last week (10st1lb and a bit), I'm now at 63.5kg (10st). Why does this all matter? Well, I checked my weight using a third machine, which confirmed the lower reading. This means I will have lost half a kilo this week (a psychological boundary, sounds more than 400g), and that I am within half a kilo of goal, rather than being over a kilo over. It's all a bit silly, but that's how things are.

Back over on the Weight Watchers forums, some people are happy to have lost, others are being told that staying the same is good too, and others are being commiserated at a gain. Sometimes it is unclear exactly what happens when you don't get the loss you expect. You can try your hardes all week, stick to your eating plan as well as you want, but somehow everything falls down. Sometimes it can be that you haven't drunk enough water (see here for the reason why), that you haven't really stuck to your plan (for some strange reason, some people justify not counting things like milk in tea or alcohol!), or even that you haven't eaten enough food, and your body goes into starvation mode, holding onto every last ounce of fat. Whatever the reason, we all keep our fingers crossed when this happens that next week we'll end up with a loss, and sometimes it happens in a rather spectacular fashion, with a loss that makes up for the previous week...

What's next

I plan to reach my goal weight (63kg or 9st12lb) in the next couple of weeks, but this is all a bit of a ploy to get my body fat down. From then, I hope to build up some muscle (which undoubtedly means my weight will go up)...
As for Weight Watchers, this means I'll be going into the maintenance phase, where I'll get more points to play with per day, and it's just a case of working out how much you can eat without gaining or losing...

Reactions

People's reactions are funny. Some people have an instant negative reaction to me being on a diet, as they find the whole idea of having someone tell you that to lose weight you need to:

• Eat less
• Do more exercise

We all know this, it's really not that hard, to lose weight all you have to do is ensure that calories in < calories out. Well done, you win a prize (as my mum says, what do you want, a paper hat or a tin whistle?)! Most people seem to fall into the category of, "Why are *you"* doing Weight Watchers?". When I tell them I've lost 1st5lb in 10 weeks, they see that although I may not be overweight now, when I started I was towards of the weight bracket I should be in (at 1.73m or 5'8", I had a bmi of 24.4, your bmi should be between 20 and 25), and now I'm near the bottom. My partner has started complaining that I am too skinny, but I discovered that I was keeping track of my weight while I was working at the bank last year, and that I am only just below the weight I was then, which probably only goes to show the dramatic difference following Weight Watchers has had.

The journey

The obsession continues.




Above is my progress chart from the time I've been doing WW. It's a good trend, I've not put on any weight over the whole time! I've managed to go back to France for a holiday (and couldn't count anything while I was there), go away with some uni friends for a trip to the Yorkshire Dales, have survived countless takeaways and alcohol, too.
Over the time, I've lost a total of 8.6kg (1st5lb), generally (except for the first week, when I lost about 3kg or 7lb) at a fast & safe rate of about 1kg or 2lb a week. Lately this seems to have slowed, but I think that's to be expected as I get nearer my goal...

Beginning WW

I started Weight Watchers on the 5th of June 2006, and quickly became obsessed. I didn't want to go to meetings, my thought was that I didn't want to sit around with a load of fat women talking about dust (if you haven't seen Marjorie Dawes on Little Britain I can only forgive you if you haven't been in the UK), although my mum assured me it wasn't like that. I decided, however, to join the online plan, which meant that I could do it all in the Internet, without having to do any meetings. I must have spent hours on the site, tracking everything I ate, which included:

Breakfast
1 glass of orange juice
1 serving muesli
milk
coffee
muller vitality raspberry yoghurt drink

Lunch
Mexican bean + tuna salad (kidney beans, butter beans, sweetcorn, spring onion, coriander, tuna, lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, peppers)

Dinner
chicken breast
noodles
baby sweetcorn
spring onion
french beans
red pepper
sweet chilli sauce
lemon juice
soy sauce
sesame oil
banana angel delight

Snacks
apple
banana
sugar (for coffee)

Seems I went a little overboard on that day, I had 26 points to play with (points are weight watchers way to make calorie counting easy - you work it out by adding the number of calories divided by 70 to the number of grams of saturated fat divided by 4), and although I managed to have 1/2 a point left, I was calculating every last one! I even only had 1/2 my share of angel delight so I wouldn't go over. My comments on the day were "First day. Quite easy really, possibly getting obsessed with this site??!"!

Where it all began

Just found this the other day, and thought I better get it scanned into the computer, as otherwise it would fade away forever. This is the weigh-in ticket from the first day I started Weight Watchers. I decided things had got a little out of hand, this was the first time I think I ever weighed over 11 stone. I had always been conscious of my weight, but never really had any issues. I looked at other guys who weighed less than me, and just assumed that they were different, and that I'd never be like that. My weight had always gone up and down, though I remember a spate of going to the gym before I went to France to live for 9 months back in 2000, when I weighed 67kg (10st7lb), and I lost weight during the time I was there (of course, on my trips back to the UK, my mum complained that I was losing too much weight!!). Probably the most weight I ever put on in one go was my trip to America in 2003, after all the steak and fries, I'd be surprised if I didn't put on 1/2 a stone in two weeks! My next skinniest point was when I moved back to France again that September for another 9 months. I got down to 63kg (9st12lb), which sounds quite low, but it was a weight I arrived at without dieting, just eating what I fancied, when I fancied it (although I always had 3 meals a day). I had everything I wanted, bread, cheese, nuts, meat...and managed to keep it down. Unfortunately when I moved back to the UK, the weight carried on rising, and I ended up back at the weight I was way back in 2000. Since then, it must have carried on creeping up to where I ended up 10 weeks or so ago. That was when I started Weight Watchers.