Friday, February 10, 2006

Non Entity Fit Club

I was absolutely delighted when I finished at the gym yesterday to find that my weight had dropped below the psychological barrier of 85 Kg.

This is totally amazing to me when I consider that last week comprised:


  • a curry fueled 'lager and rugby frenzy' weekend with my brother that started at 3:30 last Friday afternoon
  • Chinese takeaway Sunday night
  • pub crawl with Paul Monday night
  • Pizza Hut Super Supreme and bottle of red wine Tuesday night
  • Burger King XL Bacon Double Cheeseburger meal with a chocolate milkshake Wednesday night.
THus, the empirical evidence of my experience since I started weighing myself last September seems to be that exercise is at least as important as diet.

I've got a pair of trousers on today that I had to put aside a few years ago when my belly overwhelmed them. They are held up with a belt as I write since my former bulk burst the button off the top of the fly. This gives me a feeling of enormous satisfaction.

Reflecting on, and playing with the spreadsheet that I have used to record my losses leads to a couple of observations.

Since the end of September my average rate of loss has been 0.7 pounds a week. If I had been weighing myself on a dodgy analogue bathroom scale week to week, or of I hadn't been recording the figures, I don't think that would have registered with me as a regular loss at all even though I have lost 19 pounds altogether in the months since then. That is important for motivation I think. It probably also illustrates how people put on weight over months and years.

Oddly, if I maintain that rate of loss I will attain my (admittedly arbitrary) target of 80kg at the end of May exactly a year after joining the gym. Further if I project that rate of weight loss back from September to my first workout it implies that I would have weighed fifteen and a half stone then. Difficult to concede but all too likely.

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