Hi,

Well a week has passed by, and I’m a little closer to my goal and pleased to say I’ve lost almost two pounds, which has seen my weight reduce from 12 st 5 lbs to 12 st 3 lbs.  Its a single step in the right direction after a couple of weeks of seeing weight going in the wrong direction because of the holidays and injury, and lack of willpower.

Checking your progress – simple right?

Of course whether this is completely true or not I’m not sure as taking your weight is not the simple process it should be.

It can, I have read be effected by what time of day you take your weight, whether you’ve been to the bathroom – won’t dwell on that, whether you’re positively or negatively affected by water retention, ambient temperature and humidity, and whether you’re having a naturally heavy or light day, (which can give you false readings).

After wildly inaccurate readings from my scales some time ago I actually read the small print in the instructions (and who does that), and found that (and perhaps I’m the only one in the UK that hadn’t known this already) the scales didn’t read correctly on carpet.  I know – its obvious to everyone else, but my bathroom has carpet down rather than tiles and having the scales there seemed perfectly sensible.  I was not the one who made that unfathomable design decision.

On top of this, how frequently you weigh yourself can make a difference.  Weighing every day can be counter productive as your body fluctuates its weight a lot and I’ve read that you should only weigh yourself once or twice a week.  I think that you’re less likely to be affected emotionally by a more reasonable weight check after one week, than a daily one fraught with so many environmental and physiological factors.

The added complication for those taking their weight who regularly exercise is that muscle weighs more than fat, so your ideal weight figure may well be higher than the standard BMI figure.  I wouldn’t even try to work out how you allow for this in weight terms, and there is the school of thought that believes that for those who exercise regularly, (and I think this means more than taking the dog for a walk), a better way than looking at your weight is to check your waistline.

According to Australia’s Heart Foundation the bottom line is that your health is at risk if your waist size is over 94 cm (about 37 inches) for men and over 80 cm (about 31.5 inches) for women.

A handy calculator for checking your health by comparing height and waistline is at health-calc.com where you can enter your measurements for an instant verdict on how you’re doing.

This is my reading:

(I’m the one on the left).

I have to lose two inches here to get to the point where this ‘Consider Action’ message changes to ‘Ok’.  You have to get to a reading of 0.60 before it says ‘Take Action’.  The graphic of the man and woman changes dependent on which direction you go from Ideal.

Personally, I think that I’m ok if I can get into size 34 waist jeans without straining.  Still got some work to do so shall continue with that.  Kind of reminds me of going on holiday somewhere really nice, and then when you return only thinking of what it would be like to get back there.

Borrowing calories from next day week

Given that I’m not doing so much exercise as normal because of injury, I hit the stage of ‘borrowing’ from the next day, only I overdid it a bit, and borrowed a little from all week.  Having done it, I’d strongly recommend that you don’t.  I was already at maximum 1800 calories, and borrowed 70 calories from the next 5 days when I wanted chocolate I really should have had the willpower to resist, but you know what its like – some days you just can’t help yourself.  It is of course all Cadbury’s fault for making me so dependent on it.

Its an awful way to do it, because you face a reduced number on what is likely to be a pretty spartan figure to start with.  I found it a bit depressing and was glad when Saturday turned up.  If you are going to borrow, as I suggested as a founding principle of the bank diet some weeks ago, make sure you restore the overdraft the following day.  This will also curb your enthusiasm for the amount you overdo it by and reduce the pain making the difference up.

Anyway, hope some of this amuses or helps you and the best of luck with your personal campaigns for losing weight and catch you in a while.

All the best.  Ian.