reached my target weight
One of my goals this year (in fact one of my goals every start of the year) was to lose a bit of weight. I had put on a little during last summer during my stay in Sweden. Lots of food and not much moving around. It’s hard to kick the habit once you start, so that continued after my return. And the bodyweight continued to increase in spite of my high levels of activity. And you can guess what happened during the month of December.
My target was to lose 6.5kg. That’s a stone in old money. I weighed 66.5kg and I wanted to reach 60kg. I calculated that it would take 3 months. My plan was to use the Weightwatchers method of counting points instead of calories. I had followed this method before with good success, so I decided to employ it again. My wife said that she was going to do it too and so we could support each other. 24 points allowance for days when I was fairly sedentary and 28 points on the days when my levels of activity would be higher.
So today, on the 12th of April, just a little more than 3 months after the start date I weighed in at exactly 60kg. Hurrah. Time for a large bar of chocolate. Maybe not. So how did I do it? How come I stuck to the plan? Did I not have any cravings or days when I went over the points allowance? Or days when I thought of abandoning all hope of ever reaching my target?
No, no and no. Whenever I have tried to follow diets in the past I have experienced intense cravings. I remember in early 2000 following the Zone diet having intense cravings for chocolate logs. And then gorging myself till the sugar rush made my whole body tremble. But this time nothing. Not a peep. I was expecting the cravings to start around the two week mark. It was easy to stop after the christmas break because I had had my fill. It was good to eat healthy again, low fat and less. But the cravings never came.
Were there days when I went over the limit? Of course. But never two days in a row. And if I knew in advance that I would be going out for dinner in the evening or celebrating, then I would compensate by eating less earlier in the day. But I didn’t make the mistake of continuing to eat or consume once I had gone over the limit. I knew that I had gone over the limit and that I had allowed myself a celebratory feast, but that was not an excuse to continue eating. There are other ways to celebrate aside from eating. Success in one area of my life didn’t have to mean failure in another.
And what about the days when I felt down or low? When I felt that things were too much? Normally I would have opened the fridge door and looked for some answers. But I didn’t go there. I looked elsewhere. I simply didn’t turn to food for comfort. It wasn’t will power. It wasn’t a suppression of desires. The need or the desire for food simply wasn’t there. When I felt low I went for a walk, rode my bike or took a bath. They did the trick. And for some reason, I turned to those solutions first before thinking about food. There was no particular strategy to it: I simply did it. I also did web design and all my so called problems disappeared. At least for a while.
I did experience mild cravings, especially for junk food. Such as chips, deep fried sweet and sour pork balls, sausage in batter. That sort of thing. But the cravings were never strong enough to actually get me to follow them. I found that I was actually able to have a little of what I wanted and remain within the points allowance. Perhaps there were other things in my life that were satisfying and fulfilling enough so that I wasn’t looking to food for comfort. I was and am already comfortable. But I haven’t been able to put my finger on it. Not exactly.
I suppose that this is an indicator that my life is going well. That whatever it is I’m doing is working. But I do want to know that is so that at a later stage, when my life is not going so well, I can reapply the same strategy. I don’t feel as though my life is going better than it usually does. But perhaps the improvements have been so slow that they have not been perceived. Like watching your hair grow. Maybe.
I have been spending more time doing what I want and I am much better organised than I have in the past. That means that my head space is pretty clear so I can focus on what I’m doing a lot more rather than think about what I’m going to do later on. I have more energy due to eating less and also doing more exercise. I have a new found passion in web design. But I don’t think that it’s any one of these things. I think it’s a combination of factors and a case of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. So even though I like the idea of taking a snapshot of my life as it is now in order to arrange things in the same way at a later date to create the same effect, I don’t think it works like that.
So it’s been easy. So another pat on the back. And what I want now is to get just under the target, something like 59kg and then maintain it of course.