18kg to go

It's taken a while but now I'm 18kg away from goal. As you can see from the graph, I put on weight recently when I realised that my accountable person had decided to stop contacting me, I relaxed somewhat and decided to treat myself. That took a while to get back from, but here I am where I was on the 15th of May.

100g a day is an achieveable amount of carbohydrates, I can sustain that, I'm having a reward meal this afternoon then tomorrow back into the diet and I'll slowly and gently take it down when I feel that I can manage it.

I am through the period that I was dreading a bit, 19th to 23rd, my mother's deaths anniversary was a lot easier to handle, she died when she was 81 which is something most people can accept.

Ramblings

I'm not a big rambler on this blog, but today I thought I'd make an exception. I'm still losing weight, having a new weight loss buddy is great and there are no problems there. I tried 70g of carbohydrates and that was too hard as well, so I thought I'd up it to 100g (today being the first day) and slowly reduce it to see if I can reduce my cravings. I'm still hungry but I'll work that out, hopefully. Losing weight is slow, and you need to work on it every day.

Yesterday was the 5 year anniversary of my ex-partner Gill's death at the age of 51. I decided to treat myself to a coffee and slice and think of her and ditch the whole counting carbohydrates for that day. There is something about a nice sweet slice, I like reading the newspaper and looking at the people in the mall that is nearby. I went to university and did some study, sent Gill's daughter a text message then watched music videos on my laptop. The music videos were of songs that reminded me of Gill, there's been a few over the years.

Of course that made me feel even more down, I wonder if I hadn't taken my laptops headphones I would have felt better, as it happened I decided to indulge myself and bought 2 litres of ice cream on the way home. Becky understood of course, I finished off a large plate full then went to bed.

I might do the same (coffee and slice, ice cream I've already got now) on Sunday, when it's the 5th anniversary of my mothers death. It always amazes me when I think of how I continued losing weight during those times. I was a lot thinner than now, I was about 73kg, compared with 84kg now.

Sometimes when you are facing a long, hard challenge and you think about giving up, that happened yesterday (unrelated to the feeling down) but only for a few minutes. I am grateful that my weight loss buddy will hopefully keep me going. I can't think of anything else that will.

A tale of two addictions

A few weeks back I posted about carbohydrate addiction, and how I was sure that I had it. I've also got caffeine addiction, something that many people have and don't need to do anything about, unfortunately I do. My health problem means that when I have caffeine the next day I am really tired, I have trouble dragging myself out of bed in the morning although after a while I feel like I can manage to some degree.

At the moment I'm having way too much Coke, that liquid that has two addicitive substances in it, sugar and caffeine. Yes, there is diet Coke but the sugar substitute in it has the same effect on my whole appetite system as sugar.

I've struggled with caffeine addiction in the past, but I did manage to go a whole two years without one bit (Coke or coffee) which is something I'm quite proud of. I'll try to do that again. I tried today but gave in, tomorrow I'll try again.

The problem with Coke is that when I have it, it stimulates my appetite and I've got no control over what I eat after that. Today I just ate and ate after having the drink, it was shameful really.

That said, tomorrow is another day. I've found the best way to get off caffeine is when I say to myself "Just one drink won't matter" it's time to buy a small bar of chocolate, there is enough caffeine in that to reduce my cravings. After a while the cravings stop, although they can continue for about 6 months, totally random too. Chocolate has sugar in it, which is a problem of course but I don't buy heaps of it so it won't be a too difficult for my whole keeping carbohydrates in check.

One thing I will miss about caffeine (apart from the increased energy feeling) is that I'm sure that it increases my intelligence, usually for about 30 minutes. Oh I really must start work on that data analysis project I've been thinking about for so long I'll think to myself as I'm walking around with a bottle of Coke in my hand or maybe I should do my degree in mathematics rather than engineering, it's not that bad. I'll miss that. I won't miss the crappy feeling in the morning or the circulation problems.

60g a day is just too hard

As I was slowly eating half an apple today, I decided that 60g of carbohydrates a day is just too difficult for me, I'm constantly thinking of food, not because I'm hungry (which I'm not) but because I'm thinking of spreading the whole 60g throughout the day and not eating a whole piece of fruit because I may get hungry later on. That's the hard part about the diet that I'm on. So I'll try 70g a day and see how that goes. If that's too hard (I'll see if I'm thinking about food constantly too) I'll just increase it in 10g steps until things are easier. I can always reduce it later on when any residual craving/habit leaves me.

Speaking of habits, this diet is hard because of the volume of food that I'm eating. There is just not much of it, so I'm used to having a piece of fruit now and then (it's not unusual for me to eat 6 pieces of fruit a day when I'm not trying to lose weight) and the whole filling my stomach - I've done that for 43 years and a 43 year habit is hard to break. I'm sure I'll get there, but this is too difficult at the moment.

I am sorry to say that my accountable person has stopped contacting me, so I needed to go out and find a new one soon, fortunately it was easier than I expected it to be. It's sad that people decide to stop losing weight, but I definitely need someone with me, I don't know if I can do this on my own.

As a consequence, I put on a bit of weight over the last week, but it's not fat, just what I'd call "intestinal mass". So I'm losing this mass and my weight is dropping suddenly, always good, but I'm not really losing fat very fast or anything.

In terms of money spent on food, total so far is $460.59 over 54 days which means $59.71, just below my budget of $60.00, money for my camera should be $176, none so far, until I get some extra money.

Amazingly, someone reaches goal

I've been reading weight loss blogs for about 2 years now, and I have yet to see someone actually reach goal weight - until now. Lesley of Live to Slim has made it, she lost 53kg and went from a BMI of 44.5 to 25.8. Congratulations Lesley! She used Lighter Life to lose the weight, which is a very low energy diet. I'm sure all readers here wish her well.

This means that I will not be coming first on my little competition to reach goal, the number of blogs that I'm checking seems to be reducing (2 women got pregnant and one deleted their blog - always sad to see that happen), and there are a few people who may beat me to the finish line. We'll see.

Have a look on the right hand sidebar, you'll see "Weight Loss Hall of Fame" which is a list of blogs that I read where the owner reaches goal, Lesley is first there and maybe a few more before I can list my own blog. Yes, it does seem a bit silly with a blog listing itself but losing weight and reaching goal is something that I should be proud of.

Congratulations again Lesley, we all wish you all the best at maintaining your new achievement!

Just an update

As is typical for me, I haven't posted what I've meant to post, which is my carbohydrate intake. Anyway, I'm losing weight because I actually have started cutting back on the carbs, for a few days now I've been at 60g a day and for a few days I've been over that. I've noticed that my weight has dropped dramatically but I'm sure that it's just all the food emptying from my body, rather than fat disappearing.

Yesterday I was in a bit of a tizz about how my blog has an estimate on when I will complete my weight loss. When I first gave an estimate when I started the blog, I chose 250 days, and yesterday I decided that I should reduce that to 230 days. The thing is that many times I've worked out by mathematical means how long it would take me to finish losing weight, and of course I've been wrong because I haven't been at goal in about 7 years, so you can understand why I wasn't sure what to do. I decided that I'd keep it at 230 days, it will always show too many days because I'd rather not have to increase the number, I'd hate that. I have a theoretically possible date in my head which is early January, based on 7 days per kg but there is no way that I'd be able to sustain that, it's just a "if I were able to..." calculation.

It's been ages since I've done my money, I've spent $202.45 since the last calculation (of course I've left it way too long) making a total of $335.29 since July 21st which is $49.94 a week, amazingly below budget. From now on, I'll be (hopefully!) writing what I buy, it's a bit of a nuisance but it is a bit scary doing so, which does mean it keeps me on track a bit.

The money container should have $142 in it but it has none, that's because I'm a bit short of money at the moment, when that situation stops then I'll be able top it up to what it should be. On a side note, Becky lost a $5 bet (whether her friend came to NZ from the UK recently with her partner and was going to announce something (engagement, pregnancy...), I said she wouldn't) so that goes into the container as well. I seem to win most of the bets I have with her, it's pretty easy really. Of course, I'm hoping to win the $150 bet with her about whether I can stay at goal for one year after finishing losing weight.

Speaking of Becky, a few days ago I asked her whether I was losing weight too quickly for her, she said no, and said that she really did want me to get to 66kg. I've just got a feeling that those negative comments will start again, time will tell I guess.