At Last An Update!

Sorry for the silence on this blog of late, this has been due to work commitments being fairly high on my list of priorities: Imperial War Museum London to reopen

I've still been keeping to my weight loss regime (in the most part, see below) with some interesting things cropping up this weekend.

My current statistics are:

• Weight - 14 stone.
• Neck - 16.5".
• Waist - 34"

Starting statistics:

• Weight - 23 stone 4 pounds.
• Neck - 19.5".
• Waist - 52"

Difference:

• Weight - minus 9 stone 4 pounds.
• Neck - minus 3".
• Waist - minus 18".

Now as originally I had only planned to go down to 14 stone 7 pounds, I've obviously gone a way past this (before this weekend I was actually under 14 stone), but after doing some research I have decided that what flab I've got left isn't loose skin but is in fact subcutaneous fat:

Subcutaneous fat is the layer of subcutaneous tissue that is most widely distributed. It is composed of adipocytes, which are grouped together in lobules separated by connective tissue. The number of adipocytes varies among different areas of the body, while their size varies according to the body's nutritional state. It acts as padding and as an energy reserve, as well as providing some minor thermoregulation via insulation. Subcutaneous fat is found just beneath the skin, as opposed to visceral fat, which is found in the peritoneal cavity, and can be measured using body fat calipers to give a rough estimate of total body adiposity. It is thickest in the buttocks, palms, and soles. 

(source Wikipedia).

I came to this conclusion by the way this fat behaves around my mid rift and as it doesn't have the loose skin appearance. Because of this I've decided to try and get rid of the remaining fat by continuing to diet and taking more exercise.

One thing however was that my partner and I had decided to go for a slap up steak meal when I reached my target weight and as I was well under that target off we went to a rather nice brasserie at London Bridge on Friday night and I got in the supplies for a full fat English Breakfast for the Saturday morning.

This was going to be an interesting test as I'd not eaten such volumes or high amounts of calories since my birthday in April and it would be only the second time I'd eaten chips since January this year! So my main worries were:

1. Would this just trigger me off into old habits?
2. Would I put on a substantial amount of weight?
3. Sweet food, my greatest fear as I have a love of sweet food!

Currently I'm eating less than 1,380 calories a day to ensure that I continue to lose weight (thanks to MyFitnessPal for working all this out) but the amounts for my two super naughty but nice meals were:

• Calamari Rings - 328 calories.
• Tartar Sauce - 70 calories
• 15oz Ribeye Steak - 816 calories (I over estimated this a bit).
• French Fries 100g - 274 calories.
• Ketchup - 21 calories.
• 3 slices of sour dough bread - 263 calories.
• Butter - 72 calories.
• Diet Coke (yes the old fiend) 1 calorie.

So this works out at a whopping great 1,845 calories! So I basically slaughtered my goal for that day with a daily calorie total of 2,148 which is 760 calories over (but interestingly below the maintain weight goal for my current weight).

Move forward a day and it's brunch time which consisted of:

• 2 Richmond thick sausages - 250 calories.
• 2 rashers of Co-Op unsmoked rindless back bacon - 140 calories.
• 1 medium free range egg - 60 calories.
• 1 spray of 1cal oil to fry the egg in - 1 calorie.
• Half a tin of baked beans - 164 calories.
• 1 slice of malted Danish bread - 51 calories.
• Filter coffee - 6 calories.

So even though I used some of my portion cutting tricks and didn't have butter or margarine due to the baked beans this still worked out at 672 calories for this meal, and then add to this a Tapas based lunch of cooked meats, dips, pita bread etc. and you've got a daily total of 1,906 calories which was over my goal by 526 calories.

So I was interested to see what difference this would make to my weight this morning (Sunday) and as it turns out I'd put on 2 pounds, which wasn't as much as I thought; I'll carry on with the experiment by weighing myself tomorrow morning as well to see if there's an up or down movement in my weight as I've been back to my normal eating regime today which meant that I've eaten 1,122 calories in total.

So based on this experience I can conclude:

1. I managed to go back to the healthy options with no real issues after the treat days, I'm very happy with this.
2. I appear to put on and take off weight fairly easily, we'll see where I'm at tomorrow but I'm not overly stressed by the changed that occurred.
3. Sweet food wasn't an issue but this was because I was too frightened to touch it, just in case!!
4. The diet coke tasted not very nice at all, it was overly sweet and bitter, I take this as a good sign that I've broken that habit.

So all in all this was an interesting and pleasurable experience and has prepared me more for the ever nearing time when I have to eat more in order to sustain a healthy weight, because as regular readers will know this has caused me some worry in the past.