Week 16 (36 to go)

So, my body is a strange thing. This week I lost a whopping 1.8kg. Because of this number, I have gone back and looked at what is different / what changed. This has led me down a path that i will try and articulate below:

First things first. This is the first week of COVID-19 'lock-down' (not official, just a social separation thing enforced by work). I have worked the entire week from home and I imagine i will be doing so for the next number of months. The positives of this include i am getting full nights of sleep, i have a routine developing and i am eating home made lunches instead of store bought. I have my gym equipment in the garage, so no problems with exercise and we have a good amount of fresh foods in the house so eating healthy is very easy. I think this has a large bearing on the numbers posted this week.

The work week has been unusual, I have been getting roughly 8 hours of sleep consistently, been making sure i do my exercise and sticking to home made food for lunches. When at work, i always opted for the healthy meals (Salads etc), however it is evidence to me that when you cannot track 100% of what you put in, the numbers estimated are just that - estimates. I think that once the COVID-19 clears, and normal workdays resume, I will need to make sure i pack lunches more and rely on 'healthy' take out options less.

I had the bucks on Saturday night, where many whiskeys / beers were consumed. To take it back a step, in the morning i woke up, did my normal workout at a higher intensity (cross trainer / Biceps & Chest weights). I then ate healthily through the day before heading out at 4pm. We went to a whiskey bar and comedy show, where my

dinner was a chicken schnitzel with veggies, not the best or the worst option. After the comedy show (11pm) the rest of the boys tried to brave the crowds and kick on, i pulled the pin and went back to my apartment. Because i had a relatively early night, i was up at 6am on the Sunday, got showered and dressed, checked out and drove the 50 minutes home before having a healthy breakfast and getting back on track.

This month I have had a number of activities that i have written about (Tool concerts, Wife's birthday, Work trip to Cairns, Bucks night) that traditionally would have derailed my diet. I have consciously gotten back onto my eating program as soon as possible and it appears, based on my daily weigh-ins, that my body stores about 1-1.5 kg of water for the day or so after the event, and then everything continues almost as normal. I have a couple of big losses the days afterward and my weekly weigh ins are mostly unaffected. I have included my analysis (apologies for my editing) below. The dots represent daily weigh ins tracked by my scales, where there are gaps is due to me being away from home at normal weigh in time (traveling etc). The weekly markers should align to previous blog posts.

The key thing to note is that on a daily level, it would be easy to throw in the towel seeing spikes like the below. The overall trend of my weigh ins, with weekly tracking has been positive, if erratic. I am gaining a better understanding of how my body reacts to situations and with my tracking data i can go back and have a look at numbers and understand why - not throw my hands in the air, say "i can't lose weight" and sit on the lounge eating chips.

Week 15 (37 to go)

I had such grand plans for last week...

I should start with - i am a day late on weigh in. I will explain through this update, however basically it came down to 4 hours of sleep on the thursday night and a need to get to work early Friday meant i forgot to hop on the scales at the usual time. For consistency, i decided to weigh in at the common time the following day, rather than weighing in at a different time.

So this week was the week of my wife's birthday. This meant a lovely lunch out with her parents on Sunday at my favourite German restaurant. It took every fibre of my being to not order the Pork Knuckle, instead i got the Bohemian skewer (Chicken Breast, Capsicum, Onion) with chips (that my daughter ate). It was delicious. I refrained from desert and on the whole had a good day.

On Laura's actual birthday however, it was chaos. I missed my workout for presents / breakfast, was good for lunch, then in the afternoon both of our kids had activities (Kick Boxing and Gymnastics) which meant Dinner was Indian take out. I kept my portion to a good size, however i know it was not the healthiest thing i could have had. We then had cake, and it was nasty. Chocolate mud cake with chocolate glaze, it was sooo sweet that i nearly couldn't eat it. I did soldier on and finish it, but there is a mental scar on the sweetness of it.

The following day i had to fly to tropical north Queensland for work (overnight). I caught up on exercise in the morning before working for a while before heading to the airport. In short, while away my eating was OK - I optioned the healthiest things available excluding dinner, where Brazilian BBQ was served - allot of meat was eaten.

I got home at midnight Thursday night and had to be up at 0430 the next day to get in to finish work. So very sleep deprived, i missed normal weigh in. I was also a zombie for the whole day, but stayed on target as far as diet went and went to bed.

Here we are Saturday morning, i have slept a good 10 hours and weighed in. I was still able to register a loss of 400g, however yet again i am now 100g behind my target weight. Suffice to say, this mornings workout was vigorous as i am off to a Bucks night tonight so i will need to be on point this week to make up my deficit and offset the number of whiskeys i am likely to drink tonight.

Wish me luck.

Week 14 (38 to go)

Biggest news this week, according to the BMI, I no longer have the term 'morbidly' associated with me by default. I lost a large 1.2kg this week putting me slightly further ahead of target and bringing my BMI to 39.9 (40 and above is classed as Morbidly Obese).

I am still obese, and still on a journey, however it is one key milestone along the way that i thought should be celebrated.

Looking back on last week and how i hit a large loss. Essentially, I stuck to my guns the whole week with no slip ups. I had a mates 40th last Saturday where i had one light beer with him and spent the rest of the night was spent playing basketball (who doesn't love a bunch of 40year olds pretending to be 17 again), frisbee and chasing kids around their property. I also had more meals without carbs (protein and salad or veggies). This wasn't deliberate, and i certainly didn't notice it during, just something to note in looking back.

Exercise - i stepped up the cross trainer again. Still 24 minutes, however now i am on the 3rd highest resistance. Weights i focussed more on chest, biceps and triceps where i did not isolate my back. This is a hangover from the injury sustained last week. I am treating the injury accordingly, and wont rush back to further damage it. It is a case of doing what i can, not not doing what i cannot.

I am planning on another week like that this week as I have a bucks weekend next weekend that may put me back a step or two.