Week 26 (26 to go) - End of Month 6

This marks the halfway mark of the B52. As mentioned last week, this week will be all about measurements and tracking, with a little introspection thrown in.

For starters, the last week was an OK week. We had a bit of a blow out as far as meals went on the weekend which caused the now semi-understood bump up in weigh-ins through the week. Things balanced out again come Thursday morning and I have landed where I am for the weigh in. It was a needed weekend as after 3 really solid weeks I was getting a little stir crazy at the fear of missing out. I think that is a normal feeling to have from time to time - the important thing is to enabled it, but keep it in check. I did have to consciously get back on the healthy eating bandwagon on Monday, something that came easily the last few blow outs, but after a day I was back on track.

On exercise, I played golf last Friday in an anti-social / social game of golf. It was great fun and the 7+km walk was a good additional level of exercise, however i did exacerbate a shoulder injury which limited my ability to do a full weight session this week. I have kept cross trainer up with a new PB of 11.02km's in 32 mins (image below) which I was very happy with.

Now to the facts and figures.

To start with, I am now weighing in at 137.7 kg's. This is a total loss of 25.1 kgs in 26 weeks. I have just exceeded my targeted weight loss of 0.9kg over the 26 weeks, with some bumps and dips as shown in the results and graph below. Obviously each of those things have been discussed here in this blog since inception.

From an actual measurement perspective (i.e. not the infamous belt), i have lost:

• 7.0 cm's from my Neck (51.0 starting to 44.0 current)

• 19.5 cm's from my Chest (146.5 starting to 127 current)

• 25.0 cm's from my Waist (145.0 starting to 120.0 current)

• 15.0 cm's from my Hips (135.0 starting to 120.0 current)

This is shown in the graph below:

I have spoken a lot about how I feel about this in previous entries, but I think the best summary is that I am now happy. There are little things like having people I work with comment on my appearance, fitting into clothes I had grown out of and being able to walk a full 18 holes of golf and not be a sweaty, blubbery mess that make me feel proud of what I have achieved so far. I keep grounding myself, reminding myself that I am halfway through a challenge and that the benefits will only become greater as the end comes into sight. The last thing i want to do now is get complacent and end up where I was again in 12 months time. To that end, I think the best way to show the results is a comparison. Below are the before and after images showing 6 months of progress. While I am still no oil painting, I think it is now possible to see the difference the B52 has made.

Finally, just want to send a quick thanks to the guys keeping me on track. Without me having a minor panic attack about working out and getting my butt into gear, this would never have occurred. The snippets of information and conversation about progress is really appreciated - it helps me stay the course.