Weigh-in - Week 48

Well I feel really good today! This morning's weigh-in registered a fantastic loss of 3.8lbs, which brings my weight down to 16st 12.6lbs. I am very pleased to say that, at long last, I have made it into the 16's! It feels really good, especially after the trubulations of the last couple of weeks, where I had a fairly large gain.

The tricky part for me now is to make sure that I stay below 17st at next week's weigh-in - I think the Jubilee Weekend may well bring some temptation - especially the Jubilee Party on our local green, where I beleive there is to be a Hog Roast and plenty of Ale. I guess I will just have to be especially careful in the few days before it - maybe I'll have to forego my usual Friday and Saturday beers to save the weekly points for Monday.

I received the results from some tests I had done a couple of weeks ago and was very pleased to see that my Carotid Artery, Atrial Fibrillation, Abdominal Aortic Anuerism and Peripheral Arterial Desease testa all cam back with "Normal" results. The only concern the screening company raised (apart from the fact that my BMI was 32.5) was that my Resting Heartbeat was very slow at 44BPM. I went to see my doctor yesterday and he seems quite happy that there is probably nothing to worry about, but he's booked me in for another ECG next week. I'm also going to have a blood test for Cholesterol levels at the same time (last time I tested my Cholesterol, the results were on the high side of normal, so hopefully it'll be the same this time). The doctor also checked my blood pressure, which is also normal at 120/78, so all in all I think I'm probably pretty healthy considering all of the abuses I've put my body through over the years - overweight (or, more, normally obese) since my teens, smoked until about 2003/4, almost no exercise since I gave up swimming when I discovered beer in my early teens etc. etc.

I mentioned in last week's blog that I was trying to go backwards on the crosstrainer as my warm up for my kettlebell circuits. Well I persevered with it this week and on Monday I managed to do my full 5 minute warm up going backwards. I wasn't as fast as I am when I go forwards, but it definitely feels very different and exercies the legs in a different way. I'm going to stick with it and see if I can up the pace over the next few weeks. Everything else has pretty much stayed the same - 10 pressups and 30 seconds of the plank at the end of each circuit, I think I'm going to stick at 10 pressups for a little while and try to improve the technique, before I try and do more repetitions. I also need to think about introducing what we used to call "squat thrusts" so that I can get used to the movement in preparation for my surfing holiday in August.

Anyway, that's all for now - keep on losing and I'll see you next week!