Weigh-in - week 59

Holiday Target Achieved!

I'm very pleased to say that, after continuing with my reduced fruit intake, I have managed to achieve my target of under 16 1/2 stones in time for my holiday (which starts on Friday). At my weigh-in this morning I have lost 1.4lbs, bringing my current weight to 16st 6.4lbs! My aim for the holiday is to try and enjoy myself, without worrying too much about what I am eating and drinking, but to come back and still be below 17stones. I'm hoping that, as I expect to be fairly active throughout the holiday, I should be able to get away without any extra indulgences causing too much damage.

This week I tried a new recipe - The Hairy Dieters Skinny Lasagne. In case you're not aware of it, the Hairy Bikers have realised that all of the hearty food that they have been eating over the years has taken it's toll and they are now well and truely fat! In truth, neither of them are as fat as I was when I started, but they are pretty big. To try and do something about this, they have embarked on a diet, but they are customising many of their favourite dishes so that they taste as good, but are significantly healthier. The first of these was Lasagne, where they made a reduced calory sauce and replaced the pasta with leeks. I made this for Sunday lunch this week and it was a great success! I've got a portion left over which I shall be having for dinner this evening and I shall definitely be making it again. You can find the recipe here, but be warned it is a bit time consuming to prepare.

My exercising this week was a bit more regular - I managed to use the crosstrainer twice and I did my kettlebell exercises twice. I'll get one more crosstrainer session and one more kettlebell session in before I leave for my holiday (Mrs TBI has told me not to exercise on Friday morning as she doesn't want my sweaty exercise cloths lying around for 2 weeks before they get a chance to be washed!). I shall be taking my kettlebell with me as it doesn't take up much space in the car, but I will miss the crosstrainer (I hope I don't struggle to get back on it when I return).

So the next couple of weeks will be taken up with a couple of 9-hole rounds of golf, at least one theme park visit, swimming in the pool, body boarding in the sea, surfing lessons and whatever else Mrs TBI and Master TBI decide they want to do. This is very active compared to my normal, office bound, life! Hopefully we will also be able to enjoy some good food and wine, but not too much!

I'll report back again after my holiday!
Bon Voyage!

Weigh-in - week 58

Well, for those of you who have been wondering about my experiment with a reduced fruit intake, I can tell you that the experiment appears to have been a success! I have lost 2.2lbs this week, which brings my weight down to 16st 7.8lbs with another week to go before my holiday. I intend to continue with the reduced fruit intake as it does seem to have made a difference for me.

I treated myself to a fish n chip dinner from the chip shop on Saturday evening and I think it was a mistake, as I spent quite a lot of Saturday evening in the smallest room in the house. I think it will be a while before I do that again, I'll stick to the oven baked fish & chips for now. We also had a barbeque on Sunday afternoon, with good friends and lots of food and beer, so to lose 2.2lbs is a pretty good result after that.

I've been very good at sticking with the crosstrainer, in fact I matched my personal best on Saturday morning. I've not been so good with the kettlebell workout on the alternate days. I really do intend to get back to using the kettlebell, in fact I plan on taking it on holiday with me as I won't have access to a crosstrainer where we're going. I'm also planning on taking my golf clubs, or a subset of them, as our holiday cottage is next to a golf course and I hope to get at least to rounds (of 9 holes) with my son. This will be in addition to the surfing lessons that ThinBlokeInside Minor & I will be having. There is also a big theme park nearby, so that will involve lots of walking too. All in all I expect to be doing quite a lot of exercise while we are on holiday, so hopefully I won't put on too much weight even though I'm not planning on being too strict with the weightwatchers plan.

I'll be back again next week to let you know if I've achieved my target of being under 16st 7lbs for my holiday (unfortunately the target that I set myself at the beginning of the year was under 15st 7lbs, but I missed that due to spending too much time hanging around on plateaus (maybe I should have reduced my fruit intake sooner).

Bye for now.

Weigh-in - week 57

OK, so I could have been wrong about falling off the edge of the plateau - this week I've gained 0.4lbs! It could have been worse I suppose, but I am a little disappointed with that result - only 2 weeks left now 'till we go on our surfing holiday and I REALLY want to be under 16st 7lbs for the start of it.

I have been reading some of the posts in the various WeightWatchers forums and have decided that my difficulties may be due to eating too much fruit. This is my normail daily fruit intake:

Breakfast: 2 pears, 1 orange, 1 banana
Lunch: 3 tangerines/clementines/satsumas, 1 orange, 1 banana

giving me a total of 7 portions of fruit per day.

I've decided to cut it down to 1 pear and an orange at breakfast time and 3 tangerines/clementine/satsumas and a banana at lunch time to see if that helps. This will also please Mrs ThinBlokeInside as she's always complaining that we're spending a fortune on fruit!

My exercising is still not fully on track as I am still tending to miss out the kettlebell sessions, which is surprising because I think these are the important ones for me to complete in the run up to our holiday - I MUST Try Harder!

Well, I'll be back next week to share the results of my reduced fruit intake experiment, see you then!