Weigh-in - Week 16

Eighteen - with a bullet!

Unfortunately I couldn't find an image for "Eighteen with a bullet" so this one will have to do!

I'm really pleased that, after last weeks gain of 1.4lbs, I have lost 3.8 lbs to take me into the 18 stone region. I am now 18stones 13.2lbs which means that I've now lost a total of 2stones 0.8lbs and am just 0.6lbs away from my 10% target. Oh, and I have gone down another ProPoint in my daily ProPoints allowance.

This week I found it somewhat easier to keep within my allowances, since I didn't go to the Rugby club to watch the Rugby World Cup Semi Final matches, since England are no longer in the competition. Instead I stayed at home and watched a woeful France beat an unlucky Wales (who I'm sure would have thrashed France if they'd had a full team) and then a Rampant New Zealand beat an avarage Australia (who STILL don't seem capable of scrummaging). I think the final is pretty much a foregone conclusion - France - "not many", New Zealand - "lots". I suspect the better game to watch will be the 3rd place play-off between Wales & Australia.

I haven't done any exercise at all this week as my Achilles Tendon still hurts a little first thing in the morning. The pain normally subsides once I've moved about a bit, but it does come back after a period of activity - this is a vast improvement as it used to hurt all the time and walking was painful. I went to see my doctor about it yesterday and she said that there didn't appear to be any damage to the tendon, so that's good. She also gave me some stretching exercises to do to try and resolve the problem and said that I should be ok to do the Crosstrainer, which I was going to do this morning, but I overslept and didn't wake up 'till nearly 6.00AM. I will do the crosstrainer tomorrow morning.

Yesterday I found myself with 20 ProPoints unused at the end of the day! I often find that I have 5 to 10 points left over and sometimes I use them up by having a beer or a bag of crisps, but 20 points is a lot. I decided that I would have a bar of chocolate - Green & Blacks - it was lovely and 10 points for 100g seemed very reasonable. It tasted very nice, but I certainly wouldn't want to waste points on it if I was running short as it didn't seem to be very filling.

All in all, a very pleasing week on the weight loss front, let's hope that next week is equally good! I've set myself a mini target of under 18stones by Christmas - wish me luck!

Weigh-in - Week 15

Disaster! I gained 1.4lbs this week.

I think I know why though - I haven't been exercising and I overindulged at the weekend.

The reason I haven't been exercising is that I have come to the conclusion that the pain in my heel that I have suffered from for a while now is caused by Achilles Tendonitis. The cure for this is to rest the foot, so I haven't been doing any Wii Fit Jogging, Crosstrainer or my early morning walks. The pain has subsided now so that it only hurts when I first wake up in the morning or if I haven't moved around for a while (it used to hurt all the time). I think the cause of it is the Wii Fit Jogging, so I have decided that I won't do that any more, which is a shame because I had come to enjoy it.

I will start exercising again when I have been pain free for a few days, but I shall start with the Crosstrainer only for a while to prove to myself that it isn't that which caused the problem. Once I'm satisfied that the Crosstrainer is OK I shall re-introduce my walks, with the intention of starting the Couch 2 5K program after a while.

Hopefully, if I can avoid too many overindulgances I can get back on track and start to lose weight again without the exercise - I guess time will tell!

Weigh-in - Week 14

After last week's fantastic loss I really didn't expect much this week, especially after my 39 point breakfast on Saturday, and, sure enough, the loss was small - 0.6lbs! Not bad, though, as I was anticipating an STS (Stayed The Same) or, worse, a slight gain. My weight is now down to 19st 1.6lbs.

You may be wondering how I managed to have a breakfast of 39 ProPoints - it's really quite simple, I was watching England struggling to beat Scotland at the local Rugby club. I did quite well to limit myself to just 3 pints of beer, but by the start of the second half everyone around me had had a full English breakfast and I could resist no longer! This probably wouldn't have been too bad, but Mrs TBI decided that we would have an Indian Curry for dinner that evening (and I had to wash that down with some more beer!). In the end I used up 87 ProPoints in one day, something of a record for me. I have decided that I won't be having a curry for dinner on this coming Saturday because I expect the breakfast will be much the same since I will be watching England v France!

Yesterday I decided to start the "Couch 2 5K" plan to enable me to run 5K on the road. I'm pretty sure that I already have the fitness level required to do 5K on the road, but I think my leg muscles and joints need to be introduced to it quite slowly. Yesterday I did Week 1, Day 1 which is a 5 minute walk to warm up followed by 8 cycles of 1 minute of running and 1.5 minutes of walking with a 5 minute walk at the end. I managed this quite easily and the next 2 runs are the same. Even though it was quite easy, I don't intend to skip parts of the plan, so it will take me about 9 weeks to get up to the point where I am running, of the road, for a full 30 minutes. It might take me a bit longer becuase I want to carry on with the Crosstrainer and the Wii Fit Jogging too, so there aren't really enough days in the week to do them all.

Apart from the excesses of Saturday, my eating plan has gone well, I'm still finding it remarkably easy to stick to the WeightWatchers ProPoints plan and, even allowing for 87 points on Saturday, I only ended up using up about 9 Activity Points this week. I normally see using Activity Points as an indication that I've overindulged! I'm sure that as time goes on I may come to rely on Activity Points as my daily points allowance drops and this is probably as it should be.

For the next week, may aim is to lose 2lbs to take me down to below 19 stones which will geive me a total loss of just over 2 stones which I think is a good milestone to pass.

Weigh-in - Week 13 (Unlucky for some)

But not for me!

This week I registered another big loss of 3.6lbs! I really feel, after a few slow weeks, that the weight is starting to come off at a reasonable pace, even though the WeightWatchers tracker warned me this morning that I am losing weight too fast! The tracker will issue a warning if the average loss over a 4 week period is more than 2lbs a week, mine is 2.7lbs for the last 4 weeks, but as it's 2.0lbs for the total period I've been doing the WeightWatchers plan, I am not too worried and I don't intend to change anything I'm doing. I'm sure the loss will slow down again soon of it's own accord.

I've now lost a total of 25.8lbs!

My excercise regime is still going strong, I managed to complete over 11Km in 30 minutes Wii Fit Jogging, twice! I also managed to up my time on the CrossTrainer to 26Minutes this morning, during witch time I covered 11.4Km. As you know, I don't believe the Wii Fit distance to be at all accurate and I know that I couldn't possibly jog as fast on the road - sooner or later I'm going to find out when I start doingthe C25K plan.

I'm now thinking of adding some weight training to my Excercise regime and have been contemplating getting myself a KettleBell (hence the picture). Has anyone else tried using one and, if so, has it been beneficial? What are the best excecises to do with one? Please feel free to comment here or on my Week 13 post on the WW Mens Forum.

I had a bit of a binge on Saturday as Mrs TBI & I went to a friends house for a bit of a get together and we had some rather nice Fish n Chips from the chip shop, plus nibble before we got the Fish n Chips, plus beer plus a piece of banoffee cake. All in all I think the points were up to about 75 by the end of the day. Not quite as good as TheShrinkingMan's 100 points, which I think must be something of a WeightWatchers record, but a valiant effort I feel. It just goes to prove, once again, that one day off the wagon does not equal failure!

I'm now in the process of planning the next week's excercise cycle, since I will be walking to the rugby club on Saturday morning for beer, a fry up and watching England hammer Scotland in the Rugby World Cup. Saturday would normally be my CrossTrainer day, so I think I shall just move WF Jogging to Thursday and the CrossTrainer to Friday. With a rest day on Sunday I shall resume the plan with a walk on Monday morning.

I want to lose at least 2.2lbs this week as that will mean that I will have lost 2 stones since I started, If I can lose more than 2.2lbs, that will put me below 19 stones for the first time in about 2 years! Wish me luck!

Weigh-in - Week 12

Well this week I have recorded the biggest loss for some time - 3lbs, which brings me down to 19st 5.8lbs and earns me another "silver star"(I've now had 3 of them). In case you don't know, WeightWatchers awards a "silver star" for every 7lbs lost, I think that you actually get a badge if you go to the meetings, but as I'm doing WeightWatchers online I don't actually get the badge.

There haven't really been any hiccups along the way this week. I was expecting to use a lot of points on Sunday as I was expecting to have a few beers while watching England v Georgia at the rugby club, but the barman had a late night on Saturday and didn't turn up until the end of the first half, so I only had 1 pint to wash down the Full English Fry-up. This was the first proper fry-up I've had since starting WeightWatchers and, I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it (as I should have for 30 points!). I'm looking forward to another one at Saturday's match against Romania.

My excercising has also been going well and the walk to and from the rugby club will have helped to take care of some of the points I consumed with the breakfast. It was a little cold on Sunday morning though, so I am beginning to think that I am going to need to join the local Gym over the winter period. It's going to get harder to motivate myself to go gor my walks when it starts to get cold, dark and wet in the morning and, as winter draws closer, it's going to start getting too cold to use the Crosstrainer in the garage too. On the upside, if I do start to use the gym, I will probably introduce some additional, or more varied, activities to my workouts and I'll be able to use a treadmill, so I might start to do the Couch 2 5K program.

My body shape is definitely beginning to change:

                                       Start                         Now               Loss

Neck:                              48cm                        45cm                3cm
Chest:                            131cm                      122cm               9cm
Calves:                           50cm                         47cm               3cm
Waist:                            118cm                       114cm              4cm
Upper Arms:                   41cm                        37cm               4cm
Thighs:                            62cm                        60cm               2cm

I have now started wearing a 40" jeans, which were always a bit snug when I first go them but now fit me quite nicely. It just goes to show how innacurate jeans sizes are though - 114cm is 44inches! Although I do tend to let my belly hang over the top of my belt, so I guess the waist of the jeans is below my waist. Anyway I'm now looking forward to losing more next week, good luck with your weight losses.

Weigh-in - Week 11

Well I know I shouldn't be dissapointed with a 1.6lb loss, but I am. This is due to the fact that, once again, I have been taling Sneaky Peaks - on Saturday morning I weighed 3lb less than I do this morning! I put the increase since Saturday morning down to 2 things - I had quite a lot of beer on Saturday while I was watching England struggle to overcome Argentina in the Rugby World cup, followed by more beer in the evening and I also went to a carvery on Sunday afternoon and had too much to eat (including a huge Eton Mess for desert).

What can I take from this? Well, firstly I can tell that Sneaky Peaks lead to dissapointment - if I hadn't weighed myself on Saturday I  would have been very pleased with my 1.6lb loss. Secondly, that it is possible to enjoy oneself on occasion without completely undoing all of the good work - an occasional blip is not going to do lasting damage, it is only when those blips become regular events that damage will be done!

I'm still continuing with my excercise routine, but this week there was a minor modification in that I did the Wii Fit Jogging a day early (and got up to 10954metres in 30 minutes) and walked to and from the rugby club on Saturday (a total distance of 4.5 miles). I'll have to make the same changes this coming week as England are playing on Sunday morning (against Georgia - we shouldn't have any trouble in this match). I shall also be enjoying a Full English breakfast with my beer while watching that match, so I will have to make sure I've got plenty of Weekly Points left to cover it.

Anyway, I'm now down to 19st 8.8lbs from my starting weight of 21st 0lbs - a total loss of 19.2lbs in 11 weeks! I'm averaging 1.7lbs per week, which I am very happy with.

Weigh-in - Week 10

Well this is the 10th Weigh-in and I'm very pleased to inform you that I've lost 2.6lbs since my last official weigh-in. I've now lost a total of 17.6lbs, which is an average of 1.8lbs per week. I have dropped another ProPoint from my daily allowance, which now stands at 53.

I still find it amazing how easy thisWeightWatchers ProPoints plan is! I haven't felt hungry at all since starting it, apart from a little hunger about an hour before most meals - which is probably a good thing. I've not missed any of my favourite foods or drinks because all of them are allowed and I've introduced some new foods to my diet whish are probably keeping me healthier than before (I was never really that fussed about eating fruit and I certainly never ate as many vegetavbles as I do now).

On Friday Mrs TBI and I went out for a meal with some of her friends and I had Piri Piri Chicken with Lattice Fries (it was meant to be potato wedges according to the menu!), which was very nice. I washed it down with a couple of pints of Rebellion Mutiny (one of my favourite ales) and that pretty much used up most of my daily propoints. I followed the main course with Sticky Toffee Pudding and custard, which I had no idea how to point, so I guestimated at 25 points and used up some of me weekly points. I decided that if I had got the points wrong, I probably had ample Activity Points to cover it and I wasn't planning any further excesses between then and this morining's weigh-in.

Asda seem to have temporarly removed their "Chosen by You" Fruit Juice drinks from the shelves, which is a shame as they are 0PPs. I have, however, found a suitable alternative in the shape of "Panda" still flavoured water - No added sugar, No Aspartame and only natural flavours - also 0PPs.

My excercise regime is still going well and I'm starting to really feel the benefits now after increasing my walking pace to just around 15Minutes per mile (15Mins 10seconds on Monday) and increasing my Wii Fit Jogging to 30minutes (is anyone else doing Wii Fit Jogging?). I've also got up to 8.5Kilometers in 20 minutes on the Crosstrainer, but I haven't yet got comfortable enough to increase the time on that. I do plan, at some point, on doing the Couch to 5K plan but I don't want to do that until I've lost a fair bit of weight as I don't want to damage my knees.

I am definitely feeling confident that this weight loss plan can succeed for me and am looking forward to the day when I can say I'm merely overweight, rather than obese (or "morbidly obese", which is what I was when I started).