12 months

On 11 July 2010, I got on the scale and it read 86.0 kgs, even. This morning, it read 70.3. Rolling average 71.1 kgs, 16.54% body fat.

So it's been a year, the longest period ever that I have been successful at 'dieting'. The success of this year was basically based on being terrified of rebounding. I have lost weight in the past, but always rebounded after about a month of being low. In September of last year, after I hit my goal weight, I did something I never did before when I was trying to lose weight: I kept weighing myself every day. And I've kept that up: almost every day I've been at home, I've weighed myself. It's such a great practice. None of this: 'I feel like I didn't eat much yesterday' or 'I feel like I have lost weight' or 'I feel like I have more muscle than fat.' Nope, there's the number. That's the truth.

Weight Change

Time Period	Total Weight Change (kg)	Weekly Weight Change Rate (kg)	Daily Calorie Deficit/Excess
1 Week	0.3	0.3	304
30 Days	0.2	0.1	56
All Time	13.2	0.1	126

I think part of the problem of the last couple of times I've attempted to lose weight has been my inability, or unwillingness to accept several things, mainly that maintaining a healthy weight would require a change in psychology, particularly how much and what kind of food I ate. And that I would not be able to go back. I would probably not ever eat takeaway pizza in the same way that I did before. I would probably not eat french fries or chips more than a couple of times a year. I would probably need to avoid cheese most of the time too. I would probably also have to cut down significantly on the amount of bread I ate, and probably very rarely with butter. I would need to eat a lot more vegetables than I was. I would need to eat meat in much more moderation. When there were big parties with lots of cakes and pies and cookies, that not having those things would not be punishment or reduce my enjoyment of the event and I would not feel sorry for myself: I would just have to learn to not care about it (an unfortunate by-product of this being a distaste for those events). That I should probably stop spending all my time looking for low-calorie versions of whatever it is I wanted to eat so that I could eat as much as I did before, but to just eat more moderately all the time. Basically, that my lifestyle had to change.

Of course, the affordance of healthy eating has has some unexpected joyful discoveries. Like grilled eggplant, bulgar wheat tomato and parsley salad, whole grain pancakes, freshly ground coffee, sundried tomoatoes, sultanas on salad, beans, sparkling mineral water, grilled meat wrapped in Romaine lettuce, spices, hot sauces, onions, garlic... The list goes on.

So it's been hard, but not as hard as I thought: changing perspective, my ideas about what I am entitled to has been, of course, the hardest part. You can see clearly on the chart when I failed: in Spain, at Christmas, and when I went to the States. But, there were also a lot of successes as well, particularly in the run-up to Christmas, trip to Turkey, trip to Spain, birth of Mia and family influx from June. All these things would have put be back in the red in the past, but 2011 has been different.

I'm not sure I have changed completely. I have changed enough to keep the weight off, but as I've said, I am an overweight man in a skinny body now, not sure how to proceed.