I have spent this week in the retirement house I have bought in Yorkshire – although my retirement still seems to be some way off – I do manage to work mornings from here about 12 weeks of the year. The big drawback about here is you relax and think you ar eon holiday – so a bit more alcohol than normal is drunk – avoiding that and not slipping into ‘holiday mode’ has not been without its challenges.

After Monday’s weigh in (reported last week at 15st 2lb) I went out for a walk (another draw back here – the commute is about 25 feet along the hallway from my bedroom to my study) and clocked up about 3.5 miles in a circular route around the der park where the house is situated, so that’s the same as my commute in Aberdeen. At noon we went out in the car with a picnic lunch, and after that had a walk of about another 3.5 miles.

Big highlight on Tuesday was my first zero WW point dinner. A nice piece of salmon baked in the oven (fan 180C) for 20 mins with ginger, spring onion and soy sauce wrapped up tight in aluminium foil. This was served with boiled carrots (my substitute for potatoes) and broccoli and cauliflower. Quite filling. To celebrate I had a glass of empty calories (red wine in this instance) which probably undid all the gains from the dinner. never mind life is for living is it not? Not much walking today, I have a new route in the morning that puts just over 4 miles on the clock – and it was a bit wet, so not the most enjoyable tramp.

Wednesday morning was a crisp start to the day, all the grass was white with frost, but not cold enough to freeze the water in puddles. there was a fantastic sunrise over the deer park and I thought, this is a great start to the day, downhill from here? I got my 4 miler in and…………. the central heating boiler packed in mid morning! Repair man came out, but we need to get a part.

I didn’t get any walking in on Thursday. Spent the time I would have gone walking getting a fire lit and trying to get the house warmed up.

Friday the temperature was rising outside, so managed the walk as well as getting a fire lit, the boiler is working sort off, it needs to be reset every other hour, and runs for about 70 – 90 mins, but generally the warmer weather the sort of working boiler and the fire in the lounge and we are snug enough. Snug enough to try and redecorate our en-suite, which I achieved over the coming three days, but little time for exercise.

Saturday saw us having the neighbours round for drinks and nibbles – and to have a quick dinner before hand I got in a ready made Lasagne – what a killer on the ww points the five hours from 5:30 through to 10:30 PM proved to be, never mind I am driving to Aberdeen on Sunday, so no real opportunity to snack whilst driving.

Weigh in on Monday the 5th November – all fireworks??

14st 12lbs. 24 pounds lighter than I was when I stood on the scales 6 weeks ago and a pound off the half way point to my losing 50lbs in total. Not sure why I did so well this week – last weeks weigh in was on different scales, so perhaps the loss was more evenly distributed over the two weeks than the figures show. But WW points – I had used up the weekly allowance by Sunday night, and walking was poorer than normal weeks. Anyway I will take the result and not analyse it too much – I am sure there will be weeks in the future when I am specially good, and have not a lot to show for it

I’m still on a roll, although I had to miss lunchtime walks on Monday and Wednesday as I had work commitments – Monday was a double whammy as I was meeting a client for lunch – Wednesday I was travelling to a meeting that started at 13:00. Friday’s lunchtime walk was on the short side as the weather was showery and the showers were coming down like stair rods – so I didn’t want to be caught up in one of them or I’d get soaked. On the upside I managed the long walk to work every day, the weather being rather warm autumnal, but it had turned cold by Friday. I managed a long lunchtime walk on Tuesday to compensate for the lack of lunchtime walk on Monday, almost clocking up 3.7 miles in just over an hour. I travelled to Yorkshire on Saturday with an overnight stop in Edinburgh Friday night. Knowing that I would be spending the best part of the day driving, I clocked up almost 4 1/2 miles in Edinburgh before breakfast and heading south.

Overall for the week I clocked up 39.4 miles during the week – a tad short of 40, but there you go.

I had a good week on the eating front, keeping below my daily target (which has been reduced to 27 WW points) Monday – Thursday, and really only the wine and beer at the weekend taking me up to and beyond the 27. I started the week with 42 bonus weekly points and ended the week with 27 remaining – not too bad I’d say. I am finding keeping to the diet as far as food consumption is concerned not a huge effort – I do get hungry occasionally but not overly. The big strain is when watching TV off an evening. There is a habit to drink and snack. Drinking isn’t too big a deal – I just consume copious quantities of sugar free orange squash diluted with sparkling mineral water, but there is always an urge for a handful of peanuts or a bag of crisps. I manage that Monday – Thursday (sort off) but weekends it breaks down. I usually have a beer or two on Fridays & Saturdays, that takes me beyond the daily allowable, and eats into the weekly bonus and can you have a roast beef dinner without a glass of wine?? – I have managed to switch roast potatoes for boiled carrots, but not red wine for orange squash! – the challenge is to maintain the Monday – Thursday routine into the weekend, which I may have to do to get down to my target weight.

This morning I weighed in at 15st 2lb. A 3lb loss on the week – so still on track. 20lbs down, 30lbs to go. I should reach the half way point in a fortnight. I think the second half will be more challenging than this 1st half, especially if we take the fact we have Christmas in amongst that!

It’s been a mixed week – great on the exercise front, but not so great on calorie consumption.

Monday – I decided to use Runkeeper to monitor my activity instead of relying on the Apple Health app on my phone. First big news is that the long walk to work, that I reported last week as being 3 miles is in fact 3½ miles – that explains why I was struggling to do it in an hour!

Tuesday I managed an extra walk in today as I had a meeting at Queens Cross, that let me sneak in an extra 1.6 miles without really noticing

Wednesday – I thought I was going to miss my lunchtime walk as I had a meeting that ran on past 12:30, but decided to go anyway and make up the time by staying later in the day.

Thursday was a bit of a disaster on calorie consumption. We had friends round for supper and indulged in three courses, and a bit of cheese and oatcakes to follow. Also let go of the no alcohol on school days regime for the first time since I started this weight loss challenge and had a bottle of beer and a decent sized glass of wine. Used up all the daily WW points and half the weekly allowance too.

On Friday I did the long walk to work today, making that five times this week – full house! Also got three miles in at lunchtime, but slipped into two bottles of beer and a glass of wine to celebrate the end of the week (I was going to abstain since I had indulged the previous night, but didn’t!)

Weekend fantastic weather over the weekend (well if you forget about the rain Sunday AM). Did a circuit of the promenade on Aberdeen beach on Saturday, that’s a sneaky 3.2 miles, and on Sunday we visited the rebuilt railway station at Ballatar. Now a very nice café/restaurant which I’d highly recommend (and the wee scone (no jam) was great too)

So my walking stats for the week were 42.4 miles burning up 5,026 calories.

I have lost only 2½ lbs this week, which with all the walking is a bit of a disappointment, but it shows that we need to be vigilant on the diet as well as the walking if we want to get ahead. I reckon a I lost 1½ lbs worth of calories walking, leaving the other pound from the eating. We can’t not entertain, or be entertained or we will be very sad boys, and there are going to be weeks where the exercise isn’t going to be possible due to work commitments or weather – so we need to keep the twin pronged attack of diet and exercise going if we want to keep the weight loss on track. As one of the young lads said to me this morning, “you cannot exercise your way out of a bad diet”

Finishing on a positive note. 17½ lbs lost of a target of 50lbs – that’s me more than a 1/3^rd of the way through!!

 

Kept on the straight and narrow for the third week.

I have four routes into work. Straight road, which is 1 mile, short route at 1.7 miles and middle route at 2.2 miles. Then there is my new long route at 3 miles, which I did twice last week including Friday where I got soaked in the rain. It was dry when I set off, and I was wet by the time I got to the point where I could divert onto the middle route – so took the view that I couldn’t get any wetter and plodded on. In total I clocked up 34.1 miles this week.

Kept to my daily points allowance (now reduced to 28) during the week but slipped on Friday 35, Saturday 36 and Sunday 43. Of the 42 weekly points I started the week with, which grew to 58 points due to not eating too much Monday – Thursday, I had 28 unused by the end – so all-in-all not a bad week on the food consumption, considering we had sweet treats for a 40^th birthday in the office mid-week and a stack of Samosas delivered as one of our designers was leaving on Friday – I managed to avoid both.

At the end of week three I weighed in this morning at 15st 7lb. 15lb lost in three weeks, currently averaging about 8 oz per day. If we can keep that going, should be able to jettison the remaining 35lbs to reach my target in 70 days, just in time for Christmas!! I am sure there will be dark days ahead however, so I wouldn’t bank on it.

 

This past week wasn’t without it’s challenges. Monday we had a board meeting that went on over lunch – so there was huge temptation to dive in ad have a handful or two of very appealing sandwiches. managed to get through that, and have a ham salad I had prepared before leaving for work that morning. Tuesday I was in Edinburgh. On the train down I was offered a full cooked breakfast, bacon roll or a croissant – I had hoped for a slice of toast, but that wasn’t on offer. took the croissant and a yoghurt. entered the points on the WW app, and bingo, I had just ingested 13 of my 29 points for the day!! The good news about Tuesday is that there was only one meeting in Edinburgh and I managed to get six miles walking in that day, and I had ordered pies to be delivered to the office to celebrate my 40th anniversary of starting work – and one of the chaps hade put in an order for samosas to celebrate his birthday – so I body swerved them by being away. Wednesday was my bi-monthly town hall to the team, where we serve pizza. My chat over, I headed up stairs pursued by the aroma emanating from more than a dozen pizza boxes being opened. Thursday and Friday were quite benign, then Saturday evening my wife & I were out with friends for dinner. To celebrate the fact it had been two weeks since I started the diet I had the fish & chips – and just to be daring, I had skinny fries instead of the chunky chips, bad squared! This ate into by weekly allowable on top of my daily allowable, but not totally using them up (I finished the week with 13 of the 42 points remaining). Anyway I lapped the lot up. A great night out and no alcohol was consumed.

Over the week I got 28.5 miles in walking to work and getting out at lunchtime every day except Monday.

Weigh in this morning I was at 15st 10.5lbs; so 4 1/2 lbs down on the week.

I am pretty pleased with that if we take Tuesday’s breakfast and Saturday’s dinner into account

 

Well I wouldn’t say it was easy, but it wasn’t that hard.

I have put the WW app on my phone, where different foods have been assigned different point values and you get points for exercise as well. there are quite a few things (vegetables, fruit, fish & eggs) that are zero points so plenty of scope to pack it in and still not exceed the daily limit

My daily points allowance is currently 30 and I started the week with an additional weekly allowance of 42 which you can have whenever. If you don’t use up all your daily allowance some of the remainder gets added the weekly allowance. My weekly allowance peaked at 58 on Friday, but needless to say a couple of bottles of beer  with the occasional glass of red wine I finished the week still with 31 weekly points in the bag -= only going well over the daily limit on Friday and Saturday.

I walked to work Tuesday – Friday and got a few more steps in at lunchtimes, did a walk around the neighbourhood on Saturday, before doing a 4.5 mile circuit of Glen Tanner on Saturday afternoon, I got a couple of miles with just a couple of walks to the shops on Sunday. In total a magic 35.8 miles walked in the week.

The outcome was me weighing in this morning at 16st 1lb, 7 lbs less than last Monday. This is brilliant news, but it has to be tempered slightly. Last Monday I weighed in after a rather heavy weekend, so I was potentially a bit inflated, and they would have been easy lbs to lose. The weather was terrific all week, so I managed to walk into work & home and out every lunchtime (except Monday). I had no business lunches to avoid, although Wednesday was a bit of a trial with two people in the office having birthdays – so I had to avoid cake and samosas. All in all a very good week to kick off the diet and exercise plan and I am under no illusions that it will always be this easy, there will be more difficult weeks going forward

7 down, only another 43 to go.

I stood on the scales this morning at 16st 8lb and I realised what a fat bastard I am.

I am currently 62 and if I carry on like this I am not sure I will live that much longer, so I need to start shedding weight.

My target is to lose 50lbs by Easter 2019 – any tips and hints (other than having one of my legs amputated) on how to achieve this goal most welcomed