Business as usual

It’s kinda quiet around here. Things seem to have settled down as far as my weight loss is concerned. I’m loosing weight, but not as much as I wish I was. I’m pretty comfortable with my diet, which is radically different from what it used to be. On a typical day I’ll have the following.

• Fruit smoothy for breakfast (or a yogurt with crunchy granola bits)
• A piece of fruit mid morning
• A cup-a-soup, some nuts & raisin mix and a few dates for lunch
• More fruit mid afternoon
• Some sort of soup (or a salad or something) for dinner, followed by a small kit-kat and a cup of tea
• A snack about 9pm if I need it.
• As much water/tea/coffee/diet juice as I need.

Depending on how you read that, it can sound like quite a lot, or not very much at all. Roughly it’s between 1200 and 1500 calories I reckon. For a normal active 240 lb adult I’d say that’s about 1000 calories short of what could be termed ‘maintenance intake’ (or the amount you’d need to keep you weight stable). But for me, with this super efficient, easy on, hard off weight gaining machine that is my body. I’d say I’m only about -500 calories a day short. Roughly, that equates to about 1lb loss a week.

That’s not enough. So to compensate, I’m going to do 45 minutes to an hour of easy spinning on my exercise bike every night before bed. That should work off about 500 calories per day, or another pound per week. I now have my wee room set up perfectly, with the bike, a 26” hi-def TV and DVD, three series of Deadwood, the last couple of years worth of Star Gate and maybe, if I can bear it, the whole of the current run of Battlestar Galactica (maybe it won’t be so traumatic second time round).

But that’s not all; I’m going have to get out on the bike more. After all, I’ve got an 81 mile cycle to do in May. As I mentioned previously, I’m determined to use the bike to commute to work at least twice a week, which is a 17 mile round trip. This week I’ll try for Wednesday and Thursday if the weather gods are kind (there’s the possibility of sub zero temperatures and even some snow). But above that, I need to set the time aside to do a longer weekend ride, at least 30 miles to begin with, building up to 50 as my weight falls. I’ll maybe work out some targets for this later this week and publish them here. I’m sure that once I start exercising seriously my diet will have to expand a little to compensate, but obviously not as much as to negate the intended weight loss!

Today’s weight is 16 stone 12.4 lb (236.4 lb)