Well, knock me over with a feather! I got there. I knew I was close. So I have been celebrating with a little ice cream and cake! I never thought it was achievable.
This morning I even tried on my old shortpants: 34″. Lo! and behold! I can wear them (not comfortably) but I can tie them and pull the zipper up! I didn’t breathe in too much!
I honestly don’t know when I bought them from Giordano. And likely about 20 years ago, when I was last this weight. I haven’t worn them in years, except to torment myself. Well, I can (almost) wear them again. I reckon when I reach 80~1kgs they should be comfortable, perhaps even a little loose.
My calculator suggests that I’ve lost 5.5″ around the waist, and 22kgs. So that’s about 4kgs per inch lost. That also hints that my final waist size will be around 32″ or 82cm or Uniqlo ‘M’. Wow!!!
Some friends were asking me how I’d done it. I honestly wouldn’t know: I might resort to platitudes to explain. But in reality: I haven’t given up!
I also realized that my weight is the RESULT of my choices. So one day after seeing my friend’s (I don’t think Jerry’s realized the impact of that shot on me!) photo of me in which I looked very similar to the left picture, I made another choice: I never wanted to be fat again. EVER.
I took stock of the situation. I realized that with a BMI of 35, I’d already slipped into dangerous territory.
In 2021, I made the following choices:
- Weigh myself every day at the same time, in the same way to get a standard metric.
- Increase exercise by walking from what I was then doing.
- Cut out some carbs from my diet: rice, noodles, and initially bread & potatoes.
- I endeavored to walk 10,000 steps a day. One day, I’ll dig out the records and tell you if I even came close.
When I started, my weight had already moderated somewhat from the high of 106.3 to about 103.9kgs. From there, I was able to drop to 99, then 95, then 92.xkgs fairly quickly using a lower carb diet with exercise. But by September, I was really just treading water even though I tried again. The diet went nowhere.
Later on, I made additional choices to support my diet
- I kept detailed records of my weight and exercise using Google Fit
- I kept a food diary to help focus until I didn’t need to.
- I’ve kept different kinds of diary to work on specific issues.
With the COVID vaccinations always interrupting me, I didn’t make much progress in 2022 from my previous weight loss. But in 2023, I started again when I got a warning about my blood pressure numbers. I had had a viral infection, not COVID, that lingered… but my BP started showing signs of going into the hypertensive range. So I tracked it for a while, 3x a day then 2x a day.
2023: 92.5kgs to 86.8kgs
I was able to reduce my weight by over 5kgs and, with the increase in my fitness, push my BP numbers back to the normal range.
At the end of that period, I started taking Qigong class in the mornings which really helped, too. Qigong messed with my life schedule too much, so I couldn’t keep going. I finally had to quit that after the last trip to the UK when it took too long to get over the double jetlag. I was exhausted and put on 2 kilos again.
During this period, I tracked on a daily basis:
- Weight
- Calories
- Move Time
- Steps
- Stress
- Exercise Types
2024: 88.3kgs to 83.4kgs
This time around, I kept track of some different metrics: I quit tracking steps completely (no point), and switched to tracking:
- Weight
- Calories
- Move Time
- Stress
- Eating & Sleep Times
It was doing those last two spreadsheets that I came to the realization: you really don’t need to track calories eaten, if you’re tracking weight. Your weight is the result of calories eaten less calories burned and is the remainder. If it’s up, you’ve eaten too many; if it’s down, keep going!
so right now I am at 83.5kgs.