The danger in going public...

... even if it is kind of on the quiet in a little corner of the blogosphere, is that someone will always notice. Thanks to Capt'n John I'm now stuck with this whole silly idea and I guess I now hove to stick with it :)

So to the very vague (for now) plan. My logic goes something like this - having tried a number of times to lose weight I have failed every time. How do I know that? I'm fat you idiot so I must have. So I need to figure out what all my previous attempts have had in common and I think I've nailed it down. Speed. Every time I've lost weight in the past - whether it be last year when I lost about 2 1/2 stone in 10 weeks, or when I was in my mid 20s when I lost about 4 stone to get down to my record low weight and did it in 4 months - I've done it quickly in a short burst and thought the hard work was over. Each time its involved between 1 and 3 hours a day every day in the gym and that's not something that's maintainable - its just too much of a big change to my life and normal routine for me to keep up with it for any sustained period of time, and that's what's needed - a long term commitment not a short burst and 'back to normal'.

So what's the answer? That's pretty simple I guess - rather than deciding that I need to be a certain weight by a certain time, I need to start with a completely different goal, and not put a time limit on it. In an effort to come up with a new goal I've had to think about what it is that I actually want. One of the most depressing things I find about being fat is not weighing too much but being too big. Too big for normal clothing shops. Too big to push through crowded pubs. Too big to fit properly in airplane seats.

Its not that its embarrassing - I stopped being embarrassed about my size years ago because people pre-judging on looks is something you just have to live with or you'd never leave the house - its that its uncomfortable. Physically that is. I'm due to go on a long haul flight to the Dominican Republic in a month or so and I'm dreading the flight because last time I went I had huge bruises on my hips because of sitting in a tight seat for 11 hours.

I'm not looking for sympathy here - far from it. As I said in my last post I'm fat because of me and only me, and just because its an increasing trend that people are getting bigger doesn't mean its society's fault. But what this leads me to is to start formulating a vague idea of a goal. Its still in its infancy but I think I've kind of decided on the basic premise which is that I'm not going to try to lose weight this time around. I'm going to try to lose SIZE. Almost every time I've lost weight in the past I've kept track of my weight and how much it goes down. Often that's been pretty quick, but I have found that my size doesn't change at anywhere near the same rate.

My biggest weight loss ever was down from 19 stone to 15 stone, but that only resulted in a loss of about 3-4 inches off my waist size from a comfortable 42 inch to a tight 38 inch. Now after losing almost 1/4 of my body weight I would have expected a much more radical change in my size but that didn't happen - what did happen in the end was that my weight went back up again, but I do remember noticing that my size stayed pretty much the same for quite a while.

So after all that drivel and waffling here's the basic point of the whole thing in list form:

1. I want to lose size more than I want to lose weight

2. Losing size will inherently mean that it will happen more slowly and therefore force me to stick at this thing in the long term

3. I still need to put some specific targets in place.

That's enough for now though. If you got to here without falling asleep then congratulations - you're as bored as I am!

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The start of something...?

Since I have this blog, I may as well use it for something useful right? Well maybe - let's see how it goes. I had an epiphany last night - if I don't start losing weight and soon, I am getting to the age (31 at last count, though I do have to think really hard to remember sometimes!) where it's going to kill me. Its not like I haven't had this kind of thought before (3 or 4 times a day for the last 20 or so years in fact...) but I'm finally starting to realise that I'm at a point of no return and I need to get something done about it. More after the break...

As I sit here very busy but also very bored at work I realise that rather than just randomly surfing websites reading bad posts about worse subjects (for the most part at least - there are some gems in there) I could be doing something more useful to kill the time while my motivation to work returns. That was the initial idea behind the blog when I set it up ages ago but I made two posts and got bored almost immediately as is often the case with these things when I try them.

So to get myself a little more motivated I have decided to chronicle my most recent decision to drop some pounds in the hope that I will be able to firstly get myself to the age of 40 without the assistance of a medical miracle, and also to get this 'out there' so that I'm not just doing this on the quiet so that no-one knows if I fail.

So to the statistics. I currently weigh in the region of 25 stone. That's 350lbs or 159kg for those that like metric.

That makes me fat - really fat - and there's nothing and no-one to blame but myself. I eat too much, and I spend all day sat down - either at work sat at a computer working, or at home sat at a computer playing Warcraft. Does that make me the typical fat geek? Yeah I guess it does. I'd like that to change though.

The lowest weight I've ever been in my adult life was 15 stone, and I think that would be a reasonable target to aim for in the longer term. How I'm going to get there I don't quite know yet. Maybe I need to apply the same logic as one of my favourite Bloggers Ixobelle applied to stopping smoking which in my case would be a 2 step plan of 1. Don't put crap into your mouth; 2. there is no step 2. I'll put some thought into it and get back to you!


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