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!