This blog isn’t going to be just my software-development experiences; it will contain excerpts from real life, too. One of the major things that has happened to me recently (if one can equate “happened” with “actually took around four months to occur”) is that I went on a diet. It may be too early to say for sure, but it was a successful one. I got rid of about 28kg of excess padding over this time with a food replacement, very-low-calorie diet called Lighter Life. Essentially, for four months I ate nothing but these food replacement packs that I bought from them; I went to weekly counselling sessions (I gather everyone has their own name for this; I called it “Fat Camp”…); I exercised (one wouldn’t think it, but 500kcal a day intake, with fat-burning in parallel, was enough to both sustain me and leave me enough energy left over for 4 mile runs and stints on the Concept II).

The second phase of the diet is what I’m now five weeks into. Having done the abstinence part (which is really the weight-loss part), I’m now on this GI diet, where different foods are introduced over the period of three months. The idea is that there are foods (with a low GI rating) that metabolise slower - vegetables, protein, soya and the like - and thus one can go longer between feeling hunger (or, actually, thirst as it turns out - lots of people mistake the latter for the former). This second phase is all about figuring out that it’s possible to survive on “healthy” things (carbohydrate-heavy foods aren’t on the approved list for another couple of weeks, though I admit Christmas and Boxing Day were an exercise in food-reminiscence…), as well as figuring out when foods “trigger” over-eating. That “oh, I could have some more of that” subconsciousimpulse that strikes even the best of us down.

I think I’m doing well. Here’s a picture of the graph of my weight over the last few months (see if you can spot Christmas… :-( ). As you can see, I started out at 103kg (or a body/mass index of 32 or so; I’m 181cm tall), finished the abstinence at 73kg-ish, and am now roughly maintaining around the 75kg mark. I’m currently eating mostly salad, vegetables, and fish or light meat, and coping quite well without junk food (I haven’t had a packet of crisps in around six months, for example). In the same time, I also didn’t have a drop of alcohol - that, combined with the food, means I’ve got a rather clean gut at the moment, which in turn means things taste differently (better!).

I’ve also started doing some strength training as well as this running and rowing stuff I’ve been doing anyway. I saw this thing that is basically a strap with handles that one can do various and many resistance exercises with - check out the videos. It’s nice and simple, light, and works a treat. I’ve used it every day for a week, and have noticed that my time on my run is down about 90 seconds, and it takes me about two minutes less time to do 10km on the Concept II. For the cost of the strap and 20 minutes a day using it - that’s a pretty favourable trade in my book! Talking about fitness; my resting heart-rate is down about 12bpm from ~72 at the start of the abstinence to ~50, and my average heart-rate during a 4 mile run is now about 155 instead of 167 (and I do the same run in 28min compared to 42 min). I’m sleeping better (and not needing as long; down 2 hours from 9h to 7h each night), and generally feeling great!

I’ve been pretty sedentary over the last two years - I used to work 5 miles away, and would commute by bike - and, well, I decided I’d had enough of the creeping waistline. Note purely in the interests of vanity; I rowed at university, and miss being quite as fit as that demanded. There were lots of negative reactions from people when I explained what I was doing (and a lotof it completely uninformed!), but so far, this has been one of the best decisions I think I’ve ever made. I’ve shown I can follow through on something, break habits, and achieve quite a difficult goal (ditching 25% of my bodymass!).

What to pick for a New Year’s resolution in the absence of Ye Olde Reliable “go to the gym more”, though?!