I weigh myself at home in the nude every week, usually on a Monday. Today, treading carefully - in the nude - onto my electronic home scales, and timidly looking down to read the result, I saw a magic '14 stones 0 pounds' - meaning that since the home weigh on 31st October I have lost exactly one stone!
Oh, great joy! Especially since the weight-loss stalled last week. Now I feel back on track. The regular two-pounds-a-week expectation is real again.
I updated the spreadsheet I've been keeping since July 2008 with a broad smile on my face. Click on the picture to see it more clearly.
As you can see, I've reached Row 399 on this venerable spreadsheet. I can tell from this valuable record that I last weighed 14 stones 0 pounds (88.9 kg) on 3rd March 2015, but that was after a few days of not being unable to eat anything much, while I recovered from a bout of mild food-poisoning. Before then, I was last 14 stone 0 pounds on 20th July 2011, when getting active again after my surgery. (That was a long time ago!)
The lowest recorded weight on this spreadsheet is 11 stones 7 pounds (72.8 kg) on 23rd November 2008. This was after a determined (but rather unscientific) crash diet that began on 1st July 2008, in revulsion at my fat state at that time. Here's the spreadsheet again:
I was sick of being chubby. Ironically I was only just a bit heavier than now, weighing 14 stones 3 pounds (90.0 kg) at the commencement of my crash diet.
I was relentless with this diet. It was as if I wanted to slim my way towards an entirely new me, rejecting the past. And indeed this was the beginning of profound developments in my life. But my goodness, my zeal to shed the pounds frightened M---, and Mum and Dad, who all grew very worried. A sudden enthusiasm like this was so 'uncharacteristic' of me, and my insistence on continuing despite real discomfort - my muscles ached at one point - scared them. They thought it was evidence of a dangerous obsession. I called a halt after (voluntarily) seeing the doctor about the muscle pain, and realising that I'd approached this effort at weight-loss in the wrong way. Reverting to a more normal diet gradually added some flesh to my bones, but I remained desirably slim and lissom throughout 2009. By late 2010, it was time for another weight-loss session, at surgeon's orders. This time, by proper calorie-counting. That's why the red line on the graph in the top picture dips a bit one-third of the way along.
The graph follows my progress at quarterly intervals. I use the weight figure (in kilograms) on the day nearest to the last day of March. June, September and December. The latest figure is 95.6 kg on 21st September 2016. I'm hoping that the figure for 31st December 2016 will be around 87.0 kg, and if so the red line on the graph will dip sharply again!
But of course this is not mere game-playing with little graphs. I want to record a permanent and life-enhancing change.
