Now with 10% less fat!

We haven’t been making a big thing of it, but since we got back from holiday in July, Abi and I have been on the “Flickr Diet”. (That’s where you look at all the pictures you’ve just uploaded and think, “Urgh, I really don’t like the way I look.”) And by amusing coincidence, today Abi and I both hit the point where we have lost 10% of our original body mass. I started at 80.1kg and am now down to 71.7kg; Abi started at 77.0kg, and is down to 69.3kg. Wow.

Our strategy has been two-pronged:

Eat less
Stay honest

The “eat less” bit has come from counting calories. No fancy points or diet meals; just getting into the habit of paying attention to the nutritional information for everything that we would be eating normally, and rigorous portion control. No snacks. No seconds. This was really difficult for the first week or so, but since then it has been easy.

We’ve been enforcing the honesty part by weighing ourselves daily, and keeping a chart on the fridge, where we can both keep an eye on how we’re doing. Daily weigh-ins are tough, because natural daily variations can easily kick you up 500g or so. But just like eating less, it’s all about the habits. The general trend is always downwards, and you have to trust that.

With this regime in place, I’ve even found that the occasional pizza emergency isn’t a disaster. Provided I don’t eat a massive dinner as well, a nice lunch every now and then doesn’t have a significant impact on my weekly progress. (They key is in the “every now and then”. I don’t think that “every other day” would cut it.)

This is pretty much the same technique that Abi and I used to lose a good deal of weight back in 1997 or so. It worked then, and it worked now. I tried the low-carb Atkins thing back in 2003, and although it was successful in the short term, the weight came back on again pretty quickly. Habits, habits, habits: a low-carb diet is not a sustainable habit for me, and so it fell by the wayside very quickly. Other people may be different, but I can’t live without my preciousss bread. Smaller portions are much more realistic.

So anyway, yay us. We’re not stopping here, though. I’m aiming to get below 70kg, and Abi wants to be under 67. The downside of all this slimming behaviour is that last weekend I ran out of trousers that fit me, and had to go shopping for new clothes. Not my favourite activity, but that’s a rant for another time.

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