I'm back!

...in which a holiday has occurred

I haven't posted for a couple of weeks because I've been on holiday with the family. I suppose I should have posted that that was going to happen before I disappeared off the face of the Internet really.  

Last time I was weighed (18th August) I got my 3.5 stone award and had lost 1.5lb on the previous weigh in, so I was 6.5lb off my current target.

Holiday has involved a few extra treats; ice creams, chips on the sea front, possibly a couple of packets of Monster Munch and of course extra wine, but usually while everybody else was enjoying sweet treats I stuck to black coffee with sweetener. The night we got there we stayed with friends and it was the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who, and there were some very yummy cup-cakes and dalek biscuits and Adipose marshmallows, and a few of those may have accidentally found their way into my tummy...

I did still manage to do my body magic - two 4 mile runs, lots of walking, some swimming and some playing rounders etc. with the kids on the beach; I'm now just 3 weeks away from my platinum Body Magic award (16 weeks of doing at least 30 minutes of exercise for 5 days of the week - or at least doing 150 minutes of exercise over 5 days; I quite often do the 150 minutes over 2 days but you have to do some exercise every day for 5 days out of the 7 for the week to qualify). 

I ran with a friend on the first night and discovered that if I run at a slower pace than normal it has far less impact on my knee and I can keep going for much longer, so I will now be attempting to pace myself more carefully when running.

Since we were in a pretty well equipped static caravan I was generally able to cook meals that were SW friendly; I had to settle for wraps a couple of times during the day but managed to avoid bread and stuck to lean cooked meat as filling; on both the way down and back A and I had pasta salad (the second time made with mayonnaise as that's how A prefers it so it wasn't quite free - I prefer it with paprika and soy sauce, but we had that on the way there).

Men don't often talk about this sort of stuff, but one thing that did feel good on holiday was being able to strip down to my trunks and not feel like I was wobbling everywhere, or feel self-conscious about taking my t-shirt off and getting into the sea. I'm not Adonis or anything (yet ;)), but I don't feel like I have my own gravitational well either now.

I also wasn't out of breath after playing with the kids for a bit (after all that time in the gym I should blooming well hope not!)

I'm trying to avoid staying in "holiday mode" as I'm only too well aware of how a couple of extra treats can suddenly become a couple of extra treats a day, so today I'm back onto SW 100%. I will make baked bean lasagne with bacon and jacket wedges today, I've measured out my milk allowance and I'm going to the gym later despite my body's feverish protests that it would rather stay at home and have a portion of fish and chips.

We stopped off to visit some friends on the way home last night and the scales came out for some reason...according to those I've put about 2.5lb on but this morning on our scales I seem to have lost 3.5lb and be 3lb from target. (my weight does fluctuate a bit during the day, as does nearly everybody's, and the clothes I wore last night were a bit heavier than the ones I'm normally weighed in). I guess we'll see tomorrow...in the meantime, it's time to head to the gym. I might even run there, just to show off.

Weigh-in update

...in which all is not as it seems.

So. I should probably be working, so this will be a quick update, probably. This week at weigh-in I put on half a pound, despite having no alcohol, far fewer syns than usual and going to the gym a lot. For the first time that I can remember in 7 months of doing Slimming World this made me feel slightly despondent after Monday's weigh-in, despite the fact that I was half expecting it. I couldn't stay for the group portion ("Image Therapy") this week, but I would have liked to in order to get some encouragement.

Another reason it was maybe a bit more disappointing that usual is that I was so close to my 3.5 stone award (half a pound off, now a pound); also I have a holiday coming up that's going to make it tricky to stick to the plan 100%, and that might put me back a bit when it comes to hitting target by September, which was the original plan when I lowered it. (We also have a barbecue/food evening coming up on Saturday with Saira and her Extremely Significant Other coming round, depending on the weather, but I can make that SW friendly with no difficulty).

I am feeling better about it now; I had a look at my progress graph thing on the SW website and even with the gain I've lost 4.5lbs over the last 3 weeks, and an average of 1.5lbs per weeks is really pretty good, and that's despite a wedding featuring lots of beer/wine.

The reason I was half expecting it is because some of the exercise I'm doing now at the gym is designed to build muscle rather than burn fat, in order to get to the elusive state of a toned tummy and chest. (I'm not looking for a six-pack or anything, since my wife doesn't like that look, I'm just going for slim and toned). Muscle, as most people know, is denser than fat ("heavier" makes no sense - 1 cubic inch of muscle weighs more than 1 cubic inch of fat, but that's because of the density).

I doubt that I've actually put on half a pound of muscle in a week, so some other factors probably came into play; the human body has a way of kicking in "emergency fat storing mode" when it feels it might need to, and it's quite possible that the increased exercise last week caused this to happen for me so that fat that I would usually burn just got stored instead.

Still, nil desperandum, as they say. This week I'm going to do a bit more outside running again but still go to the gym 3 or 4 times. I'm still somewhat confused by this sudden desire to go somewhere that until recently I'd have considered a sort of hell on earth, but apparently it's good for me so I should probably just go with it.

Food this week...I made a sort of rice salad thing yesterday (chicken tikka chunks from Sainsbury's, stir-fried onions/peppers/carrots/tomatoes with white wine vinegar, sweet chilli sauce and paprika all mixed with sweetcorn and rice) - A. has the leftovers for her lunch today at work. Tonight I'll make diet coke chicken, and tomorrow probably paprika pork. If Sainsbury's actually have any half-price steak in I'll get some of that for Friday...

Okay, that wasn't as short as originally intended....back to work. Probably. (Or maybe I'll just procrastinate a bit...where'd that guitar go?).

Confusion

...in which things are slightly odd.

(Observation 1 in a series of n, where n is a number between 1 and as many as I can be bothered to do: Why do people assume "all natural ingredients" in e.g. shower gel means "good"? Arsenic is natural, but you wouldn't want to bathe in it).

Not odd in a bad way. Just...odd. For this post to work, you have to imagine that the below is said a slightly puzzled way. I am not showing off, I'm just...perplexed.

As you might have read, I joined the gym last week. If you had told me at the start of this year that I would have joined a gym by August I would have looked at you as if you had just told me that you were training an elite defence force made up of ferrets. If you'd then told me that I would not only have joined a gym but would actually be using it and enjoying it I'd have looked at you as if you'd gone on to say that you were training the ferrets to combat an army of space badgers that were about to land and take over the world.

Now, I am firmly with Jennifer Lawrence on the subject of people that claim they're addicted to working out. ("I hate people who say 'Oh, I’m addicted to working out', I just want to punch those people in the face." - from Pinterest). I'm working out as a means to an end (to tone up my tummy and chest a bit); I'm certainly not addicted to it. It makes me sweaty (and not in a good way), it's hard work and the gym is often full of people that could easily give you an inferiority complex, but...(there was bound to be a but)...it does give a certain satisfaction to challenge the limits of your own body, and there is documented evidence that exercising does actually make you feel better (since 90% of the time when I'm exercising I feel like I'm about to collapse in a heap I assume they surveyed people after they'd finished exercising rather than during).

I've actually started reading articles about how to exercise. That deserves the italics, believe me. If you only know me through the blog then it probably looks like I'm a pretty fit, healthy kind of guy, but until the start of this year the only thing I was fit for was moving around slowly and eating a lot of food. Seriously, I once ate 15 pieces of pizza at Pizza Hut to win a departmental competition (there was no prize, other than the pride of being the winner and preventing PH making any profit on their "all you can eat" buffet).

So, the point, inasmuch as I ever have points to these posts. Today I took the younger kids swimming (the eldest was at OsFest, a local music festival), and I swam 1 kilometre (with quite a few breaks, because swimming is hard work). Then this afternoon I felt like I wanted to do more exercise. Wait, what? That makes no sense even to me. 

I still don't know why, but I went back to the gym (and remember I'm not showing off here - this is said in tones of complete confusion) and I did 2km on the rowing machine, 3km on the Octane (I'm not sure what this is called "officially" - I guess an elliptical trainer? It's like a cross trainer except the movement feels more like running and it has bizarre settings designed to hurt exercise your arm muscles (edit: I looked it up and this is indeed an elliptical trainer)), 2.75km on the treadmill and 1km on the cross trainer. Before that lot I did a bunch of what's apparently called "resistance work" (machines with weights). If you'd told me even a month ago that it was even possible to do that much exercise in just over an hour I'd probably have taken my chances with the space badgers.

Anyway, there we go. To sum up: I'm going to the gym and exercising quite a lot, and finding it...um...what's the word? Enjoyable? Err, no, that can't be right, surely. Satisfying....yes, that just about fits.

Right, food. This week I've made some rather nice pork loin medallions with jacket wedges - I fried the pork as per the instructions (using low fat cooking spray, of course), but added some dark soy sauce (about 2 tbsp), a good sprinkling of paprika and fried onions, mushrooms and red pepper in the pan at the same time. I served this with broccoli and sweetcorn and it was really yummy (it doesn't sound like diet food, does it?). 

I made something similar tonight, but we had no soy sauce left so I used teriyaki sauce; this means there were probably a few syns in the pork/veg but they would be very low (call it 1.5 per portion).

Tomorrow is weigh-in day. I'm hoping to get my 3.5 stone award, but it's possible that all the exercise may be counter-productive (when A joined the gym she maintained for a week or so after). Also I had a really big piece of chocolate cake on Monday after weigh-in and it's just possible that I may have had a few packets of crisps this week...we shall see.

Edit: In "other news" today I bought a pair of underwear that are "small" in size and they fit. Small victories (no pun intended).