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Matt_72 almost ready to woot

Matt_72

By Matt_72
in Rebel Army Base Camp

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Matt_72

Matt_72

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I want a signpost so that when I look at my journey and people ask how much weight I have lost I can say well as of January 2014 I have lost .... so I am putting this here so that I can leave it here and move on to this year.

 

Here is some of my story

 

I had managed to put on about 8kg over the course of my wifes pregnancy in 2012, sharing is caring, and while that was bad enough I was already in a position where I needed to lose a decent amount of weight so I now had a shitload to lose.

 

I started walking with my daughter pushing her in the pram in July '12 and managed a respectable, for me, 60km for the month. I was tracking it on endomondo and had competition by way of a group challenge that drove me to second place that month. Then in August I managed to walk 105km which impressed me no end. That PB was followed by 85km and 74km so over the course of those 4 months I had managed to travel further than I think I had over the past couple of years in a purely exercise sense.

 

I have been receiving the NF emails since about August 2012 which is about 1 month after I hit my top weight of 103.3kg, funny how some numbers we will never forget. At that stage I had been a father for approximately 3 months and thought that it was time to get my shit together and set as good an example for my daughter as I could for the rest of my life. 

 

I ummed and ahhed and lost a kg gained a kg, lost 2 gained 1, lost 4 gained 3 and felt dejected, well more dejected, and by Christmas I was down into double figures and reasonably happy with my effort over the previous 6 months. I managed to lose 5kg but then Christmas hit and I put 2 back on so I was right on 100kg.

 

Then in the first week of January 2013 I bought a cook book and started cooking. It's a book purporting that the meals can be cooked in 15 minutes and by my standards they are incredibly elaborate meals with stuff boiling, things grilling, sauces being blended and the kitchen looked like a typhoon had hit it by the time I was done and it did take me about 30 minutes for most meals but the food was amazing! The tastes and textures and assault on our senses was overwhelming. So I kept cooking. I was doing 3 and 4 dishes from this book every week and instead of having a burger, chips, dim sims and a bottle of coke every Friday night we were having home made pizza.......and a bottle of coke. 

 

I also started moving again after a couple of slow months. January I walked 75km and also rode 20km. Feb was a bit of a flat month but I did start doing some BBWW's which really kicked my ass. April and May were quiet months in terms of moving but I had kept cooking and expanding to my repertoire.

 

June was when I did my first 6 week challenge. It was a good experience where I felt like I received great support from the challenge environment. I did during the challenge have a medical episode that did set me back mentally a little way so the challenge ended up more as a break even than a win. 

I followed on from that in the next challenge and performed better in terms of exercise on the back end of the challenge and more importantly got the bike out of mothballs. I ended up doing about 100km on the bike and 50km on my feet and the weight start coming back off again.

 

During my 3rd challenge I performed slightly better again and was still exercising somewhat as well as cooking most nights of the week but I also found the 5:2 protocol during that challenge. It's intermittent fasting but on 2 days of the week rather than each day of the week. I was very sceptical to begin with and took a little convincing from my better half and we decided to give it a go. It's pretty daunting approaching your first fast and knowing that you will only be consuming about 25% of what you normally would for the day. Despite all my negative internal talk I came out of it fine and pretty chuffed that I had completed relatively easily something that seemed like a massive challenge. Obviously by limiting your intake that much for about 30% of the week and maintaining your intake at the same level you previously did is going to result in weight loss. And it did. 

 

During my 4th challenge I was able to remain faithful to my commitment to the 5:2 protocol and completed 12 successful fasts. I lost 5lbs over the 6 weeks and did a little exercise with a couple of decent bike rides thrown in for good measure. I kept cooking and actually got a bit fancy with some Christmas desserts during the end of the challenge and immediately after it. I knew that I would see a bump in weight over the 2 weeks I was off work through Christmas but didn't fear it as I knew I had all the tools I needed to get back on the wagon straight after the silly season concluded.

 

So here I am today a few days into my 5th 6 week challenge and this is what I have achieved over the past 18 months;

 

Starting weight 103.3kg (228lbs) Current weight 90.8kg (200lbs)

I can cook like a mofo and out of the 250 or so items I have cooked over the past year 240 have been sensational, 5 have been good, 4 so-so and 1 got binned.

I did a spring clean last week and threw out 4 kitchen bin bags worth of clothes. At least 75% of what I threw out was too large and a size I will never fit into again. 10% was worn out. 15% fashion disasters.

I went shopping last week and bought 5 t/shirts from a few different shops and all of them are size medium!

I bought jeans about 6 weeks ago in a 34" waist and thought it was just a fluke, I now have a couple of pairs of shorts in 34" as well. That's down from 38"/36" depending on the manufacturer.

I have a wedding to attend in February and I am now too thin for the suit I bought 3 years ago but almost ready to get back into a suit that I bought 10 years ago. (This one wasn't a fashion disaster)  

I'm a guy with too many pairs of sneakers and they mostly stay laced up 24/7 and slip on and off. I had to recently retie all of my shoes because apparently I had fat feet and they were way to loose to be worn.

I have grown about an inch or so, I am still the same height but I walk around with my head up, I no longer feel the need to look down as I go through my day. I stand tall, well as tall as a short guy stands, and now see a very different view of the world.

 

I still want to lose about 10kg or so but have no fear of achieving this. 

 

It's not easy, and it isn't always fun, and it certainly isn't linear, but it is achievable. 

 

You can see in the picture the ups and downs in my weight over the past 12 months and as far as I am aware that's kind of what it is meant to look like. As long as the overall trend in downward and that is what you are aiming for then you are probably doing the right thing. I'm not ready for before and after/during photos yet but I suspect they will appear somewhere here in the next month or two.

Thanks for taking the time to check this out.

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Level 8 Satyr Scout

STR 11|DEX 5|STA 10|CON 9|WIS 12|CHA 5

 

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Matt_72

Matt_72

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I also wanted to do this here as well.

Last year I got the Lift App on my phone and I tracked various tasks some of which I am ready to retire and some which I will continue but start fresh this year.

No Coke today - 311 days

Get to work on time - 143 days

Lights out by 11pm - 44 days

No McDonalds - 365 days

 

The coke was a decent win except that I started drinking copious amounts of coke zero which depending on who you read could be worse.

 

My tolerance for getting to work on time was to be at the gate by 7.01am. The majority of misses were between 7.02 and 7.06.

 

Light's out was a massive failure.

 

No Mcdonalds was my wifes idea after seeing a post on her facebook feed last January about someone congratulating themselves for going a full year without it. It wasn't something that we had every week but it was definitely something we could do without.

 

For 2014 the tasks are as follows;

 

No soft drinks (diet or otherwise) - 4 days

 

Lights out by 11pm - 3 days

 

No take away from a vendor with a drive through - 9 days (DW really upped the ante on this one)

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Level 8 Satyr Scout

STR 11|DEX 5|STA 10|CON 9|WIS 12|CHA 5

 

Previous Challenge

 

Woot What?

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Matt_72

Matt_72

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Wow, it's been a while since I checked in here.

I missed this current challenge due to organisational issues on my behalf so thought I might update a few things here and keep track over the next 5-6 weeks until I thrust back into the next challenge.

 

So here goes with an overall update

 

Starting weight 103.3kg (228lbs) Jan 8 weight 90.8kg (200lbs) September 18 weight 84.3kg (186lbs)

 

No soft drinks - 126 days

 

Lights out by 11.30 (slight adjustment when I changed jobs) 51 days (Since June)

 

No take away from a vendor with drive thru - 261 days (all year)

 

Very happy with all of these results thus far.

 

The soft drinks one is a big win. It's one thing to say oh Coke isn't any good for me because of all the sugar but diet soft drinks are probably worse because the artificial sweetener is much more insidious.

 

Lights out has worked well. Since switching jobs I have a later start in the mornings which is why I gave myself the extra half hour but I haven't really needed it over the past couple of months because I have been using my extra morning time to get up early and go to the gym which helps get me to bed earlier the night before etc. 

 

No drive thru take away is more about staying away from the dirtiest of the dirty take away's than anything to do with drive thrus. It's been relatively easy to maintain this one. One of the hardest aspects has been that the new place I work puts on lunch for us every Friday and I think that prior to me working every now and then it might have involved McDonalds or KFC so my presence has put the kibosh on that.

 

I'm currently in the process of training for a half marathon. I found an excellent app to work me through about a 12 week process of training and even with an injury which meant that I missed one race and had to find another at a later date and missing a week of training due to illness I still seem to be hitting the targets it is setting for me. This week we booked accommodation for the place where the race is being held and I am going to register today which removes most excuses for not actually following through with it.

 

It's been a testing year so far but it has also been a great year which is still on the ascent.  

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Level 8 Satyr Scout

STR 11|DEX 5|STA 10|CON 9|WIS 12|CHA 5

 

Previous Challenge

 

Woot What?

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Matt_72

Matt_72

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Hey Matt!

How goes things? I thought of you today. I hope your training is going well.

 

I was wondering if you wanted me to put your races on the Scout calendar? Lemme know, thanks.

Cheers

T

Hey Teri how's it going?

Yeah that would be great if you could do that.

Training hit a bit of a bump in terms of another cold. It appears we are now living under the roof of a Germinator! I feel like I have done enough to get me through the 10km's this weekend but I am a little apprehensive about the half now. We have already booked accommodation for that so at the very least we will get away for a long weekend and I can be a cheerleader but if it pans out well I will also get to be cheered. Just going to have to wait and see.

 

Thanks for checking in on me :)

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Level 8 Satyr Scout

STR 11|DEX 5|STA 10|CON 9|WIS 12|CHA 5

 

Previous Challenge

 

Woot What?

MFP

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Matt_72

Matt_72

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Sooooooooooooooo I didn't get to do the 10km. Those who have followed a couple of my challenges will probably have read me write about an irregular heartbeat that i have that comes and goes as it pleases, much like I did to my parents as a teenager. It just so happened that it turned up the day before the race and it didn't cease operations until midday the day of the race. Very annoying but that's the nature of the situation. My training for the half has been pretty erratic over the past few weeks so I am thinking that I am going to drop it back to the 10km for that event which is a week from today. I'm comfortable enough to see it not as a failure but as an adjustment. I cooked something amazing last night but it's easier for me to post from my phone so off I go to do that now.

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Level 8 Satyr Scout

STR 11|DEX 5|STA 10|CON 9|WIS 12|CHA 5

 

Previous Challenge

 

Woot What?

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Terinatum

Terinatum

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Hey Matt.

That is a wonderful meal. Great work!

The body is the boss sometimes and you are in a great place to be able and willing to accept that aspect of life.

I hope the 10k is a lot of fun for you. It won't be too hot by then will it? Do you run with a water pouch/camelback? I have always wondered about one.

Good Luck and let us know!

Cheers

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The Way

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Matt_72

Matt_72

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Finally got to do my race :)

It was a lot of fun and for maybe the first half it was a lot like a training run but with a bunch of people around instead of just me. The second half I upped the ante a little so it was a little more taxing.

Very glad to have picked this race for what ended up being my first 10km race. Maybe next year I'll do the half or maybe I'll do the 10 again. Right now I'm not fussed about which.

Before

1a59fbc368e2f6c0dbddf39d12ea0555.jpg

After

757756da8443d6c58119e3b9af398065.jpg

  • Like 1

Level 8 Satyr Scout

STR 11|DEX 5|STA 10|CON 9|WIS 12|CHA 5

 

Previous Challenge

 

Woot What?

MFP

Endomondo

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Matt_72

Matt_72

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For 2014 the tasks are as follows;

 

No soft drinks (diet or otherwise) - 4 days

 

Lights out by 11pm - 3 days

 

No take away from a vendor with a drive through - 9 days (DW really upped the ante on this one)

 

2014 Results

No soft drinks - 194 

Lights out by 11.30 (this was adjusted) - 112

No take away from a vendor with a drive through - 365 (that means no McDonalds for over 2 years!!!)

 

Last year was a great year for me. I got a new job. My baby started talking, non-stop! I achieved much more in terms of health than I had thought possible.

 

July 2012 weight 103.3kg (228lbs)

January 2014 weight 90.8kg (200lbs)

January 2015 weight 86.5kg (190lbs)

 

4kg doesn't sound like a lot when you say it out loud but it does take into account seriously excessive Christmas time eating. I've no doubt that by the start of next week I will be looking more like 85kg and then I start the journey again.

 

I haven't fully established this years goals but so far I have;

Run 1,000km

Run a half marathon

Buy Nothing New Year (Rough guide here https://bnny2015.wordpress.com/ )

Still finalising tasks/challenges for the year ahead and hope to have them set by the end of this week. 

  • Like 1

Level 8 Satyr Scout

STR 11|DEX 5|STA 10|CON 9|WIS 12|CHA 5

 

Previous Challenge

 

Woot What?

MFP

Endomondo

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