Writer's Block

Starting Weight : 25 stone, 13 pounds.   Previous Weight : 24 stone 6.1 pounds. New Weight : 24 stone. 2.6 pounds. This Week's Loss : 3.5 pounds. Total Weight Loss : 1 stone, 10.4 pounds. Totally bewildered by this. I mentioned eating two whole 500ml tubs of ice cream in the previous blog. Even if I take that out of the equation, it has not been an exceptional week. I am still eating too much, too often and drinking too much Pepsi Max*, too often. At some point I think it will catch up with me. But I am still motivated on the exercise front and obviously it's great to both pass the 1.5 stone mark and have the 2 stone target edging into view. I suppose sometimes there are outcomes that you just can't legislate for and this is one of those. I have put an exercise plan in place that ought to be doable without running myself into the ground. If I can combine that with more self-discipline in terms of diet, hopefully more positive outcomes will be forthcoming. It...

Starting Weight : 25 stone, 13 pounds.   Previous Weight : 24 stone 6.1 pounds. New Weight : 24 stone. 6.1 pounds. This Week's Loss : 0.0 pounds. Total Weight Loss : 1 stone, 6.9 pounds. Thoroughly unsurprised by this. I made a number of poor decisions last week. Chief among them being my decision to have a McDonalds. 2000 calories straight down the drain and I didn't even enjoy it. I can't for the life of me understand why every time I have been in a McDonalds in the recent past, there has been a Deliveroo driver picking up a large order. All McDonalds meals seem to retain their temperature for all of five minutes so unless those bags are insulated with materials sourced from the depths of Hades, I don't really see how it's worth anyone's while. Anyway, the result is a maintain. Not the end of the world in principle. Except. The reason this blog is going up late is that I had a depressive episode over the course of the weekend. I don't really ...

Starting Weight : 25 stone, 13 pounds. Previous Weight : 24 stone 7.6 pounds. New Weight : 24 stone. 6.1 pounds. This Week's Loss : 1.5 pounds Total Weight Loss : 1 stone, 6.9 pounds. This has been the worst week since I started, food wise. Terrible choices, time after time after time.  Entire tubs of pesto, four cheese tortellini with cheese sauce and an Indian takeaway (not my choice, but I really should have pushed back on it). Then on Wednesday, I had what I would describe as my first binge since I started. I had dinner, then had dinner again, then had dinner a third time and then a fourth, the final one compounded with sausages and Yorkshires. I am uncertain as to what triggered it really but am quite concerned as to how easily I found myself slipping back into my old patterns. I compensated for this by basically running myself into the ground on the exercise front. By Friday night, I had done 105,000 steps in five days, which I believe is some way past the target I...

Starting Weight : 25 stone, 13 pounds. Previous Weight : 24 stone 11 pounds. New Weight : 24 stone. 7.6 pounds. This Week's Loss : 3.4 pounds Total Weight Loss : 1 stone, 5.4 pounds.  I am absolutely delighted with this, as again it wasn't a perfect week food wise. Can I have a perfect week food wise? Is that a realistic goal? I don't know. I'm still overeating but overeating better, if that makes sense. My cola addiction remains something of a concern. I drank nearly 2 litres of Pepsi Max on Thursday which is unacceptable really. I've accepted that I'm not likely to go cold turkey any time soon but need to start employing a good deal more willpower than I am at the moment. If I were to cut myself some slack, I would probably acknowledge that I'm not going to change a lifetime of poor eating habits in the space of a month and that there will be bumps in the road.     I have also exerted a bit more effort on the exercise front this week, going to ...

Starting Weight : 25 stone, 13 pounds. Previous Weight : 24 stone 12.3 pounds. New Weight : 24 stone. 11 pounds. This Week's Loss : 1.3 pounds Total Weight Loss : 1 stone, 2 pounds. Oh dear. I had planned to lose half a stone every week for the entire year, thus dropping my entire body weight and presumably existing thereafter as some form of gas. But not to be. Less flippantly, I had expected something like this after my heavy night's drinking and a number of not particularly great food choices during the course of the week, pizza and burgers among them. I've also snacked too much between meals and my Pepsi Max consumption is creeping up again. It's something I'm going to have to work harder on but I'm going to take the attitude that any loss is a good loss. Having been over 25 stone for at least a year, it also feels good to finally be 24 stone something. I don't want to be 25 stone plus ever again. This blog has gone up late again because I...

Starting Weight : 25 stone, 13 pounds. Previous Weight : 25 stone, 5.3 pounds. New Weight : 24 stone. 12.3 pounds. This Week's Loss : 7 pounds. Total Weight Loss : 1 stone, 0.7 pounds. Again, surprised and delighted with that. I didn't think I had a particularly great week food wise (pizza, sandwiches, macaroni cheese, too much Pepsi) but obviously it hasn't made too much of a dent. I had a couple of days off and did 34,000 steps across those two days which may have helped.  As of Monday 20th January I am slightly trepidatious about the forthcoming weigh in this Saturday, as I took on rather a lot of booze calories on Saturday and made some poor eating decisions in a drunken haze. But all I can do is make sure I have a good week between now and then. Fortunately, I am a very infrequent drinker (I may touch on this in a future blog) and last Saturday does not represent the norm. This sounds a bit like I'm preempting. I don't want to make it sound like lo...

I went to see my friend Tom Mayhew perform his show "I, Tom Mayhew" at the Soho Theatre last week. I have known Tom a long time and I've done gigs with him a few times, sharing with him the highs and lows of being a stand-up comedian. I always felt that Tom was a talented act and he has combined that with an impressive work ethic, gigging frequently and extensively around the country. For the uninitiated, Soho Theatre is the cool place to watch stand-up and sketch comedy in London. My friend Joanna used to work there and got me free tickets for lots of shows. I've still not quite forgiven her for the selfish act of moving on with her career. It's pretty much in the centre of the city, has three great performance spaces and has basically hosted anyone who's anyone in stand-up in the past twenty years. I think I speak for a lot of people who have done comedy when I say that we all aspire to do our own hour long shows there. To play there is a great achievement...