Category: Lifstyle & Weight Management

I’ve been using these scales now since  September last year. They are excellent value at £17.99 comparable to £50 ones elsewhere.

http://www.lidl.co.uk/uk/home.nsf/pages/c.o.20070714.p.Digital_Body_Fat_Monitor.ar7

This year Liddl have dropped the price to £9.99 which is superb value.
I’ve been doing a morning weigh-in everyday so if there were any problems with them they would have shown up by now. They are accurate and repeatable.

Some may dispute the body fat measurements but the important thing with all of them is the trend. Mine is still around 27% the lowest it has been is 26.5 %. Your not going to see wild swings in body fat measurement or muscle mass for that matter but this shouldn’t put you off.

Highly reccomended.

Next Wednesday is the ninth and final followup class for me.  It was a year ago when I started on the Lifestyle and Weight management course, what a year it’s been.
This time last year I was 122 Kg (268 lb) now I\’m around 85 Kg (187 lb) at the peak I was 132 Kg (291 lb)

This weekend I’m tackling my longest ride to date a 200Km Audax (120 odd miles).
I’m not super human but it would be nigh on impossible at my old weight.
I’ve seen a lot of people struggling with weightloss and I would think its all down to exercise or the lack of it.

As you can see from this site I log all the exercise I do. Now I\’m still on the (balanced) diet, I don\’t starve myself, haven\’t felt hungry I just follow the British Heart Foundation book. The only variable is the exerise, the more I\’ve done the more weight I\’ve lost, the more weight I\’ve lost the more exercise I can do. The opposite of the viscious circle.

Limits, most people don\’t know what theirs is, I know what mine is and try to test it once a week. It might be on a ride, on the rowing machine or in a spinning class you\’ll know when your up for it.

Contary to what we are all told I weigh myself every day. Same time same place, I\’ve now got figures going back to September. It helps me remain focused. 85.3 Kg this morning, fat and muscle percentage get measured too. There is no point going to a weighin not knowing what you weigh and coming out with a lame excuse if you\’ve put weight on. Don\’t forget one pound of fat equals 3500 calories. 

Monday: 84.6 Kg the morning after an epic ride. Mind you according to the Garmin I did burn 7584 calories on the ride. Unbeleivable numbers even if you do beleive the fact that they overestimate the number of calories burnt.

Wednesday:This is the start of another milestone in my life. It\’s the end of my Lifestyle and weight management course. I\’ve been on it just one year and what a year it has been. The highs haven\’t stopped coming the lows are a distant memory, it was a low that had me saying yes to getting on the course.

It starts off we with a trip to the dentist for a checkup. Now I was going to go out for a ride with the CTC and give some of them a thrashing up the hills but it was going to be tight for time and I need a breakfast in me before. Instead it was a trip to Tesco,s to exchange two shirts I had bought the week before, mediums for small, a year ago I was extra large, the year before extra extra large.

I also tried on some trousers, 34inch waist, they fitted!!!. they go in the trolley for £4 I can’t go wrong. When I was at my heaviest clothes were a huge problem, I’d be paying £35 for a pair of M&S trousers because they went up to a 48in waist and had elastic in them. The elastic is to stop them bursting when you lean forward as all that extra fat has to go somewhere. I’ve been there and I don’t want to go back. M&S sizes are generous at the top end of the sizes too. A bottle of champagne goes in the trolley too a cellibration is due.

A bit later its time for a haircut at Rachel John , they’ve noticed the difference in my size as a lot of people don’t recognise me these days. Not much to cut these days though.

As I didn’t make the start for a CTC ride it’s a session at the Oval, weights as usual, rowing 2km in just over 8 minutes and then I’m left wondering what to do next. Cross trainer is out I feel up for something. Treadmill it is. Now I’ve only done 2.5 miles before and that was the other week. So I set off at 9.1 mph which seems a steady pace with the idea of doing 2.5 miles again. Oh, I’ve got my headphones on watching a music channel, well time flies when your having fun and I’m slowly watching the mileometer tick round in hundreths of a mile.
Now the furthest Ive EVER done is 3.25miles at school on the cross-country run.
That comes and goes and I’m into unknown territory, but the thing is I feel good. The pulse is steady at about 150 bpm, the next milestone is 4 miles. Some where around 3 1/2 miles I up the pace to 11.1 mph this is new territory for me but as I know what my maximum effort is it doesn’t bother me.

Well at 4 miles I’ve got a daft grin on my face and call it a day after 4 1/2 miles. I could have push on to a new record of 5 miles if I hadn’t of upped the speed but I am more than satisfied with what I have done. I get off the machine and feel like I’m walking on air. More rowing and a bit more cycling and I’m done. 900 calories worth.

Now onto the class, eight of us turned up.  Gordon didn’t make it from my class so it was just me out of a class of 25 that completed the course. This is a dissapointment as I consider missing a class as missing a medical appointment which is in effect what it is. It’s an opportunity to get some one to one advice off Ron which I consider priceless.
Today it was who to see about running shoes, I followed his advice and went to see Julie at Runners Sports and came out with a pair after trying on about 5 pairs.
Chocolate was one of the themes tonight that and the obesity hospital that was on TV the night before. I watched it for 10 minutes but had to turn it off, I just don’t like watching this sort of thing anymore.

I clocked the other class going out as it was their final week, now there were about ten to a dozen  leaving and only one bloke from memory. Not good odds for them making it to the end of the year. It’s a pity really, I’ve got so much out of it.

Now to the weighin  83.4 kg  a year ago I was 122 kg so the final weight loss was 38.6 Kg or 85 lbs or  6 stone depending on how you like your units. Ron says it’s exceptional and announces it to the class as this is the end of the line for me. There are no more boxes on the sheet to fill in and I’m sorted. Thanks Ron, I’ve listened to everything you’ve told me over the last 12 months, haven’t cheated as I’m only cheating myself and am still on the BHF diet.

I took a before picture in to show the others what I looked like and some had difficulty making out which one was me. I now look nothing like the photograph. It may make it onto the site but it’s not mine to publish. I’ll mention Andy before I finish this post, comments keep me blogging and Andy is still the only one on the course that has had the guts to comment, thanks Andy, this blog was set up for the likes of us to keep in touch. So its been a partial success. I still want to help others achieve what I have, my life has literally been transformed in the space of one year.

Next weighin 2nd May This time as a guest. There,s another 25 that need telling that the course doesn’t end after 12 weeks and the long term gains contine by sticking to it. 

I’ve another followup class coming up tommorow and I’m coming up to the end of my year on the course. Saturday was the anniversary of my making the decision to do something with my life and sign up for this course.
For those on the course at the moment the course doesn’t finish after the 12 week classroom sessions. You should be looking to do this for the rest of your natural born.

If you’re not getting results have a good look in the mirror and try and take control of your life. Out of 25 that started the class I’m the only one left that regulary attends followups, these figures really shock me. This probably goes a long way to explain why I get so little feedback from other Lifestyle and Weight Management Course  participants.

I’m still of the opinion that women drift back to Slimming World and Weight Watchers, men generally don’t do either but only see their doctor when they think they are terminally ill. Which brings me back to the very reason you are on this course in the first place. You are in bad shape and need do something about it.

Nine of us turned up the followup class and the major theme of this class was exercise and food labelling (GDA, Traffic lights and the standard labels) Gordon from the class that I attended was there so that makes two of us that are going the full term. There was discussion from the September class about numbers coming back. They think they are good, I think they are pretty poor. The course runs for 12 months, half the class will have dropped out by week 12 and of the remainder most will have dropped out by the third followup class.
Once you have missed a followup it will be very hard to get back on track. Depending on how you  look at it the course may be judged as succesfull, if you take the figures at the end of the 12 months it might be judged less so. I intended to do the full 12 months, its been an outstanding success for me. Way way beyond what I thought could be acheived.

See you next month Andy, I passed the message on to Ron.

Wednesday 24th Jan sees me attending the seventh followup class. The classroom sessions were once a week for 12 weeks and then there is a monthly followup class and weighin. The idea for this site came shortly after finishing the classes.
As you may or may not have gathered I’m still on the scheme, it won’t have finished for me until March.
Very few of the class I attended have made it this far, Andy,s class is fairing better and hopefully the class we saw before Christmas will be better again. I don’t know what people are afraid of, most on the class I attended lost a fair amount of weight and were feeling better for it.

The beauty of the followup classes  is that because of the lower numbers there is more time to sort out individual problems and go into more detail on things that may have not been fully grasped in the weekly classes. For me it’s important that I finish the course and show that I can maintain a steady weight.

The BHF booklet is titled “So you want to loose weight for good”, well thats the plan, it’s worked brilliantly for me and I intend to stick with it.  

Update: A good turn out for the followup classes, just moi from mine, four from Andy,s class and about five from the last class to finish the year. I have to admit I didn’t recognise any of them but that will probably change next month, one or two that I had expected to turn up were no shows.
Plenty to talk about before we were introduced to the new class on their fourth week.

Ron brought us in and introduced us to the class, it started off with a few general questions that the others answered. There was a question about exercise were Andy said this is the chap to ask about exercise(me). This was picked up by the chap at the front nearest me. (If your from the class and reading this bear in mind I’ve been on the course the longest, so this was the tenth month Andy,s seventh etc) I think I must have talked for a good ten minutes or more after that explaining how I’ve done, the site, Google, spinning, exercise, the diet,etc. I think I managed to cover most things. This was an opportunity to give out the cards that provide the only link to the site, all other methods seem to have been closed off by various officials in the NHS.
The cards went down well, about 75% I would say took one, the rest were probably too reserved to ask. I made a mental note of those that went out of their way to ask for one. 

If you were in that class and managed to make it this far leave me a comment or a question. They all get answered, there are going to be very few more opportunities to meet me face to face, two at most and then we will be passing in the corridor.
That’s how I met Andy (my only LifeStyle and weight Management contributor, go on make me wrong!), thanks for that interjection Andy, I didn’t want to barge in on anyone.

Have a good hard look at the site, there is a lot of information on here now that you can relate to. Ten months ago I was in the same situation as yourselves, my life has literally been transformed and a lot of it has happened after the classroom sessions finished. Have a look at the weightloss diary, the weights are the same ones that Ron writes in your Personal Record Booklet.

Tonight was one of the few opportunities I’ve had to make a difference to other peoples future lives, if I’ve just inspired one it’s been worth the effort. Don’t let this category wither and die, drop me a comment, one on the Lifestyle and Weight Management  Course is worth ten others.

First names will do, email address optional,(it doesn’t get published, a bit like mine)not just a blokes site weightloss crosses the divide. Comments complete the circle.