Actually Losing Weight
Posted
Those of you that have read my ramblings over the years will appreciate that my one major frustration, even more so than trying to get laid more than once a decade, is an inability to lose weight.
Previously, I had discovered two proven ways of losing weight:
- Being unemployed
- Being on detox
I had settled into a groove of losing weight during the January to March period, and then putting on around twice as much over the next 9 months.
Not only was this not improving my sex life, but also it was having a negative impact on my health. And my levels of happiness.
I knew that I needed to reverse it, but I normally couldn’t make it through a Monday in the office without reaching 4,000 calories, and by Friday I was often consuming 5,000 calories or more – especially once beer was imbibed.
Yet last week, I recorded a weight under 100kg for the first time in 2 years.
How now brown cow that you are actually losing weight?
Last year I came to realise that I could only lose weight if I had at least two of time, energy and motivation. Commuting was the factor driving this – being forced to work from home full-time gave me the time and motivation to drive changes to my lifestyle.
No longer was I standing up for 45 minutes on the Metropolitan line, delayed, tired and frustrated – and going from a healthy eating mindset straight to the bacon sandwich shop. And then some chocolate.
No longer was I tired on a Friday, and consuming too much chocolate, cake and various other foods to keep me awake as my energy drains away from me.
Working from home means I can make good choices.
What are these choices?
So I’m pretty religiously having two walks a day, both first thing in the morning and straight after work. I’m doing around 8,000 steps a day. Maybe that will change when it starts pissing down with rain, but also I like rain so maybe it won’t.
Next, my breakfast consists normally of fruit and nuts. My veg box from Oddbox is flooding my kitchen with damn apples and I cannot eat enough of them.
Said veg box also provides me with lots of vegetables, believe it or not, and my lunchtime challenge is to work out what the hell I am going to do with an aubergine, cabbage or whatever needs using up. Invariably my lunch is actually vegan, but please don’t let that ruin your opinion of my carnivorous self.
I have also been eating more fish instead of meat, as fish is much lower in calories and often equally as delicious.
Finally a surprising entry and that is the Mask Stasi.
During lockdown when it was still safe to go to the supermarket, I often ended up buying baguette from Sainsburys in the morning, or chocolate/cake after work. As it is now too dangerous to go to the shop, and therefore I haven’t been to one since July, this is greatly helping me as normally I only have healthy food in the house – so I cannot easily eat unhealthy food on demand.
A thin and sexy future?
Well, I’m not sure I’ll become sexy any time soon.
I am only very slowly losing weight – I am enjoying alcohol at the weekend too much which is tempering my potential weight loss. I’m sure that if I could manage just one weekend without then I’d probably lose 1kg in a week – at the moment it is about 0.2kg a week.
Alas, I spend all week pretending that I’m not going to drink and then around 5pm on a Friday I change my mind. Hmmm. Well, there will be a 3 month detox come January as per normal.
I know that covid-19 has been shit for many people, and more superficially it has led me to lose my social life, have less fun and no holidays – in particular paying £572 for a flight to not to go to Japan. But inadvertently it has allowed me to make good decisions for the future.
Yes, I’m actually losing weight and I am confident that this will continue.
As long as I don’t get forced back into the office, anyway.
I’d like to thank my mum, the mask stasi, those people celebrating VE Day in May that are causing the second wave, Oddbox, my fridge, Lola, my employer for not being morons, Black Lives Matter, Piers Corbyn, Rishi Sunak, Romanian minimal techno producers and Prince Andrew. I couldn’t do it without you all. Mwah.