It’s a long time since I’ve blogged here. I have a lot going on in my life at the moment and a fair bit of it I am not ready to talk about. Hence the silence.

But, something I do want to share is my latest (and greatest) attempt to get fit.

About 10 years ago, I lost about 7 stone to get down from a 44” waist trouser to a 32” inch trouser. I kept the weight off for some time, until I started working away from home a lot, staying in a hotel and then it climbed fast.

I made a few half-hearted efforts to lose that weight over the last couple of years with the Atkins diet and “I can make you thin”. These sort of worked, for a short time, and then when I got bored doing them the weight crept back – a little higher than the time before.

A couple of months ago I decided it was time to repeat the diet of 10 years ago. That time I used the Hacker Diet and joined a gym. I had a regular routine covering almost every day of swimming, weights and karate.

So, I searched for a program that could monitor my diet, the main requirements were that it smoothed daily weight readings, predicted the weight loss trend, recorded the daily intake and exercise and computed the overall effectiveness of the diet.

I found DietPower, an aged but very neat program. The best bit is the food input which uses a smart search function. This approach means that it takes only seconds to record your daily intake.

Also, I joined a gym. Now, I had tried this too a couple of years ago. I went to the local LA Fitness, and it was a disaster – after only a few sessions I stopped. I pushed myself too hard and made myself feel ill, and just stopped going. The gym didn’t offer any real guidance or motivation beyond the initial consultation and it was very expensive.

The gym that I joined is a much less glossy place, more down to earth and much more friendly than the faceless machine of the chain-gym. If you live in Colchester and want a practical gym that helps you meet your goals then Hamiltons Fitness is worth looking at.

LINK REMOVED – See Here to see why

Anyway, 7 weeks later of calorie counting, swimming and gym workouts I am 14lb lighter and have lost 6” off my waist. By involving body fat percentages the news is even better, I have lost 22lb of fat and gained 8lb of lean (possibly muscle). My one mile swim time has also improved from about 40 minutes to about 33 minutes.

My goal is to lose at least another 33lb, but my trainer says that I might have to reconsider my plans if I keep building muscle. It is not unreasonable with the work that I’m doing to be the same weight in 3 months time and yet have a body fat percentage of 17.5% and a waist of 34”.