Now I have achieved my goal, I’ve got to not let it go and turn back into a mountain of lard. For me, this means that I have to carry on using DietPower for the foreseeable future, but configured into maintenance mode rather than weight loss mode.

So, I still get a calorie budget to stay within, which moves downward if my weight creeps upward (or vice versa).

The first weekend I had a massive upward swing in weight of 3lb, partially due to water retention in my sore muscles after my Swimathon and partly because of my celebratory Chinese meal (which, fitted in my calorie allowance but has lots of mono-sodium glutamate). A few days later it settled back to my target weight, but I had another upswing of 2lb a few days after that! It looks likely that the maintenance diet will be like this, and it’s something else to get used to.

I have managed to keep up the exercise with regular runs and swims. On Sunday I managed a personal best distance run of 5 miles, and I have been swimming a regular 2km swim several times per week. This helps greatly with my calorie budget. Sadly, my weight lifting has proven more difficult to maintain and I haven’t visited a gym since before the Swimathon. I believe muscle maintenance has been a critical part of my success, so this has got to change.