Well, since I achieved my main goals then I am thinking less and less about where I am on the fitness scale, and it has become something that I am not constantly talking about. But, I thought it time to review where I am.

My weight is still within the range that I set myself, although it is creeping toward the upper end of that range – which may need some maintenance work to stop it from climbing out of control. This is going to be interesting over the next few weeks as my latest contract will involve some hotel accomodation for the first few weeks as I try and find a short-term let. Hotels spell “DANGER”, as the last few times my work led me to stay in hotels then my weight has balooned out of control, vigilence is needed here, and I am a little nervous about falling badly off the wagon.

Over the last week I have picked up a minor chest infection, leading to a bit of a rattly cough. At the beginning it stopped me from running, although I managed to carry on swimming. Since Friday, though, I have resumed the running – with quite a healthy pace yesterday – it hasn’t been pleasant though, when the rattle gets bad and the resultant coughing starts.

My pace is starting to return to the pre-HRM days, but of course I am feeling much better at the end of the run. I want to start pushing up the mileage, as my dream of a November half-marathon is still there. (Can I believe I am saying this?). As an interim milestone, Alison and I may do the Cancer Research 10k in September.

I caught myself telling a colleague today that I went for a short run yesterday, only a mere 5k – and then realised what I had said. I am certainly changing.

Since her difficult 10 miler at Great Baddow, Alison has been coming on in leaps and bounds. She has been promoted to the upper group now, and definitely belongs there and seems to be improving by the week – it was a plateau breaker for her. I wish I could find a plateau breaker for my running pace.

The swimming still feels very strong, and I am doing 2k front crawl a couple of times per week. I don’t see me improving much more without a proper trainer, but it is rare for me to meet another non-club swimmer in the public lane swimming that is faster than me now. I am mainly doing this now as a calorie burner, as further improvement would require a level of commitment that I can’t give it now.

I had the opportunity to go for a London contract recently, and I think one of the things putting me off was that a daily commute from home would leave no time for a fitness program!

Over the past three weeks I have not been recording my weight or counting calories. Most days I have been eating the same as I have been, but a couple of days per week I have lapsed – without using DietPower to remind me of what I should be doing, I think I would be starting down the slippery slope to a yo-yo weight gain.

So, as of today, it’s back to the strict calorie counting and ensuring that I don’t balloon up in weight again.

One thing I have noticed is that increasing calorie intake by around 500 cals/day, which is the amount I should be able to eat to maintain my weight rather than lose it, seems to lead to an overnight weight increase of about 1.5lb. Is this the extra “waste”, or water retention, or something else? As a consequence, I am now a couple of pounds over my target weight, and have to work at getting it back off again – which shouldn’t be that hard.

I’m really glad that this news wasn’t going around 6 months ago, since I would have almost certainly used it as an excuse for being overweight and stopped attempting to lose it.

It is interesting to note that they are only claiming that about 7lb of the amount someone is overweight could be attributed to this gene, and I’m sure that most obese people will be far more overweight than that.

By the BMI calculation I am still about 14lb overweight, but with a 32” waist I am not worried.

I have achieved my target weight of 12 stone 7lb four days ahead of schedule.

The Diet Power approach to monitoring your weight, calorie intake and exercise and using that to get a constantly revised daily calorie budget that tracks your progress and your metabolic rate has enabled me to hit my target weight within a week of my target date.

I am going to carry on using it to maintain my weight at it’s current level. It should notice if I am starting to gain weight and cut back my budget, and likewise it will allow me more food if I carry on losing weight.

Thanks to my long suffering wife for weighing all my food and keeping all the packaging for me to analyse for the last six months, also many thanks need to go to the Diet power forum members, especially in the monthly challenge section who have helped greatly over these months.

I can’t recommend enough this method of losing weight, it has not been arduous at all – in fact it has been a very pleasant process.

I’m only 1 pound away from my target weight and I have 1 week left on my original 6 month plan. I am amazed how Diet Power has kept me right on track all the way through the 6 months. Week after week the weight loss has followed the plan within a pound all the way down. By every measure possible this is the best diet I have followed. Definitely recommended.

Here are some stats….

Of course, the end of the diet isn’t really in sight — as the main thing that I’ve learned is that I must continue the diet indefinitely. It will just be a weight maintenance plan instead of a weight loss plan.

Four months ago I wrote:

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”.

So, how does my prediction compare with was has really happened? Well, I have lost another 26lb and my body fat has gone down from 26% to 16%. My waist? 38” to 33”. So, the body shape predictions were pretty close. Cool.

I am still dithering about whether to go into a maintenance diet at the end of March, or to carry on losing weight. I feel fitter than ever in my whole adult life, I can run about 4 miles, my swimming speed is about 15% quicker than ever before and the 5km Swimathon in 2 weeks time is looking easy (famous last words). My strength in the gym is seriously better than it was, lifting about 3 times the weights of 6 months ago. My body fat is slap bang in the middle of the healthy range and I am getting fed up of having to buy smaller and smaller clothes. This week I am going through my wardrobe to get rid of clothes that I have had for less than 4 months because they are way too big. The big “but” is my BMI, this statistic is the one that is bugging me, every time I say I am happy to stop at 12st7lb this little gremlin says “That is a BMI of 27.5 you know, overweight“.

Another half a stone would leave me at a BMI of 26.4, still overweight, with a BF% of 11% and a waist measurement of around 31”. Now, notice how this impressive body fat percentage and waist measurement would STILL leave me with a BMI which would be considered overweight. So would I still have that niggle if I pushed myself that far?

I’m sure I’ll make up my mind soon.

I have been dieting now for 5 months, and am in the final month of my plan.

This has been the most satistfying diet plan that I have ever followed. I have consistantly hit my targets, month after month after month and am now in sight of my goal. That goal was 12st7lb with no significant reduction in lean mass, I wanted to lose 3st of fat – and I have (except 3lb to lose this month).

The main factors in this success have been…

1. Weighing myself everyday and entering the data into an analysis tool such as DietPower.
2. Adjusting the daily calorie allowance in line with actual weight loss.
3. Cardiovascular exercise to improve overall fitness and give a greater calorie allowance each day.
4. Weight lifting to build or maintain muscle which improves metabolic rate and makes the weight loss healthier than losing a mix of fat and muscle.

Now I am considering where to go from here. My goal weight wasn’t overly ambitious. In fact, I still have a BMI of around 27, but on the other hand my body fat percentage is around 17%, which is slap bang in the centre of the healthy range for my age.

I have changed my mind several times. I am trying to decide whether to aim to stick at 12st7lb, or go for 12st0lb.

DietPower 4.4 has finally come out. I will be giving it a run through over the next few days, and write up my views on it then.

Ok, how’s it going? Well, the contract is quite straight-forward – I have to design and lead the team developing a web service broker collecting information from external systems. There is the usual stuff of concurrency, request queuing, XSLT transformations, etc. This isn’t dissimilar to some of the integration and communications work that I’ve been involved with recently, so I’m quite buoyant about being able to do a good job.

Living in a house has been a bit strange, since I have to do the washing up!!!

Eating within my calorie budget hasn’t been a challenge, so the diet is still on track – it helps that the cupboards are almost empty so I only have what I bought with me to eat.

Exercise has been more awkward – I have managed one run, one weight lifting session and one swim in four days, tomorrow I will manage another swim making it a better hit rate, but it is still under what I have been doing lately.

I must order broadband for this house, quickly checking email and a couple of websites that I like to keep an eye on via dial-up in a right pain (and it isn’t a quick check by the time the pages crawl in – gmail is amazingly unusable on dial-up)

At the beginning of February I re-planned my diet to be losing only 1lb per week. The idea being to gradually sneak up on my target weight so that I don’t have big, sudden changes in my diet to accommodate.

That was the idea, and it meant 500 calories per day being added to my calorie budget. After eating around 1300 calories per day for 4 months, it has been quite a challenge to get those extra calories and I have been averaging a shortfall of 150 calories per day!

Also, the weight kept falling off – by the end of the first week I had lost three more pounds in weight – so the amount I needed to lose per week had dropped to 0.7lb and my calorie budget had increased accordingly (about another 120). Since then, though, my weight has bounced back a little. I am still about 2lb ahead of target. I am pleased that the weight loss rate is now down to approximately 1 pound per week.