Put down the sandwich, you really don't need it.

I'm sitting here enjoying a beer and looking upon my daily food intake and I'm feeling a bit sad, I seem to have gone right off track and I'm regularly eating more than double what I should be eating and its mainly snacks and chocolate to blame. I worked really hard to get to the size I currently am, slimming right down and starting to feel happy in my progress, I was also happy that I'd managed to consistently stick to my guns and eat properly but I now sit here starting to feel uncomfortable, my stomach has that bloated sensation and I'm sure a pair of tracksuit bottoms which were relatively loose a couple of months back felt a little tighter, when I had them on yesterday.

I know exactly where I'm going wrong, I'm eating too much in my afternoon break, I'm also having a false sense of how much I can eat with my bodybugg, stupidly I seem to be telling myself, it doesn't matter if I have four or more slices of toast with meat or some kind of topping, my bodybugg will show that it was ok and I shouldn't worry, the weird thing is, I'm handing out advice to other people, that I'm not following myself, I even have colleagues questioning my snack purchases at work, mentioning that they thought I was watching what I was eating.

I merely smile and laugh it off suggesting that it'll be alright, since I have tomorrow or my exercise classes to sort myself out, well based on the way I feel right now, I'm genuinely scared to step on a scale, I haven't weighed myself in over a month, so I'm not quite sure what I'll weigh when I do weigh myself again. I'm pretty sure that at some point in this post, I was likely to have put, well I'll be pulling my socks up and getting back to eating properly and also logging on my fitness pal but I've said that before, I've also mentioned that this is possibly a blip and I'll get back to eating properly and losing those last few tricky pounds.

The sad fact is, if I don't genuinely do something I will end up back at my starting weight, which annoys me, since I really hoped I had turned over a new leaf and was on the road to a fitter healthier me but alas, it seems my fucking impulse control issues have overtaken me yet again, I really need one of those angry personal trainers you see in films and comedy sketches shouting at me, whenever I go to have an extra slice of toast during my break, especially as I don't really need it, as I'll be getting my evening meal when I get home after work.

I think I'm in that post weight loss period where I seem to have lost a whole bunch of weight, so I should be alright eating a couple of extra treats, as I'll be able to handle it, when I should be limiting the treats that I have to being just that a treat, rather than a regular part of my diet, I also need to have smaller amounts of food during my longer breaks and telling myself no, you can't have that big bar of chocolate, or asking my colleague to snap me off a small piece and then hiding the rest from me, if that makes me a helpless child, then so be it, I suppose I should perhaps speak to someone about my food issues and see what I can do to stop myself from eating it all when I should be eating a portion.

I suppose I should sign off with my usual upbeat, life carries on and I'll bundle through but quick frankly I don't think I should be quite so laid back right now, in fact, I'm just going to see where the next week takes me and hopefully I'll be in a better frame of mind.

Last week reviewed

So I'm sitting here on a Monday afternoon, with a smile on my face, I had my weigh in this morning and I had lost six lbs, which I was pretty surprised at, it means I weighed 13st 2lbs (184lbs) I also looked over my diet for the last week and it was certainly a lot better than it had been for the week before. I increased my output and decreased my intake and still managed to enjoy puddings and the Iceland takeaway meal components. I also feel a lot better in myself, happier in general, I suppose writing out my problems as I see them was quite cathartic and forced me to stop coasting and beating myself up, I had a quick check and discovered that the beers, mini rolls, babybels and scone weighed in at a rather shocking 2017 calories and 77g of fat, this was on top of what I'd eaten that day.

I've also avoided having a meal when I've been on my break and having something small like a low fat mousse, or a crispbake, just to alleviate and hunger pangs I've have, as a result I've been able to keep to my daily allowance, I did worry that I might have been under eating by exercising and sticking strictly to my allowance but based on the last couple of days, I seem to have been balancing it out, going over my allowance but still having a reasonable deficit according to the bodybugg.

The moment I finished the last blog post, I decided I would walk to and from Newcastle for cheap cinema Tuesday and saw the Bourne Legacy, which was a pretty good actioner, though it seemed to tail off towards the end , the walking resulted in a small blister on my foot but that's the price of getting fit. I also managed to get to the gym on Wednesday and Thursday, then had my Boxercise and Spinning classes on Saturday.

All in all, I guess you can say, I had a much better week and seem to have reignited my interest in my fitness, this is pretty important since I've signed up for Tough Mudder North West UK in November and I'd like to finish without feeling like I'm going to die.

Socks well and truly pulled up.

After my last post, I decided that I would stop weighing in, partly because it would probably just upset me and flip some non existent switch in my head that made me say screw it, I don't care about gaining weight and also because I don't want to know if I've gone over the 14 stone mark, since I worked hard to get to that point.

So I decided that I would take a week off measuring what I'm eating and just get back into it, on the following Monday, starting afresh, then weirdly on my day off, I suddenly had the urge to do something a bit healthier, Susan had the idea that we could go to Washington (North East England, the original Washington fact fans) so off we went, to pick up some things Lee needed for his work experience week with the army, when we decided that, we should walk home, so off went, walking and chatting. When we got home Susan had to take Sophie to nursery and I decided to go to the gym, I did a bit of cardio, a few weights and swam a mile, I also decided to get back to properly recording what I was eating on both mfp and the bodybugg site.

It made me realise that, setting a specific day when you're going to start eating properly and exercising more, is counter productive, since you'll justify some chocolate or takeaway binge, with the idea, that you're new healthier eating plan and exercise regime will make those calories simply disappear and they won't have counted in the first place, it also made me realise thaat there really is no time like the present, to make those changes and act on them.

I read on Twitter that someone else was at the same point I was, that they'd slacked with their resolutions and hadn't exercised and eaten badly, which made me feel a little better that I'd done this. So here's to getting over this I say small blip, when it was more like a huge bad choices hill and getting over it, took longer than it should have, I can see why people end up quitting eating well and go back to their old habits, its far easier to eat any old crap, than pick carefully and be mindful of what's going in your mouth.

So, I sit here finishing this post having exercised in some form for the last four days, I also ate a huge piece of cream cake with my evening meal, so I guess it all evens out, so onto next week and my Monday weigh in, where I'm hoping that I'll not be over the 14 stone mark, though if I am, I'll take it in my stride and get back to proper exercise and eating less rubbish.

And that's when it all started going wrong.

I had a blog post written that I decided I would hold off publishing until July so I could have a six month roundup of my thoughts on how my resolutions had held up and how I was doing fitness wise, well, since I first put fingers to keyboard on the post and the first day of the seventh month, it all went to hell in a handcart.

My diet is utter dog shit at the moment, I'm trying to avoid eating badly and get more sleep, exercise more and continue to lose the weight I've gained over the last few decades but I seem to be almost deliberately sabotaging myself, I was really happy that I hadn't had anything with alcohol in it for almost six months, I had some in the cupboard that was left over from Christmas, well after I started my new job, I felt like I would have 2 cans in celebration of actually having a job with decent hours, allowing me the luxury of actually having money, instead of basically pocket change.

Now I'm not blaming the new job for this, that would be a stupid thing to do, since the job doesn't force me to eat the things I do, or drink alcohol and stay up till 6am singing songs and drinking, it doesn't keep me awake and cause me to feel too tired to get my arse to the gym, or my fitness classes, my job does none of these things, its just a place I go to earn a living, serving people with things.

The blame is entirely my own, which is why, I've not lost anymore weight since I reached 13st 11lbs (193lbs) in fact, my weight has gone back up, then down and back up again, at my last weigh in, I was 13st 12lbs which I was pleased about, as I've not gone over the 14st mark yet. I keep saying I'll knuckle down and get things back on track and I really mean to but since I'm sitting here writing this post at 3am having drank I'm guessing something with caffeine in it, I'm not feeling particularly tired right now, I guess I'm also lucky that my job has me on shifts that start at 4pm, which would give me enough time to get to the gym, or pool for a bit of exercise.

So, I yet again have made yet another promise to myself, that I will get off my arse and get down to the gym for my fitness classes, stop eating all kinds of unhealthy foods and get back on the no alcohol bandwagon, since it seems I'm drinking a large amount of calories whenever I do have a drink, it isn't just a couple, its much more, like the 2 bottles of weight watchers wine, then the 35cl of rum and full sugar irn bru. 

I just need to get back to it with no I'll just have one last thing then the diet starts tomorrow style fanfare and just start the day eating much better and actually do some exercise and stop staying up so late, hopefully the next time I write about how my journey is going, this will be a slightly large blip but simply that, a blip.

I hope no one thinks this is some form of self pitying whine, all oh woah is me and not my fault type of post, its just me being honest with myself and I guess the rest of the world/people I know, so please don't think of it as that. So I'm going to publish this post, step away from the computer and get my self to bed and push myself off to boxercise in the morning, since I'm hoping to test the bodybugg and see just what I burn with the class.

My BodyBugg review

Well I've had my BodyBugg for a week now and I can tell you, its a fantastic bit of kit, I had feared that it would have been tied to the account Lilliana had setup to order it for, they don't currently ship them to anywhere except the US or Canada, so I thought I might have had to use her account to access the webapp they have for tracking calorie intake and expended but once it arrived, my fears were dismissed, as I was able to tie it by the serial number to my own apex account, so that was one less headache for renewing the subscription.

Once I had tied it to my account I needed to install some software so I could upload any readings to apex, which was easy enough but when I came to charging and initialising the body bugg, this is where the problems started, I normally use safari as my web browser simply because, there is some weird issue where this computer has a problem with its memory, so chrome once I installed it, simply refused to load or even install but safari seems to be a buggy bit of software and no matter how many times I tried I couldn't get passed the starting page to set up the bugg, I thought to myself, I'll give firefox a try and it worked first time, so that was another hurdle passed, I already had the software on my phone as being able to use the software on my phone in the UK was the prime reason for choosing the apex option.

I managed to pair the bugg with my phone through the bluetooth, then no matter what I did, I couldn't get the software to link to the bugg, I followed guide after guide all telling me the same thing, unpair the bugg from the phone, then uninstall the software, re-pair the bugg and phone, reinstall the software then load the app but don't log in, press the bugg's status button then login, so on and so forth, I kept trying, nothing worked until I thought, what if I press the status button on the bugg, then start the app and like a bolt of lightening, it picked up the bugg and the various stats, showed up in wonderful green.

It was interesting to watch my calories burned and steps increase, almost in real time, I had to look through each of the information screens to see what each part of the software did, then I discovered a problem, it seems that, the bugg will only update the web server data, whenever you have it plugged into a computer, so of course, when the app refreshed the data, as apps have a tendency to do, it seemed to overwrite the info I was receiving in real time and no matter how many times I quit the app and did the trick that worked first time, it would only show as linked but not the battery life of the bugg, which tells me they are properly connected.

When I updated the webserver with the data from the bugg, the app seemed to work again, so it seems there is a massive bug within the software, which means the app occasionally becomes less than useless, especially as one of the functions is recording the calorie burn of a fitness session and without a proper connection you can't get any info recorded.

The only other bugbear I have is that the foods database, seems to be hard coded and that any foods you enter as custom foods, only get shown to you, unlike MyfitnessPal, where they become part of the community, which makes finding and recording food intake much easier, still once I've entered the foods I regularly eat, they will be available to me, so its not too bad, just a minor niggle.

The other thing I had trouble getting my head around was the fact that, it counts every calorie burned, including the ones your body naturally burns during the day even at rest, so I need to work out using the handy 24 hour bar graph, how many calories my resting burn is, minus the calories that it reports me as having burned per minute, as I don't want to have anything but my exercise burned calories entered into MyfitnessPal, based on the calories that MyFitnessPal reports as burned for each minute of exercise, I seem to be getting it right.


So as of the end of Tuesday, I had eaten 2,381 calories but burned 3,361, which gave me a calorie deficit of 980, which was just outside my 1,000 daily calorie deficit, which I'm totally blaming on the iceland takeaway dishes I had for my supper.


The system is available in the UK through http://www.kiperformance.co.uk/ but you don't get the option of the bluetooth SP version and the web subscription is ridiculously expensive, I paid £65 or $100 for my SP bugg, the ki performance price is £221 or $347.018, which I think is an eye gouging increase, for something that doesn't have the smartphone app option.

My verdict of the system is that it is brilliant, it will tell you very accurately what you burned for almost any given minute of the day, like when I had to run across to work and it had me burning 9.8 calories a minute at one point.

The ups and downs of a new job

I'm just starting a new job, which is such a relief after the shambles that was the final months of working at Subway, I'll be on much better money and back in a position of responsibility, the only downside I can see at the moment is that it is only ten minutes walk from home, now I can hear you saying hang on, how is that a downside, a job that close to home, when my commute takes me an hour or longer. Well, I used to use the distance I lived from Subway as a way of getting some extra exercise, much like when I walk to the cinema for cheap Tuesday, so I now get five miles less cycling/walking for any shift I'm working, still I guess that I'm able to get to the gym and then to work a little easier, so I guess it all works out.

Don't get me wrong, I'm totally stoked to have a much better job that doesn't involve washing any dishes or making any sandwiches, I guess I'm just going to miss the enforced ride to work, I don't mean enforced as in against my will but more to save the bus fare getting there.

I'm about to receive my bodybugg through the post from an excellent friend, so hopefully that might show me, that this new job is actually better for my health, that the previous one, in case anyone is unaware of what one of those is, its an armband that tracks a variety of body readings and uses some fancy calculations to fairly accurately  work out, how many calories you're burning as you exercise/move around during the day, it says that the band is 95% accurate and compared to the gold standard machines that they use for scientific calorie calculation, so either way, I should get a more accurate burn, which will prove I'm burning more calories than my current apps of choice are guessing I'm doing, or I'm doing less than is being reported, either way it'll be nice to have more accuracy.

The only way to get the better bluetooth version of the band, is to either live in the US/Canada or have a good friend like I have, there is a version available in the UK but its horribly expensive for both the band and the subscription to the tracking software, almost three times the price of the band and five times the price of the subscription.

Still a new job and a body bugg, life is pretty sweet right now.

New job, new issues.

It seems having a new job makes a real dent in your fitness routine, for the first few days it was humping stock around and refilling shelves getting the shop ready for opening, then it was learning how to use the tills and serve the customers, then it was learning all of the procedure I need to follow as a supervisor, especially the part about not serving the underaged with tobacco or alcohol.

For the most part its been pretty easy, I've been mostly doing closing shifts, as I live so close to the shop, so I get to close down tills, sort out newspaper returns and lock up, making sure the shop is nice and tidy for the next day. The one thing that's taking some getting used to, is the stock control, in relation to products that have a short shelf life, like bread, milk and cooked meats etc. luckily the bosses understand that this is new to some of us, so they're not being too hard about any mistakes that've been made so far.

The challenging people we think are underage has been remarkably smooth, with only a couple of complaints from people, who if they had id, would have been served, so it all balances out in the end. my diet has been slightly all over the place and I've not really done much in the way of exercise, as I've been pretty tired but I'm putting this down to being on my feet for hours at a time, when I've not done long shifts in months, that and I'm getting to bed later, I've been drinking energy drinks to keep me going which means I've been full of caffeine, which has a knock on effect.

Although I put on a little weight, I seem to have lost it again, which means I'm back to the same weight I was three weeks ago, so now I need to knuckle down and get my diet back on track, more healthy less unhealthy, since I seem to have had energy drinks, chocolate bars, alcohol and been eating way more than I should have been.

I did finally receive my bodybugg from Lilliana, which means I can get a more accurate calorie burn for the times, I'm a work, or when I'm doing my fitness classes, it weirdly counts every calorie burned including the ones you burn, when not actually doing anything, so I need to take away around 1.5/6 calories per minute for the period I was exercising, so I was albe to work out that I burned 705 calories working today, marred only by the fact I massively overate foods with a high fat content.