Well, once again I haven't written because I managed to lose all motivation, put on 5lbs (yes really...) and then lose (most of) it again. I thought it was getting a repetitive. I've managed to regain the motivation for the last two weeks so to maintain it I thought I'd reflect on the progress I have made... even though I could have made a lot more!
I'll start with weight because it's easiest. When I started my blog I weighed about 12st 3lbs I think and now I've managed to get that down to 11st 6lbs - like I said, I'd lost most of the weight I put back on. The last time I wrote I was 11st 4lb - hopefully I'll be back there this time next week. I have to say, if nothing else motivates me it's the pure misery of losing weight that I've already lost - make sense? You're making progress, but it's not as exciting as making new progress. But anyway, it's a total loss of 10lbs.
So, with my weight at 11st 6lbs my BMI is 26.6, whereas it was 28.2 when I started. This is still in the overweight range, but at least I'm closer to the healthy range than the obese range now. Realising how close I was to obesity was a big shock for me - I've since calculated that it would only have taken 10lbs - the same amount as I've now lost - to put me in this category. And I can confirm that it's easier to put it on that to lose it. So I've decreased my BMI by 1.6 - the right direction at least.
Moving on to inches - I know I've previously report on just my waist size as an indicator of risk of certain diseases, but I've also measure my hips and thighs. I'm glad I did actually because the results are reasonably good. My waist measurement used to be 37", which put me at high risk of all kinds of nasties. It's now 33" - 4" lost from there, but I know that the last time I wrote I'd managed to get it down to 31.5". This was the top end of healthy, so I've increased my risk by putting a little weight back on, but I'm still a lower risk than when I started.
My hip measurement when I started was 40" and that's now 38" - a loss of 2". My thigh measurement was 27" and it's now 24" - so that's 3" lost from each thigh! If I add that all up, there's now 12" less of me in circumference than there used to be... That's a whole foot! I'm pretty pleased with that, and I am pleased to report that I'm slowly starting to fit back into size 12 clothes - on Friday I wore a pair of trousers I haven't fitted into for.. well, years!
Final check is whether I've brought my waist to hip ratio into a healthy range. Close! Originally this was 0.925 and it's now it's 0.868 - the healthy range begins at 0.85 so I'm getting there.
Three things to motivate myself now:
- Not having to re-lose the same weight!
- My cousin is getting married in 7 weeks - I must be a comfortable size 12 for the wedding
- After the wedding I'm going travelling (woopee!) and working as I go. In physical jobs. I figure i'll probably lose a bit of weight and tone up doing more physical work than sitting behind a desk, so if I go a size 14 it's unlikely that my clothes are going to fit for very long...
So, next week 11st 4lbs, yeah?
