One Year On - How Have I Done and What's Next?

7th July - Funny Date to Start Something New

Two years ago today, a cyst on my ovary ruptured, requiring surgery. The surgery should have been routine but something went wrong and two days later I was in intensive care. I was in intensive care for a week, sedated for 2 days and had another major surgery whilst I was in there. The whole ordeal lasted 11 days and left me heavily scarred both physically and emotionally.

The experience stayed with me for a very long time. I even had some weird symptoms that lasted almost a year. The incident happened during the summer holiday between my 2nd and 3rd years at Uni so when I went back to Uni for my final year I was not long out and still recovering. I found it very hard to get around campus between lectures. I needed to get myself better and boost my health but instead I threw myself into my studies, put on a truckload of weight and did zero exercise.

Fast forward almost a year to 6th July 2006. On this day I graduated from University with a First Class Honors degree, an award for the Best Student, and a new job all lined up. It was time to make a change. The very next day, the anniversary of the day I went into hospital, I would clean up my diet, start exercising, build up my new career and change my life for the better.

One Year on the Plan

Now here I am a year later. How did I do? Well the first most obvious point is that I am here writing about it, I have worked my plan for an entire year. I had been overweight for about 12 years and I had tried tons of diets and been on and off countless exercise plans. Nothing usually lasted more than a few weeks. I had some brief success with a Simming World club, but I didn't really make any permanent changes with that. This time around I had stuck to my plan, and tweaked it constantly for an entire year. My life has changed for the better!

Lets See Some Stats!

I started out my measuring, weighing and seeing just where I was at. These were my starting stats:

Weight: 161 lbs
Bodyfat: 40.6%
Lean Body mass: 93.2 lbs

I was shocked at first. 40% body fat? Wow that seemed really high. Here's an important point I woud like to make about this. There are many different ways to measure body fat and none are all that effective but if you always use the same method to measure then you can at least ensure that the number is getting smaller. That is what I have done. I use a tape measure to take measurements of my waist and hips and plug them into this website to get the numbers. I know its flawed because my tummy often gets bloated, especially around period times but these are just blips. Over a long length of time, (especially a year!) you can see a trend.

Here's a couple of pictures from 2006 when I started:

Ugh! Check out the rolls of flab!

Graduation Day. I look fat & tired.

After figuring out where I was, I set about setting a goal. At first I wasn't too sure what I could achieve so I just plucked an arbitrary figure from out of the air - 25% body fat. That seemed like fairly average and figured that would be a good starting point. I plugged the number into my spreadsheet along with my lean body mass and figured I would need to lose about 28lbs to get there. In hindsight, I now know that spreadsheets don't always reflect reality as two weeks ago my loss had reached 27lbs and my lean body mass was higher than it started but still my body fat was over 30%.

My Current Stats

Ok where am I now? Well unfortunately I put on a whopping 5lbs on holiday so I have undone some of my progress but that is life. Here's the numbers:

Weight: 138 lbs (23 lbs lost)
Body Fat: 31.2% (9.4% lost)
Lean Body Mass: 95.2 lbs (2 lbs gained)

It's all positive but not as much as I would have liked. A few weeks after starting, I began to plan more carefully and figured I could lose 1lb a week. After a year I have lost only 23lbs so that's an average of about half a pound a week but it did not work out like that. I have plotted a little graph of my progress over the year:

I started off really well, for the first four months I actually lost more than I had planned. That took me to November when it all started to go horribly wrong. For me Christmas has always been a very bad time, but not just Christmas Day or even Christmas week. Oh no, for me Christmas starts when the shops get the Christmas stuff in. Now I dunno about the rest of the world but here in the UK that starts in October! Usually I could put on a stone over the whole of the winter period.

Looking at the chart I slowed right down in November then from December to January I had a sharp increase in weight. January I didn't do too badly and I lost most of what I had gained but I took another bad turn in February and put more back on. From November to March I had lost a net total of 1.5 lbs! That's a crappy four months. I got myself back on track in March and steadily lost all through the summer until my holiday when I had that massive jump back up!

Here are some recent photos. I don't have any flesh revealing ones yet this year but on the closeup I can see a marked difference around my neck. I hated looking so fat around the face so I'm glad its come off from there.

Same baby as before, we both have more clothes on!

I've been snapped eating, hence the odd expression!

Plans for the Coming Year

Obviously I'm not done yet. I haven't reached my goal, and as I discovered recently, I don't think 25% is good enough anyway. They say that the closer you get to your goal, the harder it is to lose but I don't really buy that. After a year, I've learned a few things and I have found stuff that works for me and stuff that doesn't:

• I now have a very good idea of the ideal meal for me, how many calories, the macronutrient ratio etc and I have built a ton of recipes that match it for breakfasts, lunches and dinners. When I started out I had to largely wing the food and just make small adjustments along the way. Now I have it sorted pretty well.
• I have identified many things that sabotage my diet and I've come up with strategies for dealing with them when I want to.
• On the other hand, I also know that I can lose fat when I want to which allows me to go out an enjoy good food on occasion without worrying about it. Over the long haul, I'm making progress in the right direction whilst still having a social life.
• I've started running. This gives me a form of cardio that I can do anywhere so that I am not tied to a gym. I still have a long way to go with running but that's something I'm going to work on in the coming year.
• I now know that during the winter months I crave chocolate and comfort foods heavily, and I also hate getting up early! I can use this to my advantage. I have done a plan for the year but I am only planning to lose just 1 lb a month in the winter months.
  
• Exercise has become fundamentally ingrained into my lifestyle. I do some kind of exercise every single day - whether it's cardio down the gym, going for a run, karate, or weight training either at the gym or at home. This is a habit I intend to maintain for the rest of my life.
• Oh yes, how could I forget - I started karate this year. Not only is it something I have wanted to take up for years but its an excellent form of exercise.

These are all tools & knowledge that I did not have a year ago. So with that in mind, here is my new target for next year:

15% Body fat, 95lbs lean body mass by 7th July 2008.

Breaking it Down

One of the mistakes I made last year was that I set my one year goal but I never broke it down further. I knew I wanted to lose 1lb a week roughly but if I had a week where I didn't lose enough or I gained I just said "oh well, there's plenty of time yet, I'll lose next week". The time period was too long and I simply didn't notice how badly things were going during the winter.

So this time I have started to break down that goal and I have set myself goals for the next three months and I'll continue to re-evaluate those as the year progresses.

Conclusion

When I came out of hospital I said that I wanted to improve my lifestyle and become a fit and healthy person so that I would never have to go through that again. I somehow attributed my poor lifestyle to the first operation going wrong. Whether that's true or not doesn't matter. It took me a year to actually start doing something about it but at the back of my mind the whole time has been the overarching goal to be healthy - not just thin.

Sure I wanted to lose the flab, but I wanted to get fit too. I wanted to change my habits and make healthier choices the norm for me. Even though I have not lost as much body fat as I had wanted in this year I am way, way fitter than I was back then, and I am much healthier.

As I tell people in the Burn the Fat newsgroup that I subscribe to, it's not a matter of losing as much fat as quickly as possible thats important, it's imprinting the right habits onto your life that are going to make the difference long term. I will continue my plan for another year, and I get real excited when I think about what I can achieve in my second year at this.