As my youngest daughter pointed out, I’ve probably had an extra 10 years of life thanks to the weight loss.
This graph tracks my weight from the start of the journey in Episode 1 back in 2017, to where I am today. As you can see, it has been a bit of a roller coaster with lots of ups and downs.
I never expected to maintain it the mid 13 stone lower levels but I have managed to keep it within a reasonable boundary in the mid 14 stones, which was roughly 2 stone lighter than my norm before I started so that has been really good.
Click here to follow the rest of My Weight Loss Journey
This has had a radical impact on my life, I have been absolutely amazed what abuse the body of a 60 something can take, just keep pushing it as far as it will go but listen carefully to what you body is saying.
7 years ago I was a workaholic, in 2018 I became a sort of dietaholic, and then moved on to being a sort fitnessaholic which gave me an overall much better worklife balance and helped me along the road to retirement.
Being lighter made me so much happier, I always hated tight cloths so being able to walk around in smaller sizes and not having them stretching the seems was great for self confidence.
But I lived in fear of putting the weight back on, and going back to the bigger me and having to go through the battle to lose weight, I didn’t want to have to do that again as it felt like a one off experience.
You have to watch your calorie consumption constantly if you have an appetite for food and beer like mine. In the graph you can see the drops, that is normally after a holiday or there is a particular challenge coming up and I start calorie counting, that tends to focus the mind on what you are eating, you avoid the snacks and know the cost of alcohol so don’t do it – or at least make the right choices.
I am constantly setting targets, I hated running but decided to do the Bristol 10km as a challenge, I ended up running 10km twice a week and eventually did a half marathon.
During Covid, I used the time to cycle. I cut down on the mountain biking as I guessed I wouldn’t be popular in hospital if I had a crash, so started doing longer rides, 50km, then 100km and finally 100 miles in a day – these were tough but so glad I’ve done them, and all of them on my own without support of a group.
In fact, I then found out the qualifying time of the GB Over 60 Triathlon team run and managed to achieve it in a 5km sprint, at this point I decided I had to stop somewhere at that was it.
I had my hip replaced last year after I smashed it on a mountain bike fall in France, but within 2 weeks I was back in the gym, 4 weeks did 50km on the bike and 6 weeks I was back playing football because if you keep yourself fit and have reasonable control of your weight there is surprisingly few things you can’t do and overcome.
So that’s it, after the diet you need to find your equilibrium and focus on staying in that zone.
I am normally about 14st 8lb now, I’m happier a few pounds less but if I start to go too much above it then it is time to start calories counting again !
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