Six weeks ago I drove my wife, daughter, son and mother-in-law to Heathrow. Later today I will go back to pick them all up. The six week challenge I set myself - to extend my life expectancy by 6 weeks - is over.
So, how did I do?
Well, the truth is I have no idea. I probably should have researched something on life expectancy to see what my goal was. Oh well.
What I can do is compare my 2nd 3 weeks to my 1st. In the 1st 3 weeks I lost 3.4kg of weight, in the 2nd 3 weeks I lost 2.8kg.
Bummer right? Wrong.
As I mentioned last time, "weight loss" is an irrelevant figure. It is focused on so much because its easy to measure, but relying on it too heavily is stupid.
Lets look at it a bit closer:
First thing to point out is that I have no idea what the kilo of "other" that I've lost is. I've checked and I still seem to have all my fingers, toes and dangly bits so I'm guessing it wasn't important.
The other thing to note is that my surplus fat loss has been fairly consistent in both periods, the key difference is that my muscle loss has halved. That makes my 2nd period much more successful than my 1st.
For anyone thinking of starting their own challenge, let me leave you with some of my top tips:
- If you're doing it to "look good" be prepared for disappointment. I've lost 6kg of weight, including 4kg of fat and, honestly, I don't look any different. But I do feel better, which is far more important.
- Ignore all the vast amount of often conflicting "advice" out there. Unless you're planning to be an athlete, it doesn't matter if you get the "best" or most "efficient" plan. Keep it simple: eat healthy and exercise. Build the details around what works best for you. For example, if I tried to force myself to go to a gym, I probably would have found a long list of excuses not to but I found doing over 10km of walking a day quite relaxing. Figure out what works for you.
- Don't make any food "forbidden", just acknowledge that some of it is stupid. If you eat a bit of stupid food, oh well, live and learn. Making things "forbidden" just increases people's desire to have them. I'm fairly certain if a new law was made to outlaw punching yourself in the face their would be an immediate increase in the number of people punching themselves in the face.
- Get yourself a scale that measures fat/muscle. These figures won't be as accurate, but weight loss isn't always a good thing.
- For your sanity, make a graph.
Right, now I'm off to pick up two of the worlds greatest chefs (Jean & her mum) to come live with me. Think I can keep the weight off?
Wish me luck.
