Friday 14 January 2011

got ahead of myself

One of the slightly annoying things about not meeting my weight target is that I'd actually pre-written a whole load of celebratory posts.

I'd basically done a weeks worth that discussed how much I'd lost, how I'd done it and what the plan was for the coming year. Obviously these became rather scuppered, because I didn't actually meet my target (by some way) and so hadn't lost what I said and it somewhat ballsed up the plan for the future.

I think what I'll do is re-work these and post them when I do finally meet that target, as the target is a bit of a milestone anyway, since it represents a transition from morbid obesity to just plain old obesity. Still not a good weight to be, and there's some debate as to how accurate and representative the indicator I'm using is, but I think it's good to mark these things.

As I think I mentioned before Christmas, I did basically loose some 40 pounds, which is the best part of 3 stones, which is great, although it does highlight how big I was that this still didn't take me out of the morbid obesity zone.

I also completely failed to do a lot of the stuff I'd planned to over Chrimbo.

Usually, I try to ensure I do a back up of my electronic files when I have these holidays (usually I do it at Chrimbo, Easter and then my 'summer' holiday, which is usually actually more like an autumn holiday). I did do the essential backing up, but it's usually accompanied by some specific sorting and tidying as well as some redundancy stuff (having multiple copies in case both the original and other copies go tits-up).

It was this stuff that I failed to do. I also failed to watch much in the way of DVDs (anime or regular), which was another thing I'd decided was important. I'd thought I really should watch stuff, because at the least, if the weather stays improved I can start e-baying again.

But I didn't do that either. What I did do was sort of inspired by the back up and another thing I've been crap at - scanning.

Basically, the back-ups I did took absolutely ages - several days. The reason was because I've got so much stuff on my hard-drives it takes yonks to copy it all. But also, there's a hell of a lot of duplication, and some stuff in particular I know isn't properly organised.

The thing I ended up focusing on were my scans - all those scans I've done of Japanese magazines over the last 4 years. I thought if I could properly sort them out I'd be able to go through them and see what I could perhaps upload to animepaper and possibly even my own scan site.

The big problem I'd given myself was that I hadn't named things properly. A lot of scans were just numbered sequentially, so I couldn't search to see what Sengoku Basara scans I had, for example. But also, I'd been horribly inconsistent in terms of how I'd named things and then there was the age old problem of not being able to identify series at the time.

So I thought Id' go through and sort them. Only it turned out this was the job of weeks, not hours as I'd initially hoped. And that was with the discovery that windows 7 actually has some features that make the process pretty damn smooth.

Anyway, the point is I did manage to go through all the scans and rename and standardise everything but a small handful of stuff. And it seems to have done the trick a bit - I'm quite keen to get caught up with my backlog of magazines and have so far scanned 4 animages over the last week or so.

Thursday 13 January 2011

too busy

Again, just too busy to post yesterday.

Thought today I should make an effort and at least do my weekly weigh-in post.

Basically, I was rather stunned to discover I'd apparently lost 7 pounds. Having apparently gained 8 weeks over the Chrimbo fortnight, this means the net weight change since my last vaguely 'on course' diet week was a gain of 1 pound.

Now if I'd gone bonkers last week and done loads of walking and eaten nothing, I'd have sort of understood this apparent drop back. However, I didn't do those things, so I was rather stunned.

My theory as to what was going on is a little crude as it essentially revolves around bowel movements. You may want to skip ahead to the end.

The theory was that a big part of the gain was actually due to, shall we say "unprocessed", food in my bowels. Or, to put it more bluntly, having eaten a lot it was taking a while for all the waste to make its way through my system.

I know that may sound a bit odd, but I've always suffered from rather 'slow' bowels and am prone to constipation at the best of times. So going from a long term diet which involved pretty decent levels of fibre to a couple of weeks of eating a lot of not very good stuff it's not beyond the realms of possibility that I was afflicted with slow bowels.

Also, to get to the point again, I had really noticed a decline in the frequency and size of my bowel movements while on the diet (if you eat little, you're hardly going to do a lot of pooing) and then last week I was shitting for England. I was actually worried that I'd run out of toilet paper before I got a chance to go to the shops at one point.

So yeah, slightly bizarrely, my theory is that I had somehow managed to store, like, 5 or 6 pounds of poo. I know - doesn't sound very likely does it, but all I can say is that I've no other explanation of such a big increase and sudden decrease.

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if I have another gain this week. I am now pretty much back on the diet proper, but at the beginning of the week there were still quite a few bad things left to eat. Actually, past tense is wrong there - there is still plenty more left, but everything else is suited to long-term storage (that is, they're frozen or tinned, or dried packets, etc) so I can consume them in a trickle and compensate for the calories a lot easier.

Tuesday 11 January 2011

only tuesday, but...

I'm knackered.

Main problem is that I've come back to work and there's been so much to do. Talk about diving in at the deep end...

And it's kinda scuppered the whole blogging thing, both from the point of view of I've not got the time to do it, but I've also not got the inclination.

But there's also another factor at work. A factor that I always encounter at the beginning of a new year, or actually after a holiday. This extra factor is summed up best as "too much to talk about and not knowing where to start".

A good example is the small reviews I post about the DVDs I rent and watch. Since the last one I put on here I've actually watched 3 rented DVDs, with a fourth winging its way to me as I type. But also, while I was at my dad's over chrimbo we used his BT box thing to watch a bunch of movies, so I could also write reviews about them too.

But that's loads and so I don't know where to start, just like after every holiday. And then add to that I also don't have a lot of time nor inclination because of all the work I need to do and you can see why the blog unfortunately seems to be staling a bit.

Monday 10 January 2011

well this is rubbish

Couldn't post on Friday and can't really post today either, because I'm horribly, horribly busy, which is totally rubbish.

There's absolutely loads on at work and all of it's time sensitive and rather critical, so I'm having to actually do stuff all day, rather than blog. I know - what is the world coming too?