2 stone

This week's weigh in revealed I'd lost another 3 pounds.

I was pretty pleased with this as it was a fairly normal week. Or at least, I think it broadly represents what's going to be the norm across the winter.

The new plan is that I pretty much stick to the diet, but the exercise has reduced due to the combined factors of the freezing weather and the dark mornings and evenings. I'm still doing exercise, as mentioned last week, but it's less than it was.

My hope is that the loss of some of the exercise is not a big factor, as the diet is still very much in action. Also, I've done really quite well with my initial target, as I'm now pretty sure I've lost over 2 stone.

Since I didn't start weighing myself until I'd got my new scales and my first weigh in was somewhat dodgy, I'm pretty sure it's more than that, but I'm sticking with 2 stone as I don't think it makes sense to over-count these things.

There's a heck of a long way to go yet, but the main thing is I'm on target. I'm not bullish enough to actually reveal my starting weight, but I will say I'm on course to get my weight below the BMI level that represents morbid obesity by Chrimbo, which is my starting goal. I've also done pretty well in terms of loosing it at a fairly steady rate. It can actually be dangerous and damaging loosing weight too quickly, so I've been wanting to avoid that being an issue too.

And speaking of which, I was looking at what the minimum calorie intakes were, because I actually had a bit of an odd experience last Thursday. Basically, it came evening time and I found I wasn't at all hungry. I almost had to force myself to eat an apple and didn't then have my other bits I normally have in the evening as well.

This slightly worried me as it's not like I'd pigged out during the day, and my research suggests I did go under the minimum recommended intake, which is about 1,300 calories for a man. I therefore decided I would ensure I eat those bits in the evening, even if I don't feel specifically hungry, as such. Plus of course, I need to keep up things like vitamin and fibre intakes.

I guess what this really represents is the fact that my stomach has now shrunk. What happens when you consistently eat too much is that your stomach naturally grows in size. When you think about it this means that you get hungrier quicker and it takes more to fill you up.

But it's a reversible process - by consistently eating less your stomach shrinks down and gets used to those smaller volumes. And that's what's happened in my case.

This is actually what they effectively do when they do those gastric band or gastric bypass type surgeries. They're surgically short-cutting (pun intended) the size reduction process, which therefore means those people avoid the whole feeling ravenously hungry phase that is a big part of why weight loss fails.