through the barrier

For the last few months (since around summer, in fact - so the best part of the last six months) I’ve been struggling.

I've been struggling to make it below the 19 stone mark.

19 stone doesn't represent anything in particular.  It doesn't signify a shift in my BMI from one category to another.  It doesn't represent any particular milestone (well, give or take it's about vaguely half way to my hoped for target weight).

But it did seem to present me with a particular barrier I just didn't seem to be able to overcome.  As such I've been hovering around in a sort of limbo between 19 stone and 19 and a half stone for all that time.

The issue has been my diet.  Generally what's been happening is I've been having random days where I was on my diet, but then other days where I'd slip and eat lots of bad stuff.

Also, generally speaking, I would have to buy lots of said bad stuff (for example a packet of x, as that's what they come in) so I'd then be locked in to eating that bad stuff for several days to come.

I'd also then loose my commitment - having slipped up a bit I'd then fail to come back properly on course ("well, if I'm going to slip, I might as well just not bother this week at all") and so the week would end up with me either not loosing weight or gaining weight.

Oh, there'd be weeks I would loose weight, but those were always been balanced by weeks I'd gain.

Well, last week I finally told myself I was being silly and decided to adjust things to try to get below 19 stone.  What I did in particular was make an upward tweak to my walking (I walked quickly round the industrial estate after work) and also stick as close as I could to the diet and not slip.

I also deliberately bought some more and different breakfast cereals so that I could have them as a snack instead of the more destructive types of things I was having (chocolate cakes or whatever was replaced with breakfast cereals).

Anyway, upshot was I got past the 19 stone barrier.  Indeed, it was a bit of a gangbusters week in that I actually lost around 4 pounds, which is similar to what I used to loose when I started this process.

I guess what it really proves to me is that I can still loose the weight, I just need to stick to the diet and exercise (who'd have thunk it?!).