Fat Man on a Diet

The toe is improving… apparently. It seems much the same to me but what do *I* know? If the doc says it looks ok then I suppose it must do. By the way I cleverly I forgot entirely to ask how long it will be before I can get back to the gym but I see him again next week so with luck I’ll probably forget then as well. Grr…

In the meantime the weight has remained fairly constant at 130.0 so I’m ‘comfortable’ enough if still much heavier than I want to be.

Since I was lax in asking the doc when I could go to the gym I’m sort of assuming the end of next week will be a good ‘target’ of sorts to aim for. I’m not sure when the membership was suspended but I can ask. The real question is whether I’d be ok to walk uphill for 5 kilometres at 6 kph or above or would I cause more damage?

The doc seems to be more concerned about the nail than my broken toe. He seemed to imply I’ll just have to get used to the pain. Charming.

Weight is hovering around 129.0 kilos still so no massive increase despite having minimal exercise.

The toe? Hmmm… seems to be a bit mixed. I changed the dressing this morning and it seems not to be infected, or at least what infection there was has diminished greatly. However I still wouldn’t claim thins were as I’d wish.

The nail is clearly ‘loose’ on my toe and more obviously only held in place by the stitches. Naturally it is still sore which means there’s no sudden recovery on the cards which would enable me to return to the gym within the next week or two.

All in all it could be worse, could be better. I’ll carry on making periodic updates, especially if I manage to get myself dieting ‘properly’ again (even without the exercise component) to give you an idea of where I’m at. If I *can* get myself to take the diet alone seriously again the weight *will* fall off. I have this feeling that in part I may be subconsciously ‘holding fire’ until the start of the new Biggest Loser competition at the gym to give myself a fighting chance of winning it again!

If that *is* working away somewhere internally I really need to overcome it. The weight loss is more important in its own right than massaging my own ego! Even so, maintaining the weight at the current level is an achievement in itself… for me.  I’ll carry on as I am for now, and reassess the situation after seeing the ‘Toe Doc’ on the 25th and noting what his opinion is. After all, the bones might just have knit back together by then… or maybe he’ll tell me the bone was so small to begin with it doesn’t matter either way as long as the shards don’t break through the nail bed!

Let’s just wait and see what he says before I get too excited about it eh?. 

Seems my toe actually has a compound fracture and I’m likely to be unable to walk for several weeks let alone exercise.

I’m seriously peeved.

I think from now on I have to just diet and forget the exercise for now. I’ve already asked the gym to suspend my membership for a month to give the toe time to recover…. but without the exercise… and without being able to move around much… how will I keep myself from eating and just exploding? If I knew I had the willpower it’d be a start… but I don’t think I do.

It’s a worry.

Some improvement today! I can at last get a pair of shoes on! Can’t walk properly in them but at least they are on.

This being the case I might try staggering into the gym tomorrow morning (after dropping the kids at school) and spending 30 mins or so on the weights but to see if I can. There’s no way I can get onto the treadmill like this… every time I flex my toe I reopen the wound, but if I’m able to brace myself without too much pressure on my toes I might just find the weights ok. I could even try working out slowly on the rowing machine!

Sadly, the weight currently (at 6:00 p.m. after a day spent nibbling) the weight is back to 130 kilos… but *if* I can get into the gym that’ll soon change.

Tomorrow might be interesting… I’ll drop a report in when I get home.

The toe is still weeping blood from under the nail so I still can’t take the dressings off to let me get shoes on and get to the gym… it’s *very* frustrating.

The weight reflects the loss of mobility in that it’s back to 129 kilos, tho that was *after* drinking 500 ml of water and then having had another 500 ml with the shake for breakfast so I’m not too unhappy.

The toe isn’t hurting as such so I doubt it will stop me exercising for much longer than a few days. Once it settles down I’ll just have to get back to it properly and see how quickly I can get the weight back down to where it was before the Xmas blow-out.

The back aches from lying down for two days with the foot elevated… not that it did any good as far as I can tell… but that’ll cure itself with the renewed doses of anti-inflammatories and painkillers. A day or two and it’ll be gone… until the next time.

Basically I just have to sit and be patient for a couple of days.

The entire exercise regime is grinding to a halt because I hurt my foot yesterday.

For reasons to long to explain here (see other blog later) I managed to drop a toilet bowl on the big toe of my right foot which caused it some trauma.

Right now I can’t even do weight training since we aren’t allowed on the equipment without ‘enclosed footwear’… and even when I *do* get trainers on it’ll be a few days at least… maybe longer… before I can exercise on the treadmills again.

Currently the toe and I are lying in bed, wrapped up waiting for the pain (and bleeding) to stop and the swelling to go down enough for me to get trainers on again.

It’s all very frustrating and made all the worse because the weight dropped to 127.0 kilos this week!!

Seems there is yet another ‘Biggest Loser’ competition in the offing at the gym. I think it might be starting towards the end of March so if I don’t lose too much weight between now and then I won’t be too upset… as long as when the competition *does* start my weight drops as dramatically as id did before!

Of course this means I have to enter… which I almost certainly will (if I’m allowed to)… and if I enter then I go in to win! Even now tho I’m aware it will *not* be easy to do this twice.

The 40 kilo loss of last year would be *extremely* hard to replicate if not all bar impossible, since it would push me down to 90 kilos… which is after all my ‘target weight’. I think it isn’t going to be possible to lose all of it, but *if* could get down to 100 kilos I’d be more than happy!

Of course, I might have got the information wrong… again… but if not then it’ll just be 6 weeks before we’re off and running again! Woohoo!! 

Went to the gym… still no air conditioning yet… but managed to hold myself together for an hour on the treadmill at max elevation and at least 30 minutes at 6.0 kph then varied between 5.5 and 6.0 kph. The machine told me I’d burned up 1500+ calories which is handy to say the least.

I’ve said in the past that no matter what the ‘experts’ say I really don’t consider exercise as a weight reduction method. It’s obviously good for ‘fitness’ and maintaining a weight once your diet has reduced you to the correct level, but by itself it just isn’t enough.

The weight is still at 130.0 kilos and will probably stay there for a while yet. I’m not too concerned about it yet. My body has to come to terms with the change in diet etc so it might well *raise* my weight a little for the first week or two. No probs.  All things will pass… so to speak.

It really isn’t easy to find sufficient motivation to get back on the diet and stick to it… and I’m not sure it’s ‘motivation’ I need. As a matter of fact what I *need* is to have as a ‘way of life’ something that encompasses all the best parts of the diet and exercise and stick to it because it’s just ‘what I do’.

Going back to the gym, although this is only the second ‘proper’ day there, has actually squeezed me back into the lifestyle I had whilst I was on the competition! I’ve eaten the shake for breakfast and the soup for dinner and whilst I can’t claim to have been 100% compliant I *have* been 95%. The only ’sins’ have been some dried fruit whilst watching the film last night,  and a fresh fig this morning whilst shopping. The fig wasn’t even deliberate as such! I only realised I’d eaten it about 30 mins afterwards while in one of the aisles I was congratulating myself on not being hungry!!

So. The diet is mostly back in place. The diet is mostly in place. The willpower?? Well clearly it’s a little shaky, but it seems to be strong enough right now. As usual, all I can do is hope I keep it up and see where it takes me.

It isn’t enough that I tell myself to go back on the diet. What I need is additional motivation. Let’s face it, if the motivation I had was sufficient I’d (a) not have got so big to begin with and (b) wouldn’t have regained some of the recently lost weight over Xmas… so what to do?

That for me as for everyone in my position is the $64,000 question, and I don’t have an answer.

I was lying in bed last night watching the end of the Robots movie and eating some dried fruit as a snack wondering about it and wondering how I managed to lose the weight back in 1989 – 90 when it dropped off me so fast it was amazing!

Back then I was living in London and walked virtually everywhere except when I caught the train to Hatfield where I was in college working on my Masters Degree. Even there I walked from station to campus. I ate a lot it’s true, but I was 100% vegetarian (even Vegan for a short period) and my lunchtime meal at college was usually a plate of mixed beans and salad. Evening meals were baked potato with dressing, or spaghetti with a simple sauce etc. full of complex carbs but obviously in amounts far less than I needed to increase overall weight.

Clearly something was happening then that *isn’t* happening now. So is it boredom? The easy availability of food? Owning a car? The hot weather making it hard to walk outside? I think maybe a combination of all these.

When I didn’t have a car I *had* to walk everywhere. When in college I had less money *and* was vegetarian so the amount of food I *could* buy was limited and the food I *did* buy was very low in animal fats. Also, being out of the house, short of money, and in classes or travelling for a large part of the day, meant access to food was very limited so the calorie intake was much reduced.

So how does this apply to my current situation… and how do I change the current situation to mimic those earlier days?

Suggestions please?