Hi. Well, this is my first ever post on my blog. I plan to blog initially about my weight loss journey, so let’s start from the beginning.

For pretty much as long as I can remember, I’ve been on the “plump” side shall we say – chubby toddler, chubby child, seemed to slim down during later teenage years, discovered drinking at uni, then put the pounds on very steadily. I’m pretty sure when I graduated at the age of 23, I weighed around 12.5 stone, with a 32 inch waist. Not bad all things considered. Then the inches and weight started creeping up. Here’s the thing – by the time I was 38, 15 years later, I weighed 16 stone, and had a waist of around 40 inches. So that’s 3.5 stone I’ve put on during that time. Seems like a lot doesn’t it? Well, actually, that works out on average of 3.2 pounds increase per year! That’s hardly difficult to do is it? I mean, they say when you “diet” you should aim to  lose 1-2 pounds per week, so putting on 3 pounds in a year is actually very easy, and it accumulates very easily as you can see.

Ok I’ve never been one for exercise which doesn’t help obviously. I’ve dabbled in weight training, football, cycling and swimming, but to be honest, it’s never really helped keep the pounds off. As I add to these blogs, you’ll see that for a lot of people, like me, exercise doesn’t really help in losing weight.

So at the age of 38, I decided I needed to give losing weight one last go. One last go in the sense I’d kind of resigned myself to the fact that I was going to struggle with this and was prepared to accept I was just going to be fat for the rest of my life, but hey, what did it matter right? I mean I was happy at the time, I was married to a wonderful woman, I had two beautiful children, the best set of friends a man could wish for, I had a fantastic family and in-laws around me – what’s not to be happy about? Well, my dad told my mum who told me (of course my dad would never tell me directly!) that he was worried about my weight. You see, my dad is now in his 60s and suffers from a variety of maladies – he’s got high blood pressure and has developed type 2 diabetes, 2 ailments which are easily preventable through life style and dietary changes. In his 30s and 40s he started piling on the pounds, and despite the doctors telling him he was on the verges of developing these subsequent problems, he chose not to listen. And sure enough, when he hit his 50s and decided to do something about it, it was too late. Funnily enough, I’d been for a general check up and was told I was borderline at risk in terms of blood pressure and blood sugar, but hadn’t really paid much attention to it. But my dad saying to my mum telling me that he was worried, well that was a bit of a reality check. I mean, when your mum says she’s worried you’re fat, you don’t really pay attention, but when it’s your dad, well, that’s different!

So I entered 2011 with yet another resolution to “lose weight”. And after recovering from an indulgent New Years Eve, I decided to follow the standard low fat, calorie restricted diet. 2 days later I was miserable as hell, obsessing about food all the time, and pretty much of the opinion that there was no way I could last the 3 months I’d calculated it would take to lose the 14 pounds or so I wanted to lose, let alone keep this up for good to keep the weight off. Let me put that into perspective – I was 16 stone, I had set myself the target of 15 stone, and 2 inches off my waist. Yet today, 20 months later, I weigh just over 12.5 stone and have lost more than 6 inches of my waist. More importantly, I’ve kept the weight off, and I feel SOOOOOOO much better about myself. So obviously I did something differently. Over the coming days and weeks I’ll write about how I did it, the challenges I faced, the discoveries I made, and how I kept at it. And I should add that my wife, G, has dropped from a post-pregnancy 10 stone to a very svelte 7.5 stone! And she looks mighty fine for it.