reach my ideal weight

It is great! Sometimes it is not easy, but definitely this is not as hard as it was when I was not following the rules I am following now.

One of the three key rules is not getting over 10% of calories from fat.

It does not matter if I eat something with more than that, but if this happens, it has to be balanced with the rest of things I eat in my meal, so overall it keeps under 10%. However, with some food like cheese it is nearly impossible to keep under 10% if you eat more than a tiny piece of it (say over 10 grams)...

Slowly but firmly losing weight. First time I achieve this weight eating a varied and balanced diet :)

After radically changing my diet on 1st September, and keeping on cycling and running to work, now I am under 75 kg!

This means I am half-way to my goal, as I used to be in the last months about 80 kg, and my goal is getting to 70 kgs.

I am very happy about this. Will write more about this ;)

After moving to Spain I have lost some good habits. This happens to me usually when I move to another country, as I find difficult concentrating and getting used to new things at the same time.

So I have to go back under 80 kilos. I am attacking two fronts right now:

• to lose fat I am running and cycling to work, as usual, and

• to get some shape I am doing crunches. I know that doing crunches does not eliminate belly fat (that is why I am running and cycling to work). However, it is true that just losing weight is not going to give me a lot of shape. So this is the reason why I am doing crunches as well as other exercices.

That is why I have set up a sub-goal: doing 3020 crunches by 16th August. Let’s see if this work ;)

Why 3020 and not 3005? It is explained in my blog (only in Spanish, sorry).

Better! Some weeks ago, while preparing for the half marathon I put on some weight, reaching 79.5 kg (as I ate a lot, because I wanted to make sure I was going to have enough energy for the 13 miles). But as I am getting into new habits (more sport and more diet awareness, instead of short-term dieting or unsustainable training), I didn’t take too long to recover a healthier weight!

That’s quite different than the way it was some four years ago (I lost weight as fast as I recovered it later).

Long-term habit is the only way to be where I want to be.

Getting closer :)

Ok, I have set up a deadline to achieve this goal (my ideal weight is 70kg = 154 pounds).

I don’t want to lose weight too quickly. That is very easy (the only thing you have to do is stop eating), and very ineffective (because that means you didn’t change your way of doing things, so you will get back to your usual weight, as it happened to me).

I want to lose weight by changing my attitude (eating better and less, and burning more calories). This is the hard way, but the most effective. It is hard as well, because you lose just a bit every week. And the closer you are to your target weight, the slower you lose weight.

So, I’m ok with losing 200 g/week, and 100g/week when I will be less than 74 kg. Fluctuations will occur, and the error due to water drinking and so is bigger than those 200 grams, so I have to think long term. For the moment I think I am in the right way, as I have lost exactly 4kg since the 26th of February!

Then, the date I will put to myself to reach this goal is the 15th of August 2009, and the 9th of November 2008 to reach the 74 kg.

It may seem it is very far, 64 weeks to reach 70 kg! But in my opinion it is the only way of doing it well.