andrujayx

Just checking in to say things are going smoothly.

Today I’ve reached my first mile stone – already – and have lost 14 pounds (a United Kingdom ‘Stone’ / 6.4 Kg) since I started about 7 weeks ago. I’m just creeping over the line into the first quarter of the Obese category. I need to lose another 17 pounds to get into Overweight.

Just need to keep it up and be patient.

The Body Mass Index is a graph that you can use as a tool to help work out what a healthy weight for your height is.

Body Mass Index article on Wikipedia

Severely underweight
less than 16.5

Underweight
from 16.5 to 18.5

Normal
from 18.5 to 25

Overweightfrom 25 to 30

Obese Class I
from 30 to 35

Obese Class II
from 35 to 40

Severely Obese
from 40 to 45

Morbidly Obese
from 45 to 50

Super Obese
from 50 to 60

Hyper Obese
above 60

I’m male, 24 years old and 6’1” tall. I know that my current weight falls into the Obese Level I category. My goal is to lose enough weight to get down into a Normal rating.

I need to lose 30Kg or 66 pounds in order to get into the edge of this BMI range.

At time of writing, I’ve already lost around 10 pounds since I began the change of my diet and took up walking for an hour most days of the week. I started making these changes slowly before Christmas 2008. First things to change were simple, such as cutting out sugar from my coffee and tea, relegating chocolate / biscuits / cakes and fast food from almost daily dietary contents to occasional indulgences, and finally choosing no dessert with my evening meal every day. By January 1st 2009 I was starting to lose weight steadily; at about the healthy rate that doctors recommend, which is 2 pounds per week.

I’m excited about how achievable exiting the Obese Level I category is. Once my scales show less than 101Kg / 222 pounds, I will be officially classed as simply ‘Overweight’.

I don’t have a very clear idea of how long the process of reaching the Normal category will take. I do know, however, that eating so few calories is boring and takes a lot of willpower and bravery, and therefore I’d prefer to get it over with as quickly (and safely) as possible. I have no intention of dragging it out by losing less slowly, or having any lapses – willingly or accidentally.

Once I’m at my goal I’ll be living on the scales for the rest of my life as a weekly indicator and an early-warning system to show me when I’ve been consuming more calories than my body actually needs. This is something I’ve never habitually done in my life, but it’s so important because you can’t detect by sight when your weight is on the increase.

2009 is the year that I’ll shift a lot of this excess body-fat and feel Normal. What separates me with a normal body image is about a fifth of my own volume, made entirely of un-needed human lard.

Wish me luck.

I’m a legal Learner! I did my CBT (Compulsory Basic Training) certificate yesterday on a 125cc motorbike, which is the most powerful engine size you can legally learn on. I was given a dark-red Yamaha commuter-style bike with five gears and a nice short-travel clutch lever, so learning to find the biting point as I let the clutch out was actually very easy.

I did my CBT over the course of two days because of a problem with my head. It’s very large, and on my first visit the instructor found that he didn’t have a helmet big enough. After phoning his wife to bring an XL from home, I managed to force that on but it was still far too tight and after 2-3 hours I was finding it very difficult to concentrate. So we did everything except the mandatory 2-hour road ride in the afternoon that day (it just wouldn’t have been safe to do it with that helmet), and came back after a couple of weeks when I had bought my very own XXL Shoei Raid II (highly recommend by-the-way as a quality entry level Shoei helmet). We recapped what we had learnt in the last session and went straight out on the road, my friend Dave leading the way for the first half and then me leading the second. We were using in-helmet radios so we could hear our instructor’s directions and reminders to cancel our indicators, or which gear we should be in at any moment, plus the speed limits in the area, but we were unable to talk back to him as we had no mics ourselves. Before I knew it we were out on country lanes on the route towards Winchester and approaching 60 mph! It felt fantastic, the weather was lovely and sunny – about 9’C – though a little windy, but it was great for riding, we were lucky with the booking date. I had my visor up the majority of the ride until a fly hit me in the eye, at which point I found a slow bit and deftly lowered it in one quick movement with my left hand – but leaving a small gap at the bottom so all the fresh air could still pour in.

If anyone is reading this and is nervous about going out on the road – take it from me, it’s actually a lot less scary than you think it will be – especially leading the ride which I was terrified of to begin with. I don’t drive a car and haven’t got a lot of road sense, but I still felt very safe most of the time. I made a couple of stupid mistakes, but nothing scary and the constant stream of advice from your instructor makes it possible, you can’t really go wrong. If you aren’t good enough by the time the ride comes around in the afternoon then your instructor simply will not let you out on it. I certainly didn’t feel like I was ready but I picked everything up very quickly. I just had to keep reminding myself that it isn’t a computer-game – I can’t mess up because the consequences would be very real.

I did my CBT at Eastleigh BMF which runs from the Eastleigh Football Club carpark, Hampshire. Keep an eye on the weather forecast and phone up your local centre and book it. The next step for me is to find a learner bike on eBay. I’m looking to get a cruiser style bike like a Kawasaki Eliminator.