Hungry

After the interval sessions down at the track last night, my legs (calves) are pretty stiff. Went to the pool at lunchtime to try and stretch them out a bit, but it's the busiest I've ever seen it down there. Done about 100m (honestly) and some breathing drills down at the deep end and called it quits.

Had planned on going for a cycle this evening, but it absolutely poured down on my way home from work, so I gave it a miss. Was actually pretty bored, with nothing to do and that's usually when I'm at my worst, eating wise. I've been pretty hungry all day, but I've been quite good - went to Tesco's about an hour ago and just got a pot of yoghurt and one of those Philadelphia dippers - about 400kcal in total.

Literally just had dinner (potato waffles and fish fingers) and I'm starving again! Grrr - it's really annoying.

Talk about restraint

We normally get a buffet in at lunch time at work as one of the perks of the job. It usually involves a massive shop at Sainsbury's, with a load of bread, meat, cheese, some fruit & veg, soft drinks, snacks, cakes, etc. Its pretty awesome and there's generally no end of stuff left over, which gets used up during the course of the week.

Well anyways, as there's so much and its all good (I love fresh bread that you've to cut yourself), it can be pretty tough to show some restraint. Half the battle is at lunch-time, where I'd generally have a sandwich or two, with a portion or two of crisps, coleslaw, etc. All good stuff. The next part of the battle would be in the afternoon, where any cup of coffee would be accompanied by a cake or bun, etc. Basically Thursdays are a disaster for me.

If you look at the graphs on the right hand side, you'll see a slightly cyclical element to the data, that look like they're almost weekly...well they more or less are. It all starts on Thursday and continues over the weekend! So, I'm good for 3 days of the week and ill-disciplined for 4! Hardly ideal. Weekends are always tough for me, generally cause I'm always up to something be it travelling, watching sport, playing sport, etc.

Well, today was not like any other Thursday...I was very, very restrained at lunch. Just one sandwich (half a baton, with beef and cheese), a handful of cherry tomato's and a handful of crisps. I then succeeded in resisting all the cakes and buns in the afternoon (there were actually more of them today, as there were a lot of people out due to half term).

So, I'm definitely giving myself a good pat on the back for that. Lets hope the weighing scales are friendly in the morning.

Discipline

We finally get to the third part of the "weight loss" trilogy...discipline. Needless to say, without this, the other two tenets are doomed. As such, this is probably the most important aspect of them all.

Discipline is a strange creature at the best of times. Its quite possible to be very discipling in some aspects of life, and totally unruly in others. For example, I'd normally have the discipline to attend every possible training session when committed to a sport, yet not have the discipline to look after my diet after those (tough) training sessions, hence allowing me to train harder!

Anyways, thats got to change (diet wise at least). The following are a list of things that I am currently ensuring that I do to ensure I am disciplined...

• weigh myself every morning when at home
  
• keep an food log to monitor the calories that I'm eating each weekday (I keep this at work)
• at a minimum, aim to keep calorie consumption under 2500kcal per weekday
• aim to eat 5 portions of fruit or veg per day
  
• aim to do at least 30mins of physical activity per day
• keep a track of said activity and review progress
• post progress and musing to this blog

Now there is definitely some room for improvement in the above, but I feel thats not a bad start. I find that I generally stick to the points above, apart from the weekends. Still, at least its a start and something to work off.