lnr | Entries tagged with weight

The bathroom has tiles! We can use it again, and the bathroom pod on the drive went back. I got a very entertaining graph of the temperature in the pod for most of the time it was there: ranging from 14 degrees max to about minus 2.5 degrees at a minimum. (There was actual ice on the floor inside the pod one morning, from the drips from the shower door being left open). There's some issues with the coloured grout having made everything BLUE, but most of it has come off again. We're just waiting on getting the bath resurfaced (on the 27th) and then I'll get some photos. It's lovely to have the house back together again! Insurance company agreed to pay for the extra electricity and the bath re-enamelling, which is good.

My iron levels are still a bit on the low side, so we're testing again at the end of February, and I'm taking over-the-counter iron supplements in the meantime. They're "gentle" ones, so I'm not getting such tar-like poo as with the stronger prescription ones. I've persuaded the GP to do another HbA1c test at the same time because...

The Wegovy prescription seems to be doing its job. ( weight loss talk )

As a result it seems like a good idea to check my blood glucose control (HbA1c gives an idea of the "average" blood sugar levels over the last 3 months) and see whether I need to be taking a high dose of Metformin as *well* as the weight-loss drug which also treats diabetes.

Weight loss talk

So Tuesday was a) my birthday and b) my second online class with the Tier 3 Weight Management "Eat well, move more" Healthy You programme.

We have a workbook to accompany the course, and I was somewhat surprised to discover us jumping ahead to session 4, which was entirely about exercise. So this fortnight's session didn't contain anything about food at all. We had about half an hour talking about exercise recommendations, and about half an hour of gentle exercise. And a suggestion at the end of making another SMARTER goal around exercise "snacking" again. I did mention that last week's goal had made me cross, and the course leader for exercise sounded surprised, but did ask why. I explained that the goal did not seem very relevant to me, as I already meet and exceed most of the NHS exercise suggestions, and that this was adding 5 minutes a day, burning around 17 calories, and not getting my heart rate into even the moderate zone. With an inadvertent pun I said that while I'd done it anyway it felt like a bit of a pointless exercise. So, I have suggestions of things to do this week - increasing the time or distance of my existing exercise, or to increase the intensity of my cycling if it's safe to do so. I can also up the weights or intensity of my "snacking" but if I do I should make sure I had a proper warm-up and cool down to make sure I don't cause any injury. Which I suppose is fair enough.

So at the moment I don't have a SMARTER goal (I can't remember the ER anyway, Evaluate and Review? Something else?) but just a woolly thought of OK, I'll add 5 minutes throughout the day, I'll try to add something flexibility and something balance and a squat or similar for legs and something with weights for arms and something like their seated plank for core muscles. But 5 minutes a day still feels pointless. I think what would *actually* be good would be finding a pilates class, preferably on a Friday late morning or early afternoon! Plus trying to actually notice when my watch tells me I haven't moved enough this hour. It buzzes at xx:50 every hour during the day time, and I ignore it.

Second dose of Wegovy taken. No effects or side effects noticed yet. I do have a bit of a stiff neck today, and I think maybe he was right about not waving round a pair of 2kg weights without warming up. Or maybe I'm just not very well, I have a slight headache too.

I've also noted another new change bloody Google have made to the Fitbit app. As well as removing the web pages where you could look at your data they've now also update the weight tracking bits of the app itself. It no longer has a BMI over time chart (which I liked to use/screenshot when sharing information with health professionals) but also it's changed the number of points it displays on the "All time" graph. I've got weight numbers going back to 1994. Sometimes only one or two entries a year, but sometimes a reading every week. It's showing about 30 or so points in total, and the rounding as a result means some things you could point to on the graph are no longer visible. You can't see my sister's wedding any more (losing weight to fit in my bridesmaid dress). It's hopeless! So I'm going to have to export all the more recent data which isn't also recorded elsewhere and start constructing my own graphs again. Gah!

Weight loss talk

Prescribing nurse on the phone: so what do you know about Wegovy? Me: well, it's a GLP-1 agonist, and it was originally developed to help diabetes, but it was also discovered to help with weight loss, even in people who don't have diabetes. And it helps with appetite. Nurse: OK yes. :)

The outcome is I have a prescription at the lowest level, which will arrive by post tomorrow. 4 weekly doses in an injector pen, with a sharps box. And I need to watch out for eating too quickly, as it may cause nausea, and keep an eye out for low blood sugar, which is slightly more likely given I'm also taking Metformin. And she'll talk to me again in a few weeks to see how I'm getting on, and whether to increase the dose or not.

Again, having been told it would take 6 months, and not everyone would get Wegovy, I'm a bit startled how quickly this has all happened. Diabetes check up on Thursday this week too, so will make sure I let them know.

I'm still doing my 6 minutes of exercise every day. (5 different exercises, 1 minute each, I cut the rest intervals to 15 seconds). I have decided that in this particular SMART goal the R stands for Resentment. I'm going to try and insist that future goals are actually more Relevant.

Weight loss talk

So today was my first 90 minutes session on the Tier 3 "fresh start programme". It consisted of about 45 minutes of nutrition information and 45 minutes of physical exercise information, and that's the shape of the next 11 sessions too - one a fortnight

The nutrition part talked about diets we may have tried before, and then introduced the Eat Well plate, and its friend the Weight Loss plate, which differs in having more fruit and veg, and leaving off some of the finer details. Basically eat lots of fruit and veg, lean protein, preferably wholegrain carbs, healthy fats in small quantities, and everything else (e.g. cakes, crisps, sauces) occasionally in small portions. So far so nothing new.

The exercise part suggested we try "exercise snacking" - building in 5 sets of 1 minute exercise, alternating with 1 minute rest. Once a day for the next week, aiming to increase to twice a day next week. Try doing a set while waiting for the kettle to boil, or during an ad break! Example exercises were done with or without a chair, and with adaptations for if standing up from the chair is a problem. Grab a couple of cans of food! (I picked a pair of 1kg weights instead as they were more convenient). To be fair, doing this sort of thing a couple of times a week, making sure I include a variety of things, will be good for muscle strength and flexibility. But not cardio. And I'm skeptical about weight loss. I did not need to worry about my blood pressure. The actual time exercising was about 10 minutes, much of it stretches.

I was very polite, and did not outright say that I thought they were wasting my time. But I thought they were wasting my time.

My personal goal for the next couple of weeks: try and eat more fruit and veg. Aiming for 10 portions a day instead of 5 would probably make a difference, especially since I don't always manage 5 anyway. And I'll do the exercise snacking. I did some more ankle rotations in the bath, since I could. I'm very glad this programme also offers some one-to-one sessions with dietitions, exercise specialists and a psychologist, because otherwise it appears to be just the same advice we've all seen before. Apparently you need to attend 80% of the sessions to be eligible for Wegovy. And we'll need to have a session with a nurse practitioner for that, which should happen sometime after the second session. What I need to *not* do, is start obsessively calorie counting, because there lies unsustainability. No counting!

Weight loss talk

Last year I did a Tier 2 adult weight management course via the NHS, with a team called Healthy You. It's a programme you can self-refer for. Lost 10kg over 12 weeks, put it back on again over the course of the year. In the final 12 month follow-up call I asked if I could be referred to Tier 3 services, and heard nothing. That was June.

In late September I got back in touch via my GP practice's team, and asked again if I could be referred for Tier 2. The Healthy You team finally got back to me, and it turns out for referral to Tier 3 you have to talk to your GP. So I made an appointment, the GP agreed I met criteria for it (just) and made the referral. (I'm right on the 35 BMI with diabetes boundary, but having done Tier 2 and not succeeded is also relevant).

On Tuesday I got an initial screening call, to check some details, and was told that at the moment there could be up to six months wait. Today I got another call, to check some more details, and make an appointment to start a 12 week course. Next week. !

I've got a phone appointment on Monday morning to talk through what it entails, and then group sessions online start on Tuesday evening. Which is a bit sudden to say the least. I've said I'm not interested in weight loss surgery, but am interested in weight loss injections. (Given I'm a) type 2 diabetic and b) *always* hungry Semaglutide sounds like a no-brainer to me). I may or may not be eligible. Apparently I should expect a 5-10% weight loss in 12-weeks, even without, but we'll see.

I honestly wasn't expecting to hear for months, so I'm a little blindsided here!

I'm not clear exactly which if the Tier 3 Programmes I'm starting, but I'm sure they'll tell me on Monday! Tier 3 programmes summary

For those who think fat people should "watch their weight" it turns out I have indeed been watching it, in probably far too much detail, for nearly all my adult life. Having just added entries from my medical records, before I started tracking it myself in 2001, and for the last year in order to inform my diabetic review next week, the graph shows a ludicrous number of points.

( graph, with no numbers, but lots of up and down lines )

Ok, so it's probably just bad reporting, but this BBC article, states (for example):

Bowel cancer - Of around 42,000 new cases, being overweight or obese causes 4,800 - I make that 11%. The figures for other cancers are: Kidney (22.4% caused by excess weight), Liver (22%), Ovarian (6.5%!)

But from their own figures there are 14.9 million obese adults in the UK, which is 22.6% of the UK population. Once you add all the overweight people too - you could be talking 63% of the population or more.

I really *really* want to know how they are determining that it was someone's weight which caused their cancer, because surely they don't just mean all the other 37200 people were not overweight? There is definitely *something* missing from this equation.

As others have pointed out there are all sorts of reasons why this campaign is misguided. If it's about population level health it shouldn't be shaming people on billboards. Smoking is something you do, whereas being overweight is something you *are*. Weight loss is not a solved problem. It's horrible for those whose loved ones have cancer - even if they are thin. And it shames those who are overweight and have cancer *even if* their cancer is not linked to obesity (eg leukaemia).

They've even had advice on how to target obesity campaigns - and this is *not* it. I'm utterly furious with them - and with the press's reporting of it.

I passed an advert today, with a phrase on the lines of "obesity causes cancer too" on the side of a mocked up cigarette packet. So I did some digging. Numbers approximate as of 2018.

Obesity is considered the second most common cause of preventable cancers in the UK. The first is smoking. Reading the graph on this BBC article it looks like roughly 54 thousand cancer diagnoses a year are attributable to smoking, and 23 thousand to obesity. Apparently there are about 6.1 million smokers in the UK, and in 2018 28.1% of adults had a BMI of over 30 (which works out as approx 13.8 miliion obese poeple). This works out as 0.88 percent of smokers and 0.16 percent of obese adults receiving a cancer diagnosis - making smoking 5.5 times worse than being obese.

0.16% chance of being diagnosed with a cancer that was caused by being obese is quite possibly still worth looking at - but reliably and permanently turning an obese person into a not obese person is not something which is easy to do. Even if giving up smoking is hard I would suspect this is a lot harder.

I don't know who those posters are aimed at, but I wish they'd stop. Raising awareness of the link between obesity and cancer is only *one* part of Cancer Research's campaign, but those posters do not mention *any* of the other things they are doing (policy on diet and obesity) and they are thoroughly over-simplistic. It's just one more thing to feel bad about.

I'm 104.7 kg, with an estimated body fat percentage of 49.9%, my blood sugar levels are slightly raised, and I know being thinner might improve that aspect of my health, as well as making hill climbing easier. I've done it before. Twice. And a set of simplistic weight loss tips is not going to suddenly make it easy.

( weight loss graphic )

It's a long time since I've posted anything here about weight loss. And even longer since I'd updated my webpages about it. In fact they were last updated in 2006 and I'd long since removed the link to the weight loss pages from my front page.

Last week however I finally reached a nominally healthy BMI of 24.8, and hence declared myself to have reached my target at Slimming World. So now I'm no longer planning to post anything about weight loss at all, but may make the occasional post about maintaining my weight.

If you'd like to see the graph of my weight over time, see a couple of before and after photos and read a bit more about it I've now updated my webpages, and you can find the relevant page here:

My Weight

At some point I need to go back to the GP and get them to do all the health checks again, to make sure that the weight loss has my blood sugar and cholesterol under control now that I'm not longer taking medication.

Sprained/chipped ankle: sufficiently better that most of the time I don't even remember I did it any more. Even when doing things like attempting to scale a climbing wall. Success.

Hyperparathyroidism/hypercalcaemia: Have appointment to see surgeon on 28th, at which point they'll make an appointment to actually have the operation and take my overactive parathyroid out. Relatively minor day surgery, will need to take calcium/vitamin D supplements for a while afterwards until the other three glands reset to normal operation.

Kidney stone: This is almost certainly caused by the excess calcium in my urine because of the above. CT scan results are in and I have a 4mm stone in my left kidney. At this size it's 50/50 whether it's worth treating, but since I have symptoms (pain again this Tuesday, and I can still sort of feel it now) the GP has referred me to have it broken up using external ultrasound. No idea how long this referral will take. In the meantime I still have enough diclofenac left to deal with the pain.

Metabolic Syndrome: Having lost some weight I've discussed this with my GP. Since I have a strong family history of diabetes it's very likely that even if I lose more weight I'm still going to get diabetes later. He'd rather I continued to take the Metformin and statins, since apparently they can have a protective effect and will hopefully delay its onset. I'm not terribly happy with this, but will review in maybe 6-8 months time, at which point I'll ask them to re-do all the sugar/cholesterol level tests too. This does mean I still can't drink.

Weight loss: 13kg so far to 97kg, which is over 10% of my weight and more than 5 BMI points. I expect to reach 90kg (around BMI 31.5, and my next target) by mid-September. I need to reach 85kg to no longer be classed as obese. Still following Slimming World online, still trying not to go on about it.

Things I have done recently:

Joined slimming world's online site at http://bodyoptimise.com and spent a week following their plan
Taken metformin and statins for just over a week: 1 day of nearly gagging while eating, 2 days of diarrhoea, now just the occasional gurgle.
Despite the combination of the above I've not lost the huge lump of weight which is typically associated with the first week of a diet, but I shall persevere
Had my first day back in the office, and resolved to start going in again next week. Stephen has offered me lifts, since I'm very nearly on his route to work anyway. I'm thinking about trying the bike after Easter.
Been out to my first social event since doing my ankle in, the lovely Alison's lovely birthday party, with the most incredible Star Destroyer cake. It was nice to talk to people.
Got a letter from the NHS asking me to use their "choose and book" system to get an appointment about the hyperparathyroidism. Only I could neither choose (only one choice) or book (no appointments available) so I rang them up and apparently Addies should write to me directly within the next 14 days and if not I should contact me GP and get them to talk to Addies about it.
Had a go on the wii fit: 13 minutes of step and two balance games, and beat my previous scores. With a wii fit age of 29 but my highest weight ever. Though it's 161 days since I last tried it. Without my rides to work I need a little exercise of some sort. Ankle didn't mind at the time, tiny bit achy now.
Ascended a monk in nethack! Only my second ascension ever, and the first time I've seriously played a monk at all. It was rather fun.

Don't expect regular weight or diet updates, I just want to quietly get on with it, rather than talking about it.

Friday night we stayed in and had a night so quiet I can't remember it.

Saturday we got up and pottered over to Parkers Piece for a wander round the county fair. We saw re-enacters, steam engines, sheep, pigs, harris hawks and cute collies (including excitable puppy), ate sausage-inna-bun, and pottered through the craft and food stalls. We came home with game pie, a joint of beef, some posh burgers, a bottle of concentrated sarsparilla and some expensive Italian chocolate. We'd considered going out cycling afterwards, but it was far too hot, so we spent the rest of the day quietly and watched The Bourne Identity on DVD in the evening, with our nice burgers in ciabatta buns.

Sunday we woke early, and were out the house by 9:30 on a little 11 mile loop to Waterbeach and back along the river, taking in Tesco to drop off our carrier bag mountain. (Bikely route map). It was getting fairly hot again by the time we got back (around 11) and Mike was suffering rather badly from the pollen. We had another quiet rest of day, with me bravely managing to stay awake until lunch of ham sandwiches, game pie and pickled eggs. Then Mike stuck the oven on, I gave in and had a nap, and eventually it was tea time with roast beef and roast potatoes and lovely red wine sauce, very nice indeed. We finished the evening off watching Walk The Line which we've had out on DVD for nearly a fortnight, but somehow never seemed to be in the mood for. It was most excellent anyway, and was a nice finish to the weekend.

Week so far has been fairly normal, with work and geeking and not quite enough sleep and going to finally register at my local doctor's surgery today. They were very helpful anyway. Though when I made an appointment for an hour later I made the mistake of leaving my keys at home when I came out of the house again. The doctor I saw was lovely, and took my blood pressure with a fancy new automatic machine, which really did feel like it was trying to squeeze my arm off. 135/92 - the latter figure being a little worrying, but not too much so given overweight people often have raised blood pressure, so it's probably that and not the pills. It also took my pulse as 78, which is pretty much what I'd measured it as myself the previous day. We talked a bit about the weight, and I embarrassed myself thoroughly by getting teary about it. She said I could try their nurse led clinic if I liked, but I decided to leave it for now. Perhaps there's still the hope I can get hold of this myself, but when I've already regained half of what I painstakingly lost over lent I've no confidence I can keep off any weight I lose. I have too many bad habits that I honestly don't really *want* to break.

On which cheery note I've eaten mostly sensibly today, and had two nice brisk 1 mile walks to work and back, since without my keys I couldn't get my bike out of the shed! Oops, silly me. Perhaps the exercise is more important anyway.

Weight:
In Lent: lost 13 pounds in 6.5 weeks, from 17 stone 2 to 16 stone 3
Since then: gained 7 pounds in 9 weeks, back to 16 stone 10

As previously described I gave up alcohol and junk food for lent. So no cakes, biscuits, sweets, pastries, pizza, chocolate, etc etc for 6 and a half weeks. I made 3 exceptions: a glass of pink bubbly on my sister's hen-night, a half of guinness and chinese out on the day we moved house (which was also St Patrick's day), and a packet of crisps and some biscuits when I gave blood, because they're there for a specific reason.

This morning I am 13 lbs lighter than I was on the morning of Ash Wednesday.

It seems to have worked so well for me I intend to continue, but not to include holidays and weekends. I can't deny it was nice to have a pain au chocolat for breakfast though! Happy Easter! (And *hug* for those for whom it's being a sad one).

Current Mood: impressed

Currently I weigh somewhere in the region of 17 stone (108 kg) and I'm about 5'6" (1.68 m) which makes me 38.3 BMI, my clever scales say I'm somewhere between 47 and 50% fat, I'm female and I'm 30.

Guidelines say that people should be between 20 and 25 BMI, and women my age should have between 21 and 33% bodyfat. So by BMI I should be between 8 stone 12 (56.5 kg) and 11 stone 1 (70.5 kg). At my thinnest I was just under that upper limit.

Let's assume that I'm at the higher of those two fat percentages. That means I currently have 50% lean mass (8 stone 7, 54kg). If I lose only fat, then 21% bodyfat would be at 10 stone 11 (68.5 kg, 24.3 BMI) and 33% bodyfat would be at 12 stone 10 (80.5 kg, 28.5 BMI). 20 BMI would leave me with only 4.5% bodyfat.

Of course you *don't* lose only fat when losing weight, and that still leaves me needed to lose over 4 stone to be in a healthy range, but it's definitely food for thought.

So, last night's gig. Doors were at 7, and actually seem to have opened on time yet again, which is becoming a continuing source of amazement. Support wasn't on until 8 though, and only had a half hour slot. This meant we had plenty of time to kill, in which burgers and chips from the Trailer of Life franchise were scoffed. Saves meeting up to eat beforehand and it's cheap and cheerful, if not exactly healthy. Anyway the chap doing support was called Declan O'Rourke and played us some vaguely folk tunes accompanied by acoustic guitar and harmonica on one song. He was competant, but dull enough that even his gentle Irish lilting voice couldn't rescue him. The crowd seemed to quite like him though, and applauded more than just politely.

Now the crowd, that was the thing with this gig. They were nice. Very very nice, and awfully civilised. And just a wee bit too grown up (and I mean that in terms of ~~age and not behaviour~~ d'oh! behaviour and not age! Even the young people were being very grown up). We made our way nearish the front for The Divine Comedy but it just seemed to rude to push such nice people - we could easily have been right at the barrier if we'd been just a wee bit less polite about the whole thing. Still the music was great. The set had a lot of new material since there's a new album out, but that wasn't entirely surprising. Neil Hannon turns out to have a very good sense of humour and comic timing, and there was a good sprinkling of old favourites. Ernie and I danced and sang along to the fast ones, but despite Neil commenting part way through that it was nice to see people bouncing to the music because that way he could tell they were enjoying it the crowd for the most part was very very static. They woke up a little for Charge which was definitely the highlight of the show, but when we can only see about 3 people other than ourselves in the front 5 rows of people who are dancing to Something For The Weekend which closed the encore then well, it couldn't help but seem a little flat. Still, someone complemented us on the dancing as we were queueing for the cloakroom on the way out.

So yeah, musically and in terms of between=track banter it was brilliant - the band were all incredibly good musicians and Hannon is a star, but overall as gigs go it was lacking a bit of an edge. I'd definitely see them again, and maybe I'm kicking myself just a little for not seeing them two years ago, but nah, it was the right decision at the time.

Since it was over by 10:30 I headed over to Mike's post-gig, which would have been a pleasant end to the evening but my horrible acid-reflux indigestion won. I was up throwing up with it twice in the night, which is not pleasant when you've already got a slightly sore throat anyway I can assure you. To be honest it's rather pushed me into being a bit more careful about my eating though - I *know* it's worse the fatter I am and yet at the moment I'm at my fattest ever and dwelling on how horrible I feel like I look far too often. So it ends here, for a while at least. I popped into Sainsburies on the way into work this morning when it opened at 8 and have lots of fruit and things for eating in the office, as well an ingredients for a nice chilli for dinner tonight. But still, even raspberry and cranberry yog with a tub of raspberries seems to be too much for me to make myself eat this morning, and I'm munching on indigestion tablets rather than finishing it. Hopefully stop feeling grotty soon though.

The BBC are running a "you're unfit and you know it" campaign at the moment, or at least in the run up to it. It occurred to me last week that I really do hate being this unfit. Only getting fit is extremely hard work, and what I dislike about being unfit is how hard work it makes everything. Hmm, awkward little situation that one.

Current Mood: grotty

This week I gained 1lb. Not been very careful this week, but not too unhappy with that result. Will have another non-logged weigh-in on Weds morning, which should quite safely show me weighing less than on 1st Jan, which is the current goal.

( details )

This week I gained 2¾lb. Sod it, may as well go back to the long-term graph. Not like I've actully lost weight since the short term one started. This could have been worse, it was a couple of lbs higher when I last looked mid-week. All that jumping up and down and walking over the weekend had to be good for something.

( details )

This week I lost 2½lb

( details )

This week I gained ¾lb

( details )

15 stone 10.8 say the scales, which is about 2.5 lbs down. 47.9% fat. Graphs need three weeks of data so back next week.

Current Mood: pleased

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Page generated Jul. 5th, 2025 10:12 pm

A slight case of overblogging

Entries tagged with weight

Quick catch up

Healthy You - second session

Wegovy time

Well that was a thing

Gosh, that escalated quickly

Trigger warning: Weight talk

More on cancer and causes

"Obesity causes cancer too"

Weight loss, and maintenance

Health update

Stuff and things

Weekend and thereafter

Lent / Happy Easter

some interesting numbers

Good / Bad

Weekly weigh in

Weekly weigh in

Weekly weigh in - week 3

Weekly weigh in - week 2

Weekly weigh in - week 1

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