The Blog of G

It’s been a bit quiet around here recently and that isn’t likely to change hugely, as I’ve been focusing most of my blogging time on Not Junk Food recently and that’s not likely to change in the short term.

Add to that my rather crowded to-do list for this week, apart from the obvious “get a job”, I’ve some long overdue DIY around the house as well as a major upgrade to the home network and finally sorting “The Home office” out as it was never so much moved into as bootstrapped from storage space to workable and not really beyond that for the better part of the last 2 years.

Of course the upgrading of the home network, will have to be completed before I can finish “The Home Office” but I’m really looking forward to having the space where I do most of my writing and techie stuff tidied and sorted into a more hospitable place to be.

But before I can do that I have to finish hanging the curtains properly in the house. Now, before you get the idea that we’re some sort of weird exhibitionist living in full view of the world since we moved in, back in June 2008 this is not the case. The curtains have been up and in place all that time, just the only way to open them properly has been to take them down again, or pin them out of the way with Clothes pegs.

Thankfully I have Grannymar here to assist with the process of attaching the curtain rope/string/whatever ye call it today so hopefully it won’t take to long.

Today is the day that I, at one point in my life, thought I would never see. This morning I got up and hopped onto the scales (it’s become a little bit of a Saturday morning ritual) to find that I’m overweight and I am over the fucking moon happy.

There may be people reading this that have never met me and think that I’m being ridiculous or sarcastic in my excitement and joy at this moment, but what you don’t know is that only 4 years ago I was super obese (it’s a clinical term, not me trying to make my obesity sound cool), something I’ve only ever talked (in detail) to 3 people about and one of those was my doctor and aside from him, I have never let anyone know how bad it really was. Well here goes nothing.

When I first spoke to my doctor about my weight, he weighed me, I knew it was going to be bad and it was. Was this the heaviest I had ever been, I honestly don’t know, but I’m pretty sure I have been heavier because the largest trouser size I’ve ever worn was 2 inches bigger at the waist than the ones I wore that day.

As we chatted about the different ways to lose weight he was tapping away at his computer and then he stopped, looked me straight in the eye and said the most terrifying words I’ve ever heard “George, I’ve been calculating your BMI, while we’ve been talking and yours is 38.5, you are super obese“.

He proceeded to explain to me what BMI is and what the effects of this could be and the discussion got a lot more intense (I want to thank Dr. Tomaz, for taking the time to explain this in a way that was not judgemental, preachy or condescending, I believe you are the one who got me onto this road, which is saving my life). We discussed every method there is to losing weight, the natural ones (diet and exercise), the medical ones and even the surgical options.

You can find a BMI calculator here, you just need to know your height and weight.

I left his office that day, with a prescription for Reductil (banned for sale in europe this week) and a stronger resolve than I’ve ever had to lose weight. I joined a Gym within 24 hours and over the following month dropped 20lbs. For 3 months I took my medication, went to the gym at least 3 times a week and recorded every calorie that I ate. I dropped a total of 45lbs in those three months.

Then I stopped. I couldn’t handle the stress that the rapid weight loss was causing and I was starting to show signs of depression as a result. After some discussion with my doctor, the decision was made to stop taking reductil, but continue with the diet.

He wanted me to continue the exercise but without reductil my weight loss stopped, reversed and I became frustrated, stopped exercising and I regained about 20lbs weight. From what I’ve read about reductil being banned, weight gain when you stop taking it is one of the reasons it’s been banned, but the main one seems to be that it causes heart attacks and strokes, so please don’t take this as an endorsement in any way and don’t try to source it from some dodgy ‘internet pharmacy’.

Since then, I’ve been watching what I eat but I returned to my sedentary lifestyle. I’ve focused on my diet and while I haven’t cut out any of the foods I love, I have learned to cook most of those dishes myself and with cooking from fresh ingredients when possible I have continued a much healthier path to weight loss. I am sharing these recipes on my new (with a little help from Elly) website NotJunkFood.net at the moment and will continue to do so.

I’ve managed to lose weight slowly but consistently for an extended period of time without adding a large amount of exercise to my lifestyle. It’s been fresh ingredients, portion size, frequency of meals, daily breakfast and drinking cold water that have got me this far.

There is only so much weight loss that can be achieved though diet alone and I fear I’m approaching that point, so I need to exercise more and I hate exercise, I’m not fit. This is going to be difficult for me, to say the least, but it has to happen, it’s going to happen, I am already making this happen.

Beginning today I will walk a mile everyday and keep an eye on things to see how it goes, adding to this meagre amount of exercise as I need to/am able to. My next target is to get myself under 200lbs (round numbers are good goals ), then 183lbs (BMI of 24.9 for me and within the ‘normal’ BMI, just) and my ultimate goal is 170lb. I’m looking forward to that day, it will mean the end of my weight loss and the start of weight maintenance.

The afternoon before my mother died, I promised her I would lose the weight, not for her but for me. I will not let anything stand in the way of me keeping that promise and I will achieve all of these goals before the end of this year. The time has come, this is my personal call to arms, this is my mission, this is my right and this will be done.

Now I want, no, I need to hear from people reading this, Do you need to lose weight? What are your weight loss goals? What have you been doing about them? What has worked? What hasn’t worked? The comment form is below so have your say.

On Friday afternoon last, myself and Elly finally got inside what will be our new home. No we haven’t moved in yet, but we’re a lot closer. We got access to ‘snag’ all be it without power or plumbing. Still, that’ll be another day out.

Essentially, we studied our new home from top to bottom looking for thing’s that aren’t up to scratch and with only a few minor issues to report, were very happy with our afternoons work. Well apart from the fact that we’d spent hours standing on hard concrete floors and were exceptionally tired as a result.

We also took the opportunity to measure some of the rooms so we could start thinking about where things would go and planning what we needed to buy to fit the spaces we wanted.  We nearly didn’t, we were so tired.

Once we got home (the rented home that is) I logged onto IKEA’s web site to download their room planner tool and plastered across the screen was the news that they were having a 21% off sale in all UK stores to celebrate 21 years trading in the UK, starting at 6am the next morning, running till midnight that evening. We did some calculations and worked out that if we went (what with the current exchange rate and the sale) items priced at £100 sterling would end up costing us about €100. You can’t argue with that value! A call was made to my youngest sister (long time IKEA fan) to see if she wanted to come, Alas too short notice for her.

We decided to get up early, Saturday morning and hit the road. Planning to use IKEA’s delivery service to ship what we bought to Grannymar and we’d get it from there once we had the keys to the new house.

Literally 3 minutes before we were going to leave my sister texted me, to let me know she was on her way, complete with people carrier. After a bit of a wait for her, off we set. The sister had removed all but 3 seats from the people carrier as well so we had almost as much space as a ‘Hiace’ in the back.

After trekking round IKEA for most of the day and meeting up with Grannymar in the process we finally headed to the tills, paid and left, heading for the cars. Packing commenced and for a while it was looking like not even the world Tetris Champion could move these ‘bricks’ around to get them to fit. In reality we couldn’t get everything to fit in the people carrier. Thankfully, Grannymar was on hand to take the excess items that wouldn’t fit, otherwise it would have been the returns desk.

So we got most of our purchases back to Dublin with us, Grannymar is storing the sofa-bed for what we plan to use as a spare room/home office. Thankfully it will fit in either my own or Elly’s car so it shouldn’t be to difficult to get it back to Dublin. Which is probably just as well because as I type it’s the only bed we own.

For the amount that we spent, we got an awful lot, enough bookcases to cover a wall, Dining table and chairs, a sofa bed, an armchair & footstool, Light fittings for almost every room in the house, a dressing table, a crockery set, a very cool magnetic spice rack thingy and a load of other little bits and pieces. Jaysus that sounds like I’m on the Generation game

As for the shopping experience, I’ll be generous and say that shopping in IKEA is unpleasant (if it wasn’t for the price I would never shop there again) I may post again about that, I think this one is long enough for now.

Wow! what a couple of days it’s been. Since last Friday morning, we (Elly and myself) have…

1. Snagged our future home
2. Discovered an amazing sale in IKEA Belfast
3. Been to IKEA Belfast
4. Bought 2 loads of furniture
5. And last, but by no means least, possibly even most importantly, been to my nephew/godson’s confirmation.

All in all it could be described as a busy, expensive and exceptionally tiring  weekend.

Yeah, It’s monday and I have the day to myself, Elly has to work so I’ve got the house to myself. Now what am I going to do with myself?

Well I’ve already caught up on all my blog and news reading, my Google reader has no unread feeds left for the first time since I switched from Newsgator. although it seems to not want to allow me to add more feeds which is odd cause I know I don’t have as many as the likes of Robert Scoble but I can’t add anymore now

From my reading frenzy this morning, I see Grandad has Blognapped Granny’s Blog to wish her a happy birthday, the oul romantic! Well at least he didn’t head off tourist hunting for the day

Gizmodo seems to be getting less about the gadgets and more about the gags, these days, so much so that I hardly seem to read it anymore, could it be that the volume of posts is costing them quality? Surely not.

And Finally, over on the Blather Zeitgeist, Damien has posted a brilliant short film from Blur Studios, very funny and well worth the bandwidth and time it takes to view it.

So am I going to mow the lawn and fix the Media Centre PC today or just laze around the house all day and do nothing, It’s my day off after all.