FIRST WEIGHT LOSS GOAL ACHIEVED.

The posting I made on this blog on the 19th February highlighted the fact that I was making a concerted effort to lose weight. Mid December 2009 I was suprised to find that I had allowed my weight to spiral to 15 stone. There were reasons for the weight increase but as this was the heaviest that I had ever been I decided straight away that I WAS going to shed the surplus weight.
I read up as much information about the science of weight loss and took advice from a sports coach and a nutritionist and eventually came up with a programme to lose the weight.
On this blog on 19th February I set out what I hoped to achieve and the dates for these target weights.
The first one was 12 stone 7 pounds to be achieved by 31st March. Yesterday I stood on the scales (now a weekly routine) and right on the button I had achieved this first weight target.
I have detailed broadly the method I have used in the comments section of the posting on 19th February.
My experience of losing weight is that it is not difficult. The thing that is difficult is sticking to the plan.-you do need to be disciplined. I believe that it is not enough to say 'I am going to lose some weight' this just isn't specific enough- you need to set out your goals in a similar way that I did with the dates that you intend to achieve your goals by.
To lose weight you will probably need to make some major nutritional changes to your regular eating pattern-after all your current diet is one of the reasons for the fact that you are overweight-that and the possibility of insufficient exercise. Lets face it drinking loads of beer and eating lots of chocolate and cakes and walking or cycling an extra 3hours each week is not going to get rid of the flab. I have become almost obsessive about how many calories I am eating and I am staggered that I used to eat an entire chocolate bar (900/1000kcals) in one 30 minute sitting-no wonder that I had put on the weight.
And from here-what now? Well I will continue with the diet until I hit my next target of 11stone 11pounds on the 9th May- after that I will taper the diet losing weight more slowly until my final weight target of 11stone is achieved by mid August.
I hope that my observations are of use to those of you who are planning to lose some weight.