OK, I haven’t updated the blog for a while. Truth is, I got blown off course somewhat. Life, stress, distraction…

I fell off the wagon for a few weeks, and paid the price. I’m back up to 15st 7. That’s a definite step in the wrong direction, given that I’d managed to get down to 15st 4 at the beginning of April. I’m nonetheless still more than half a stone lighter than I was in January, so I can still claim progress overall. Now it’s time to get back on track and make another significant step in my weight loss journey.

This is the start of Week 17, which should have been the penultimate week of Phase 3. The target was to hit 15st 3 by the end of Week 18. Truth be told, I don’t think I’m going to achieve that now – shedding four pounds in the next twelve days isn’t going to happen. So, instead, I’m going to scrap that plan and commence a new phase instead. This one is slated to be 8 weeks, taking me well in to June. The target is to drop below the 15st mark by the middle of the year.

Now, in one sense, that’s much slower overall progress than I had planned at the beginning of the year. At that rate, it may be the end of the year before I drop below 14 stone, and it could be the middle of 2018 before I get down to 13st. But…so what? If it takes a little longer than originally planned, then so be it. What matters is that I get there, not how long it takes. And I do still plan to get there.

To start getting the weight off again, I obviously need to get calorie intake back down. So I plan to replicate the phased calorie reduction pattern of Phase 1:

Week	Target calories
1 (17)	3000
2 (18)	2750
3 (19)	2500
4 (20)	2400
5 (21)	2400
6 (22)	2400
7 (23)	2400
8 (24)	2400

It worked before – I got seven pounds off in eight weeks last time, so hopefully it will work again.

On the fitness side, I haven’t let things slide quite so much. I’ve been steadily building up the trampoline work, and I’m now doing 9 x 30sec stints, so I’m still on course to be doing 10x 30secs by the end of Week 18, which was the original target. Still very moderate of course, but I have a plan to build that up to 10x 60 seconds with 30 sec rest periods by the end of this eight week phase.  

Week	Sessions	Stint time	Rest time
1	9	30 sec	90 sec
2	10	30 sec	90 sec
3	10	40 sec	90 sec
4	10	50 sec	90 sec
5	10	60 sec	90 sec
6	10	60 sec	60 sec
7	10	60 sec	45 sec
8	10	60 sec	30 sec

That still won’t be enough to make me ‘fit’ of course – a very long way from it – but I’ll be considerably less ‘unfit’ that I was on January 1. Again, progress is what matters, not the speed of that progress. By Midsummer I’ll have completed the ‘rehab’ stage, and in the second half of 2017, maybe I can go on and actually start to get just a little bit ‘fit’. There are different ways I could tackle that, but one simple option might be to build up to sessions of 20 or 30 mins nonstop on the trampoline. There’s the bike too, which I still haven’t touched since that last disastrous attempt. Maybe I could do a mix of both trampolining and cycling on different days….anyway, I’ll see how it goes. Let’s get this eight weeks finished first.  

Strength is pretty much unchanged, though I have been a little negligent with the weights too, but I’m still able to do the same reps / sets as before.   

So, on with the show.