Still 15st 2. Still one pound off having lost that first stone, with just under half a year gone. Still, I'm not too unhappy. At least I'm holding steady at my lowest weight in a good while, even if I am still a very long way off my ideal weight. Could be worse, I could still be 16 st+...or even heavier, which I probably would be by now if I had carried on as before. I reckon I might have been approaching 17st by now if I hadn't changed my habits. So looking at it that way, I'm probably more like two stone lighter than I might otherwise have been...that thought really does make it seem worthwhile!

Right now, I'm more concerned about exercise. I've dropped off doing it a little and my fitness has dropped again...maybe not quite back down to rock bottom, but lower than before (and I wasn't very fit even at my recent 'peak'). I visited the doctor last week and she recommended 30 mins of exercise daily. I've also been looking it up and I gather that this is indeed pretty standard current medical advice - 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity a week, which obviously equates to 30 mins 5 times a week.

That doesn't sound like a lot...but in all honesty, it's quite a lot more than I've been doing, and I'm not altogether sure I can stick to that. Still, I'm going to make it a medium term goal. In the short term, I'm going to aim for 30 mins 3x a week. That will put me at 60% of the medically recommended minimum and I reckon that's a start.

Strength-wise, things are OK. On the bench press I'm hitting sets of ten reps with 54 kg, which works out at a theoretical 1RM of 71kg - pretty much exactly where I was before, so at least I'm not getting any weaker as I get lighter. That also suggests the weight loss so far is fat, not muscle tissue - if I were losing muscle I should also be losing strength, and I'm not.

So, yeah. Things aren't going too badly in the sense that I could be in a much worse position right now, but I need to make more progress and in the immediate term that means hitting the 30min x 3 cardio target and losing that last bloody pound!

Well, it's the Summer Solstice and I'm 15st 2. I haven't quite managed to drop below 15st by Midsummer as I once planned - though I'm pretty close now. I did actually briefly drop to 14 st 13 a couple of weeks back, but I hadn't eaten properly for three days and as soon as I started eating again, the weight went back up.

Still, I'm only one pound away from being a stone lighter than I was on January 1. It's taken half a year - considerably slower progress than I hoped - but all the same, progress is progress. If I can get a similar amount off in the second half of the year, I'll take that as a win. It's a long term project and I'm not going to set any time limit - what's important is that I keep moving in the right direction.

15st 3 again this morning. On the one hand, that's no lighter than last week, but on the other hand, it was the target I set two weeks ago for today, so I'm satisfied with that. The aim now is to hit 15st 2 by next week. I guess I'm inching forward...So long as the scale keeps going down, it's progress, even if painfully slow progress.