1899: Continued Shrinkage

Slimming World tonight, and I’m pleased to report that I lost another 3.5lb this week, which puts me in the “Club 10” category; I’ve lost 10% of what my body weight was when I started. If I can keep at or below this weight for 10 weeks, I get a free week of membership: a small reward, but an incentive nonetheless.

I’m pleased at how well I’ve managed to stick with it so far. The fact that the “diet” itself isn’t anywhere near as restrictive as a lot of other plans has helped me maintain my motivation to keep with it. I can continue to eat many of the things I enjoy, so long as they’re prepared appropriately — in most cases, this means substituting oil for low-calorie cooking spray, which I haven’t noticed having a particularly big impact on flavour. It obviously rules out things like deep-frying, which is a shame as there are certain things — hash browns are one — which are unquestionably superior when deep-fried compared to baked, but it’s something I can live without.

Or rather, I don’t necessarily have to live without these things so long as I pay attention to their “syn” values. Syns are abstract values that I believe are somewhat tied to calorific content, but also seem take into account things like sugar, fat and so on. The pronunciation of the name is perhaps a little misleading — they’re not “sins”, but rather short for “synergy” in that they provide controlled doses of the parts of a balanced diet that are easy to let run away with themselves — things like the aforementioned fats and sugars. We need these things to function — we need calories, too — but having too much of anything is where problems start. By limiting “syn” intake to 5-15 a day — I normally err towards the 15 mark, since I still enjoy my food — it’s much easier to keep a handle on what’s going in. And that, in turn, helps the weight continue to fall off: since I’ve started, which was, I believe, about 10 weeks ago, I haven’t had a single week where I haven’t lost weight as yet. I’m sure it’ll happen eventually — every week I expect to have reached that plateau and have to start working a bit harder — but for now, the efforts I’m making are being rewarded.

And that’s a good feeling. At a time in my life where I can’t honestly say things have been going particularly “well” — though things are marginally better than they have been thanks to me getting some sporadic work here and there — it’s nice to have one thing where I’m consistently and regularly having the opportunity to genuinely celebrate some success. And I’m pleased that the Slimming World group I’m a member of — as with most Slimming World groups, from what I’m given to understand — is more than happy to celebrate that success and keep me motivated to continue.

That and the fact I tried a pair of jeans on earlier that I couldn’t do up a few months ago and they went on easily.