Number-land

Dear Diary,

Today was my day off, so have spent it being incredibly productive - by which I mean tidying the whole house, getting totally organised (I have a whole 3 hours to myself before bed and am spending it blogging, reading and writing - as opposed to preparing lunch, choosing work clothes and grabbing a shower) and making a much-needed trip to the gym. Completely horrified to realise that with everything getting in the way, it had actually been a WEEK since Joel and I last went. It was pretty damned hard getting back into it - especially since my favourite cross-trainer (the one with the best view, the most comprehensive on-screen options, and a working heart-rate monitor) was nabbed by the same Iranian guy who always seems to get in there, RIGHT as I'm about to go on. But still managed my 10k on the bike, and burnt off a total of 300 calories, so not all bad news!

I'm still completely spurred on by my 2 pound loss yesterday - not to mention two other things I discovered yesterday:

ONE being this utterly horrendous photo, taken months and months ago on the night Mum won her "Woman of the Year" award:

As you can see, it was taken completely without my knowledge. This is the first photo I've ever seen of myself where I'm not posing, smiling or looking directly at the camera - but worse than that, it's the first photo that has truly shown me what I look like. When caught in an unguarded moment, I look like THAT, and I didn't like what I saw. Mum showed it to me to prove how far I'd come and how different I look now. I'll say - still can't even believe it's me! I can't believe my CHIN was that bad (or a "separate entity" as Louise called it!) or how big my arms were. No wonder I always wear long-sleeved tops.

I feel sick everytime I see that photo, and am determined soon to do an underwear-shot of me "before and after," as it were. Obviously I should have done this right at the beginning of my Slimming journey, but at least I can start somewhere, I guess.

TWO being the mathematical side of Slimming World. Now, I'm the first to admit, I don't remotely have a maths brain. I had to re-take my GCSE 3 times just to get a C-grade - and I'm more interested in arts and writing anyway. But when I took the time to look at the maths side of things, slimming-wise...... it REALLY made my ears prick up.
Discovered this the other day, when frantically trying to convert stones and pounds into kilograms for the cross-trainer at the gym, when it asks what weight you are. Found an absolutely BRILLIANT page called FatFranks which basically gives you all the metric knowledge you need for losing weight.

THEN I also found a brilliant App called the "Pound Loss Calculator" (look for the black percentage sign in the red box, if you're thinking about downloading it) which calculates exactly how much of your body weight you've lost (an excellent one if you're approaching your Club 10!)
So without further ado, here are my Mathematical Slimming Facts so far:

STARTING WEIGHT: 17st 5lbs
STARTING WEIGHT IN KGS: 110.2kgs
STARTING WEIGHT IN LBS: 243lbs
STARTING BMI: 35.9

CURRENT WEIGHT: 16st 1lb
CURRENT WEIGHT IN KGS: 102.1kgs
CURRENT WEIGHT IN LBS: 225lbs
CURRENT BMI: 33.2

WEIGHT LOST: 1st 4lbs
KILOGRAMS LOST: 8.1kg
POUNDS LOST: 18lbs
PERCENTAGE OF BODY WEIGHT LOST: 7.4%
BMI DECREASE: 2.7

So the bad news is, even afrer losing a stone and 4 pounds, I'm still classed as Obese.
The good news? Well frankly, there doesn't seem to be any.

OK, so I'm not in as much dire straits as I was. I've got to at least be healthier than I was before, however marginally. But this is a blow, I won't lie. I've never really looked into BMI before, and my god, am I starting to regret it. Even with the weight I've lost, and the sense of achievement that comes with it, I feel like I've finally - FINALLY conquered Everest..... only to look over the top and see Kilimanjaro lurking behind it. OK, so that may be a little dramatic (not to mention geographically incorrect) but that's how it feels. It took me nigh-on a YEAR to simply lose 1 stone, and after all that effort, I've still got a Lord of the Rings-esque journey to make. A quick check on the NHS BMI App reveals that a girl my age and height has to be 14st 7lbs before she can even TOUCH the Overweight-Obese line. So even after I've dropped a whopping 3 STONE and weigh the least I have in years, I will still be NHS-classable as Overweight.

F**K.

xxxxxx