Fell off the wagon again

And stopped posting here. Oops. Anyhow, I'm now fully divorced, I've got a new house in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, a part-time job in Oxford and I've just got back from an excellent holiday in Florida. The scales have been out of commission for several months due to a flat battery, so I had no idea what I was weighing over those months.

Anyhow, whilst on holiday, I spent a great deal of it in little clothing, which made me feel a little exposed and uncomfortable with my tubbiness. Added to that, I developed a pain in my left knee (I think I might have hyperextended it, but that's conjecture). And constantly trotting round the theme parks and up steps to ride the water parks continuously aggravated it. And I was very aware to myself that my weight really wasn't assisting in it.

We got back on Monday and I needed to do the food shopping. I'm now ordering online from Ocado - it's quite a good way to not be tempted by things whilst wandering around the supermarket.  I ordered a lot of fruit and vegetables and virtually no snacks at all.  Tuesday's meals were therefore a low-fat Muller yogurt, an apple and a pear for breakfast, crackerbread and low fat cream cheese plus a banana for lunch and then low fat houmous with celery, carrot and sugarsnap peas to dip.  I did have three praline chocolates that had been bought on the plane home, but a little treat every now and then has to be part of the eating plan.

Today, I only worked half day, finishing at noon.  And I actually put my kit in the car and stopped at the gym on the way home.  Bearing in mind the gammy knee, I didn't do any weight training, but I did get in the pool and swim >50 lengths.  Well, I swam 44 lengths before getting overwhelmed by curiosity at the length of the pool, to know how far I needed to swim to accomplish 1km.  So one length, I spent walking the pool, counting the tiles at the side of it.  Based on that estimate, I think the pool is around 20 meters long.  So I did another 7 lengths to get me over the 1km and back to the right end of the pool to pick up my towel before heading to the jacuzzi.  

Upon leaving the gym, I dropped into Argos and bought a new heart monitor and a set of body analyser scales.  These are very nifty indeed, as they don't just measure weight, you programme them with your age, sex, activity level and height, and then they measure hydration levels and fat percentages as well.  Not only do they measure all these things, but the scales have a memory to store the details, which you can download to a USB stick and then upload to any computer (this laptop in my case!).  So, I duly brought them home, unpacked them, read the instructions, downloaded the software from the internet and then got onto them.  The information was not entirely welcome, although not entirely unexpected.

• Weight 87.5kg
• Body Mass Index 31
• Fat Percentage 37%
• Hydration level 46%
• Basal Metabolic Rate 1, 583.

I intend to measure these parameters once per week - the software will graph my progress for me.  The sheer techiness of the scales seduced my partner onto them too, the first time I've been able to get him to weigh himself - 97.7kg for him.  So we're both in the obese level for fat percentages and BMI.  Bugger.

Food has been another yogurt and a banana, then an evening meal of boiled rice, with a sauce made up of lean minced beef, onion, mushrooms, garlic powder, italian mixed herbs, beef oxo cubes and passata.  I made up enough that I have another two similar meals in plastic boxes for microwaving in future, plus one serving of rice to do a cold rice dish.  I provided my partner with a meal that was twice the size of mine - his breakfast was a chocolate chip Tracker bar and his lunch was 7 Ritz crackers, topped with cheddar and Branston pickle, so he's not exactly joining me in the overall healthy eating!  Additionally, there are plenty of biscuits and crisps still in the house.

My uncle died back in April and as a result I inherited a new breadmaker and have barely bought store bread since.  I should make another loaf this evening - we've not had bread since getting back.  The only problem is that hot bread and butter are hugely enjoyable snacks!