I'm down by 140 pounds.

[Feek]

And it's great!

140 lb is ten stone. That's 63.5 kg.

Here's me in July last year.

Here's me at the start of May this year.

And here's me today in my new suit.

Note - I'm wearing my fancy black sunglasses to preserve my international man-of-mystery image.

I decided a year ago that I'd got to the stage where I blocked out the sun and it was time to do something about it. Twenty plus years of contented marriage can have that effect if you don't watch things and I stopped watching them some time ago.

I can hear you asking how I did this.

The answer is simple. I walk and I count calories. I've not set foot inside a gym.

I walk a lot, currently between eight and ten miles per day at an average speed of around 4.4 mph.

Since July last year I've walked almost exactly 2,500 miles and destroyed a pair of shoes and two pairs of trainers.

My daily calorie allowance is 1,500 plus what I earn from exercise.

I add the calories earned from walking to my daily allowance and as a result, the weight has simply fallen off. I don't eat particularly healthily, it's effectively just good portion control and I think I'm proof that providing you burn more calories that you eat then the weight will come off. Physics, yeah.

I never go to bed hungry!

Here's a plot of how my weight has dropped over the last year.

The yellow line is my trend weight and as you can see, I've only breached it three times. Christmas, New Year and the blip in February is when I had a long weekend away with Mrs. Feek.

The thin green line at the bottom is my final goal weight. I've already reached the initial weight I planned and have just revised it down a fraction further.

So there you have it. I used to be a fat git and now I'm not.

I'm happy

 

[Feek]

I've not kept a single item of old clothing, it's all gone.

But I have kept my two belts. They're like my rites of passage, every new hole is a cause for celebration and they now reach all the way round to the middle of my back!

 

[Feek]

I wouldn't recognise you, Good on ya.

I've had a couple of people that I've know for years simply look through me. I saw a barber who used to cut my hair every six weeks simply look past me as I sat in his shop when he walked in. He knew I was coming to have my hair cut but I'd not seen him for about a year.

Last weekend I was chatting with one friend when another one walked up. I've known Bill for about twenty years but haven't seen him for a couple of years. He just looked through me and said hello to the other guy without realising it was me.

 

[Feek]

I've got some loose skin, that's to be expected with such a loss but it's not so much that it's worrying me.

I've not played Eve for years

Shades were from Photoshop My jeans in the second picture are from Primark though.

Yes, my knees certainly love it, I also have a lot more stamina and energy generally. I normally do a 4-5 mile walk in the morning before work and I'm going at the same speed when I finish as when I start. I really enjoy my daily walking now and if I don't get out, I feel restless.

No chance of me losing too much and becoming underweight. In fact, technically (according to BMI), I'm still overweight

I am very proud of myself, I won't be going back to where I was a year ago

I don't drink much these days, actually I haven't drunk much alcohol for a few years. I'll still be doing the local beer festival in August though and will probably find myself legless after three or four pints. I really don't miss it.

 

[Feek]

Thanks everyone

I've not done this for several years now but goddammit, I'm gonna break out the cake (which I assume you'll decline) and sparklies:

I'll eat the cake, just go for an extra walk at lunchtime to burn it off. That's what I do, if it's a birthday at work (as it was yesterday), I just put in a little extra effort and enjoy myself.

Did you build up your walking amount and speed over a steady period of time as you got fitter or start with close to the same distance but got faster?

It took a month or so to get up to doing five miles a day and my speed has just gradually increased as I've got fitter. When I started, I didn't believe I'd ever reach 4mph but I now cruise along at just under 4.5mph easily and I can maintain that for a long time.

I won't be switching the walking to running. I don't find it comfortable, I don't enjoy it and if I'm not enjoying what I'm doing, I won't carry on with it. It's like the food I eat. If I'd cut out on all the stuff I like such as pizza once a week and fish 'n' chips on a Friday then I'd never have been able to do this.

 

[Feek]

Having met you irl a few times now, even having a posh dinner & all that there is no way I would have recognised you.
I can't praise you enough mate which is why I've come back to give another Well done.
Your Missus & Kids must be well proud of you.

Thanks 4T, that means a lot!

I even had the sexy black shades in those days....

I've mentioned the skin thing already but I'll repeat it. Yes, I have some loose skin but it's not too bad and I'm certainly not worried about it at the moment and I don't have any plans just yet to even consider getting it removed.

 

[Feek]

What did you use to manage your calorie intake?

MyFitnessPal. I also carry a FitBit which counts my steps and feeds my exercise back into the app. I log everything I eat within MFP.

 

[Feek]

Bit of a bump, here's me this afternoon in my Superfake (or Fakeadry) t-shirt and a spanky pair of [get this] 32" waist 501s! I won a competition that got me a £100 voucher at Debenhams so I treated myself to some nice jeans.

I'm at 149lb lost now and still drifting downwards.

 

[Feek]

Why the letterbox?

Note - I'm wearing my fancy black sunglasses to preserve my international man-of-mystery image.

 

[Feek]

How did you ease yourself Into it and what sort of distances were you doing in the first month on a regular basis ? I'm 17 stone and finding 4 miles everyday a struggle ( knee starting to hurt ) but preserving .

It didn't take long to work up to five miles per day, I don't recall exactly how long it took me to get up to that distance but I just did more each day. I found I was restless if I didn't go out for a walk and so I got into the habit very quickly.

Now I'm at my goal, I've reduced what I'm doing but my bare minimum is still five miles per day.

Well, I say I've reached my goal weight, I actually got to it about three weeks ago but in trying to get a maintenance level, I put four pound back on quickly. I've only just got that off so I'm going to try and drop another few pound before I attempt maintenance again just to give me that buffer.

 

[Feek]

Wow that is impressive. Do you notice the weight you've lost? I mean like do you feel lighter in yourself?

I do, yes but it's only in the last couple of months that I've actually come to accept that I'm not fat any more. I see reflections of myself in shop windows and it puts a smile on my face to realise that's me!

 

[Feek]

Will your new-found confidence finally encourage you to ditch that gay font you use in your posts?

I've never lacked confidence so your irrelevant point is irrelevant.

 

[Feek]

So you're no more confident now than you were when you were a fat Feek?

As the many people on here who know me in real life will confirm, I've never lacked confidence so I guess the answer to that is 'no'.

 

[Feek]

Incredible, if true.

Why is it so incredible? Are you suggesting that all fat people don't have any confidence but they'll gain confidence by losing weight? I don't particularly appreciate your insinuation by "if true" that I'm lying. I've already said that people on here who know me in real life will confirm that I've never had a confidence issue.

Ditch the font anyway

No

 

[Feek]

What lengths did you go to to make sure what you were recording was as close as possible to being correct, in particular for things that you had no input in during their making?

I tried to avoid situations where I had no control but on the occasions that it did happen, I estimated but I used common sense. If I had lasagne and searched the MFP database for it, I'd find multiple entries. I picked one that I thought was closest and always went for an over-estimate.

In time, you start to get a more accurate feeling of what's right. For example, when on holiday with some friends last October, we had a home-made curry. I looked at the packets and worked it out exactly. One of my friends who is also using MFP just searched for chicken curry and picked a low figure. I think the calorie count I worked out was around 850 for the rice, sauce and meat but he just logged about 300 calories even though common sense said that it's wrong because to start with, a 100g portion of rice is around 360 calories.

A lot of restaurants (specifically the large chains) have their full menus and nutritional info available online so it's worth a look.

When I'm in control, I weigh everything, easy.

 

[Feek]

Last week was the Maritime Festival in Ipswich and I went to the beer festival on Wednesday lunchtime for an hour, Thursday lunchtime for an hour and Friday lunchtime where I stayed there until about half seven. A combination of beer and extra food (because one always eats more at a beer festival) meant that I put on 7.5lb between Wednesday morning and Saturday morning! I guess it was largely water retention rather than fat.

However, I was back on the wagon on Saturday and by this morning, I've already dropped that 7.5lb plus a little bit more, taking me to this:

 

[Feek]

Yup, I left early evening having had a nice skinfull of beer, a plastic of pork scratchings and a pizza.

 

[Feek]

Another update to this.

According to the slightly flawed BMI, I'm not overweight any more. My weight now falls into the normal category.

It actually hit 25.0 last Friday but I didn't post because the colour in the box didn't change to green until it went under 25! It didn't help that I went out for a curry with work last Friday evening which gave me a temporary blip and it's taken until today for me to drop back under 25. I don't mind these blips because in the long term, they're very minor and easily dealt with.

It's an amazing transformation but life is still about living, it's great to see you're continuing to do both

I am, hence the curry last week. I know such things will give me a small blip but it's really not a problem for me any more. I have a long weekend away at the end of October and I'm fully aware that I'm going to eat and drink plenty but will soon get over it once I return.

Now that my BMI is 'normal', it means I'll start looking into the possibilities of an abdominoplasty to get rid of the excess skin around my tum.

 

[Feek]

11 stone down now, that's 154lb or a fraction under 70kg.

A few weeks ago I tried running. I did the first three weeks of the NHS C25K thing but once I got to week 4, my right knee started playing up badly enough for me to abort the first day, twice. I ended up limping quite badly and so I've stopped that. My knees haven't been good for years and I was rightly concerned. I'm glad I tried though.

 

[Feek]

Have you maintained the steady decrease purely from walking 5 miles a day and being strict with your diet? Was this all in one go, or 5 miles split throughout the day?

It varies, some days I'll do it all in one go, other days I'll split it. I know that's probably not too helpful but I'll go into more detail.
On weekdays, I get to work an hour or so early and go for a walk. I've got a few set routes and I know roughly how long they are. Then at lunchtime, I'll go out again, normally for 45 minutes or so. Sometimes, if I wake up ahead of the alarm then I get to work early and do over five miles before I even go into the office!
At weekends, I normally do it all in one go on a Saturday morning but then perhaps top it up with another couple of miles later in the day. On Sundays, I go with my wife to where she works and then I walk home - The route I do for this is almost exactly five miles. She finishes work at 16:00 and I walk back to meet her from work but I take a more direct route that's three miles or so.

So you can see that it really does vary. Today I did nearly five miles before work and another three miles at lunchtime.

I've talked about what I've done with quite a lot of people and a very common comment is "I don't have time to walk that much". My answer is simple, get up earlier. If you really want to do it, you'll make the time.

I only ask as around 2 years ago I lost around 3 stone purely from huge changes to my diet (1000 cals a day, no processed foods, sugars etc etc) albeit with no exercise (other than what you would normally expect an average human being to do during a working day). I have put back on around 0.5st since then and have fluctuated around the same mark for a while but I want to really shift another 2 stone off but don't want to have to restrict myself as much as I did back then.

Some years ago I tried doing 1000 calories/day and the weight fell off me. However, I felt absolute rubbish and didn't sustain it for very long. I don't think a very low calorie diet is a good or sensible thing.

One thing which I found helped me a lot was having regular portions of protein throughout the day with next to 0 carbs in my meals. An example of what I was eating was - a protein shake mixed with some berries in the morning, then a mid morning morning snack of two boiled eggs and a tomato, some chicken with spinach and salad for lunch, afternoon snack of cottage cheese on a ryvita or similar with an apple and an evening meal of tuna steak with broccoli and carrots. Having those 5 regular bits of protein were instrumental I think in having successful weight loss and helped me stay fuller for longer.

I also tried the very low carb thing. It was great and I lost weight but I got very bored on how restrictive it was.

What does your diet look like day to day if you don't mind me asking, i'm curious if there are things I could be doing better (as i'm sure there are!)?

Well it's getting better! I now normally manage to get three or four of the five-a-day into it but I still eat don't eat especially healthily. My diary is open to friends on MFP so if you use that, let me know your username and I'll add you.

Would you say a Fitbit is a worthwhile investment?

I wouldn't have done this without it, it's as simple as that.