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Bum.

Caught myself in the mirror last night....and I’ve definitely put on a bit of lard.

Time for!

LESS CAAAAAAAKE, MORE EXERCIIIIIIIIISE!

Gonna aim for a 2/3k walk each day, and go back to not snacking.

I’ve always been a big fella in terms of build, so hopefully just a slight shift in present lifestyle will do the trick!

One of my hobbies i playing in the kitchen. I’ve been binge watching the Great British Baking Show. I don’t have coworkers to foist experiments on. This is not a good combo.

Plus side, I know I can make choux pastry and croissants from scratch. Bad side is I don’t like wasting food, and there is a LOT of butter in those guys. The croissants in particular, which are basically pure butter, with just enough other stuff added to give it a nice flaky texture.

I should try harder to find new fun healthy recipes to experiment with. But most require odd ingredients I don’t have on hand. Flour/butter/sugar I always have.

I've now lost 10.5 kilos since the 1st of March.

For those who want to structure weight loss a bit more scientifically, I strongly recommend this PDF ebook:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z4IsCPzQhCzhhpAItv6QRLxY7X2pb_Qv/view?usp=sharing

Ignore the title as the principles it outlines are the same for any person losing weight.

It will firstly allow you to understand your bodies genuine base needs in terms of calories and macro nutrients, but will also allow you to accurately pre determine weight loss when factoring in exercise and activity.

For the sake of an hours reading and a little bit of calculations, it can make your weight loss journey a hell of a lot easier.

For those going with the 'eat less cake and go for a walk approach' it probably won't work (sorry to say that), losing weight (or fat specifically) should have a consistent method that can be accurately assessed after a week or two. You don't have to measure your food, but you do need to know what your body actually needs so you can work out what should be going into it.

The scientific approach is useful to understand.

My daughter is losing weight much more slowly than me, although she eats less and does more exercise. The differences are that she weighs less, and I am a man and we have higher metabolism.

I calculated I need to eat 66% more food than her to have the same balance of calorie intake. Actually I probably eat 20% more, and drink more booze, and that's why I'm losing weight faster.

Exactly why, though you need to be careful with booze, those calories catch up quick if a person is quite a social drinker...

If she is doing lots of exercise, she may be gaining some weight lost in muscle... Other factors come into play as well, inflammation from DOMS means you can hold onto water and if you are in a constant state of that, you will retain more and more water as muscles grow, meaning you will be heavy but it won't be fat...

General daily activity as well is a factor, you don't just burn calories during exercise as I'm sure you know, but day to day activities you may not consider exercise will burn more calories than someone who sits around on their bum all day.

It's amazing how much my BMR calorie requirement has changed during lockdown whilst I haven't been at work, my step count is roughly the same still but the amount of time I spent on my feet at work (FE lecturer) really makes a difference, around 250cals extra a day on average it seems....

I work standing up all day now.

Whilst there's nothing wrong with that ebook, there's virtually nothing in it dealing with issues around the psychology and mechanics of actually eating, which make a huge difference.

Diet has been an easy one for me, went vegan 3 years ago, best life decision I've ever made.

Loads of fresh vegetables, leafy greens, fruit, nuts, beans, mushrooms and wholegrains make up the bulk of what I eat. I try for the whole foods approach as much as I can (which cuts out processed foods and oils), but that gets made difficult by the amount of delicious vegan junk food that keeps coming out, it's sometimes too tempting but I try to limit it.

I take a multivitamin as well, but that's something everyone should ideally do.

Main benefits I've noticed are my skin clearing up completely and better cardio (my walking speed increased about 20% completely unconsciously, I just noticed that I was arriving early at places).

For anyone interested in nerding out on peer-reviewed scientific studies and analysis I'd definitely recommend https://nutritionfacts.org/ as a good reference, it tends to analyse the methodology used in studies and how reliable/ well supported they are. Always go with the science and not the newspaper headlines which love to portray the whole thing as somehow associated with left-wing politics when it's really not political at all.

In short, plant based diet very good, but not so good if you're still eating loads of vegan pizza, donuts, cheese, burgers etc. instead of blueberries/walnuts/kale. There is some effort required to get the most out of it and with the commercialisation of it there's a lot more vegan junk food out there than 5 years ago, something like vegan ice cream doesn't suddenly become healthy, it's still a giant block of sugar and fat void of nutrition.