The Fat Jester

I am the official jester of the medieval town of Conwy in North Wales. The first to be appointed to the position of jester in the town for over 725-years. It's my full-time gig. I don't do anything else. I'm also currently weighing in at 17 stone and 1 pound. For my American friends that's 239 pounds, or 108.4 kilograms for my European cousins. Problem is, at only 5 feet 10 inches I shouldn't be over 17 stone in weight. I should be 12 stone (168 pounds or 76.2 kilograms). What this means is I'm not just a jester, I'm a clinically obese jester. Not big. Not overweight. Not even fat. But obese. This blog will (hopefully) detail my journey from being a "dead before you're 50" 239 pounds to being a healthy "I'm the oldest jester that ever lived" 168 pounds.

[thefatjester-blog]

Weigh-in and first goal achieved

Yeehaw!

I’ve managed to achieve my first goal.

For the first time in over 5-years I am under 15 stone.

Current weight at this morning’s weigh-in is 14 stone 13 pounds, that’s 209 pounds or 94.8 kilograms.

My next goal is to get below 200 pounds and simultaneously take myself from the obese area of the BMI chart and in to the overweight zone. That’s just 9 pounds.

Also, I have 46-days until I hit the 5th September 2017, which is the date I’d like to reach my overall goal weight of 168 pounds. Why 5th September? It marks 3-months of me changing my diet and deciding to do something about my ever increasing waistline. And the good news is that in order ti achieve that I only have to lose 0.9 pounds per day between now and then, which I think is achievable. Tough, but achievable.

And all done with a plant based diet. 

[thefatjester-blog]

Nutritional Yeast

My latest vegan discovery is nutritional yeast. Now this may not be the ground-breaking revelation to you as it was to me, but as a life-long lover of cheese in all its forms I’ve been having a hard time finding decent substitutes. Especially when it comes to finding something I can use on my pasta (I’ve also found an awesome substitute for pasta, but more on that later) instead of Parmesan.

Nutritional yeast is the answer.

I never knew this existed until a few days ago, but I’m sticking it in everything now. It’s amazing.

In the UK, and Wales in particular, alternative foods are still difficult to source. However, I was able to find nutritional yeast (with added B12 no less) in Holland and Barrett. The brand I’ve been using is call Engevita and it adds that funk to food that I used to get by adding cheese.

I should probably say that I like my food to have funk. It’s a texture, smell, taste, party-in-the-mouth thing that I used to get from meat, cheese, fat and salt. It’s what I love about food and something that I’ve missed whilst doing this diet. So I’ve been looking for other stuff that adds funk to food, but will still allow me to eat mostly vegan. I say mostly vegan because I do still have the odd steak, piece of chicken or other meat product now and then because, as I’ve explained in other posts, I’m not turning vegan for any moral reasons it’s purely a health thing for me. Although that said, I am finding that as I go along I’m fancying meat and animal products less and less.

In fact, last Saturday whilst driving the 5-hours from North Wales to my show in Southampton I had a McDonald’s breakfast. It’s the first one I’ve had since doing this and I thought it’d be a treat. The salty, fatty deliciousness that is the double sausage and egg McMuffin was order and consumed with glee. I loved it. Loved it that is until about 30-minutes after eating it when I started to feel really ill. Not just a bit off, but verging on throwing up ill. The only other time I have ever felt like this previously was one time as a student I drank so much that I hallucinated seeing baby hedgehogs in the road and then passed out in the gutter. I don’t know how I got home (thankfully I have some very good friends) but I do remember the 48-hour hangover that followed my alcoholic binge.

This is what eating that double sausage and egg McMuffin had done to me.

I don’t know what it was, but I felt poisoned. I can only assume that 6-weeks of no added salt, sugar or fat has started to make my body reject such things. It was awful, and somewhat of a surprise. But needless to say, this was my last McDonalds.

Anyway, not only has adding nutritional yeast to my food help me to bring the funk I’ve also found mushrooms do too. I’m particularly fond of chestnut mushrooms at the moment. But any mushroom will do the trick. And if you add mushrooms and a little nutritional yeast then BOOM! I’m in heaven.

Oh yea, the pasta. So I’ve been missing pasta too. But the diet says no to pasta, because it’s not a whole plant. Potatoes are fine, but pasta is a no. So I’ve just cut it out, until this week when I found edamame and mung bean fettucini. Ingredients? Edamame and mung beans. That’s it. It comes in dried pasta form and the texture is pretty much the same as regular pasta. The main difference is it actually has some flavour, but I loved it. Because edamame is packed full of soy it also adds funk to the food. It’s delicious and well worth trying if you haven’t done so already.

It is a little pricey at £3.35 a pack. But you’ll get 4 meals out of it and it’s much cheaper than buying a pack of chicken breasts or a steak. A 1/4 pack of the fettucini with a 1/2 tin of tomatoes (add a few herbs and a little chili) and you’ve got a meal for less than £1.50, which really isn’t that bad at all. Plus it’s healthy and really tasty.

So yea. Grab some nutritional yeast, a pack of edamame and mung bean fettucini, and a handful of mushrooms to add some funk to your food. 

[thefatjester-blog]

Weigh-in 14/07/2017

210 pounds / 15 stone / 95.25 kilos

[thefatjester-blog]

Chipotle sweet potato and black bean chili

I absolutely love chipotle.

I didn’t know what it was until recently, but since discovering it I use it as often as I can. For those like me that are unsure what it is, chipotle is an awesome little smoked Jalapeño chili pepper that creates the taste of Mexico and places like New Orleans. It’s truly amazing.

This is currently my favourite recipe and it’s 100% vegan with no added sugar or salt. So not only is it mega tasty its also perfect for weight loss too.

Plus... It’s super easy to make.

You’ll need:

2 tablespoons chipotle paste

1 medium onion, diced

1 green bell pepper, diced

2 stalks of celery, diced

2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced (I cheat and use a couple of teaspoons of easy garlic that I keep in the fridge)

2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

1 tin chopped tomatoes, undrained

1 tin black beans, drained and rinsed

2 teaspoons chili powder

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika

Water, as needed

You’ll also need:

A big saucepan

Hob

Wooden spoon

Chopping board

Knife

In a pan saute the onion, pepper and celery. So that I don’t add any unnecessary fat I use 25ml - 50ml of water.

Add the garlic, chipotle paste, chili powder, cumin and paprika. Stir and cook through for a couple of minutes.

Add the sweet potato and stir so they are coated with the spices and cook through for a couple of minutes.

Then add the tomatoes and enough water to cover the veg. Bring to the boil and then lower the temperature and simmer for 30-minutes covered.

Add the beans and season with freshly ground black pepper and cook uncovered for a further 10-minutes or until the potatoes are lovely and soft.

If you like your chili on the hotter side then do add more of the chili powder to give that extra kick.

Enjoy!

[thefatjester-blog]

Struggle

I’m finding today really difficult. I feel tired and lethargic, with a total lack of any motivation to do anything at all. The fact I’m writing here is a small miracle in it self.

It could be that I’ve just overdone it a bit. It is summer season, which translates to crazy-busy-season for me. I’ve been travelling a lot and my sleep patterns are all over the place.

The problem, however, is that when I get tired I just want to curl up on the sofa with a bucket of fried chicken and binge watch low budget movies (I’m still to put myself through Sharknado).

I have to keep telling myself that its not worth jeopardising hitting my goal of 168lb. by the end of August. But the call of the fried chicken is just so strong right now.

On a positive note I’m down another 1lb. to 214.7lb. This should be enough but...

Here’s hoping. I’ll report back tomorrow with whether I caved in or not.

[thefatjester-blog]

Weigh-in 05-07-2017

216.4lb.

Or: 15 stone 6.4 pounds

Or: 98.16 kilos (to 2 decimal places)

[thefatjester-blog]

Feasting and fasting

Another weekend, another festival.

This time I was on the South coast in a lovely little place called Weymouth for the Chickerell Steam and Vintage Fair. And what an amazing couple of days it was.

We had fantastic crowds, great food and a selection of some of the best West Country cider available. This is all wonderful, but for those on a diet this isn’t so great. Or I should say, for those on a traditional ‘everything in moderation’ type of diet it isn’t so great.

But I don’t do moderation. And the diet I’m on to lose weight isn’t based on moderation. It’s based on the idea of fasting and feasting. And this weekend was a feasting weekend.

I ate like a pig, and it was amazing.

I had fish and chips, pizzas, sausages, bacon, bread, more fish and chips and even more pizzas. I also drank cider. Lots of delicious scrumpy passed my lips and it was amazing.

When I got home at 6pm on Sunday evening I weighed myself and I’d put on 3.7 pounds. Almost 2 pounds per day.

So I immediately started a 24-hour fast. And on weighing myself yesterday (Monday) at 6pm before eating some delicious plants I’d lost 2 pounds. I started another fast after finishing my meal at 7:30pm and so won’t eat again until 7:30pm this evening, but I weighed myself early to see how I was getting on and the remaining 1.7 pounds is already gone. So I’m back to the weight I was before heading out the door on Friday last week.

I’ll continue fasting for 16-20 hours between my plant based meals this week and should be able to get pretty close to 14 stone something. My aim is to hit 14 stone 13 pounds, but we’ll see how that goes.

I’ve got another week at home next week, so I’m hoping to be able to come in somewhere near 14 stone 7 pounds by the end of next week and be on track for hitting 13 stone by the end of this month.

If I manage that then my primary goal of hitting 12 stone by the end of August should be attainable.

[thefatjester-blog]

Vegan ketchup

This recipe for vegan tomato ketchup is nothing short of spectacular. It goes really well with the Best Vegan Burgers I made last week and with anything else that you might want to add a splash of tomato deliciousness to.

What’s even better is this recipe has zero added salt, sugar and fat. So if, like me, you’re attempting to lose a few pounds (in my case 71 pounds) then this is perfect.

You’ll need:

As many fresh tomatoes as you can get your hands on. I used about a kilo. The riper they are the better.

2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar (apple cider vinegar is also really good)

A small onion

1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon of mustard powder

Water

You’ll also need:

Blender or stick blender

A sieve

Chopping board

Sharp knife

Saucepan

Hob

Wooden spoon

This really couldn’t be easier.

Finely chop the onion and cut the tomatoes in to quarters.

Add a 25ml shot of water to the saucepan and bring to a simmer. Add the onion and cook until they start to go translucent and soft. You don’t want them to take on any colour.

Add all the tomatoes and the vinegar. Stir, keeping an eye on them as they warm through. The tomatoes should start to release their juice.

Stir in the garlic powder and the mustard powder. Leave to simmer. Keep stirring and as as the tomatoes soften mash them down a bit to release more juice.

If the pan start to get dry add a little more water. I keep a 25ml shot glass next to the cooker ready to add when needed. You may need to add a couple of shots depending on how juicy your tomatoes are.

I start making this before the main meal and leave it to simmer gently as I prep everything else. If you want your sauce to be a little spicy simply add some chili to the mix. I keep a jar of easy chili in the fridge, but you could use chili powder or fresh chilies if you prefer.

Once the sauce has cooked down you’ll want to leave it to cool and then blend it using a blender or stick blender. If you don’t have a blender you could use a potato masher or even a fork instead. Although a blender is best.

You can then serve the sauce as is if you like a more rustic texture or to further refine the sauce you’ll want to pass it through a sieve.

Total time to make this sauce takes about 45-minutes from start to finish, and most of it is just leaving it to sit on the hob and simmer. Easy.

[thefatjester-blog]

The best vegan burgers

Since starting my weight-loss program I’ve been mostly eating plants. I do have the odd “rare and appropriate days” or, as I prefer to call them, “retro days” where I eat like a pig (to the point of eating a pig) but for the most part I eat vegan.

Actually that’s not true. I eat beyond vegan, because I only eat plants. No processed stuff. No sugar. No salt. Just plants.

Now eating just plants has meant that at the time of writing this I’m down from 17 stone 1 pound to 15 stone 7.2 pounds. That’s pretty good going for a meat loving, sausage eating, doughnut guzzling pig.

The problem with eating just plants is that I get a bit bored with the recipes. Essentially I’m living off of plant stew or stir-fried plants (stir-fried with water instead of oil). So I’ve been looking for alternatives and I stumbled across a recipe by British TV chef Jamie Oliver for The Best Vegan Burgers. But it contains a few things that I’m not eating, so I made a few changes and they really are amazing.

You’ll need:

1 x 400g tin chickpeas

1 x 340g tin sweetcorn

1/2 bunch fresh coriander

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1/2 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1 lemon

You’ll also need:

A food processor or meat grinder.

A grater that will allow you to zest the lemon

In Jamie’s original recipe you also add flour, but I took that out because it’s not a plant (yes I know the spices aren’t plants either but for some reason that’s ok).

Rather than the food processor I used my meat grinder and shoved the drained chickpeas and drained sweetcorn through it. I also threw the fresh coriander, stalks and all, in there as well.

The advantage of using the grinder instead of using a food processor is the texture of the chickpeas and sweetcorn resembles that of minced meat, which is perfect for burger making.

I then added the spices and the zest of the lemon and mixed it all together by hand.

Separate the burger mix in to 4 and flatten them out so they look like burger patties. You want them to be about 2cm thick.

Then pop the burgers in to the fridge for 30-minutes. This helps them firm up.

Next, you’ll want to cook them. Jamie fries his, but since oil is a major no, no right now I opted to grill them. So I put them on a non-stick tray and threw them under a medium heat grill.

You want to use the tray instead of the regular grill rack because you’ll find that you’ll lose some of your burgers through the holes in the rack. There’s no fat to drain away, so you’ll be fine.

Turn the burgers regularly and serve once golden brown.

I served two burgers per person with a lettuce and tomato salad, some grilled yellow peppers and homemade tomato sauce. Alternatively you could slice the lemon and drizzle some of its juice over everything.

[thefatjester-blog]

Working and weight loss

This is something I find particularly difficult.

My job is to entertain people. It’s a very privileged thing to be able to do and it’s even more amazing that I do nothing else in order to pay my rent. I don’t have to have a ‘regular’ job. Entertaining is my only gig.

Because I live in a small town in North Wales in order to make my living I have to travel. Sometimes only an hour or two, but often times I’ll be driving for five or six-hours. I also get the odd job here and there where I get to fly to somewhere hot and exotic. These are serious perks of being a full-time performer.

Perks that is until you become fat and then decide to no longer be fat.

The reason (or one of the reasons) I got as fat as I did was due to fast food eaten whilst living on the road. I’d stop at motorway services and get enticed to eat greasy burgers, fries and other delicious fatty poisons that were working to put me in an early grave.

The other reason (or should I say another reason) that I’m fat is because a lot of my shows happen at outdoor events. I work festivals, steam rallies, country fairs and other amazing outdoor events. I get to spend my time living outside in a field and getting paid for it. I literally live the hippy juggler dream.

But most of the food available at these places are burgers, hot dogs, fries, doughnuts, and other really yummy things that are absolutely fine to eat when you’re at the one or two festivals you might visit through the summer. But when you basically live at a festival for the entire summer, and have a weakness for fried food, you start to pile on the pounds.

To put it another way, I’m fat because I spend my entire summer eating fast food whilst I drive to a gig. Once at the gig I eat more fast food. Then, when I leave that gig to go to the next one I eat even more fast food. And then once at the next gig, yep you guessed it, I eat even more fast food.

My entire summer is basically spent eating grease and fat. When I’m not doing that I’m doing a show. But my show lasts an average of 30-minutes and I do three of those per day. So for 1.5 hours a day I’m working and the rest of the time I’m eating junk. Oh, that is unless I’m drinking beer. There’s also lots of beer drinking at festivals. And again, if you only do one or two festivals throughout the summer drinking to excess isn’t going to cause you too much harm (I should remind you all that I’m a jester and that you really shouldn’t take weight loss advice from me, for all I know drinking any amount of alcohol could be bad), but I’m at an outdoor event surrounded by beer and delicious fatty foods for the majority of the summer season.

So what to do about it?

My first port of call (as readers of my blog will know) is to grab a Huel shake. It’s not ideal and I know there are many who disagree with its use. But I’m pretty certain it’s not going to do any more damage to me than a burger and fries will. And I recon that it’ll do me more good. Maybe not as good as a salad or plate of veg, but certainly more good than something that’s been pulled out of a fryer.

I also try to take stuff with me. I’ve discovered I really like cold potatoes. So I take a box full of those with me where I can. They’re really quite delicious. As are cold sweet potatoes. You can eat them easily on-the-hoof and you don’t look out of place munching them down in the middle of a field.

The final option if neither of the first two are available is to simply not eat.

WHAT?!?!

I can hear some of you out there going nuts. But it’s true. As long as I’ve got plenty of water I can go two or three days without food before it becomes a real issue. Which is long enough to cover most weekend-long events. Eat big before I leave and then fast throughout the event and then eat again once I get home.

In fact, I regularly go 16-hours without food anyway. At the time of writing I’m on about 20-hours since my last meal and I’ve done a couple of shows at my residency plus the usual errands. And no, before you ask, I’m not hungry. Not in the slightest. If my stomach starts to grumble I drink a pint of water. If I feel a little lethargic I’ll drink a black coffee. But as time goes by I’m getting used to it and my coffee intake is going down. I now drink less coffee than I did before I started losing weight, which is great.

So that’s how I’m managing my weight loss program whilst on the road. So far it does seem to be working.

[thefatjester-blog]

Presto!

Earlier this week I mentioned Penn Jillette’s book about his weight loss Presto! How I Made Over 100 Pounds Disappear and Other Magical Tales. It’s a great book. It’s funny, smart and entertaining and well worth a read (or listen if you go with the audio book version).

Below is a video I discovered of Penn talking about the book in interview.

So grab a water or black coffee and consume during your lunch break instead of that 1000-calorie McDonalds meal.

[thefatjester-blog]

Unethical Vegan

This is a phrase I first heard (read) in Penn Jillette’s book Presto!. He gives credit for it to fellow Vegas magician Mac King who eats vegan but does so for purely health reasons rather than for any ethical reasons like animal rights or to save the planet. And I guess this is what I’ve accidentally become over the past three-weeks too.

You see my current weight loss programme was kick-started by super buff juggler Jason Garfield. He recently released an ebook called The NEXT Diet & Excercise Fad. It’s a book and video series that talks about a different type of weight loss programme.

It focuses on fasting, eating whole plants and specific excercises that are designed to help you with your goals. With mine currently being to shed 70.1lb by 31st August.

Jason mentions Presto! in his book, so after I’d finished reading The NEXT Diet & Excercise Fad, I bought that too.

There are a lot of cross-over between the two books and if you’re like me and have failed to lose weight the traditional way you might want to give these two publications a read.

Both books use techniques from Ray Cronise (Penn calls him CrayRay) that do away with what we think of as a healthy diet and introduces a new way of thinking. I should probably read his book too, but currently I’m happy with getting weight loss info from a couple of jugglers.

Ray Cronise at TEDMED 2010

Anyway, both Penn and Jason talk about how their diet (Ray’s diet) is beyond vegan. Vegan food can still include oil, other fats and processed foods. Whereas their (his) diet focuses on whole plants and only whole plants.

So this is what I’ve been (mostly) living on since I decided I was going to lose weight back on the 5th June 2017. I say mostly, and this is where the idea of being an unethical vegan comes in, because both Jason and Penn also talk about having a day off. Jason calls them Retro Days and Penn (Ray) refers to them as Rare and Appropriate Days.

What these basically mean is that if, once a week, you fancy a bacon sandwich you have a bacon sandwich. If you want a doughnut, have a doughnut. You eat what you want. However, you must stick to the plan the other 6-days of the week.

However, if you can forego your retro day (I prefer Jason’s terminology) then you’ll lose weight a lot quicker. In fact this past weekend has been more a retro weekend than a retro day and it shows because I’ve lost just 0.3lb in 4-days instead of at least that per day. So the next few days are going to be spent flushing out and resetting the system.

[thefatjester-blog]

Weigh-in (22/06/2017)

221.4 lb.

15 stone 11.4 pounds.

100.43 kg (to 2 decimal places).

That’s a current total loss of 17.6 lb; or 1 stone 3.6 pounds; or 7.98 kg (to 2 decimal places) since the start of the year and a loss of 15.6 lb; 1 stone 1.6 pounds; or 7.08 kg (to 2 decimal places) since I started the new diet plan on Monday 5th June 2017.

Just 53.4 lb. until I reach my target weight of 168 lb.

Why 168 lb? Because according to my BMI, 168 lb. is when I enter the healthy weight zone.

209 lb. will be when I’m just overweight rather than obese, which is where I still am currently.

[thefatjester-blog]

Not too much damage

Phew!

I was concerned that being away this past weekend would’ve resulted in me gaining weight, but I’ve actually managed a small loss.

According to my all singing, all dancing Withings scale I’m currently 223.5lb. So I’m down by 0.3lb compared to what I was when I weighed myself on Friday morning.

If I’d have focused a little harder then maybe the loss would’ve been a little better. But at least I didn’t go up.

Just another 55.5lb to go.

[thefatjester-blog]

Huelling Station

As readers of the The Fat Jester will know I was gigging away from home this weekend and that I was worried about the temptation of greasy burgers at motorway services.

Well my fears were unfounded thanks to Huel.

I took a bag of Huel, a bottle of water and my trusty shaker with me and when the boredom set in and the cravings for fast food got too much for me to handle with heavy rock music and podcasts I pulled over and mixed myself up a liquid companion.

Using my ‘Huelling station’ instead of McDonalds saved me 1000 calories!

3 scoops of Huel has about 458 calories. My normal travelling companion consists of 2 x quarter pounders with cheese, large fries and a large Oasis, which comes to 1427 calories. That’s nearly 1000 calories more than my Huel!

I’ve literally just worked that out for the first time as I’m typing this so I need to let that sink.

1427 calories.

Wow. No wonder I got really fat.

I do have to admit that I’ve eaten more being away than I would normally. So I’m hoping that when I jump on the scale tomorrow I won’t have done too much damage. But what’s certain is that if I hadn’t been using Huel I’d have undone a lot of work in one car ride.

Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

[thefatjester-blog]

Huel Taste Test

Yesterday I wrote about Huel (Human Fuel) and I was quite excited to try it as part of my weight loss adventure. If you didn’t catch my initial post about Huel check it out here.

Right. So the taste test.

I ordered the sweetened, vanilla version of Huel. They also do an unsweetened version (as well as a gluten free version of both the sweet and unsweetened versions), but as this is my first Huel experience I thought I’d go with a sweeter option first.

I mixed 3 scoops of Huel, which is about 114g, with 500ml of water in the free shaker that they sent out with my order.

I didn’t find mixing it together particularly difficult. However, in a former life I used to work as a bartender and so mixing drinks is something I know a little bit about. For those not used to shaking up a drink you may find it takes a bit of getting used to to create a smooth blend. If you’re struggling then I suggest to take a look at some basic bartender videos on YouTube that teach shaking technique.

One little tip is to make sure you have your thumb over the cap on the inbuilt pourer on the lid. The last thing you want to be doing is wearing you Huel.

The texture of Huel is kind of like a runny porridge, which I actually found to be quite pleasant. I used cold water straight from the tap, but I think chilled water would’ve made it taste even better.

After eating (it that the right word?) Huel my stomach started gurgling a bit. Not in an unpleasant way, just in a “different food has entered me” kind of way. I expect this to go away after I get used to using it more. I may have consumed (that’s a better word) it far too quickly too. If I’d eaten 400+ calories I would’ve taken my time over it. Chewed it. But with Huel being liquid nourishment I necked it in about 2-minutes. Possibly even quicker than that.

The taste of Huel is nice enough. It did leave me with a sleight powdery aftertaste, but again I think this is something I’m going to get used to over time.

You can also get different flavour packs to add new flavours to your Huel. I got one of their trial packs with my order so I can try all the different flavours out. Although this time I went plain.

Until this point I’ve been on a mostly plants only diet and as I type this the sweetness from the Huel is still haunting my pallet. I’m wondering if I should’ve gone for their unsweetened version instead. I think I’ll get a bag included in my next order.

Right. That’s lunch sorted. Now to get ready for the radio show tonight (you can listen to my show live every Friday from 10pm BST using the TuneIn app and searching for Tudno FM).

[thefatjester-blog]

Small victories!

Today has started well.

I woke up (which is always the best start to any day), got out of bed and started my morning ritual. That ritual being to take a pee and then jump on my fancy new Withings scale to see how my weight is doing before drinking some water and making myself a coffee.

Well, today is the first time this year, and possibly the first time in over a year (probably more like two if I’m being honest) that I can officially state that I’m under 16 stone.

I didn’t quite believe the scales so I weighed myself three times in total and each time it came back with the same value for my weight.

I am 15 stone 13.8 pounds.

Yea. Ok. I’m only 0.2 pounds below 16 stone. But my weight has a 15 in it.

A 15!

This is a huge step. At least it is for me. I started this year at 17 stone 1 pound. That’s 239 pounds. I lost a bit over the course of 2-months and then went back up to 16 stone 13 pounds. And now after less than 2-weeks after starting on this journey properly I’m below my previous lowest weight for the year.

I weigh less than 16 stone.

I’m 15.2 pounds lighter than I was at the start of the year. I’m still a long way off my goal of 12 stone (168 pounds) but I’ve also still got plenty of time to get there.

This couldn’t have happened at a better time either. This weekend is the first time I’m going to be working away after taking up the challenge to get healthier. For the first time I will have to face the siren-like call of the motorway services and avoid their burgers of death. Something my willpower has never been able to resist before.

But if I focus on turning that number 15 in to a 14 I should, with any luck, be able to return closer to that next target than I am currently. And, not only will this help me to lose a few pounds in weight hopefully it’ll help me save a few pounds in sterling.