It’s day 29 of Lent and I have 17 days to High Saturday, when I will break my fast. So how am I doing then I hear you ask?

At the beginning of Lent, I was 85.9kg of which 20.2% (17.1kg) was fat and 75.8% (64.1kg) was muscle. Today I am 79.8kg of which 17.8% (14.2kg) is fat and 78.1% (62.3kg) is muscle. Of course, these fat and muscle figures are estimates. I’d need to go and immerse myself in a water bath to get accurate ones. But essentially, I’ve lost 6.1kg and 2.9kg of fat.

I can feel it. My clothes are loose. At the beginning of Lent, my upper waist was 101cm and my lower waist was 96.50cm. Last Friday, they were 93cm (36.5”) and 91.90cm (36”) respectively. My 36” jeans that have taken a beating are now a bit loose. A First World Problem I guess. Anyway, I will not do anything about this until things have settled down at Easter.

The synopsis is: progress is good from a number’s perspective.

Generally, I feel well. Once I get up and get going, I have energy. I usually eat between 1600 and 1700, but I can go later if need be.

On Sunday, I had a carb blow out: prawn cocktail with bread, steak pudding with mash and trifle. I’ve yellow carded myself because the trifle had sherry in it and I’m not supposed to have alcohol. I felt a bit worn out on Sunday after this. On Monday, I had a personal training session and decided not to have porridge before. Given the suet pastry from the day before, I thought I would be okay. Actually, I was not - the legs workout was very difficult because I didn’t have enough energy. For my upper body workout on Thursday, I will be back on the porridge.

Yesterday I decided that I needed to get up earlier. I have an alarm clock that wakes me up with a light, then a normal alarm. As the light as bright as the combined suns of Orion woke me up at 545 this morning, I wondered if I’d made the right decision. But I got up, did some thinking work, then walked the dogs. Now I’m typing this and in 30 minutes I will start work. Energy is not a problem.

Anyway, 17 days to go. The hardest days will be next week when I’m travelling to Switzerland and France. Monsieur, sans pain ni pommes de terre, s’il vous plait.

I suspect that my weight will drop a bit more and will taper off around 78kg. The lightest I’ve been since I was 35 is 76kg and that was in 2012 when I’d followed the Slow-Carb diet. I managed to maintain that throughout 2013 and 2014. So, I’m hoping to maintain this loss and start to build muscle again.

What could go wrong? Well, not limited to the following but:

  • Get too relaxed about diet
  • Not getting enough exercise
  • Drinking too much

Let’s see.