July was a good month regarding the food tracking, after doing the sums it seems that I’ve hit roughly an 83% adherence to the prescribed plan.
For me that’s pretty good. If I could manage that level of adherence for the next six months I would consider that a success.
Unfortunately I don’t have any particularly good metrics to objectively quantify the success of the journey so far to improve my body composition, really due to a combination of apathy and a slow acceptance that our cheap analogue scales are as useful as a chocolate teapot for providing meaningful data.
I’ve known for some time that weight is a poor measure of body composition change due to an over simplification of a complex mixture of variables. Despite knowing better, the inherent laziness in me still yearns for the low friction approach of standing on something to get all the information I need.
Consequently I still find myself squinting at the swaying needle in the early morning, somehow expecting a startling reward for heroically declining a portion of chips the day before.
It seems the conditioned culture of weight loss has some stubbornly entrenched behaviours.
Getting out the tape measure and the skin callipers is cheap and effective but difficult to execute accurately on yourself; alternatively the approach of taking photographs can suffer from the subjective expectations of progress, with the often anguished quote…
“I don’t look any bloody different!”
anyone who’s ever tried to ‘look better’
The journey of body composition change is a wiggly line on a graph, hopefully with an average trend pointing in the right direction, it’s also progressively slow and subtle, a bit like watching the hour hand on a clock.
Without the supporting measurable data, it’s easy to feel disillusioned and lose motivation.
I’m thinking it’s time I invested in some more sophisticated body composition scales!
Fortunately I do have some supporting evidence that the whole endeavour is worthwhile. Photographs of my back do show a slow retreat of the glacial like ripples on my flanks. My activity levels have progressively increased with notable improvements in performance times to walk up our local hill, starting to swim more frequently, taking up jiu jitsu and improving at tennis.
Increases in activity tend to perpetuate enthusiasm for other activities and without any conscious thinking the week progressively fills with opportunities to move more, sweat a little and push your body into action
Additionally the repetition of observing dietary intakes soon evolves to established routine and habit, so that it begins to feel more automatic and requires less purposeful intention.
As an enthusiast of food and eating, the crux I’m realising is my internal battle between vanity and gluttony.
Would I like a six pack more than that pastry….?
Probably not and actually, so long as my health is good, I’m ok with that.
Or at least I would be……
You see this month I now have a more pressing consideration, or maybe I would rephrase that as, a problem. My cousin is getting married in a few weeks and I have a suit to get into.
It’s an expensive suit, really nice but also the only one I own.
It’s also very tight, or at least the trousers are. It seems my upper body proportions aren’t yet Schwarzenegger, but my legs, waist and backside are a tad more Konishiki Yasokichi. I’m ok if I stand very still but I walk a bit like an 80s robot and sitting down is out of the question.
The trousers are currently with a seamstress but as she looked at me over her half moon spectacles, I felt like she wanted to keep my expectations low.
It appears that I may struggle to buy my way out of this one and a juice diet could be on the horizon for the latter part of August.
