Milestone

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Today is a milestone for me - it's two years since I decided to change my eating habits for good. For 50 years I had followed 'diets' and, when the diets finished I went right back to eating what I had always eaten, and any weight I had lost soon piled back on, usually with a bit more. But this time it would be different - it was going to be a permanent change of eating habits, which would involve learning a lot about calorific values and changing my cooking techniques and styles.

I started at 148.5kg (23st 5lbs), and in mid-April this year I hit my target weight of 83.5kg (13st 2lbs), having lost 44 percent of my body weight. Then the difficult bit started - maintaining my weight. This would be a test of whether I had really learned new eating habits, or whether I had just been following a diet.

I have been maintaining now for just a quarter of the time I was losing weight, so it's early days. But so far, so good, because I have kept my weight somewhere around 83kg for my four months of maintaining, with the odd wobble. I have blogged a lot about why I think maintaining seems to be working for me, for example because I like the constant focus I have on my weight that daily weighing gives me. But I noticed when I sat down to write this blog that I have just reached another milestone - it is six months since I started my weekly blogs for Nutracheck, and I'm sure that is something else that has been very useful. Every week my focus comes back to my weight in a fairly public way, and that must help to keep me motivated to succeed - I don't think I could stand the embarrassment of having to blog that I had lost my grip!