Wednesday Weigh-In - 23 January

Well, another week gone and the diet is holding firm. Three weeks of sticking to my strict regime and it is working. When I climbed aboard the bathroom scales this morning I was greeted with this.

4lbs lost in the last week and 13lbs gone in total. In 21 days I'm nearly 1/3 of the way to my target weightloss of 41lbs. According to the BMI scale,  I am now overweight, rather than obese, which is progress.

BMI Scale - I'm at the wrong end of overweight, but it is an improvement

I'm starting to see positive side effects away from the numbers on a Wednesday morning. I've previously written about going down a waist size meaning I'm wearing a smaller pair of trousers. Now I'm noticing that the shirts I wear at work are a little on the loose side, and so I'll be thinking about changing my attire in the coming days.

When I was shaving this morning there were signs that my cheek bones were starting to re-emerge having gone into hibernation in recent months.

The cravings that plagued my days in the early stages of the diet have subsided. I am winning the mental battle on that front, which makes keeping to a routine so much easier.

In the last week I have mixed things up a little at lunchtimes as I see that as the pivotal meal for successful weightloss. Breakfast sets the tone for the day, but lunch is what you need to keep you going through until the evening. Too little and the urge to snack will take over. After two weeks of having the same fairly mundane sandwich, I've replaced the bread with tortilla wraps to add some variety. I'm finding these more enjoyable to eat so will probably stick with them for the timebeing. At the weekend I opted for soup without bread.

Consistency is something I talk about a lot, but I acknowledge that periodic change is important too. Even I would find it difficult to maintain discipline if I served myself exactly the same 3 meals day after day, so little changes here and there are to be welcomed.

Although I am pleased by my early success, I'm not prepared to get carried away. I'll probably sound as cliched as a football manager, but I am taking each day as it comes and not looking too far ahead. I have a target with an undefined finish point and I prefer it that way. Setting a date by when the target must be reached brings unnecessary additional pressure. For now I'm just going to keep what I'm doing on a day-by-day basis and hopefully that will keep bringing positive results on a Wednesday morning.