No sleep 'til Christmas

This is it, no more distractions until Christmas, or the Christmas party at least. That's about 5 weeks of very strict dieting. I won't be having the occasional night off that turns into the week off or having a dessert that doesn't fit into my daily calorie allowance, from now on there's no let up.

My recent surges of enthusiasm have yielded quick results, but they've soon petered out and the gains are lost or at least reduced. Obviously this is better than putting on weight, but it's not what I want. It's been quite embarrassing writing a column such as the one I did a few weeks ago about how I've got this new found enthusiasm only to have lost it by the time people read the column and talk to me about it. I sound like David Cameron; what I say sounds good and positive but the words are pretty empty.

My latest strategy is to set dates to aim for; the office Christmas party is 19th December. The party usually consists of eating and drinking as much as possible being as the boss is paying, so I think this is a good date to aim for. I'll go back to logging all my food online; when I first stopped being strict about doing this I started to become more careless with what I ate.

I know you've heard it all before but so far this week has gone really well. I've kept well below my daily calorie limit and I've got back on the the cross trainer at the gym, even beating my record distance of 4km in 17 minutes. I'm going to set the target high, I want to lose another stone by the Christmas party; it's a tall order but I'm taller.

Bang goes the diet

I love autumn, the scarlet and golden leaves scattered beneath the clear blue sky with the bite of the fresh cold air. I look forward to the seasonal parties around this time of year; in the last couple of weeks we've had a Halloween party and this week we went to a couple of bonfire parties.

We tend to go to see fireworks round other people's houses rather than organised ones. It's a good way of getting together with friends and family but best of all there's normally loads of food and it's free. Christmas is the excuse used by the supposedly tee-total to have a tipple; for me, bonfire night is the excuse for dieters to become salad-dodgers again for the night.

Anything goes tonight, except tinned hot-dogs. Dieting means that I read the labels and I have found out what they're made of, go on, have a guess. The answer is chicken, but not chicken as we know it, mechanically-recovered chicken, don't look it up if you're squeamish; it's meat residue blasted off the carcass. The burgers, sausages, pizza, soup, curry, chilli etc were all fair game and I would have my share as well as someone else's.

I'm well aware that a couple of episodes of bonfire-night binge-eating can have lasting affects on diets. They should perhaps put up posters warning of the dangers of this next to the ones illustrating the dangers of fireworks with a picture of a scarred child. It could have a picture of a sad looking fat man holding a burger and a sparkler pointing at the stretch marks on his belly.

I made sure that I visited the gym and cut down on my other meals to mitigate the damage but I'm still not going to weigh myself this week.

Karate man

I've got the eating side of the diet back on track but it's now the exercise bit I need to get in order. A trip to the gym used to consist of 45 minutes of cardiovascular exercise and 20 minutes on the weights. It is now 5 minutes on the rowing machines, 20 minutes of weights and then 20 minutes punching punch bags. It's not too bad but not enough to improve my fitness, plus I'm going once a week currently as oppose to 3 times previously.

I'm still keeping the karate up though. This week I had my first grading session and my lack of fitness showed through. I had to do 20+ kicks in a row, each one had to be right, my technique started to wain the more out of breath that I got. I did pass in the end thankfully but the new belt only just gets around my waist. I walked out with it thinking no one will mess with me now, although this was due to all the sweat pouring off me.

I have another belt that needs replacing also. It seems that although over the previous few weeks I wasn't losing any weight, my waist has got a little smaller. My jeans belt is a little too big for me so my jeans keep falling down; if you see me in the back of a police car this week, you'll know why. I think this is down to me gaining more muscle as I lose the fat. 2 hours of karate a week plus practice is really changing my physique, I stand upright, I'm a lot more flexible, my balance has improved 100% and I have really noticed my muscle building-up; it's still wrapped up in fat like a fleshy Christmas present though. It would be nice to have it unwrapped for Christmas, unlikely but I'll do my best.