The First Rule of Diet Club…..
…. is to lose weight, obviously. I am however at liberty to talk about diet club. In fact we, the exclusive members of diet club, are encouraged to shout about Diet Club as mush as possible as a means of encouraging the weight loss. “Look at me everybody, I’m a fat bastard! Yes, I know that’s pretty obvious, but I’m just saying I recognise this fact. I’m trying to lose weight! So please do not feed me lard.”
A few posts back I mentioned a blog as motivation, which is the reason for me talking about Diet Club here in this post. Also, sharing the experience with other encourages weight loss – thus Diet Club. Diet club is a group of four friends each with a small to large weight problem that we’d like to tackle. We aim to lose a collective 17 stone (14 pounds in a stone, non-british, non-commonwealth readers). We’ve also made things interesting by placing a small wager on the loss. Each week we put £5 into the Diet Club Kitty. The person who loses the most at the end of the month gets the Kitty contents. So the winner will get £80. My initial idea was to convert these to Evans tokens, but not all of us are as keen on squandering cash on bikes and bike related paraphernalia as for example, I am. So it’s going to be cold hard cash. This will be further encouragement, and serves as a reward to if we are to win the competition. If there is a loss, but we do not win the competition, then we must treat ourselves in another way.
There are four members of Diet Club: Emma (that’s me, hello), Dave, Gyp (aka Lesley) and Michael. We’re measuring our weight and waist/hips/chest also as a means of keeping us encouraged should we fail to lose weight, we will have the measurements to look at. So here’s hoping that we’ll have reduced in the measurements or else the plan may fail miserably.
I am not fully at ease with making my weight public knowledge, but I will mention my BMI. My BMI is scary. I’m surprised I’m still alive. I win, hands down in all apart from one measurement. I do not have the largest waist measurement. Oh, I’m also not as heavy as an overweight 6ft4 man. Go me. It’s time to change stuff before Mr Death rings the doorbell with his friends Mr Heart Disease, Mrs Diabetes and the Cancer Kid. I’m going to write my goals a main page.
Diet Club Goals
| Name | Starting Weight | Starting BMI | Weekly Goal | Monthly Goal | Total Goal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Emma | Not telling | 37 | 2lbs | 7lbs | 7st 5lbs |
| Lesley | Not telling | Not telling | 1lbs | 5lbs | 3st |
| Dave | 17st7lbs | 30 | 2lbs | 6lbs | 3st |
| Michael | Not telling | 31 | 2lbs | 6lbs | 3st |
| Grace | 12st 7lbs | 27 | 2lbs | 6lbs | 3st |
Taken from :59 seconds, by Richard Wiseman, page 102. Here are some things to write down to encourage you to reach your goal:
1. What is your goal?
2.Potential Benefits and Setbacks
a. Write down one word that reflects an important way in which your life would be better if you achieved your goal.
b. Write down one word that reflects a significant barrier standing in the way of you achieving your goal
c. Write down one word that reflects another important way in which your life would be better if you achived your goal
d. Write down one word that reflects another significant barrier that stands in the way of you achieving your goal.
3. Elaboration
On a separate document elaborate on your answers to the above.
- Elaborate your answer to question a Imagine all the benefits that would flow from this achievement.
- Elaborate your answer to question b Imagine how the obstacle hinders achievement and the steps you would take to deal with it.
- Elaborate your answer to question c Imagine all the benefits that would flow from this achievement.
- Elaborate your answer to question d Imagine how the obstacle hinders achievement and the steps you would take to deal with it.
Also read pages 106-110 of :59 Seconds about diets and losing weight. Also, read Quirkology by Wiseman. It’s excellent.
Edit
Grace has now joined the Diet Club. She asked how she’d know that we weren’t cheating. I guess it’s because we four are all monitoring each other and we don’t live far from each other. The idea is that we’ll meet up on Saturday, but if not we can always get wife/husband to make sure we don’t cheat.
Grace isn’t joining in with the betting bit.
If anyone else wants to join in with Diet Club simply supply your Starting weight, target weight, weekly and monthly targets. Weigh in day is Saturday. The betting part of the club might get a bit difficult, not sure about that. But the weigh in might help if you want to join in the fun.
I have no shame admitting that my starting weight is 17 stone 7lbs. BMI is about 31 which means I’m overweight according to those evil charts and due a stroke any minute now.
Dave
A. Energy
B. Booze
C. Healthy
D. T’internet
Gyp
A. Clothes
B. Job
C. Happiness
D. Husband
Off for a sausage, bacon and egg butty.
Sausage bacon and egg butty. Mmmmmmmmm. Hold on a minute, how does that fit in with Diet Club?
Have you seen how many calories you can consume in a day from the charts I sent? You lucky bastard. Even at sedentary you get 2738 calories. So even with your broken leg, you can lose weight if you lay off the vono and cut back on the food. Poor Gyp only gets 1453 and I get 1962. Both those numbers only if we are moderately exercise and if she is 5ft5.
Also, I’ve 6 more BMI points than you, so in your face!
My BMI is 27. I disgust myself. My ‘fat pants’ no longer fit.
How do you make sure none of you are cheating?
That’s only 10 BMI points less than me. Try harder. Eat more lard!
NHS website with fitness tips from Olympians for me. Also did BMI test and an now 31.4 and obese!
http://www.nhs.uk/LiveWell/Fitness/Pages/Fitnesshome.aspx
Am liking the ‘lose your spare type’ video too.
Gracious
a. Confidence
b. Greedy
c. Freedom
d. lazy
You know you can easily work out your weight from the BMI you’ve given
Aha, but first they would need to know that I am 6ft4. Doh! I’ve said it now. If people really want to know how much I weigh by doing the sums I must be more interesting than I imagined.
Also knowing I’d like to lose 7st5lbs gives some indication of the hill I have to climb, but Gaz has managed a lot more than that, so it is doable.
I’m a big fat blobby bastard. I’m hoping I can find the will power to make it happen.
Highly inspirational. I wish I could loose some weight.
I think am going to have to cut out bacon sandwiches.
I imagine getting that fixie up hills keeps you in trim. Do you really need to lose weight?
I seem to be going the wrong way and putting weight on, so first thing is to stop that, then in spring will try and lose the stone I have put on. For me I need the weight in the winter to keep warm as I ride so much!
I’ve seen pictures of you Trio and you don’t need to worry! One day… one day I’ll be fit enough to carry a cyclo-cross bike up some steps. And less of a wuss for the downhill too.
I’m 102kg and only 5’10″ so I think I need to loose a lot of weight
Trio: Yours is all muscle, you’re not fat.
My motivation words:
A. Health
B. Focus
C. Appearance
D. Organisation
Goal Review
A. Confidence
B. Booze
C. Healthy
D. T’internet
Happen I should have replied to self in earlier post but…
One night no wine. Gagging for a pint of Gin.
Well done Dave. I bet you drop a load of weight this Saturday.
This is a good site http://dailyburn.com You can join and use for free.
Today I did 1400 cals and burned 1000 doing spinning. I should be like a stick by Saturday. I’ve also joined the gym, but I have to go through their retardy induction sessions. I was a member there for ages before and it hasn’t even changed slightly. It’s a bit of a shit gym, but it’s better than nowt and will be good for when I can’t go on bike/spin.
I’m thinking of setting up a separate site for Diet Club at eatlessmovemore.net
I’ve put a wp install there, just waiting for the domain to resolve properly.
I might have to join that.
I am going to HAVE to start running again. I just don’t seem to burn any calories cycling anymore.
I think I just lost another four pounds just sitting on my arse.
Go Emma! Best of luck with it all. I’m slowly coming round to the fact I need to lose weight (currently 14st11, BMI 31.5).
Have a look at WeightBot for the iPhone, looks a great little app. Also why you use iBlog not WordPress for iPhone?
You don’t seem overweight Rafe! You do loads of exercise. I’m not so sure how useful the BMI number is.
I’ll check those apps out, I haven’t tried wordpress for Iphone.
Strangely Gaz said the same thing. But the fact is that I am overweight. Have started to change what I consume – if there was a record for the amount of food in an office ours would win no question, there’s always sweets, cakes, cookies, biscuits and full-of-fat savoury nibbles like cocktail sausages (how do they pack so much fat and calories into something so small) and only 12-15 people!. So stopped having any of the office junk as well as cutting back on other junk. Also going to up the exercise things because I don’t actually do loads of exercise and the amount of hard manual labour has diminished as the house renovation is nearing completion. But thanks for the vote of confidence!
I don’t know where I want to be in the weight stakes, but 2 stone would be a minimum to lose. After that I’ll see how I look/feel, though that’ll still give me a BMI of overweight I don’t care because a BMI of “normal” will have me around the weight I was when I was very ill (through stress and lack of sleep caused by w*nker housesharers) and I don’t want to be like that ever again.
Have been playing with WeightBot a bit more – it’s very cool. If you try it, flip the iPhone onto it’s side both ways as it does different things when you do. It’s got graphs, progress bar, stats etc. all in a dead gorgeous interface.