I'm Really Losing Weight Now

This week I finally hit double-digits.
99 kgs.
I'm really losing weight!

I've lost about 10 kg in 13 months. That's 22 lbs, or one and a half stone. No liposuction or hellish diets.

At the start of 2012, my doctor told me I was dangerously overweight (by Japanese standards) and my blood pressure was almost high enough to require medication. He said I needed to lose weight at once.

I joined a health club at my wife's urging and worked out about twice a week. Weights, exercise bike, stretching and swimming. I eventually stopped swimming because it was too boring. I like to study, read or listen to music & podcasts while I exercise to pass the time, and you can't do that swimming.

For the first six months or so, I didn't see much progress. I'd drop about a half kilo every six weeks or so. It seemed pretty hopeless for the longest time. A voice in my head kept telling me to give it up as a waste of time. It seems like it took about six months of concerted exercise and diet to convince my body that I was serious about losing weight. Once my body got the message, it started dropping about a kilo a month.

Additional factors:

• I upped my aerobic exercise from 30 minutes twice a week on the exercise bike to one hour, three+ times a week on the elliptical machine, and with more weight training.
• I reduced evening meals to near-snack-sized portions; mostly soups and salads.
• I eat smaller portions overall.
• I cut out evening deserts.
• I phased alcohol from two drinks a night to roughly two drinks a week.
• I stopped smoking.
• I drink several liters of water every day.
• I cut out sodas.

Alot of these, like soda, desert and alcohol, I never would have considered relinquishing before. But reducing was easy. The more I reduced them, the more I reduced them. It wasn't hard, and I still indulge here and there. It's not like alcoholism, where you mustn't ever partake. I may even have a cigarette one of these days. I'm not being a nazi about it (sorry, is that offensive to Nazis?).

At first, I was making an effort to achieve progress. Now my progress is driving the effort.

Since the beginning, I'd been planning to celebrate this milestone with a big feast. But now I don't want to. I just want to keep going until I hit my target weight of 85.