Whoosh!! 99kg!!! A major milestone!

I finally did it! After my recent three week plateau I have now broken through to 15 st 8.7 lbs (218.7 lbs / 99.2 kg).

In one fell swoop, I’ve smashed through the 220 lbs milestone AND that elusive but much more psychologically powerful 100 kg barrier!

I’m now into double figures metrically speaking! That feels fantastic!

This takes my weight loss since December to 2 st 11.2 lbs (39.2 lb/17.8 kg) and my total loss since diagnosis to 3 st 4.8 lbs (46.8 lb/21.2k g). I’ve now lost 17.63% of my original body weight at diagnosis, steadily approaching 20%! 20%!!! That will be 1/5 of my starting body weight!!! 😝

As you can see from my ticker above this means I’m now at over 55% of my weight loss target with just 38.7 lbs / 17.6kg left to go!

Confession time! Diet blips ahead!

I had a bit of a “diet blip” over last weekend. I went up to Newcastle to see my partner and she served up wholewheat pasta with bolognese on Saturday. I hate to put her out and make her cook separtely for me so I mostly ate around the pasta, but ate a little bit.

But then on Sunday we went out to the Everyman cinema. It’s something we used to do quite regularly, and a real treat was their Spielburger menu, where they serve really nice burgers, with sweet potato fries, right to your comfy sofa in front of the screen!

Given my recent successes, I decided to allow myself a minor lapse and enjoyed it immensely, although I could literally feel my blood sugar rising! It felt quite uncomfortable by the end. So it’s certainly not something I want to do very often, and I’m glad I felt some real discomfort as a reminder.

This was my third time seeing the (now not-so) new Ryan Gosling sci-fi movie Project Hail Mary, which has entered my top 15 favourite movies of all time – quite a feat given how much of a movie aficionado I am. It’s actually jumped above even Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar! I cannot recommend it highly enough. Unlike Interstellar, it’s a much less dark, more fun movie.

Anyway, following my lapse, when I came home from Newcastle, I decided to extend my usual 36 hr fast to a 46hr fast, skipping breakfast on Tuesday and not eating until the evening. That was my longest fast in the last three or four years. I expect to integrate a few more longer fasts over the coming weeks, since I’m now officially “unemployed”.

While I have been quite comfortable working during my 36hr fasts, I know that longer fasts can impact my energy levels/concentration so it’s a good time to stretch myself.

When you start to see plateaus, as I have recently, breaking up your schedule can be a good idea. For me, that means trying different fasting schedules. So I will push for a 48hr fast, and then the next step after that is a 56-58hr fast, basically fasting for two solid days, for example, from Tuesday night’s last meal, fasting all day Wednesday and Thursday, then breaking fast Friday morning. I may give that a go this week!

The rest of the week I was back to my strict keto diet and two more regular 36-hour fasts. It’s a testament to how well I’ve been doing that, despite pasta and burgers, I still lost a total of 2.5lbs (1.13kg) this week!

Of course, I do need to watch the temptation to fall back into old patterns. An occasional treat is fine; if it becomes a regular thing, it will only set me back. It’s not only about my weight; the most important thing is the need to keep my blood sugar under control.

My blood pressure has been fairly consistent this week, a little on the higher end of where I’d like it to be, but still within acceptable parameters.

This coming week, on Tuesday, I have my official GP diabetic checkup, which will include a new HbA1c, which I’m really excited for.

I’m anticipating that my trajectory for lowering my blood sugar to have continued since my last test at the end of March, and therefore expect to see a new HbA1c somewhere around 34–38 mmol/mol.

Of course, given my recent Chinese food, pasta and Everyman Spielburger “treats” I should anticipate a slightly slower trajectory – as the HbA1c is more sensitive to your recent blood sugar, and these lapses were all in the last month – but one or two meals in a sea of strict keto habits and 108-120 hrs of fasting each week is still just a drop in the ocean.

I am ultimately targeting a completely normal, healthy, non-diabetic HbA1c, which would be in the 23–27 mmol/mol range, so I still have a little way to go.

It’s worth noting that it is entirely normal for the trajectory/curve of metabolic transformation to slow and flatten out as you approach the “optimal” level, since the body has mechanisms in place to prevent your blood sugar from getting too low. That being said I still think it’s not unrealistic to anticipate getting to that target around the same time I hit my weight loss goal of 180lbs, which is mid to late September.

And I also anticipate along the way being able to drop my blood pressure medication entirely.

So that will be a complete metabolic transformation within 9-10 months – less than a year! I also intend to build my fitness up significantly by then, enough to break my previous personal best for a 5km run.

This will make me the fittest I’ve ever been in my life, as well as probably the healthiest, and certainly the lightest I will have been since I was around 21-22 years old – 35 years ago!

2026 is definitely going to be a truly memorable year! 😊