I started the past month on holiday. There were plenty of opportunities for treats, but to compensate, I upped my exercise activity. I walked around 5 miles a day, swimming for anywhere between 30 to 60 minutes, and total daily steps were between 18,000 to 22,000. The plan was to have ice cream and eat out, which would, of course, be more calories, but the aim was to still achieve a deficit.
The plan went wrong!
I’m not sure how it went wrong, as with exercise, I had still calculated a deficit and I carefully tracked all food intake and logged. The shock was that I put on 4lb that week according to the scale. I don’t understand, as while I did eat more, I didn’t go crazy.
However, one week later and the weight corrected (back to pre holiday weight) and showed an additional 1lb loss as well as balancing off the 4lb. Phew!
Mid-month I had to stop walking for four days. I was feeling run down and had a cold/flu thing. Conscious my calorie deficit was less that week as I reduced walking (food intake was about the same), I did not weigh that week. However, I found that walking after the cold was really difficult. It took a number of days to build up to walking three miles daily again. Thankfully I am now back to walking anywhere between 3 to 6 miles at a time again with ease.
One handy benefit of losing weight was packing away and retiring some of my larger clothes mid month. Being able to pull out some smaller sizes that I never thought I would wear again was quite the boost.
In summary, weight loss has slowed down to about 4 lbs in total for the last month, but I still lost weight. I am probably now on a manageable daily calorie amount that I could reasonably stay on without issue. Enough calories to limit intake but still allow treats when making careful choices food-wise.
By 1st of August I had achieved 82% of my planned weight loss and I am now on the last 10lb to hit my mid September target. However, once the target is hit I will continue as no harm in keeping fit and attempting further weight loss.
Walking wise I achieved 96 miles during recorded walks for the month. Then 406 miles in walking exercise for the year to date with many of the miles walked in the last few months.
