I wrote recently about sustainable weight loss, I commented that through removing some really poor diet choices like Coke and moving every day that it had helped me lose 15kg and go from 108kg down to a low of 93kg.

I try to exercise most days of the week by going for a run or ride for 45-60min and on the weekend I’ll do something longer that is normally 2 hours plus. I’m pretty consistent with it, Strava tells me that I averaged 25-35 hours of aerobic exercise per month last year. To lose additional weight, the answer can’t be to add more exercise – I need to adjust my diet.

The recommended intake for an average adult is 2000cal/8000Kj per day.

As I mentioned in the post linked above, my diet is far from ideal and I could definitely clean it up by removing/reducing additional unneeded sugary foods:

• Hot Chocolate – While I’m not drinking coffee at work, I am drinking hot chocolate. I did some quick searches in Google and they contain ~200-250cal. Most days I have one, some days I’ll have two.
• Ice Cream – Most nights after dinner I’ll have a small bowl of ice cream. I weighed it last week and while it isn’t a lot by volume/weight, it is rich and comes in at 150-175cal. The timing on this is also not great, your metabolism slows down in the afternoon, so taking in unnecessary food at night isn’t ideal.
• Cake – I discovered something called a Pound Cake, it is a vanilla sponge type cake. When I’m working from home, I’ll usually have a piece of that at morning tea.
• Lollies / Chocolate – I often have a variety of different lollies or chocolate in the house. Not an every day item, but it is frequent and could be reduced.

My goal is to reduce or remove items like those above from my diet over the next month. I’ll make a point of weighing myself at least once a week to see if it is having an impact or not. As of this morning, I am 97kg and ultimately I want to be under 90kg. I don’t expect to lose 7kg in a month, but I’d be happy if these small changes re-starts my weight loss trend as I look to find a new sustainable normal.

Stay tuned.