Matt Charlton

It’s been a strange couple of days at work.  We’ve had some staff changes and as a result I’ve been given some more responsibility which is great.  It’s made me realise just how much I missed being in charge of something (for want of a better phrase).  I’ve been drawing up processes and thinking about procedures this evening. 

Providing the procedures I put in place are correct and they’re followed through, everything should go smoothly.  If I’m on holiday or off sick for any reason anybody should also be able to pick up where I left off and carry on with it. 

BETT last week was amazing, it was great to meet so many customers and see reactions to Frog 3.0

So, thats enough about work. 

I decided to jump on the scales this morning for a mid-week check up, wish I hadn’t bothered.  I’m 2lb heavier than Saturday’s weigh in.  I know I might lose this weight by the time that Saturday rolls around but it’s made me think more about the exercise and the impact that it has on the way my weight loss will progress. 

Plans to go to the gym this week were foiled by some strange pain in the side of my neck, possibly one of my glands.  The pain seems to carry from my ear down to my shoulder.  Using some of the diclofenac left over from the accident last year seemed to keep it under control today at work.  I’ll monitor the situation and if it’s still an issue next week, I’ll call in at the doctors. 

I’ll probably be the first person in work tomorrow morning, that’ll be strange.  It’ll give me a chance to catch up with some tickets and finalise one or two things with the system I’m putting in place.  Need to double check a few things.

I really need to get the IMDB challenge back on track, I also need to devote some time to the Xbox and 360.  Aaaaaaaaaaand I need to do some spring cleaning. 

There’s just never enough time!

I was talking to a friend at work today who also happens to be doing WeightWatchers.  He said a friend of his who actually goes to the meetings gave him some advice in respect to how you should think about the points.

Basically if you have so many points that you’re “allowed” a day – if you’re feeling satisfied and full, it’s getting late and you still have 5 points left for the day – bank em.  If you don’t use them by the end of the week, thats 5 points you’ve not used.  Great stuff. 

You’ll lose weight steadily on WW if you eat up to your points limit.  Mine is around 1900 calories a day I believe.  Theres some formula about it being 50 calories for each point plus a load of other stuff that it takes into consideration. 

Anyway, the point (heh) is that it works both ways.  In the eating out guide it states that if you go out for a meal, you don’t make sensible choices, you have a rough night and you go over your points limit, chalk it up to experience and start again the next day. 

The progress you make over a month means that it doesn’t matter if you have a burger every once in a while.  It all balances out, if you can plan and make room for the burger, then great.  At the same time, it doesn’t matter so much if you have a moment of weakness. 

As I’ve said before, the minute you make a food forbidden, you’ll want nothing but that food.  That’s the way your mind works. 

Stupid brain. 

So I guess the point of this post is to remind myself that if I don’t use all of my points for the day, no biggie.  At the same time if I really am hungry and I go over my points for that day – it isn’t the end of the world.

I had a brisk walk to Sainsburys and back today – 15 minutes each way.  That gave me 3 bonus points.  Super.  Won’t be using them though.  That’ll take my total saved up this week so far to 8 and that’s if I don’t have any to save at the end of the day.

That’s almost enough for a Big Mac

Just finished off my second bowl of porridge for the day.

Oats So Simple = pure win. Why on earth didn’t I try them before now?

I’ve got 29 points left, considering most main meals are less than 15 points I could find myself requiring something unhealthy to compensate. Damn!

I seem to have developed a headache in the last 20 minutes or so. Typical. I’m on my 4th glass of water for the day too. Which is good. Although too much water can kill you, so be careful.

So here we are, 2009 is upon us – in fact we’re almost through an entire day of 2009.  Which means that there are only 364(ish) sleeps till Christmas, don’t worry – I won’t be counting down properly until December. 

I usually take New Years resolutions with a pinch of salt, I find them to be meaningless and a bit of a fad.  Just the fact that people “can” break them makes them a little pointless.  So instead, I’ve come up with some New Years targets.  Yes, that’ll do for now.  Targets. 

I want to get back on the losing weight wagon, I’ve been off it for some time and the daily trips into Halifax town centre to either Greggs, McDonalds, KFC, Burger King or Sainsburys haven’t done me any good whatsoever.  In fact I’ve put on a lot of weight since I left Hanson – even with the mile and a half brisk walk round trip to town I take every day.  I really want to get back into my old trousers – the ones I’ve had to buy since don’t really fit me at all, they’re far too big, but I’m far too big to fit into my trousers, so that’s that. 

I’m really not in a happy place weight wise at all.  The plan with buying a load of t-shirts from Florida the last time we were there was that some of them didn’t fit me, but I was losing weight so they’d fit me inside a couple of months and give me something to wear.  That didn’t work out as planned and some of the t-shirts that did fit me don’t do so any longer. 

I know I used to use my blog to record food diarys and weight loss updates and things.  I think I’m going to sign up to WW online and use their online tracking system – that’ll let me record my weight and food properly and will also show me snazzy things like a progress chart.  I will of course post updates here, I’m sure at least one or two people will be interested. 

From the look of it, there are no really great deals on Weight Watchers online membership – just a two week trial and then a tenner a month (after they hit you for an initial £40-£50 for your first three months).  Once that’s out of the way, £10 a month isn’t really something I’m going to miss all that much.  We should be good to go – especially seeing as though the mortgage payments are coming down a fiver as of this month (yay for new lower fixed rate deals) and the sofas are paid off in April – thats another £50 a month we didn’t have before. 

Financially we’re not in too bad a place at the moment, jobswise we should both be secure for the foreseeable future – the only concern is the Disney Vacation Club loan which is in USD – with the exchange rate being at it’s lowest in a long, long time I’m paying about £30 a month more than I was when I initially started in May.  Again – it’s not a big deal because we’re okay financially. 

Speaking of Disney, I can now officially say that we’re going back next year!, yay! That’s something to look forward to now

Part of the motivation behind the weight loss is so that I can go on the mummy ride – I couldn’t quite get the test vehicle lap bar down (well I could, but it wouldn’t have been very comfortable for the duration of the ride).  The really cool log flume at IOA was out completely – I couldn’t even get into the sodding log.  I’m not sure just how much weight I can lose in just under 14 months but I’m going to have a good crack at it. 

The experiments with the beard/goatee have now come to an end.  I’m sick to death with people taking the piss and calling it ginger.  You can all fuck off.  I haven’t shaved it off because it’s ginger, I’ve shaved it off because I was subjected to more than enough bullying and piss taking at school for me to be arsed to endure any more of that. 

It’s like the whole PS3/Xbox 360 thing.  People will swear blind that their console is better than yours because that’s what people do.  I’ve got both of them, I know how it is and I can give a balanced opinion about it.  The PS3 is a bag of wank as far as games are concerned.  The Xbox 360 is great for gaming.  The PS3 is great playing Blu Rays.  It might have superior technology powering it but none of it is being used at the moment, with games (fallout 3) looking best on the PC, followed by the 360, followed lastly by the PS3.  Fanboys piss me off.  Unless it’s the film fanboys, thats a great film and worth watching just to see Kristen Bell in a Princess Leia slave outfit.  Awesome.  That’s out soon. 

Also – Yes the iPhone can’t forward texts, nor can it Bluetooth.  Who gives a flying fuck?  Seriously.  It does exactly what I want it to do (apart from being able to forward that text I wanted to last night).  Belittling someone because something they’ve bought isn’t as good as something you have is exactly the same as waving a giant e-penis around.  Nobody gives a shit.  At all. 

So, rant over.  Everybody just play nice with your own toys and don’t rip the piss out of people for no reason.  Or if you are going to rip the piss out of them, do it once, twice maybe, but not persistently all night at three separate family get togethers over the duration of a week.  It gets real old, real fast.

As soon as I stopped this week I came down with something nasty.  I thought it was a cold, it was very flu like – runny nose, achy limbs, didn’t feel like moving around much.  Tuesday, woke up and was much better – in fact all the symptoms had vanished.  Wednesday, I was better still.  Woke up this morning with some fluid on my chest and was very cold.  Spent most of the day feeling dizzy and a little out of it – feel much better now though.  Probably has something to do with having something to eat.  It’s just typical that as soon as I get some time off I get ill. 

Tried some of my humour tonight.  Sue’s mum was looking for the rum, I said “Why is the rum gone?”.  Nobody got it.  I had to retell it to several people before someone picked up on it being a Pirates quote.  Gutted. 

So anyway – targets. 

I’m going to lose weight.  I’m going to join Weight Watchers online and go to the gym in order to help this.  If I can’t go first thing in a morning because Sue is working nights then I’ll go at lunchtime or (god forbid) after work.  I don’t like the gym after work, it fills up with all those people that love themselves.  It’s not too bad in a morning, not sure about lunchtime, but it’d mean eating a sandwich on the fly, running over to the gym, working out, showering and getting back to work inside an hour.  It’s possible I guess. 

At least the personal trainers should leave us alone now.  Arsehole.  If it wasn’t for that incident a few months ago I probably wouldn’t have stopped going.  I know I went a few times after but it’s never been the same. 

I think I’m going to weigh myself on Saturday morning.  Saturday can be my new weigh in day.  I’m also going to start eating cereal for lunch, I’ll also try and make time for a proper breakfast in the morning – even if that means getting up that little bit earlier.  It’s not like I’m that late to bed most nights. 

I’m really looking forward to getting home.  It feels a bit like I’ve been non-stop this last week and a half.  Doesn’t feel like I’ve had any time alone with Sue either – we’ll have to make sure that Sunday is spent watching films curled up on the sofa together (not gouging on chocolate, because chocolate is bad – and pointy). 

Everything will be pointed and counted.  I’m dreading just how many points I’m going to be able to have actually, it’s scary to think that I’ve put weight on and I’m in a worse place than I was the last time I decided to try and lose some weight (probably around this time last year actually).  We were really good up until we went to Florida, we fell off the wagon about the time we got off the plane and never got back on the wagon when we got back. 

This way, when we go to Florida next, I won’t be able to eat half as much food as we did last time (nor will we be purchasing the deluxe dining plan – we had 30+ meal credits left!!)

I’ll post up my weight on Saturday morning.  I guess it’ll be weekly postings after that (the first week’s post will be loss due to water retention obviously)  We’ll see. 

Smaller trousers and smaller t-shirts here we come. 

Bring me that Horizon.