Go Figure

Blood was 5.3 this morning, which is fine for me.

Had a bit of a Damascus moment today, in Starbucks at Aldgate. Cos one of the things you really don't want if you're embarked on a self-deluding path is cold hard facts...

So thanks a freakin' lot, Starbucks Aldgate, for happening to have a brochure by the stirrers, with the calorific values of your coffees in. Needed that like a goddamned hole in the head.

Turns out my big-ass bucket o'pointlessness - nnnotsofreakin' pointless after all - even with skimmed milk, you're looking at 165 calories per bucket. Now, there will be those among you who think..."So the Hell what?" Well, for perspective, a big-ass can of really hearty "full meal by itself" soup...is 165 calories. Two buckets of coffee per day is over 300 calories. A day like I had recently, with cofee coming out of every orifice, is gonna be over 500 calories.

And I know how hard I have to work to burn 500 calories. And that's a sonofabitch.

So - time to start exercise the self-mastery that Aristotle keeps banging on about every time I pick up the Kindle, and the thing is, knowing the figures makes that self-mastery a walk in the park, because knowing how much each bucket of coffee costs me in terms of cycling is a great counterbalance to how much I think I actually want it at the moment of consumption. I'm by no means gonna do a volte-face and swear off the decaff - sometimes, I really enjoy those buckets, sometimes they make my day snap into focus and rightness, and make me go "Oh yeah, game on." And I'm not gonna whinge when I have them. I'm just gonna make sure when I have them, I really want them. If I just want the sensation, I can always downsize (I should explain, d's gonna be laughing and feeling smug right about now, cos she's told me this for months now) - a small bucket is only about 102 calories, which I can handle.

So this is just me getting a bit rational about the whole coffee as replacement-dessert thing.

Oh wait, it's Tuesday, isn't it? You'll be wanting to know the weigh-in result, won't you?

16 stone 7.5 pounds.

That's four stone, Brit-readers. 56 pounds if you're American and 25.5 kg for the Europeans, Australians and other metric fans. Do the Four Stone Dance, people, go wild and crazy!

So - that's 44.4444 recurring percent of my goal achieved. If I maintain a two pound per week loss consistently over the next four weeks, I'll have made it a whole 50% of the way before Christmas. I seem to have said this a lot of times already, but this is based on the shifted, eventual goal of getting to my 'ideal weight.' On the original target of losing 104 pounds in a year, I've now completed 53% of the task in 66% of the time. But, as I've also said before, given the blisters, and the broken toes, and the occasional broken bike here and there, I'm happy enough with this progress.

Here's to the next milestone - the halfway point...