The aim was to get under 70kg. 69.5kg to be precise.

I was close, but didn’t quite get there. My final weight was 72.2kg.

Despite not completing the task, I am very happy with how I went. In eight weeks, I lost 5.3kg, through a combination of walking, jogging, cutting down on alcohol, and eating much healthier.

I anticipate I will probably put this back on while in London (I have heard a lot about the dreaded ‘Heathrow Injection’). But that’s OK, because now I know what it takes to get rid of it again.

Might have been more, except we had Christmas in July celebrations with the family on Sunday.

Now I am less than 4kg away from the goal weight, with four weeks to go.

Amazingly, I still managed to lose 200g. I am now 74.2, and still managing to head in the right direction.

I cheated myself a couple of times, once with a delicious chicken parma, and once with a big breakfast of eggs, bacon and sausages.

But I did keep up the walking, including a long walk in search of toilets on Saturday (as mentioned in a previous post), and a climb up the Sydney Harbour Bridge (to be mentioned in a future post).

End result – a weight loss of 1.2kg.

Which brings the total loss after two weeks to 3.1kg.

I expect the losses of under 1kg will inevitably start next week, so I am glad to have made such a solid start.

We had two functions during the week at work that involved cake (and another today), and I spent the weekend with family playing cards, where more cake, plus lollies and chips, were in abundance.

But I managed to avoid (pretty much) all of it.

I walked every day too, including doing a 45-minute walk before work every morning last week.

And the resulted weight loss was…1.9kg!

Given it was the first week, a big loss was expected. But I am still very happy with my progress.

Eight weeks to go.

Without even noticing.

It happened to me, and it wasn’t until I saw myself on TV that I realised it.

I have put on weight.

Not much, but enough to realise I should do something about it before it gets bad. The still shot below from the channel seven news report shows a rather unslightly beer belly starting to develop. The text of ‘he couldn’t hide’ is quite ironic.

So I am starting a program to lose a little bit of weight before I move to London in nine weeks.

This isn’t a goal on the list, but just something extra I would like to do.

I bought a set on scales last weekend, and weighed myself on Monday morning. I am 77.5kg. I have set myself the task to get under 70kg, so am targeting to get down to 69.5kg.

What is LLL? Leaving for London Lighter!

To get to 69.5kg I have a two-prong attack:

1. Walk every morning for 45 minutes,

2. Use a Weight Watchers strategy of only having a certain amount of points allocated per day, where each item of food in the world has a certain amount of points (good food = less points, bad food = more points). Once the points are used up for the day, that’s it. No more food.

Every Monday I will weigh myself and put up the result, so that I am super-accountable to myself and anyone else who cares to keep track of my progress.

Basically, I need to get the blue dot down to where the pink dot is, by the end of the ninth week.

Wish me luck!