Who said failure wasn't an option?

March started with an absolute shocker !

Having seen my weight consistently come down in the three months previous, it suddenly jumped by 0.9 Kilos to 140.7 on 5th March.

I even weighed myself three times to check that the scales weren't playing some weird trick on me.

I was absolutely despondent. I felt like I had still been doing all the same things and eating, exercising and managing my lifestyle exactly the same, and this jump in weight came as a real shock.

I was angry, frustrated, resentful, bitter and just about every negative emotion you can think of. In short, I did not react well. I won't lie - part of me thought "to hell with the diet".

The problem is that I struggle to maintain my discipline when the pain is at its worst, and the reality is that at the end of February, I had a series of bad pain episodes. When the pain is at its worst, telling myself that I can't have that piece of chocolate or slice of cake, is about as likely to succeed as I am likely to break 70 on the golf course. I have to be more realistic. I have to be patient with myself.

Failure is natural

I've written and spoken before about the fact that weight loss will never be a straight downwards line. There are always going to be ups and downs and thinking otherwise is just going to put unnecessary pressure upon myself. If I set myself unrealistic aims of losing weight every single month and every single week, all I am doing is creating impossible targets for myself that I will never ever achieve. And nothing leads to total failure like unrealistic goals - just ask anyone working on HS2 !

Yeah - OK! So I had a bad week. I just need to recognise that, understand the reasons why and try to do better next week. And when I fail - as I inevitably will - I need to understand clearly that it is natural. It's impossible to constantly move my weight downwards without there being some bumps in the road. And the best thing is, I can always make up for it this week. I know the recipe - it's a mixture of sensible exercise with intelligent food choices - I just need to get back on track.

I know it's also about what I eat and the use of proteins, pulses, carbohydrates and so much more and I'll talk about that next month.

My plan to deal with setbacks is to have a competition with myself. I know I am going to have the occasional bad day when the pain is doing its worst, so I will 'offset' that by having lots of good days in compensation. As we have previously discussed (and you do remember us having that conversation, right?...), my goal is to have no more than 1500 calories per day maximum, with a stretch target of 1200 per day).

My competition is to make sure that for every bad day I have where I go over the 1500 calories per day, I have at least 4 (and preferably 5 or more as a stretch target) where I go under. It makes it a fun competition. I am very goal orientated and I need the motivation of competition to keep me engaged and this seems like a good way of achieving the goals I want to achieve.

A little competition between me and me

Failure leads to success

As we went forward through the rest of March, the results of my plan started to show the kind of results I was hoping for.

The final three weeks of the month showed a steady loss of weight in each week, with a total loss of 2.3 Kgs over the month.

It's not a massive loss of weight but it is a steady managed reduction and if it continues, we'll be well on our way to achieving my targets.

On the subject of targets, when my weight went below the 138.2Kg threshold, it represented a massive milestone. Avid readers will know that for this first stage of my journey of reducing my weight to 16 stone, I set myself two interim targets:

• Walk nine holes of golf

• Lose 10% of my bodyweight by mid-May 2026

Well ... I successfully walked 9 holes of golf back in February, and now as my weight dips below 138.2Kgs, I have lost 10% of my bodyweight.

Success !!!!!!! I'm as chuffed as a furyised chuffer can be. And let me tell you - I've seen a furyised chuffer, and that is pretty damn chuffed.

Realism not Idealism

As I move forward with this plan, I'm going to try to stop worrying about bad days or even bad weeks. I'm going to have ups and downs and I go into this a little more in Episode 8 of Striving For Sixteen which you can see here: https://youtu.be/VURYGrmgFj4 and of course, all the blogs and videos are available at www.gibboblog.uk.

Will the good news continue into April? I'll keep you updated!

In the meantime...

Stay Strong. Fight Hard. Laugh Lots.