Tag: weight

Weight loss and fitness update

May 6, 2010 / Matthew Cashmore

There’s not been an update for a while. That’s mostly because since I’ve been back in the UK about all I’ve managed is to stay the same, I could blame the weather, or a whole host of other things but the reality is I just stopped trying.

Interestingly during this period I’ve actually lost 5kg – without putting any effort in – and that shocked me a little and I’ve decided I need to pick the baton back up and get on with it. I always knew as I got to sub 110kg things would get much harder, in fact I knew that the target weight loss would have to drop from 1kg to .5kg. That doesn’t sound much but it is a ‘sensible’ amount that means actual change to my routine – sustainable change. Limiting my loss to 1kg a week over the last (almost) year does mean I have changed the way I eat and exercise – demonstrated by the small loss over the last few months with no effort.

Here’s the new chart – updated with current weight and new figures for the coming months. 99kg is still the target for the moment. I feel another hard year ahead in battling with the final 10kg – and perhaps more after that.

Fitness update

November 11, 2009 / Matthew Cashmore

Notice I say fitness not weight? There’s a reason for that and we’ll come to it in a moment. First of all I want to say thank you to everyone who has left comments here on my blog, to the friends who have encouraged me from another continent via Facebook and to the good friends here in Oz who every day say how fantastically I’m doing – it’s your support that has meant I’ve got this far, and it’s your support that will see me hit my target sometime around March next year.

The bad news. Weight. Well, yet again I’ve hit a bit of a sticky point – I’d blame doing two Hack Days two weekends in a row – one of which I ate a lot of biscuits at and the other I was very good at – the reality is that I’ve not been watching what I’m eating well enough and I’ve not done enough exercise and I’m one again faced with a third week at a static weight… but we’ll break through it – 113kg by December 16th so I can say I’ve lost 30kg (4.7 stone) before I come home to London.

The good news. Fitness. I’m going from strength to strength – really. I’m lifting twice as much as I started doing and my cardio tests are amazing – I can’t get over how much better I’m feeling – not only because I’m not carrying as much weight – but because my heart isn’t having to work so hard to move me around – compliment of the year remains, ‘you no longer run like a fat man’ – thanks Marcus.

Jogging makes you fat

October 20, 2009 / Matthew Cashmore

It was a startling revelation to me that the reason I was fat… was because I ate too much and didn’t exercise. In order to lose the 3 1/2 stone (I need to lose at least that again) that I have to date, all I did was eat less, exercise more often and cut back on touching anything other than the odd apple between meals – simple.

However, what I have noticed is that for every person who discovers this simple fact, there’s an army of people who need a complicated diet to make things work. I understand that different people need different things to get motivated and to get the weight off and I applaud anyone who makes that effort – I know how tough it is. What does get my back up is ‘research’ that suggests that it’s ‘not your fault your fat’. It is. It’s not nice but it’s true.

So, here’s some research. Because we jog more in the western world, but we are all getting fatter it naturally follows that jogging makes you fat.

How Not To Lose Weight

The Times
19 Oct 2009

Forget those sporty trainers. Give up jogging. Don’t bother with stationary bicycling in the gym. This is a pointless activity, not only because it gets you nowhere, but also because it will not help you to lose weight. Quite the opposite, in fact. We…read more…

Writing, weight and Over The Air

October 7, 2009 / Matthew Cashmore

What a month back in London. It was amazing to catch up with everyone, and to see – even for a short moment – how much London can pull you back in and take over your life.

The trip back was to organise Over The Air 2009 – a full post and round-up coming soon – but for the moment I think it’s enough to say it was a massive, massive success. The photos I managed to take in-between moving bean-bags and hugging Daleks are to be found here, and some video of my putting fires out after blowing things up have started to appear on YouTube.

The other news from London is that I joined the Travel Club. It’s a private members club based out of St James Square that caters to people who work in the Travel Industry. It’s been put together by a gentleman called Tom Nutley, who was the exhibition director for World Travel Market with Reed Exhibitions – he’s a very smart fellow who understood that the travel industry had no place to call ‘home’ in London – and his choice of the In & Out club was inspired. I spent a very happy month walking the halls and running meetings from there, a perfect base in central London. (they have the first privately built squash court in the country – which is single handily responsible for my conversion to the sport).

Talking of sport (see what I did there), and squash – sooooo much fun – and helpful with the weight loss too. I had a small blip in the week of Over The Air, and put on a little – but after some swimming and more games of squash with Frank Wales and Paola Kathuria I seem to have managed to pull it back on track… even if it’s only ‘just’ back on track. The new target is 110kg by Christmas…. 3kg below what I ‘should’ be on the 16th December.

That’s about it from me for this long update. Look for more OTA stuff later this week, and also, some rather exciting news about a Lonely Planet Hack Day here in Melbourne that we’ll be announcing on Monday.

Getting fit

July 15, 2009 / Matthew Cashmore

The reason I wanted to lose weight, was so I could get fit and take part in the Australiasian Safari – which would be really rather cool. I’ve not hit my target this week (but I’m still tracking well against the average target), the fitness is another aspect of the deal that I’ve not talked about much.

The plan is to spend 12 months getting the weight off whilst gently increasing fitness, then once I’m down to the target weight (99kg) work really hard on the fitness. As part of that we’re tracking my Cardiovascular Fitness… I’ve never quite got the stats part of the whole exercise thing – what is the point of Nike+ ? But I think I’m starting to get it… here’s the chart of my first two tests.. it shows improvement, and bloody hell does it make me want to make it look better!

Losing the weight…

July 14, 2009 / Matthew Cashmore

…. I don’t like talking about my weight – I’ve always been happy with it. But the time has come to get back to where I was when I was fit and young and healthy. This has nothing to do with being 29 on Sunday, and therefore nearly 30.

The easiest way for me to achieve things is to say in public I’m going to do it – so here’s that public statement – by early next year my weight will be in double digits.

Here’s the chart – blue line is target, red line is what I’m actually achieving.