Now I know that in the last blog I wrote, I said I’d do my best to keep it up this season after not really updating it much during Season 3. However, you find me somewhat breaking that promise as I am covering two weeks worth of weigh in’s and games this time around.
I would have written about Week 2 a lot sooner, but honestly speaking, I’m still reeling from it. It was, as they call it in the business, a bad week.
In Week 2, myself and the rest of the boys from Slimdown were up against 17 Stone Roses. We knew that the Roses are an incredibly good football side, and that they are also top performers on the scale, so the discussion in the group chat in the lead up to the game was all about tactics and having a good week weight-wise to try and topple them. We always go into a game confident, no matter who we’re up against, and this week was no different. The week before, I’d managed to weigh in under my target weight so I was feeling great and looking forward to the challenge of maintaining/not having to lose so much whilst still being good. I was hoping to get off to a good start in my new challenge, but upon weighing in, disaster number one struck.
I put on 1.8kg in Week 2. It was the second biggest gain I’ve had in all my time with Man v Fat. Gains don’t worry me as much anymore, as I know that they are all part of the parcel of this process, and that weight can and will fluctuate over time. Plus, I now know from experience that I am more than able to work it off the following week. However, I was reeling this week as it meant that for the first time ever, I’d gone over my start weight for the season. I was really frustrated and disappointed with myself. I had people say I could afford a bad week as I’ve had numerous good ones.
No.
One bad week can lead to another and another after that, and I’ve worked too bloody hard to let that happen. I was determined to put it behind me and work hard to get myself not only back under my start weight, but also back around the target I’d set myself, which I was now 800g over. Thankfully, tomorrow was the start of another week.
So, to the pitch. As mentioned, 17 Stone Roses are a brilliant footballing side, so we knew we’d have to be well organised to try and keep them at bay. For the first time in a game, we used the 9v9 nets. Slightly bigger than the nets we were used to, and with that also came a slightly bigger pitch. Slimdown found ourselves a few players down this week, so we only had one sub. Not ideal for a game against a team of Roses ability.
To cut a long story short, we were hammered 13-0. I could blame the fact we only had one sub, or I could blame a lack of organisation, but the fact is, Roses were superb and we were awful.
I spent the next week feeling very disappointed in myself, and everyone else on the team felt the same way about the performance on the pitch, too. We were all determined to rectify it in some way the week after and put it behind us.
And so on to Week 3.
This week, Slimdown found ourselves up against Fatboy Slims. Again, another side who can turn it on in the games and couple it well with scale results. We had a bigger squad this week and went into the game with a clear plan. It seemed to work really well – We frustrated them all game, their top scorer didn’t get a sniff and we were the better side… for 29 minutes! A last minute leveller – an absolute screamer, it must be said – saw us draw 1-1, but regardless of the result, I was so proud of how we played and bounced back from the previous weeks hammering. I also had a couple of opportunities to score which is very rare, so to know that I’m getting ever closer is a massive boost. We came off the pitch with our heads held high and that’s the most important thing.
Scale wise… The team performed well and we genuinely thought we’d pip Fatboys on the scale, as pretty much everyone lost this week, and lost well. However, Fatboys chose the week they played us to see what seemed like half their squad hit 5% targets and hat tricks! Great! 12-6 loss overall, but many signs of improvement in all departments.
Personally with the scale, I most definitely wanted to shift that 1.8kg gain from the week before. I was originally aiming to do it as 1kg or so this week and then get the other 1kg or so the week after to do it, as I knew my losses would probably be slowing down now. However, weighing in this week, I saw 106.4kg, down from 110.8. That was a 4.4kg (9lb) loss. Yep. 4.4kg!
My second biggest gain the week before was followed by my second biggest ever loss (I did 4.6kg in one week in Season 2 – I didn’t know how I did it then, either!). A huge loss which I was delighted with, if a little worried about, as I genuinely don’t need to lose that sort of weight in one week anymore. I’ll happily take it though!
I think this season is going to be a lot of trial and error with looking to maintain instead of losing lots and lots of weight like in previous seasons. I had a method which I devised over a long period of time up to now, and now I have to work out how to revise that method so that I’m losing, but not losing too much or so that I’m staying around the same weight. It’s definitely uncharted waters, as I’ve never ever been at a healthy weight before. I’ve never been in a position where I don’t actually *need* to lose weight, and this is all very new to me, so until I find my feet a little, the scale may be a bit up and down, but as long as I stay around where I am now, I’ll be more than happy. I’m 52.8kg down (8st 4lb) and that is more than enough. I think that extra 4lb will probably be my leeway, where I can put that on and not be too bothered, but as soon as I go over it, I’ll switch back into hell for leather mode to get it back off.
We’ll see how it spans out across the season and the foreseeable future. I’ll keep taking it day by day and week by week, and hopefully that should continue to see me in good stead.
ONWARDS
Josh Deegan's MANvFAT Blog 