Last night I almost attended a whole kung-fu class. Some business at home meant that I was late again though. It was a fun but intensive class. My fitness is still lagging. The class started with the butterfly knife form, which I feel is finally coming together. Need to buy a paid of knives so that I can practice at home though. We then did some light sparring. This is where things started to go wrong for me last night. There were three other students in the class, and each for them seemed to have the upper hand each time we fought. My sparring seems to have gone to pieces, and this started to get to me. I guess that it is no surprise as we do not do so much sparring now, but my fitness and lack of skill / applying technique seemed to show.

My fitness and weight loss has taken a hit in recent weeks. I had two weeks off work, and although I had great plans to up my exercise during this time, the opposite happened. I had a great holiday, actually a staycation, as we cannot afford to go away due to the credit crunch! I missed kung-fu on Monday last week as we went to the beach for the day and I was exhausted in the evening, and my only excuse on Wednesday was that I wanted to relax at home with my wife rather than train. So it was a holiday off work and off exercise.

I did do some more sprints around the park, making it up to 8 sprints, but that was all.

Tonight I did my third sprint circuit on the football pitch on my local park. I failed to time the first, but the second, which was last Tuesday I think, I managed 5 sprints in 12:30. Tonight I did 7 sprints in 17:25. I jogged at an easier pace tonight as my hip was hurting a little from kung-fu last week. New guy in the class tried to crush my hip in a conditioning exercise, then wondered why I was pulling my hip strikes afterwards....

I have managed to gain just under 0.5kg in the last week or so. Got a bit lazy again, and even had some chocolate cake with my coffee last week.

I am making a renewed effort to go along to kung-fu twice a week, tricky some nights as my son is often late to bed on the days he goes to nursery, and those are the days I go kung-fu in the evening.

This is my first blog in several weeks. I have been very busy recently, and not had time to blog, but I have still been concentrating on my diet. Fitness is improving slowly, but I am relying mostly on kung-fu lessons, where the emphasis is on skill rather than cardio fitness. But, this morning I weighed myself, and I am now a pleasing 85.6kg (188 pounds). My target for the 17th June was 85kg, so I am now almost there,

I have now set myself a new target of 80kg. This may be too light, depends on if I get my weight training in order. At the moment 80kg is probably the right weight for me, but I know I will bulk up pretty quick if I do some intensive weight training sessions. Big if at the moment though.

Weighed in this morning. For the last week I have had a cold, and I am still in recovery, with a chesty cough. Also hayfever has been really bad. As a result - no exercise at all. Diet has been OK, although drifting from the low-card routine. But, managed to lose a little weight still.

My target for getting to 85kg was mid-summer, which is now almost a week gone. 1.4kg is not too bad though. Still managed to lose a total of 10.6kg so far. Need to start exercising. I think that I sand that last week.....

First set back is of a technical nature. For some reason, I lost some blog posts, so recent updates have vanished. This is really just annoying. The other set back has been my recent binging. I had a binge last weekend on my son's 1st birthday party, and another binge this weekend. I did lose 0.2kg (almost half a pound), weighing in at 86.4kg on Friday monring, but even so those two binges have not been good for my health, my fitness or my weight loss.

I did do some press ups the other evening. I did 20, and it felt much easier than the last time, so being 10kg lighter must have helped a lot. But other than that, I have not done much.

I am now into week 15 of the Motley Health Fitness and Weight Loss Plan. My total weight loss is now 10kg (22 pounds) and I have gone from a BMI of 32 to a BMI of 28.6.

Well, on Saturday morning I weighed in at 86.6kg. However, Saturday was my son's first birthday party, and it was a bit of a carb and sugar fest really. I think that by the end of the day, I had eaten:

1 bagel
4 scrambled eggs
rice
chilli con carne (my own fab recipe)
a piece of sponge cake with icing and jam filling
a few pieces of chocolate gateaux
a bowl of trifle
about 5 sausage rolls
a few mini onion bhajis, and some other Indian snacks
half a glass of beer
several glasses of red wine
handfuls of peanuts

This week I have managed to lose another kilo (2.2046 pounds). Weight loss is slow and steady. I think that I have done really well this week as I suffered from a throat infection, which was then followed by a virus that gave me really bad headaches, which was then followed by me feeling run down. So I have not done any exercise for over a week now, but have still lost another kilo.

Really the weight loss can only be attributed to the ongoing phase of Atkins, as I am still avoiding refined carbs and sugars where I can. Now eating more carbs, but trying to limit that to fruits and vegetables, mainly in stews and soups.

Have eaten some white bread and some potatoes, as we had no other food in the house. But mostly avoiding those danger foods.

Had a funny few days. Last Wednesday I cam down with a throat infection which lasted until Saturday. As I was off work, I decided on Thursday night to do some weight training (I was getting bored doing nothing in the house) and also decided that rather than the usual clean and presses to start with, I would do a quick clean and press warm up, followed by SQUATS.

I only squatted a light weight, but concentrated on form. For the first time, I did full squats, i.e. squatted down until my thighs were parallel to the floor. I think I was using 50kg, but that was enough. I did a few sets of 8-10 reps.