via Twitter, I came across Withings scales – a set of scales that’s connected to t’Internet. (via wireless network)

I still can’t decide whether it’s a great idea or an incredibly bad one. I love the concept of being able to keep track of your weight, graph it out and monitor it. I hate the idea of it connecting to t’Internet rather than just recording the data on a card for uploading to your own computer. I get the idea of it, but yeah, that connection to t’Internet means I probably wouldn’t want one.

Interesting idea, though.

Last year, I was working on losing some weight, and went to the local Slimming World group with Herself in order to look at doing so.

With the way work’s been, I stopped having the time to go to the meetings back at the start of December, but pretty much kept to what we’d been doing while attending.

With things calming down a bit, we’ve started going back, and of course one of the things that had to be done was weighing-in again.

I knew I’d done OK in the interceding time, hadn’t put on too much even with the Festering Season. So it was nice to see that in that time I’d put on 2½ lbs.

I’ve still got a way to go – a long way, if I’m honest – but at least I’m doing OK, and intend to keep on doing so.

Over the last few months, as I’ve written about before, we’ve been attending one of the local Slimming World groups in an effort to lose a bit of weight. Obviously I’ve got more to lose than Herself, but we’re both working on it.

So far it’s been fairly successful – we’ve both lost a stone over that time. We could, in all honesty, have lost more, and/or in less time if we followed all the rules and weighed everything obsessively.

But that’s the key word – in my opinion, there’s an awful lot of this weight-loss stuff that is actually about doing stuff obsessively. We’ve seen three (I think) “group leaders” now, all of whom have lost significant amounts of weight – and absolutely fair play to them for doing so, they’ve done fantastically well – but all of whom are (to be polite about it) just a little bit crackers. There’s a number of examples of this, although right now I can’t be arsed to list them.

The one that keeps on coming back to me, though, was the one who was still utterly obsessed by food – all she’d done was replace high-calorie foods with low-calorie ones. But there was still that slightly crackers gleam in the eye when she was talking about being able to eat “whole bowls of no-Syn trifle to yourself” and so on.

And I find I just don’t have that obsessive part to me – and to some degree it actually leaves me feeling quite uncomfortable. I’m not obsessed with food, nor do I collect anything obsessively, or really anything else. It’s simply not part of me.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, to be honest. It’s just something I’ve noticed and wanted to write about it. And maybe that’s it, maybe writing is my obsessive behaviour, whether it be D4D™ or other writing projects. In some ways I’d actually be quite happy if that were the case. I just don’t know if it is.

Last night, I finally officially got rid of my first full stone of weight. It’s taken a while, although some of that is because of the working-away of the last six weeks, where I have slipped a few times and not been quite as good as I should’ve been.

All the same, I’m still pleased with having lost that stone. I’ve a fair way to go – this means I’m halfway through my first phase of the weightloss – I finally feel like I’m beginning to make some progress with it.

Yesterday, I went to see my GP. Never my favourite way to spend time – I’m no fan of GPs at the best of times, and always go in expecting them to say “Oh, well, there’s not actually much we can do about that.”

In this case, I’ve whacked an existing scar, and opened it up again. Nothing special – it’s a fragile piece of skin, from the look of it, which is something my mother also has issues with – but more of an exploratory “Any suggestions on a) doing stuff to improve healing time on this? and b) preventing it in the future?” kind of thing. And I got exactly the expected answer. (But at least I know that for sure now)

Anyway, at the same time, the GP decided to check my blood pressure. This is one of the things that never fails to amuse me – considering I’m 6’4″ and distinctly overweight (although having now lost a stone from earlier this year) they always expect to give me a lecture on blood pressure. Bear in mind I’m rather known to be of the ranty persuasion as well, and they think it’s a no-brainer, which all goes to explain why they can never believe what it actually is.

In this case, the GP decided he’d done something wrong the first time, and checked it again.

But it still came out as 100/60. Which is ridiculously healthy and normal for someone of my dimensions and lifestyle.  I don’t know how I manage it, but that’s pretty much what my blood pressure always works out to be.

Strange but true – and always fun to bemuse a GP with it.

What with all the other rubbish going on here, I’d forgotten to post a quick update about health, weight loss etc.

While I’m currently away during the week, I’m still working on the entire weight-loss thing, although I’m not managing to weigh myself regularly. I know I should (in theory) but I’m not doing – I’m quite happy with knowing it’s coming off.

Besides, I’ve got my own evidence that I’m still dropping weight.

For one thing my belt is now two holes in from where it used to be – that means that I’ve lost about an inch from round my waist.

The other big sign is that I’m now able to wear T-shirts one size smaller than I was when I started the weightloss. (And they’re T-Shirts from the same manufacturer, so none of this “one size in [company A], another size in [Company B]” malarkey)  I’m now wearing a 2x shirt instead of a 3x.

It’s small things – and small but steady losses. I’m not wanting to drop five stone in five months, or anything insane like that. I am wanting to lose it, and keep it off. And as I do lose it, I’ll be doing more stuff in order to keep it off.

I’m happy with how I’m doing, anyway.