Too many variables

This time last year I had just got back home from driving to Poland and back. At the time I had a rather vague objective of getting my weight down. On the way, I took this picture of my dinner, to try and kid myself that I was eating sensibly. I didn't take any pictures of the high-cholesterol travelling food - which I suppose is a kind of denial.

My real aim is to be thinner. I'm not all that concerned about being lighter. So the important test is the notch where I can comfortably buckle my belt. It is still - slowly - moving inwards. However, I also weigh myself fairly regularly - just to make sure that I'm not getting any heavier.

Gradually we are getting to the point of this....

Yesterday I went to the barber and had one of my occassional hair cuts. When I weighed myself this morning I discovered that I was a pound lighter. I knew I was overdue for a haircut, but who would have thought that the barber could have removed a whole pound of the stuff?

My conclusion is that it is much more effective to keep track of how much effort I am putting in, rather than keeping track of the outcomes. It is easy to measure how much further and faster I am riding, and not difficult to set targets that I can reach for, and achieve.

By contrast, my progress on reducing weight and girth seems slow, and patchy, and there are just too many variables. I find one approach encouraging, and the other discouraging. So I will carry on setting all sorts of silly cycling goals, and try to ignore the real objective, in the hope that I achieve it as a side-effect. I also promise to try and avoid unhealthy food - probably.