This morning after about 16 months of my weight yoyo’ing, I finally reached a weight goal I’ve been striving for. 12 stone 5 lbs (172lbs or approximately 78kg).

Several years back, I lost about 4 stone using Weight Watchers and that had been the weight I got down to then, although, that was without the benefit of exercise.

In the last month, I’ve lost 10lbs without trying too hard. I’ve not increased my training but have counted every calorie eaten and burned using the amazing MyFitnessPal app.

This app is by far the best calorie tracking/weight loss app I’ve ever used and, believe me, I’ve tried a few.

If you want to lose weight or even maintain your current weight, tracking your calories is a sure-fire way to do it and MyFitnessPal makes it easy.

Now that I’ve reached my goal weight, I need to maintain it at that level. I’m using MyFitnessPal and will continue to track all my calories and adjust my daily allowance as necessary to keep between 12st 4lbs and 12st 6lbs.

Some might ask why I wanted to lose weight when my lifestyle is pretty active.

Well, there are several reasons:

Firstly, even when being active 5 times a week, I had a 40 inch waist and that wasn’t good (it’s currently 37 inches!) I don’t want to be looking like the photo below the next time I wear a tri-suit!

Also, the more excess weight I’m carrying, the more I need to lug around whilst running and doing other exercise thereby increasing the demands on my body and heart.

By losing weight, I’m reducing those demands and reducing the likelihood of injury.

Losing weight should also help make me quicker when running, cycling and swimming.

My optimal racing weight according to this Racing Weight calculator is 156lbs (11st 2lbs or 71kg) which is a long way off my current weight. I think that’s completely unrealistic and I wouldn’t feel comfortable being so skinny at all (I was that weight as a teenager once up on a time though). It would be great to get more toned which I’m sure swimming will help with.