For a few years now I’ve been a fairly consistent 83-85kg, and the marathon training in 2013-14 did almost nothing to change that. I never thought of myself as a fatty, but it has been an objective for a while to try and get below 75kg which was my normal weight in my late teens and 20s. I felt that my weight was greater than what was best for me, and it seemed that the power was within my grasp to get closer to an ideal weight, so why not.

I’m happy to say that I’m now under 75kg, and ten kilos less than I was in March last year. My approach was to set a target (75kg by Christmas), and then set-up a monthly objective of losing 1.5kg. My method was the 5:2 diet, which seems to work for me because with two days of discipline, you spend the rest of your life eating normally.

It’s great to hit my objective (a month late), though technically I think under 73kg is the ideal weight following the BMI scale. I’ve now set-up a sort of control valve system – if I’m over 75kg on a Sunday morning, I follow the 5:2 diet (500 calories on a fast day). If I’m 74-75kg then I fast just once (the Wednesday), and otherwise, I don’t have any reduced calorie days. What I haven’t yet done is got rid of some bad habits like eating too much, always eating everything on my plate, pigging out when food is free… But the control valve system does set-up a simple reward system for eating well and keeping control on things, and hopefully means my current weight level will be maintained.