Firstly thanks for even bothering to take a look at this page!!

Read below for further details, but here is a quick progress report:

Having now hit 4 months on the new lifestyle, I am delighted to announce that to date I have lost 3.5 st which is 21.5 KG!!!

Thanks for all your support!!

I started this weight loss effort at 155 KG back on the 10th July, today 12th August (1 month later) I am pleased to report I have lost 10.2 KG, which is 22 1/2 lbs or 1 stone 8 1/2 lbs.

I am 20% of the way there, but no this early stage is the easier part and that going forward each KG will be harder and harder.

If you know me, you will know that I am what some people would kindly describe as large boned or, as my kids would call me, Fat.

I have tried diets in the past and had some amazing success and someabject failures, but when it comes down to it, really what it is all about is having the right state of mind and the support of my friends. 

I have set myself a target of losing 50KG over the next 12 months and as of now (18th July) I have lost about 5 KG, I say about as I am so big that our scales never went that high.  Our view was that I was about 155KG and having now been on the new lifestyle regime for 9 days I can finally register on the scales and I am 150.3 KG.

The reason for creating this page is that my best friend in the whole world Kevin Hayes, suggested that, in order to incentivize myself further and also put to good use the effort I am making that it would be good to get people to sponsor me. so here we are.

So why did I choose Mind as the charity I wanted to support, well again this was somethign Kevin and I discussed and came up with, about 2 weeks ago I took a status from Rosie Buckingham ( a friend from Bahrain) which said:

Depression is not a sign of weakness, it is a sign that you have been trying to be strong for too long. Put this as your status if you know someone who has or has had depression. Will you do it, and leave it on your status for at least an hour Most people won't but it's mental health week and...1 in3 of us will suffer at some point in our lives.

This resonates so strongly with me having had a small bout of depression when my youngest Son was born last year and also from living with it through my childhood, when the most amazing woman I have ever known (My Mum) suffered with it.  Depression is something no-one ever really understands unless they have been through it.  It's an illness that is so hard to understand as it doesn't really have visable signs that you can spot without really knowing it and it can come and go so quickly that sometimes people think it's nothing more than something that's put on.  But it isn't, it effects many of us in different ways and when it does the people around us are often the ones to suffer most.  With the support of the people and organizatiosn such as Mind this illness and others like it can be helped so significantly as to make a big difference to many peoples lives.

I am not setting a target for how much I want to raise as it is something I am doing for myself, in terms of losing weight, and this is simply a useful by product of it.