If you're happy and you know it clap your hands

In 2024 I went on a personal experiment. My goal was to see if the "Eat Less, Move More" philosophy to weight loss was true and if it was the best way.

Over the course of the year I found that indeed, moving more was the way to a lesser belly. I also found that if I didn't eat as much I lost weight more. The caveat was that by eating less I found I snacked more so I could have lost a bit more.

I did find through a number of resources that it's not so much about what you ate and that most diets are bad for you. I purposely did not pursue diets because I had an idea this was the case but my research proved it.

So my conclusion was that from a year's worth of data, moving more is the key to losing weight, and reducing the amount of food you eat adds to the goal rather than what you eat.

This year my experiment is a little different. "Eat Less, Move More" takes care of the physical part of the equation, but are we forgetting the mental part?

This world is not getting better. Every day seems to get worse and this leads to many people not coping.

In August 2024 my brother-in-law committed suicide for whatever reason he found fit. He did apparently have mental health issues and it did make me think a lot more about my own mental health.

Here's the thing, I have noticed in the past that when I'm with friends and I'm having a really good time, I eat less but I feel more full of energy. The more I think about this the more I wonder if we are more energy beings than we think. What if the best way to lose weight is to become happier and more positive?

The more I think about it the more I realise that I only started putting on weight when I moved to Wellington and started having a miserable time at work. I was about 28 when I started putting on the pounds, working in IT, spending most of my time locked up in an office or stuck in traffic. Too tired at the end of the day to do anything, in a city I was unfamiliar with.

I made awesome friends and when we hung out we had a great time and I ate less but still felt full, but now more full of life.

So my goal this year is to be more mindful of my moods and see if they correlate to a reduction in the waist.

I am convinced that our mental health is the number one important thing we need to look after and I sincerely believe part of that mental health is also spiritual health in whatever form we choose. I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses so my spiritual health will follow that path.

So I'm going to make more of an effort to post something daily about how I feel during the day along with my body details to see if I'm on the right track.

With this in mind here are this morning's body details:

Date	Height	Weight	Clothing Weight	Actual Weight
7/1/25	161cm	76.8kg	0kg	76.8kg

Neck	Chest	Waist	High Hip	Hip
34cm	89cm	79cm	79cm	87cm

BMI	Body Fat	Lean Body Mass	Ponderal Index
29.63	30.81%	55.04kg	18.4