Good evening from London, where it is cold and wet. My new wellington boots are getting plenty of wear. I am still knitting legwarmers to go inside my boots and have ordered some welly socks to tide me over until my knitting is finished, because sometimes these things take a while.

A few weeks ago, just a bit before the start of this blog, I joined a fitness challenge which is being hosted by one of Reddit’s many weight loss communities. Everyone is assigned to a team and the challenge is to have your team beat all the others for exercise minutes and step count over an eight-week period of intensive activity.

I signed up for it because I was desperately in need of a push to get me through the effortful last few pounds of my diet. It sent my activity levels through the roof and now I do about 120 minutes of exercise on most days and a minimum of 60 minutes every day. I started the challenge weighing 150 (in fact, 150.8) pounds and I set a personal goal of losing ten pounds during the challenge, dropping to 140.

This morning I weighed in at 142.2 lbs. On the one hand, this is great and it means I’ve lost 8 pounds since starting the challenge six weeks ago. On the other hand, I still have two pounds left to lose and there are only two weeks of the challenge remaining. I have to get at least two more pounds off by 28 November because that’s when the competition closes, then they announce the winners on the Friday.

I expect you are thinking ‘two pounds, that’s not very much to lose in two weeks, especially for someone who claims to be doing that much exercise’ but losing weight is slow for me and there are a lot of ups and downs. Anything could happen in two weeks. I could lose five pounds or I could gain three. But I must do everything I can to shift at least two pounds. My team needs me and after two months of hard slog I strongly want us to win this competition.

Anyway, so that’s me and my first world problems and my tiny little weight loss project. Two pounds need to come off immediately, as fast as I can shed them.

Oh, if you are interested, yesterday’s 21-hour fast went very well and I abstained from eating until after midday today, so that was good. Today was also the 6th consecutive day of staying within my calorie limit and not giving in to sugary junk. I should get one of those signs. And that’s all today’s news.