The Bearded Belly Chronicles

  Progress This Week & So Far 📉 Starting Weight (Jan 1st): 159.7kg 📉 Current Weight: 148.3kg ⚖️ Total Weight Lost: 11.4 kg 🚰 Water Drank This Week: 28.7 litres ☕ That’s the equivalent of 166 standard mugs of tea ⏳ Total Fasting Time This Week: 140 hours 51 minutes 🎵 That’s enough time to listen to The Fast Food Song on repeat 1,747 times A Week in the Life of Me This week has been a full-on roller coaster, the kind that throws you through loop de loops of highs and lows , makes you question your life choices halfway through, and leaves you stumbling off at the end wondering what just happened. It has been a Pizza Hut, Greggs, KFC kind of week , but also a week of realisations, resilience, and BFG sized strides forward . Some days, I was on top of the world , feeling in control and smashing goals. Other days? I was one bad mood away from single-handedly funding Greggs' next store expansion. I have toiled for hours over what to cut and what to keep from this week, a...

Progress at a Glance Weight lost this week: 1.4 kg Total weight lost so far: 10.4 kg Weight Today : 149.5 kg  10.4 kg dropped since January 1st. Total water consumed: 39.3 litres (or, if we’re measuring it properly, 1,572 Sambuca shots' worth—which, if taken as actual shots, would have left me either a legend or in intensive care). Total time spent fasting: 135.7 hours, which is the entire series of Friends 1.56 times (so I could have seen Ross yell “We were on a break” at least twice). This week has been huge. Not just for the number on the scales, but for the mental shifts, the unexpected challenges, and the moments that tested me in ways I didn’t see coming. But most of all, this was the week I finally stopped hiding. Facing the Mirror – The Page 3 Edition For years, I’ve done everything possible to avoid my own reflection. Swimming in a T-shirt. Dodging cameras. Rushing to get dressed before anyone sees. Even now, with 10.4 kg gone, I still struggle. But this week, I did someth...

Progress at a Glance Weight Update: 159.7kg on January 1st → 153kg last Saturday → 150.5kg today Total Weight Loss: 9.2kg since January 1st This Week’s Loss: 2.5kg Water Consumed: 144 litres since January 1st, which is 0.0058% of an Olympic-sized swimming pool Hours Fasted: 153 hours total, equating to 255% of the time needed to watch every James Bond film back-to-back That means I could have watched Daniel Craig brooding, Sean Connery smirking, and Roger Moore raising his eyebrow twice. If I keep this up, I might just start seeing life through a Bond montage, minus the tuxedo, martinis, and improbable stunts Turns Out Water Isn’t Just Water My New morning routine - magnesium,l-theanine, l-tyrosine , lions mane and Ashwagandha with a litre of water to start every day. At the start of the year, I came across a guy on TikTok called the Water Sommelier who made me question everything I knew about hydration. I always thought water was water, but whenever I tried...

Chapter One: The Man Behind the Beard (and the Belly) Hi all, I’m Ian. I’m a 36-year-old man from Tamworth in the West Midlands, and, to put it bluntly, I’m morbidly obese. This journey is starting after a long battle with my weight, or rather, my weight always winning the battle. But that’s why I’m here now. I need to make a change, and through writing to you once a week, my aim is to stay grounded and accountable. So, if you’re ready for a story full of ups, downs, and everything in between, join me for the ride. And please, keep me accountable along the way. The Turning Point Believe it or not, my turning point wasn’t recent. It happened in December 2013. My son, Ewan, was just three months old, and I was determined not to be “the fat dad in the playground.” What a year 2014 turned out to be. I managed to drop from 26 stone to 14 stone in just six months. At the time, it felt like a huge victory, but looking back, I realise that I became obsessive. I avoided family meals...