To Weigh or not to Weigh...

That is the question today. It's become increasingly apparent to me since I re-embarked on my quest for healthful living that I haven't been particularly hung up about food. I made a bit of an effort over the first couple of days to design a kind of template for my intake (no complex carbs after lunch, fruit for breakfast etc.) but other than that I've been completely flexible and guided by what I feel I actually want. Strangely, that hasn't been pizza and chips!

One key difference between my current regimen and previous attempts at diet/exercise has been my decision to stay away from the weighing scales for two weeks. The immediate effect of this has been to actually shift the focus of this operation off my weight and on to the way I live my life. I can't begin to tell you how different I feel because the decisions I make each day aren't based on pleasing the scales once a week, they're actually based on what I can best do to make myself happy each day. So, when I get out of bed at 5am each morning to go for my walk it isn't a chore that I must do to please the god of the scales, it's something I love to do because it makes me feel like I've achieved something and it puts me on a high for the rest of the day. Similarly I don't eat anything after my late afternoon/ early evening meal because it makes me feel bloated before bed which impedes my ability to get off to sleep and, thus, interferes with my ability to get up in the morning.

So. with all these benefits, why would I want to weigh myself at all? There are those who recommend just that and it does have some great upsides. I think I've reached a point where I need to establish some guidelines so that I can put the issue to bed and not have to worry about it. So I've decided on a compromise; I will weigh myself on the first of each month. That way, hopefully, my weight loss will be substantial enough to maintain my motivation and the long interval between weigh-ins will help me to avoid obsessing about each an every pound and help me focus on what really is important; feeling great about myself and happy in my life.

A Change is as Good as a Rest

I'd been wondering all week just what I should be doing at the weekend. Should I take it easy, rest, recover, cross-train? I have to acknowledge that, despite having a really encouraging start to my training, I'm still pretty unfit at best, so the idea of a two-day lay off was very tempting indeed. In the end I decide to rest and cross-train. On Saturday I was still up at 5am, but I did a few chores and spent some time with my family (when they eventually emerged), and had a lovely lazy day.

This morning I decided that I did want to work out but I didn't want to do my weekly training walk. So out came the bicycle for it's first airing in many months. I know that there are certain protocols about road-worthiness etc. but I must confess to being slightly ignorant of what they are. There was air in the tyres and an open road before me. I couldn't resist.

I think, with hindsight, it was perhaps a little ambitious of me to try and cycle 9 miles on my first time out in a while, but I had a point in my head that I wanted to make and, actually, it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. It was still difficult - and it will probably hurt tomorrow - but it wasn't beyond me. As someone who has struggled with his weight for most of his adult life I can state with some certainty that I tend to think most things are beyond my capabilities. I've held myself back for so long because I couldn't believe that it was even worth trying, let alone consider the possibility of succeeding. So I think that achy thighs and a slightly sore bottom are a price worth paying for the positive feedback that only comes through achieving things that I thought were beyond me. And perhaps, next time, I'll be less afraid to try and more willing to take a risk.

Back to the walking tomorrow.

Variety is the Spice of Working Out

Another beautiful day for a walk, which is lucky because that's exactly what I was doing. Under the auspices of keeping my walking programme as similar to a good running programme as possible, today was a hard day. No heroics, just an ardent desire to keep pushing forward and no coasting. It paid off, I feel, and not because I've seen a miraculous improvement in my size (still fat) or condition (still unfit). It just really helped to get me out of the door knowing that I had a little competition going with myself. And that, I feel, is the secret to this stuff. It has to be a lifestyle change, but if you're going to be doing this for the rest of your life then it needs to be fun. Setting little goals helps to give it that competitive and fun edge.

So, it's an easy day tomorrow, and believe me when I say that it is just as much of a challenge forcing yourself to go easy when you know you've got much more left in the tank, and I thought that I might try some intervals on Friday. Just a kind of ten minutes hard five minutes easy kind of thing, to try and juggle things around again. Who thought you could have so much fun at five in the morning?