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?

Day 3

It's quite paradoxical that, although I live in one of the most beautiful areas of Scotland, much of my exercise is done in quite shabby urban/ semi-industrial neighbourhoods. I'm sure, of course, that beautiful woodland trails exist nearby. I'm just not at all sure that I'd be able to cope with the demands that such trails would place on someone of my weight and fitness. Concrete it is then. For now...

My plan is evolving daily. I guess that once you have completed a programme like C25K, it's very hard to have to go back to just walking around the same old loops. In the short-term, then, to ease the boredom and simulate a training schedule as much as possible, I've decided that Monday Wednesday and Friday will be my hard days with the others as recovery/easy days. I walked hard today and went almost a couple of minutes faster than my best time so far. I'm hoping that this kind of schedule will add a little bit of competition to the mix and will allow me an easy platform to introduce slightly harder workouts as the weeks progress.

I also read a snippet in Runners' World Magazine from Jeff Galloway (I think) which espoused a very gradual transition from walking to running. The basic idea was that you run for 10 seconds and walk for 50 over a ten minute period, gradually increased the 10 minutes to 30, and then gradually increased the seconds spent running. I'll consider this approach, possibly, when my weight gets to a sensible level.

For the moment, though, I'm focusing on gratitude. I am lucky that I am able to get out every day and walk for 2.5miles. Many people can't (or wont) and, I'm sure, their lives are poorer for it. My life is much richer for achieving something every day whilst most people are still in bed. I am so grateful for all that I have. I am grateful that I get to share that with you, dear reader. Onwards.

Consider My Ass Well and Truly Kicked!

I want to say a big thank you to my old C25K comrade Doug (Batman) for his refreshing comment. I wish you well my friend, and I hope that you're feeling fitter and better than you were. I thought I'd published the post when I received it, and it was only today, when I came to write this post, that I realised it hadn't made the leap to cyberspace. As for what you had to say, Doug, you were right on the money, and I'm really grateful that you took the time and effort to aim your boot at my rear. I needed it badly.

Not that you were my only motivation to get back on here and stay true to the promise that I made myself when this whole thing began. I now have two children (both girls), the latest of which was born on April 21st. Having a new baby around the place, looking so small and terribly fragile, just underscored for me the fact that I am very responsible for those two little lives and that I need to ensure that I hang around for as long as I can to take care of them. Of course, being something of a pragmatist, I have to acknowledge my own finitude, so I spent most of yesterday afternoon trying to arrange life insurance (I've been holding off until I'd spent a whole year smoke-free). The depressing news is that, as far as insurance companies are concerned, I am not a very good bet for living another 20 years. The primary reason being that, since I completed C25K, I have ballooned to 283lbs (128.5KG), and get out of breath heaving myself upstairs to bed at night. It has brought me down to earth with something of a bump.

When I first started C25K I think I was around 252lbs and got down to the 230s by the time I finished it. The fact is that, at this weight, C25K isn't an option. If you need any further proof of this let me just advise you that, in a straight line, my three year-old daughter can outrun me and frequently leaves me in a breathless heap after just a few seconds. Some serious preparation is required before I think of doing C25K again. As far as nutrition is concerned I'm trying to treat my intake as if I'm training rather than dieting; thus, what do I need in order to complete the tasks I assign myself on a daily basis, minus roughly 500 calories. I am aiming to restrict, if not eradicate completely, my consumption of wheat and dairy. My training at the moment consists of a daily walk of 2.67 miles which, today (the first day of my new regimen), took me just over 47 minutes. I really need to gradually build a base of aerobic and musculo-skeletal fitness whilst losing some of the flab. As my fitness increases I will first increase the intensity and then increase the distance of the walks. I also hope to include some cycling as things progress. I will consider starting C25K again when I reach 240lbs.

This is my plan. I appreciate now that action is required rather than talk. Nonetheless, I am hoping to update the blog at least a couple of times each week, and certainly on weigh-in days (which will be alternate Mondays beginning on June 14th). No more excuses.

Me Again...

Having sat here reading the last post I made, somewhere in the region of a year ago, the temptation is to feel a little ashamed of myself. I'd got my determination going, quit the smokes, started a running programme and was losing weight hand over fist. Then, as occasionally happens, the wheels fell off. Within a very short space of time I was back on the smokes and the couch. The weight piled on again and here we are, one year later, at 265lbs.

On a more positive note, I've been off the smokes for 11 weeks and I now feel ready to tackle this again. I've started some gentle exercise with a view to getting back on C25K within 2 weeks. I don't feel ashamed, I feel determined and a little bit better educated than last time.

To those wonderful people who contacted me with messages of support and concern after the posts stopped, I thank you sincerely. I can only apologise for the prolonged silence, but those who know the shame that is associated with failure will understand, I hope. Take comfort in the fact that it is those messages which made me resolve to get back on track. I'll be making sure I don't let you down again.

The No-Need for Speed

Hey Folks,

I hope you're all still out there and running. I am, I'm just not posting quite so regularly at the moment - lousy work getting in the way.

Anyhow, I've been provoked into action by a few posts on forums that I've seen lately which are from beginner runners who are preoccupied with speed. Now, I know it may sound a bit rich coming from me, but as a beginner runner the word "speed" has no place in your vocabulary - at least not in the sense of going fast. There are two good reasons for this:

1. Until your body has become accustomed to running, speed is not an adequate or even desirable measure of performance. To illustrate further - many beginner runners are either unfit, previously sedentary  or overweight - and often a combination of all three plus some more like, current or former smokers, asthmatics etc.  For this type of beginner runner  the only way to survive on a running programme is to work for time and perceived exertion.  Even beginner runners who are fit need to take care when they start running.  Aerobic endurance is the key to distance running, and it won't develop if you run so fast that your heart rate goes into the stratosphere. All you'll develop is the ability to run through the unpleasant effects of lactic acid build-up, which is a good thing, because by training anaerobically all the time, you'll have a lot of lactic acid build-up to cope with.
2. Speed develops best with the increases in fitness that a new runner experiences. It happens incrementally and only ever in line with what your body can cope with. As an example - I have been known to go a little quickly myself - so I have recently made a concerted effort to keep myself in check. On yesterday's run, I set off at a nice easy pace, made sure that my breathing was even and that I was always in control of my pace. When I got home I discovered that I had taken 30 seconds off my best time for 3 miles. I was utterly shocked, because it felt as if I'd been just coasting along, but obviously my fitness has improved and my natural, easy pace has got faster without me even trying.

Please folks, do me a favour? If you're going to do C25K, then please do C25K. Follow the instructions, run to the specified times, always warm-up and cool-down, ALWAYS stretch at the end of a run and don't go too fast. You can't be a runner if you can't run. C25K was designed specifically to help you become a runner whilst minimising the risk of injury. So let it help you to achieve something you'll always be proud of.

Easy does it.

Blogged with the Flock Browser