Is this what it is about?

Whew! Just done a good session on the cross-trainer, and I sort of get an idea what people mean when they talk about getting a high from exercise. Fit people probably don’t understand, but for unfit people, that sounds like a whole crock.

When you’re unfit, exercise is just plain unpleasant. You don’t get through the pain-barrier, you don’t get second-wind, you just have a thoroughly miserable time. You have, I suspect, to reach a certain fitness threshold before you start to get any of those benefits.

(I will add here that I in no way think that I am at that stage yet, but I did, I hope, get a slight inkling of what it might be like one day)

No exercise got done yesterday, alas. I had to head straight off to the event after work. I also pigged out on BBQ chicken. It was not in any sort of sauce – bonus – but it was bloody good.

Stayed there overnight and had a cooked breakfast this morning. M-mmm, I do love a cooked breakfast; what the hotels here in the UK call a “Full English Breakfast”. Fried bacon, fried sausage, fried eggs, mushrooms, baked beans, tomatoes, hash browns (although those are, of course American gate-crashers to the party). Full of calories, full of fat and full of sheer scrumptiousness. I could happily eat a full English breakfast every day. I would no doubt soon be 38 stone, but what a way to go. So, I never cook them for myself, but I do take advantage of them when they are on offer.

One caveat though, no fried bread. I hate fried bread. Eurgh! I don’t know how people can eat it. Too much grease, too concentrated. I was put off it in the school canteen 30-odd years ago, and I have not been able to face it since. Toast. That is what the righteous breakfast has, not fried bread, toast.

However, I digress. Other news on the lifestyle front, I have invested in a new juicer, which turns out to be a real pain in the butt for doing citrus – and I do love fresh juice – so I have got a cheap citrus juicer from Tescos (£5.99) and it is very good. (I gave my previous cheap and cheerful juicer from Argos (14-odd quid) away as a present (asked for) and this one is better at half the price. Easier to clean).

I have also decided to try out Psyllium husks as a Fibre supplement. 2 teaspoons morning and night. Good for the digestion, so I am told, and bulks one out too.

I’m off to Scotland tomorrow until Monday, so no diet and no official exercise; however I hope that I will do a fair amount of yomping up and down hills, which should count a bit.

Back Monday.

Struggles

This is not turning out to be a good week, so far.

Went down to London on Monday night to have dinner with my father and brother. I get on extremely well with my old man, and take every opportunity to spend quality time with him (and my mother) that I can. With me in my forties and them in their seventies, the sense that such opportunities are finite grows ever stronger.

So, fairly boozy evening on Monday, with ensuing hang-over on Tuesday, squashed the training on Tuesday.

Tuesday night, I was working behind the bar for a local charity event. Calorie-wise it was not a bad occasion, although I did drink a lot of diet coke, which is probably not the healthiest option in the world, even if it is relatively non-fattening.

However, I eventually got home at 4.30 this morning, so no early rise for exercise today either. Tonight I go to another event for an organisation that I help out with. Probably booze-free, but the BBQ might be a bit calorific.

I am hoping to get a session in on the cross-trainer before I go, but work commitments mean that this might not happen.

This change of lifestyle thing is not that easy…

Oh, crap!

Curses!!! Weighed myself this morning, something that I decided I would only do once per week so that there would be a chance to see any real differences, and I have gained a pound. I now weigh 15st 9lbs.

I waxed lyrical last week about how I would be happy to lose only 2lbs per week, and how that would hopefully indicate a sustainable change, but gaining a pound??? Where the heck did that come from?

Now ok, as recorded, I went out a few times last week and had “normal” meals, but the point is that these were no different to what I would have had before I started trying to change things. Since then I have done at least 30 minutes of exercise on the cross-trainer most days – and this is breaking-into-a-good-sweat exercise not a mild jaunt – plus I have been doing 200 assorted crunches with each session. They do say that just increasing your exercise alone should help you reduce weight, so the fact that I have replaced a lot of my meals, with salads and healthy food should have helped twice as much. I am not looking for earth-shattering results, but gaining a pound?? That sucks!

I have spoken to a couple of people who have pointed out one or two possibly contributing factors. There’s the old muscle-weighs-more-than-fat cliché. Well, ok, perhaps it does, but I can’t really see that my 30 minutes on the cross-trainer will have converted that much muscle fat into muscle. I shall have to invest in a tape measure and start recording measurements as well.

Second, and hopefully more hopeful, someone was telling me that the very hot weather last week will have made my body retain a lot more water. Now I thought that when you started increasing your consumption of water, it stopped your body from retaining as much.

Maybe this takes time, and the old bod isn’t used to the idea that it doesn’t need to retain at the moment, plus maybe there is something in this idea that the body retains more when it’s hot.

The thing is that I’m sure the principle ought to be right. By exercising more and eating lots of fresh fruit and vegetables instead of junk, I ought to be able to lose weight. So, I have decided that I will give it another week.

If I don’t see better results next week, then I will have to do something different.

The main thing is, not to give up.

Ok

Yep, got my exercise routine done yesterday evening, and again this morning – although still the usual problems with getting out of bed. Diet has been as it should be, too, so it seems we are back on track.

I am away to a conference from this afternoon until Sunday, so I’m not sure how much exercise I will be able to get there. I should probably explain that I have, largely through falling off horses, completely knackered my ankle and therefore can not run.

Well, ok, I can run to catch a train, or something, but repetitive high-impact training, such as running, is a no-no. Hence the cross-trainer.

This means that when I go away somewhere, it’s not that easy to replace the training, unless I can find something similar where I am going.

Back on Monday.

On routine...

I was just thinking about this, following on from the previous blog.

So often, routine can be used as an excuse for giving up. When circumstances, be they 3rd party actions, time constraints or a simple failure of will-power, make you break a pre-determined routine, it is all too easy to adopt a mindset of "Oh well, the routine is already broken, so I don't need to follow it any more..." This has got to be one of the greatest causes of broken new year's resolutions, Lenten fasts, diets and "giving-up-smoking" campaigns that ever exist - and it's just a load of defeatist bollox.

Everyone fails in their resolutions every now and then - and using that to give up is just an excuse. If you fail, you fail - ONCE! So what? Move on and try harder. If you are on a diet and you succumb to the attractions of a cream cake – or, indeed, a curry – then this doe not mean that because the routine is broken you don’t need to bother with it any more. You have just broken it once. You can still adhere to it thereafter. The routine is still there and it can still be followed.

In fact, coming to think about it, “broken” itself is a defeatist word to use. It carries within it it’s own in-built excuse for further failure. It implies a sense of finality. “I have broken my diet”, “I have broken my routine”. It’s so easy to turn this into programming for failure. If it’s broken then I can’t follow it any more, can I? I’ve broken it… No you have not. The diet is not broken, you merely veered away from it briefly. The routine is still there, unbroken, intact and attainable, it just requires you to get back on course.

Losing weight is, I believe and hope, much like giving us smoking – true success comes not from gizmos, gimmicks and gadgets, it comes from a genuine decision on your behalf to make that change happen.

Genuine decisions include refusing to give up the journey just because you stumble along the way….

Get back to routine

Hmm. Just to confuse things, the post with yesterdays (Wednesday’s) date on it was actually written on Tuesday and referred to Tuesday.

So on Tuesday, I did no exercise and had a very fattening dinner.

Wednesday, I did manage to get my exercise routine done, but had a large lunch, with a totally unnecessary pudding and then a curry in the evening.

Now, my philosophy is that I should eat “proper” food and cut out crap when I am at home, but that when I am “out” I can eat “normally”. When I say out, I don’t mean just out on the town, as an excuse to pork down burgers, kebabs and KFC, I mean going to other people’s houses for meals or joining groups of friends for “proper” meals out. This is partly because I love eating, but also because it’s bloody irritating having people coming to your hou7se who are on faddy diets. It’s bad enough with people who have food intolerances – and where the heck did they come from, hardly anyone had food intolerances 30 years ago – but at least you can sympathise with them. People just “on diets”, on the other hand, make it very difficult to be a good host.

So anyway, as far as eating was concerned Tuesday and Wednesday were not good, and Tuesday was a bust as far as exercise was concerned – but I was at a Show all day Wednesday in 35º in a dark suit, so I probably sweated off a fair amount…

Last night I had a very late night, so I made a conscious decision to lie in a bit this morning, but I will, says he, get my exercises done this evening, you see if I don’t…

Oh dear! Had a bad day today. Could I get out of bed this morning? Could I hell as like?

I really don’t understand what my problem is. I lay in bed listening to the alarm going off every 10 minutes – curse you, snooze button! – and I just felt like shit. Not sick, but definitely not well. My limbs felt heavy and ache-y and I just felt as if getting up was going to be a really unpleasant experience. How much easier it was to just carry on lying there…

I have never really analysed this before, but it is quite weird, as I am sure that most of it is psychosomatic.

So having failed to get up, I failed to do my morning routine; I then decided I would do it in the evening. However, I have a meeting with my boss at 6.00pm and dinner with him at 8.00 pm.

No probs, I thought, I will meet at 6, be done y 6.45 and have plenty of time to exercise and be done by 7.45.

So, of course he was 45 minutes late. Hence, no exercise followed by very calorific, boozy dinner.

As said before I have nothing against calorific, boozy dinners. These are part of what life is about and why life without them is not really worth living…

Dinner good – no exercise baaaaaad!

Must try harder 7/10

Progress!

Weighed myself this morning. 15st 8lbs. That might not seem much of a difference, but if I can lose 2lbs per week, I will be perfectly happy with that. I hear tell that weight that is lost quickly gets put back on quickly, too, so loosing it slowly is maybe not a bad idea.

Actually, I am not really bothered about weight itself. I don’t really care how much I weigh – it’s how it looks that bothers me. Muscle weighs more than fat, so they say, so I’m not really bothered what weight I get down to as long as I trim up a bit.

I’m sort of vaguely getting use to the idea that whatever I do, it’s going to have to be a permanent lifestyle change. There’s no point in doing some weird fad for a few weeks and blasting off a few pounds, only to put it straight back on again when I go back to “normal” living.

What I need to do is find a lifestyle that allows me to lose weight and trim up, and then stay that way. So I need an exercise routine that I can commit to following permanently and a change of diet likewise. Fortunately, I am not particularly attached to sweet or fatty foods, so eating healthily is only a question of foregoing the convenience of junk food. I actually quite like the tastes.

I was talking to a friend over the weekend who is also trying to loose weight, and he is on a crash course of one of these meal replacement diets and is eating nothing but these shakes and soups four times a day. Well, quite frankly, I’d rather be fat.

I am not counting calories. I am just replacing junk with “healthy” alternatives. I told him that one of my favourite snacks was garden peas, fresh from the pod. “Oooo,” says he, “you can’t eat peas, they’re full of sugar.” Well, ok, yes they might be – but I hope that they are still a better idea than a packet of crisps of a piece of toast.

If I am wrong, then this crusade is doomed before it starts. I am prepared to change to healthy foods and a reasonable exercise regime – I am not prepared to sacrifice the enjoyment of today for the possibility of an extra 10 years at the end of my life. I don’t want to end up lying under a number 9 bus thinking “Bloody hell, I wish I’d had those garden peas after all…” Life is too short, and there’s absolutely no guarantee that you will live long enough to live longer, if you know what I mean…

Why is it that I just can’t get out of bed in the mornings? I mean, I just hate it. Even if I have one of my infrequent lie-ins and get loads of sleep, I still don’t like getting out of bed. I never want to get out of bed. Ever.

That said, I did get out of bed this morning and do my routine, but it was a struggle - and at least half an hour later than it was supposed to be.

And then some of the nectarines that I was planning to vaporise for my breakfast smoothie turned out to be going manky. Ick! However, I still managed to find a nectarine, a peach, a banana, some raspberries and some blueberries, so smoothiedom-ness was achieved.

However, I have to admit that feel fairly vibrant now. ‘Trouble is, even though I know it will make me feel better, my in-bed-self still doesn’t want to play. I sometimes think that my-in-bed self is an evil alter ego that manages to infiltrate my body when my mind is asleep. Many times when I need to get up for something – be it some thing important or something trivial, my in-bed-self turns off the alarm clock and sends me back to sleep.

Sometimes, especially when it is important, my in-bed-self takes advantage of my sleepy normal persona and starts very persuasive arguments why it’s not really necessary to get up at the time set on the clock. Half an hour later, when normal-persona finally takes control, it almost invariably reveals in-bed-self for the evil lying bastard that he is, and frenzied panic ensues to try to make up for the lost half-hour – which was, of course, necessary all along. Curse you, evil –in-bed-self persona!

I’m off to not one but two funerals today, and then I’m off for the weekend, so won’t be posting here ‘til Monday. Normal exercise regime and diet will be out of the window for the w/e, but plenty of exercise will be taken, including a fair amount of riding.

There will also be some fermented – and even, possibly, distilled – vegetable drinks partaken of, but only in moderation, of course…

Better day today. Did workout last night - although I suspect that the melted butter that I had on my globe artichoke afterwards probably was not very good for me. However, I just want to get into better shape, not kill off all of the pleasure in my life, so I'll let that one slide.

Have you ever tried globe artichokes? They are good.

Managed to get up ok this morning and did 30 minutes on the cross-trainer and 50 of each (4) type of crunches. Go me. Ok, I know it may not seem a lot to the fit folks out there, but it's a start. The plan is to do this twice a day, but it's taking some getting into. I know now that it's just not going to work every day, because of my lifestyle, but if I aim for two a day, then hopefully I should get at least one.

This evening, for example, I had some visits to make connected with a funeral that I'm going to tomorrow. Bummer. I seem to be going to a lot of funerals just lately. Goes to show the point - you just don't know how long you have got, so make the most of your time. As a great friend often says "this is real life, it's not a rehearsal".

This is part of the reason why I am not going crazy on this fitness kick -he other part of the reason is, admittedly, sheer bloody idleness. However, it is a valid point that I just want to improve my lifestyle so that there is still plenty of enjoyment out there, not regiment it into a torture camp.

I once read that there is no point in walking sedately into your grave in a perfectly preserved body with lots of money in the bank. Rather you should skid sideways into the grave, completely skint, in a worn out body, shouting "Woo hoo! What a ride!!!"

There is a happy medium there, but it's a valid point none the less.

I woke up this morning with a stiff neck. This could have something to do with the exercise - particularly the crunches - however, I have done these before without similar problems, so I suspect that it is just a co-incidence.

Diet hasn’t been too bad today. Now, when I say that, however, I’m not actually “on a diet”. I have however, thoroughly moderated my eating patterns. I’ll write it up at some point in due course, but essentially, I am eating a lot of fruit and vegetables and not a lot of anything else.

I am not a vegetarian, by any stretch of the imagination. I love meat (and I had a couple of slices of lean ham this evening, for example.) I just find that cooking meat and two veg is too much hassle. If I am going out, I eat normally, but if I’m at home, I eat salads and fruit.

The salads are probably not exactly the most healthy possible, because I whack things like olives and sun-dried tomatoes and pine nuts into them, but I figure they must still be “healthier” a lot of other junk that one might eat. One day, if I happen to trap a passing nutritionist, I will attempt to find out …

Oh, crap! Not a good start to my new "campaign to a new you" regime. Instead of getting up at seven to do my exercise regime, I overslept and woke at nine thirty. Gah!

Alas, I am not a morning person. I hate getting out of bed, and I find it all too easy to ignore the alarm.

Must do better...

So here we are. This is my first ever attempt at a blog.

What is it about? Well, it's called "Middle Age Dread" because as a 41 year old male who is, as far as he is aware, pretty healthy I have come to the realisation that I need to be more responsible if I want to stay that way. I am, I would guess, already over the crest of the hill in lifeline terms, so I need to get a grip now and try to make sure that I don't fall apart completely.

My middle aged dread is of imminent middle aged spread.

So, something about me. I am 6'1" tall and I weigh 15st 10lbs . That is wayyy to much - an came as a big shock to me when I jumped on my newly acquired scales. I thought I was a whole stone lighter than that!!!

Oddly enough, however, I carry it relatively well. I have something of a pot belly (which I can still pull in) and my man-breasts seem to outstretch Jordan's in my eyes, but I am told by those whose word I trust that I don't look that fat.

Alas, I fear that "not that fat" is not quite as complimentary as I usually kid myself that it is.

Incidentally, I should point out at this point that you're going to have to take my word for this, because there aint not going to be no pictures on this blog - or at least not of me.... Anonymous is the name of the game. This is here for me to record my progress - if anyone ever looks at it, and I can't imagine for a moment why they would, then they will have to rely on the beauty of my prose, I'm afraid.

Unless, of course, I lose shedloads of weight, become super-fit and launch a new career as a fitness guru and millionaire fitness guide author - in which case when the current me is nothing but a memory, then I shall revel in the publicity of its demise. Until then, let caution be my watchword.

I lead a relatively active lifestyle - ish, I suppose. I ride horses a fair bit, and I walk the dog. I do however, sit on my butt in the office a lot, too.

I am single and live on my own. I cook relatively well for company, but can't be bothered to cook for myself.

I used to smoke 20+ a day until the beginning of this year (although I was a late starter, and probably only smoked that much for a couple of years, and didn't smoke at all until the new millenium).

That'll do for a first post. Let's see how it goes...