This is the third resurrection of this blog in as many years however this time I have a more serious incentive than before to keep the blog going and chart my journey to what will be a huge achievement in my life.
To begin thinking about bringing the blog back to life again, I sat down and had a really good think about my fitness and in particular how it has evolved over the course of my life. When I was a kid, I was relatively fit. I was no Usain Bolt but I played football, went riding on my bike and ran around whenever the opportunity presented itself. When I was around 7 or 8, everything seemed to change and all of a sudden my fitness evaporated. I found I couldn't run for any extended period of time and a staple of school sports day was seeing me struggle to the finish line in last place.
Around this time, I also started to notice that when I was doing exercise, my chest would become very tight and it would be difficult to breathe comfortably. A visit to the doctor resulted in me finding out that I have a mild form of asthma which is brought on either by strenuous exercise or from allergies. As I went through secondary school, exercise took even further of a back seat in my priorities, with me preferring to spend my time walking the streets with friends on a night or playing on the Playstation for hours at a time.
This trend continued on through college and university, where I found myself using excuses to not exercise while at the same time eating anything that I wanted. During my first year of university it was common place for me to have my dinner at Mcdonalds around three times a week. Fast forward a few more years and around 2009/2010 I finally signed up for the gym. By this time my weight was pushing around 19 stone and my asthma had become a little worse (I have to use my inhaler most days)
This was really the first time in my life that I had paid attention to my weight and actively taken steps to track it and try and bring it down. I managed to bring my weight down to 17 stone which was mainly due to the exercise I was doing in preparation for a 5k run which up to then was the most I had ever ran. I completed the run and decided to take a couple of weeks off from the exercise as a reward for having achieved something I hadn't done before. Weeks turned into months and pretty soon the gym membership was cancelled and I was back into old habits.
Fast forward again to May 2012 and all the weight I had lost was put back on and then some. At the start of May I weighed 19st 3lbs and was bigger than I have probably ever been in my life and I knew that something had to change somewhere. After hearing and seeing the success that lots of other people have had with the program, I decided to give Weight Watchers a try. This initially was a difficult decision as the way I saw it, WW was something that only women did.
However immediately I saw the success and although the success had come from things I could have done on my own, incentive and motivation is often the difficult thing to find and I found that knowing I had to weigh myself each week and knowing I had to stick within a daily set of guidelines great motivation and I was seeing the changes.
It is 9 months since I started on WW and in that time I have lost just less than 3 1/2 stone and I my weight is currently at its lowest for probably about 10 years. Because of my success, I began to feel like I need to give myself a challenge and that is where I was drawn back to the blog.
When the blog was first started I set myself 4 goals which I wanted to try and achieve, the goals were:
- Fit into the next waist size down jeans
- Fit into large size t-shirts
- Get my BMI down into the overweight band
- Take part in the Great North Run
At the time of writing, I have smashed two of these challenges. In nine months I have dropped 2 jean sizes and all new shirts I buy are now large rather than extra large. I need to lose only seven more pounds before my weight gets into the overweight category and last month, I registered to participate in the Great North Run. I received confirmation that I will be taking part in the run on the 15th September which is a huge challenge for me but one I am looking forward to.
I have already taken very small steps to begin my training but this is something that I will be stepping up over the course of the next couple of weeks. I am going to use the blog both as a way to track my own progress over the coming weeks but also for anyone that is interested in the journey of an overweight and unfit person to running a a half marathon.
The following weeks and months are going to be tough but I hope that anyone who reads this blog enjoys reading about my journey.
Friday, 15 February 2013
Thursday, 2 September 2010
Race For Grace
Since I have started on this new fitness drive, I have constantly been trying to think up ways to challenge myself, both to see if I can achieve these challenges and also as a way to gauge my progress week by week. In the beginning it was simply a case of seeing if I could beat the number of calories I had burned at the last gym visit or seeing if I could beat the distance I got on the exercise bike. This was fine but I quickly realised this wasnt an effective way of challenging myself as weekly, sometimes daily challenges were only going to be attainable for a very short amount of time. It was great to see that I could increase my distance on the bike by 1km in 3 successive gym visits but I'm no Chris Hoy so I quickly realised I needed to look at it from a different point of view. At the moment my main goal when I go into the gym is simply to match what I did in the last session, if I beat it by a little then its a great result but as long as I can match myself, I know I am still on target.
I am now into the third full week of my regime and as I came out of the gym a week or so ago I came across a leaflet advertising the Race For Grace 2010. For those unfamiliar with the Grace House hospice, which will be probably be most people outside of Sunderland, the appeal was set up in order to raise funds to build a dedicated hospice for children all over the North East of England. They are trying to help make a real change to the lives of thousands of very sick children. For the past couple of years, there has been a race around Herrington Park to try and raise as much money as possible so that the hospice can be built as soon as possible. When I saw the leaflet in the gym, it immediately drew my attention. I see this as a chance not only to challenge myself and test my progress so far, but also to take part in something which is for an extremely good cause. The entry fee is only £10 which is nothing to me and in part I actually felt slightly disappointed that you aren't asked or required to garner sponsors for the run. Never the less, I took my application form, I have filled it in and now sent it off, giving me now just over a month to prepare myself for what is going to be the longest run I have ever done in one go. My training regime is going to have to change very slightly as currently I train only on the cross trainer and exercise bike but I know I will need to do some work on the treadmill in order to make sure that I can go the distance. 3 mile may not seem like a great deal but for me this will be a big test and I may be red in the face and crawling over the finish line but I am determined that I will do it. If anyone reads and would like to take part or find out a little more about the appeal, you can find the website at http://www.gracehouse.co.uk
Aside from all of that it has been another fairly productive week since my first blog entry, I am continuing to improve session by session, I have just increased from 20 minute routines on the machines to 25 and was surprised to find I coped with it very well, its been a long time since I have been able to complete 50 continuous minutes or cardio but I am getting there. I have also taken another positive step to achieving one of my main goals set which is to fit into the next waist size down jeans. I have just recently found I could fit into the next size down from the ones I have been wearing for 2 years. In my experience, you can try on a pair of jeans in one shop and have them fit fine and then the exact same size in another shop will not fit at all. As I went into a shop last night, despite having fit into a pair or smaller jeans in another shop, I was fairly confident based on past experience that they would not fit here. Thus I decided to make the claim 'the day I fit into a pair of Ben Sherman jeans comfortably, I will buy them'. I revelled in my claim as I knew it would be long before this would be a reality, until I decided to try a pair on anyway just to see how far away I was. To my delight/horror, I found that they fit absolutely fine, delight dawned as I realised they actually fit, horror dawned as I realised the £60 price tag. I swiftly backed out of my original claim, knowing that I certainly do not have 60 sheets to throw away on jeans. Regardless, this was another positive boost and acknowledgement of the effort I have put in so far, giving me only more motivation to continue.
I will post again soon to update on my planning and progress towards the Race For Grace, cue the Chariots Of Fire theme playing in my head. And hopefully come October 3rd, I will still have enough energy left to let you know how I did.
Graeme
I am now into the third full week of my regime and as I came out of the gym a week or so ago I came across a leaflet advertising the Race For Grace 2010. For those unfamiliar with the Grace House hospice, which will be probably be most people outside of Sunderland, the appeal was set up in order to raise funds to build a dedicated hospice for children all over the North East of England. They are trying to help make a real change to the lives of thousands of very sick children. For the past couple of years, there has been a race around Herrington Park to try and raise as much money as possible so that the hospice can be built as soon as possible. When I saw the leaflet in the gym, it immediately drew my attention. I see this as a chance not only to challenge myself and test my progress so far, but also to take part in something which is for an extremely good cause. The entry fee is only £10 which is nothing to me and in part I actually felt slightly disappointed that you aren't asked or required to garner sponsors for the run. Never the less, I took my application form, I have filled it in and now sent it off, giving me now just over a month to prepare myself for what is going to be the longest run I have ever done in one go. My training regime is going to have to change very slightly as currently I train only on the cross trainer and exercise bike but I know I will need to do some work on the treadmill in order to make sure that I can go the distance. 3 mile may not seem like a great deal but for me this will be a big test and I may be red in the face and crawling over the finish line but I am determined that I will do it. If anyone reads and would like to take part or find out a little more about the appeal, you can find the website at http://www.gracehouse.co.uk
Aside from all of that it has been another fairly productive week since my first blog entry, I am continuing to improve session by session, I have just increased from 20 minute routines on the machines to 25 and was surprised to find I coped with it very well, its been a long time since I have been able to complete 50 continuous minutes or cardio but I am getting there. I have also taken another positive step to achieving one of my main goals set which is to fit into the next waist size down jeans. I have just recently found I could fit into the next size down from the ones I have been wearing for 2 years. In my experience, you can try on a pair of jeans in one shop and have them fit fine and then the exact same size in another shop will not fit at all. As I went into a shop last night, despite having fit into a pair or smaller jeans in another shop, I was fairly confident based on past experience that they would not fit here. Thus I decided to make the claim 'the day I fit into a pair of Ben Sherman jeans comfortably, I will buy them'. I revelled in my claim as I knew it would be long before this would be a reality, until I decided to try a pair on anyway just to see how far away I was. To my delight/horror, I found that they fit absolutely fine, delight dawned as I realised they actually fit, horror dawned as I realised the £60 price tag. I swiftly backed out of my original claim, knowing that I certainly do not have 60 sheets to throw away on jeans. Regardless, this was another positive boost and acknowledgement of the effort I have put in so far, giving me only more motivation to continue.
I will post again soon to update on my planning and progress towards the Race For Grace, cue the Chariots Of Fire theme playing in my head. And hopefully come October 3rd, I will still have enough energy left to let you know how I did.
Graeme
Wednesday, 25 August 2010
First Steps
Welcome to the first entry in my new blog which I intend as a means to keep track myself of my progress as much as letting anyone else who reads this know what is going on.
Medically Obese, not the term anyone wants to hear about themselves but based on my current BMI this is the reality of my situation. I am naturally quite heavily built and as such I have never had expectations of being rakishly thin with a six pack, more a six pack of eggs in my case. Having said that, for about 6 years I have been on a steady decline with my fitness. Around a year and a half ago I joined the local gym, intending it as a way to get myself back into shape and increase my overall fitness. 18 months down the line and there was no noteable difference, most likely due to my motivation levels not being what they need to be and also the fact that I still ate loads of junk food and crap whenever I wanted to. I have said in the past that my asthma is a reason for me not getting into shape but as I have discovered over the past couple of weeks, this was a prime example of a piss poor excuse.
During a recent weeks holiday from work, I decided that now may be the time to really give the whole fitness thing a go and see what I can do, I am unhappy with my current weight and appearance and for the first time I discovered real motivation and detetrmination to succeed. My first step was to cut out all of the bad food that I turned to so readily before. I have now had almost 3 weeks without so much as a piece of chocolate and I have found that I am not even missing it in the slightest. I have also started a strict gym regime which I have not broken. I currently go 3 times a week and have found that as I have started seeing the results, I have more motivation to go and dare I say it, even a measure of enjoyment in going. At the end of my second full week of this new outlook, I stepped on the scales to weigh myself. This is unusual for me as in general I have never used scales as a basis to keep track of my weight. Previously my approach was that if I can see myself that I have lost weight then this is progress. I have since realised this approach is not the way to go as it was too easy to become demotivated when I didn't see an immediate result.
Sunday gone (22nd) saw me step onto the scales for the second time to see whether or not I had achieved any success. The scales read half a stone lighter than at the same time the previous week. This was a huge morale boost for me as if I had used my previous method of if I can see it, it's working, I would not have known at all that I had lost any weight over the week.
After seeing that I am making progress, I decided to set myself some reasonable targets to work towards and settled on four:
Graeme
Medically Obese, not the term anyone wants to hear about themselves but based on my current BMI this is the reality of my situation. I am naturally quite heavily built and as such I have never had expectations of being rakishly thin with a six pack, more a six pack of eggs in my case. Having said that, for about 6 years I have been on a steady decline with my fitness. Around a year and a half ago I joined the local gym, intending it as a way to get myself back into shape and increase my overall fitness. 18 months down the line and there was no noteable difference, most likely due to my motivation levels not being what they need to be and also the fact that I still ate loads of junk food and crap whenever I wanted to. I have said in the past that my asthma is a reason for me not getting into shape but as I have discovered over the past couple of weeks, this was a prime example of a piss poor excuse.
During a recent weeks holiday from work, I decided that now may be the time to really give the whole fitness thing a go and see what I can do, I am unhappy with my current weight and appearance and for the first time I discovered real motivation and detetrmination to succeed. My first step was to cut out all of the bad food that I turned to so readily before. I have now had almost 3 weeks without so much as a piece of chocolate and I have found that I am not even missing it in the slightest. I have also started a strict gym regime which I have not broken. I currently go 3 times a week and have found that as I have started seeing the results, I have more motivation to go and dare I say it, even a measure of enjoyment in going. At the end of my second full week of this new outlook, I stepped on the scales to weigh myself. This is unusual for me as in general I have never used scales as a basis to keep track of my weight. Previously my approach was that if I can see myself that I have lost weight then this is progress. I have since realised this approach is not the way to go as it was too easy to become demotivated when I didn't see an immediate result.
Sunday gone (22nd) saw me step onto the scales for the second time to see whether or not I had achieved any success. The scales read half a stone lighter than at the same time the previous week. This was a huge morale boost for me as if I had used my previous method of if I can see it, it's working, I would not have known at all that I had lost any weight over the week.
After seeing that I am making progress, I decided to set myself some reasonable targets to work towards and settled on four:
- To fit into the next waist size down jeans
- To fit into large t-shirts
- To get my BMI down to 'Overweight'
- To take part in the 2011 Great North Run
Graeme
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