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:

• 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

I am enjoying the challenge of working towards these targets and hope to reach at least some of these targets within the next few months. My blog will help me to keep the motivation levels as high as they currently are and will also give anyone who is interested a chance to see how I am doing. Keep your eyes peeled for another blog soon detailing the first real challenge I have decided to pit myself against........

Graeme