So far so good - three days in and I've already lost three pounds!
Whoop! Smashing it, #easy.
Wednesday, 27 November 2013
Monday, 25 November 2013
Getting Fit For 40
So, it was with a slight shudder that I realised I’m going to turn 40 in
less than 18 months. And I don’t mean that I feel my life is over and ‘what the
hell happened to my youth’ and all that whiney crap, (although, seriously, what
the hell happened to my youth?).
In fact with each passing decade I’ve felt more and more
comfortable in my skin and glad I’m getting further away from the
embarrassingly nieve, self-centred and arrogant angry young man that stomped
around this beautiful city (Bristol) with my pen and reporter’s notebook in
hand, brandishing it with all the righteousness of a broadsword wielding
Crusader during the sack of Jerusalem. I'm looking forward to my forties, there's a lot that should be happening which will be amazing, and after all, it is the new 30 in any case.
My point is, the skin. While I’m more comfortable in it, there seems to
be more of it than there ever has been, all stretched and man-booby, in a way
that is not attractive, which goes without saying, but also in a way that is
just not healthy or indeed sustainable.
On March 10, 2015, I’ll hopefully be marking my fortieth birthday in
some debauched, drunken and possibly depraved manner, as is the tradition, in
order to usher in a new and exciting point in my life. Later that same year I
will, (wedding Gods willing) also be getting married to the most wonderful,
beautiful, warm hearted, intelligent, forgiving and patient woman I’ve ever
met, and I know how lucky that makes me. She also laughs at most of my jokes,
which surely makes her a keeper.
So I want to hit my fifth decade running, both figuratively and in an
actual sense, by being fitter and healthier and giving myself the best chance
of appearing like the good looking bastard I always hoped I would be in my
wedding photos. Okay, I know, we’re not working miracles here...
But this isn’t just some vanity project. Although who doesn’t want to
look their best on their wedding day? This is about understanding how to
achieve that thing that seems to be so elusive to me, which is about having a
healthy balanced diet, getting regular exercise and not having to worry about
whether or not I’ll reach 40.
Why am I doing this?
Last year my dad gave us all a scare by having a heart attack in the
middle of the night, thankfully all was well and the good people at TauntonMusgrove Park Hospital did a great job in keeping him alive. However lately
it’s been making me think, and specifically it’s been making me think about the
time in my very early 20s when I was living a fairly typically excessive
student lifestyle, burning the candle at both ends if you like, and melting it
in the middle probably. My doctor told me that if I kept living my life like
that for the next ten years, I probably wouldn’t make it to 40, due in part to
my heart condition which I didn’t really take very seriously at 20, being that
at 20, I felt pretty much invincible.
Of course I grew up and out of all that but as the big ‘Four Oh’ now
approaches I can’t help but think that my health needs again to be my top priority,
because despite my on-off relationship with fitness and running, including the
year-long full-on sordid affair with the London Marathon back in 2009/2010, it
turns out I’m not in fact invincible. It also turns out that running one
marathon doesn’t mean you can then eat crap for the next three years and expect
the well-toned snake hips not to turn into a big fat whale’s arse - (I never
had snake hips of course, I was just reaching for some easy animal analogy).
Okay, where is this going, why should I care? Two good questions.
What I’m doing here now is trying to focus everything on getting fit for
40, not because it makes an easy alliterative blog title, although that helps,
but because it’s a crucial age, a crucial year in my life and the fact is it’s
going to take more than a year to turn this bloated tanker around.
Here are the stats as of November 25, 2013:
Age: 38
Weight: 17st 6lbs
Height: 5ft 6ins
Waist: 38ins
Chest: 48ins
Collar: 18ins
BMI: 38.21
Life expectancy: 73
There are some bad numbers there, and there are some really bad numbers. It’s not pretty, and nor are all the attending health issues that go with it.
So, I’m starting a journey, today, to change those numbers and my life, although I admit there’s
not much I can do about my height unfortunately. And without sounding too much
like a hopeless X Factor contestant, I’ve decided to share this journey because
I want to know how to achieve a normal, healthy state of being, without having
to go on a cabbage soup diet, or run ten miles everyday, or any other
extreme measures which are not only unsustainable but utterly miserable.
I enjoy my food, that much is clear, but I mean I enjoy good food and
wine...and beer. I don’t want to give up the simple pleasures of life for a
Spartan existence that may well see me return to a 28 inch waist and look ten
years younger, but at what cost? We live in a society where we all work long
hours and during the week me and the missus-to-be see little of each other
beyond getting some kind of dinner on the table, watching a bit of
Corrie on catch up and falling asleep in front of the news. So I don’t want to
give up those times at the weekend when we can enjoy a good meal and maybe two
or three bottles of wine. Or even maybe four...
It’s also clear that there are a lot of people, especially men, who
probably feel the same and I want to hear from them and build a community of
shared experience. Men are still woefully ignored by the diet industry, in my
opinion, and only have fitness mags that seem to be written for and by
elastic-waisted twentysomethings. Instead of titles like Mens Health, we need
things like Fat and Balding Bloke’s Health, with features on how to enjoy a few
pints of Doom Bar at the weekend without having to pay for it during the rest
of the week and easy recipes for food that tastes real without worrying about
calories. Shed building, Ford Focus maintainence, how to let out your Levis
around the waist, etc. Please save us from diets, but instead work out a good
balanced lifestyle.
The challenge ahead
I’ve just been looking up my ideal healthy weight for a man of my
height, and according to the NHS Choices website, a healthy weight is between
nine and 11 stone. I don’t think I’d have the muscle strength necessary to get
out of bed at nine stone. So I’m going to aim for ten stone, which give or take
a few lamb baltis is about eight stone from where I am now, which seems like a
lot. And it is.
I think I can do it, in time for turning 40, but what’s really important
is what happens after that. Professional sportsmen (with whom I have little in
common it’s true) will say that winning world championship, the Premier league,
Wimbledon etc is one thing, but retaining the title year after year is a much
bigger challenge. And that is the true nature of this challenge before me. It’s
not to lose eight stone and run another marathon, but to lose weight and to
keep it lost on a permanent basis as that is the title that eludes me.
 |
| A bit less of this.... |
 |
| ...and a bit more of this. |
Having said I don’t want to rely on a diet of cabbage soup and run ten
miles a day, I know that over the next couple of years I need to take action to
get fit and that is going to mean a lot of running, walking and cycling, and
abstaining from all that wonderful stuff that I’ve paid such a heavy price for.
Time to get off my arse!
And of course no challenge would be complete without trying to raise
money for relevant charities and for me that is the British Heart Foundation
and Cancer Research UK.
I have set myself a goal of raising £2,000 for these two vital charities
over the next two years, by taking on a number of different physical challenges
in order to lose about eight stone in weight and to Get Fit For 40.
Obesity, and all its attending health problems, is a major cause of
heart disease and cancer, and as I underwent a heart valve replacement in 2007,
and have known too many people lose their lives to cancer, it feels right that
anything I can do to help should benefit these two leading charities.
With the scale of the challenge ahead of me I feel two years is about
right and in that time I plan to complete the following:
2014:
May - Edinburgh Half Marathon
June/July - Three Peaks Challenge
September - Bristol Half Marathon
2015:
March - Bath Half Marathon
June/July - Ridgeway route walk 87 miles
September - Bristol Half Marathon
That is the plan right now, but that may change with things like life
and weddings having their impact and I will keep this updated if there are
changes. I’ve not put in for any planned activity for 2013, as there’s so little
time left so I’m just going to focus on getting down the gym and avoiding too
many Christmas sweets. Although a Christmas Cracker 10K may not be too far out of reach.
I know very well the pressures on all of us financially, but if you can
give anything to this cause I would be hugely grateful, and of course every
penny goes straight to the charities, so even if you think I’m a complete arse,
your hard-earned will be going where it should.
Also if you got to the end of
this blog post, then especially well done to you!
To find out how to donate, go to my VIRGIN MONEY GIVING PAGE.
Right then, I’m off for a brisk stroll to stock up on celery and diet
pills!
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