She Came, and She Fired A Gun!

Every new year I (like most people) take a good look at myself in the mirror and say, "this year I'm going to lose weight and do better, I won't give up like last year." This little white lie is generally followed by a huge hair of the dog on the evening of New Years day and despite keeping good form for a little while, old habits and patterns soon creep back in. There's always tomorrow.  The excuses and soft talk begin within weeks, my birthday is just around the corner, then Easter, a holiday maybe, then of course summer with barbecues and picnics. Soon we come back around and although I've got plenty of fresh air and exercise, it's all been in vain (or in the case of cholesterol in vein), because like everyone else in my predicament that gets carried away with the moment I've taken on more calories than I can actually burn.

This year is different though. Last October through a fortunate change around in my career, I found myself working from my office at home more frequently. The side effect of this was that the biscuit tin was close at hand, and because my office is only ten short paces from my bedroom I began to put on even more weight.

Now I wouldn't want you to think that before this revelation that I was thin and active, far from it. I did however get to walk between the various offices that were my responsibility, and would try not to use the lift (but I did use it a lot), which helped keep me as just obese.

So having returned from a cider fuelled holiday in Cornwall we were reviewing the holiday snaps and I noticed my Chins were larger than before. The next morning I stepped onto the scales to find I was little more than a gnats whisker away from 18 stone. With Christmas looming I figured by January another stone would be flapping over my belt and I would be almost back to the heaviest I had ever been (19 stone 7llb aged 26). At 46 years old and another birthday on the horizon I concluded waiting till January was not an option, I began in earnest counting the calories.

Toasting a publication shortly after returning from Cornwall

Well here we are in January, and thus far I think I've made a good start. I like many other people that fight the good fight every day, don't expect praise,  don't expect judgement, we do what we do, because we do.

So while I'm attending to my own personal battle, enter stage left Katie Hopkins, making her statements about people like me. Her judgement being that we are lazy. Anyone that knows me will vouch for the 40-50 hour weeks I often work, and confirm Lazy is not a word that can be levelled at me.

Having been subjected to the trailers for her programme, I confirm I was more than annoyed, but like most road kill TV it compelled me to watch it, if only from the perspective of someone who by her terms was Lazy and un-employable. In my terms I am someone who works for a living earns, a wage and just so happens to be obese and has been for  most of their adult life. Effectively what Katie did was akin to a non smoker smoking a packet of fags in a day, then saying the next day "There you go I gave up why can't you."

As someone that has struggled with their weight I did identify (grudgingly) with her angst at not being the person that she wanted to be, or was used to being. However non of us are perfect, that's the point. I guess the thing that annoyed me more was the insistence that it's easy to lose weight, and that she didn't have a personal trainer or a personal chef. Fair comment, but in the same way that those of us that are overweight don't necessarily have the mind set to slim down, you Katie do not have the mind set to be overweight. There were more than a couple of visits to Harley street in the programme, not something your average person in the street has access to, and not something we can expect from an already overstretched health service.

So as someone that owns half a life time (so far) of fat, I decide to lose weight. I decided this before the Hopkins programme aired, and have thus far lost a stone and 3 pounds, making my current weight today 16 stone 9 pounds. I intend using no more than tools that are freely available around me, on the internet or through my own knowledge or open discussion. The kinds of things that are around us all regardless of wage, social background, not all of us can afford to join a Gym and go to a spinning class Katie.

I already have access to an elliptical exercise bike (purchased by wife for her own well being, I rarely use it  as it hurts my knees), and  an air walker, the later being a second hand machine that's been sat in the garage for almost ten years. We also have the kids Wii with balance board, and this bright pink bungee strap thing, pretending to be a rower.

I have a cheap android smart phone, that I got back out of it's moth balls on Friday evening, I'm going to use this to play the Couch to 5k MP3 course that's available free from the NHS Website and also to use one of the freely available trackers that you can download as an app to your smart phone.

So that's me and my intention, let's have some fun, and see where this takes me.

UPDATE:

Yesterday I did the first podcast for couch to 5K, I deliberately got up very early (6am) and got myself out before breakfast, I must admit it hurt a bit, I got cold and wet, but I got home safe and proud. This has begun.