Crickey that hurts!

The return to 'proper' exercise is certainly leaving its mark this week... the circuits left a hefty and prolonged ache. Ironically it was the stretching session after the circuit that did the most 'damage', stretching bits that hadn't beeen strectched in a while! The opted to try and stretch out more often afterwards, and so far haven't been caught by work colleagues doing impromptu leg stretches in the office, hehee.

I managed to get myself into the gym this morning, which was great. Although I didn't realise the done thing is to coiffeur your hair into the bed head look in the mirror for five minutes before entering the gym and working out!?!?! I went with my usual 'au naturel' bed head, plus bike helmet head hair style (sans mirror)... perhaps I'm actually a gym fashion leader??!?! ;o)

Many ouch'y returns

I returned to circuits tonight, and oh ouch!! I discovered just how much my fitness has gotten away from me. At points I was weak as a kitten, which is... rubbish. It was a good circuit in its design, I just didn't have the power to do it!?!?! I hope to make it a regular session now, because it will definitely pay off if I keep it up. After tonight it has to be said the only the way is up!!

It has really brought home to me just how far I need to go to get into half decent shape. Will do my best to keep the blogging going ;o)

Little by little

When it comes to making new starts (which inevitably happens along any path) then the key thing to keep in mind is little by little. I managed to forget this bit of my own advice, and for a few minutes of a rowing machine session this Saturday just gone I was very annoyed. I thought that I would be able to do almost as well as I used to do a couple of months ago, ah no, not even close. When you go back to doing something you've not done in a while give yourself a mental break and don't expect old glories instantly.

The same is true of healthy eating, don't expect that because you were once much lighter that a return will come swiftly. Admittedly the early days of eating better invariably do go well, mainly through a sort of detox effect of 'emptying' your system of excess digestion material (whatever it was you were using to make yourself feel 'full'). After the initial phase give yourself a similar mental break, and know that from there on its going to be incremental and steady work to get back to where you once were.

Happily I am enjoying be back at the task, the rowing machine session felt good - as soon as I got off I felt the buzz. The healthier eating is similarly good, the initial 'effect' of diet change has tipped me just below the 15st mark. I must up date the chart, though I need to get my FTP service sorted before I can, d'oh!!

I keep thinking of things to blog, so hopefully I'll post some of those up in coming days :o)

Return to action

After a brief but lovely holiday I am back to concerted efforts to keep 'on the move'... started by cycling into work today, and will continued with that at least until the weekend. Some rowing and running will (I hope) creep back in next week with a renewed healthy eating thrust.

The scales didn't tell me scary things when I got back from holiday indulgences, only that I seem to have settled back at 15st. I will get to updating my chart on the weekend, it is usually the act of charting that inspires a good run of activity. Now that my days, weeks are fuller with things I will perhaps need to be canny about fitting in goodly amounts of exercise. We will see how that develops.

I noticed my blog has a number of American visits on my ClustrMap, although sadly I never subscribed to the details map so I have no idea where they actually are from. I am intrigued to know whether anyone reads this at all, let alone with any regularity (bar my wife that is who often reads this and offers kind hints about my terrible spelling!?!? hehehehe).

On the subject of readers, I often wonder if I'm missing a trick with certain keywords and so on. You know the thing, you blog a bunch of stuff and keep mentioning words over and over so search engines offer your blog up to read. I am often curious as to what happens if for example I wrote several blog entries about celeb gossip or diet fads whether my ClustrMap would reflect the 'titillating' keyword pick ups / hits?!?! Happily I really couldn't care less if anyone finds this or not, when I remember to blog its always more for me that it is for you.... and I certainly don't intend to start dropping little search enticing keywords everywhere ;o)

Ps. yes I know there is a spell checker here, I often forget to hit the button before the 'publish' button - sorry! :o)

Currently

Well currently I am at 15st, which isn't at all terrible in the grand scheme of my personal weight history, but isn't close to where I'd like to be. The work starts here (again), and starts with the elimination of snacks. Over the last few months I have become accustomed to grabbing food as and when I feel like it. Bringing back some structure is the key to turning around the bad run, standard meals and two light snacks (mid-morning and mid-afternoon) to fend off cravings.

Over the next couple of weeks I hope to improve activity levels a fair bit as well. Hopefully I'll be able to report some good new progress ;o)