I started it because I had moved house and had moved away from the urban sprawl so didn't want to travel to a gym. In fact as I write this now i'm looking back on the past week and realising I only went out once last week and even then it was at night to go shooting. However I was constantly making an excuse not to start but yet watching friends loose weight and get fit. Yet others would be yo yo dieting, complaining they haven't lost weight or got fitter but neglect to go into the fine detail about the amount of pies they had eaten, or how they skipped gym sessions. I didn't want to be one of those and as I looked in the mirror I realised I didn't want to be what I saw either, which was a young minded guy approaching 40 yet looking way over 40, pot bellied and tired.
Excuses excuses...
I started to grow a beard to remind me that I needed to loose weight... I became fat AND hairy... this wasn't working. So I kept the beard and used it as a daily reminder to exercise. The excuses still carried on flowing. The beard stopped itching and I started to become Grizzly Adams!I was tired of being tired, tired of my uncanny ability to make excuses, can't exercise today because....
Too tired
I need to get fit first before I start on those types of exercises.
Too old, i'll just eat less and that'll do
I'm too far, I need to loose weight first
My ankle is killing me
By the time I finish it'll be too late to eat
If I make something to eat now, it'll be too late to exercise when it's all digested
I've done enough graft in the garden today, i'll not give it my all
I'll do it tomorrow
I've got to walk the dogs first
Plus many more! But things were about to change. I scoured the internet for training schedules that used your own body weight as I didn't want to buy equipment (yet another excuse) and found Freeletics. I watched the transformation videos online and thought "Wow, I gotta get me some of that". The best part of those videos were the ones showing the struggle at the start, so I thought I would give it a go. It was my birthday at the time (Start of March) and Mum didn't know what to get me so she gave me some money. I figured I would pay for the coach as it was a pretty cheap one off fee and would give me some guidance, plus as it was a present I would feel obliged to do my best.
It was the best decision of the year.
About me at the start
Just to give you an idea of where I started from. I'm a 39 year old Software Developer from the UK with two gundogs. My day runs pretty much as6am get up and have breakfast
7am walk and train dogs
8:30am organise my day
9:00am start work (sit infront of a PC and pretty much don't move)
1pm lunch break
1:30pm back to sitting infront of the pc
5:00pm finish work, take dogs for another walk and gundog training
6:00pm make and eat tea
7:00pm meander through the internet
10:00pm bed
so lots of sitting down and 3 hours of mindless nothing in the evening.
Fitness wise, pretty much as you would expect someone who sits at a keyboard all day. The only running I ever did was to the loo and the only time I'd put any tracksuit bottoms on is to sit in front of the TV for a comfy night in. Although there is one painful factor in all this, I had a bike accident in my mid 20's where my right leg was badly damaged and my foot came away from the socket. After a couple of operations, traction and a wheelchair I recovered but needed to find a less active job (I was a debt collector at the time). In recent years my foot has become more painful resulting in the need of crutches if I walk over 5 miles in a day and running / jumping is very painful. Thing is, you learn to live with it and if I know i'm going to be in pain I either take some Co-codamol before and after to dull the pain. Although the following morning my ankle does freeze and I go from having my usual 50% movement to around 10%.
Even after only 6 weeks my routine now is vastly different yet I have more energy than before. Take everything above and add in an Online IT security course and a Computer Science course at Harvard online, plus Freeletics and you pretty much have my day.
I'm too busy to study, too tired to exercise..... Weak and feeble excuses that I've heard from so many people including myself. I had become my own worst enemy. I just needed to get over the first few weeks and I started to realise that life's for living.
My Journey
Here's a list of my posts to date, or you can click on this link and all the freeletics posts will be listed with the most recent always appearing at the top.Pre-Start
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Week 6
Week 7 (Hell Day's)
Week 8
Week 9
Week 10
Diet and progress update
Week 11 - Sickness Strikes!
Week 12
Week 13.... False start
Week 14
Week 15
The end result...
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