Another update...!

OK so I didn't keep updating the Blog. I had a lot of stuff going on and if I'm honest I'm unlikely to post all that often - there I said it; don't expect regular posts...!

Having said that, here's an update on where I am in life at the moment...

So having run every day in January I then had a flare up of an old problem called a pilonidal sinus. I'm not going to describe it just look it up if you like. I've had to take long periods of time off work (and life in general) on a few occasions because of it and although this particular case was a fairly mild one, I still ended up having a couple of weeks off running.

A couple of weeks turned into sporadic short, slow runs over a couple of weeks and eventually running stopped altogether, taken over by other things.

Firstly, as part of an effort to live life a bit more outside my rapidly collapsing relationship I decided to start learning to ride a motorbike. Learning and passing the tests took a couple of months and by April I'd got my licence and my own bike, which was awesome. It also allowed me to join long time friends and now fellow bikers on their annual bike trip around the Alps and Pyrannes in July.

But that must have cost a fortune, I hear you say. It did, but luckily I had a load of money saved for a thing called a 'Wedding' which also got officially called off in
April. So yes form an orderly queue ladies - I'm single.

By September I realised I'd put another stone back on because of eating too many takeaways and drinking too much to dull the boredom of living alone, so I did another 'run every day in...' challenge for September. I missed only one day, the 3rd, for my Sister's wedding where I gave her away. Not because I didn't have time but because the time I had was spent furiously finishing my speech!

So to the present day. October was an up and down running month, and I'm back on full in November with running again. Where I previously tried to run a constant amount of time a little quicker each time, I've decided now to stick to the same speed and run an extra minute every day in November, which will get me up to about 7km in 50 minutes every day by the end of the month.

Mini goals are as follows:

- Do 5k Park Runs in the new year - hoping for sub 35 minute times to begin
- Get down below 18.5st before February - Stag do in Rome...
- Get down below 16.5st before May - Uni American Football reunion
- Get down below 15st before August - The original(ish!) goal from 2009.

Starting weight: 25st 3lb / 353lbs / 160kg
Current Weight: 19st 12.5lb / 277.5lbs / 126kg

Lost since Aug 09 : 5st 4.5lb / 74.5lbs / 36kg

Read more...

Right - an update

Since its been well over a year since my last post I thought I'd give an update as to where I am since the last blog post all that time ago.

The holiday I went on just after my last post was one with my then girlfriend and the rest of my family. On the second day of that holiday my girlfriend stopped being my girlfriend and became my fiancé because I asked her to marry me. The date ended up being set for Summer 2012 in order to save up and pay for the wedding and we both also decided that we would try to lose weight for the big day.

My vague plan was as follows and doesn't even remotely stick to the vague plan I had previously:

- I was starting from a weight of just over 25st when I got back from holiday
- By the end of 2010 I would lose 5 stone, taking me down to 20st.
- By the end of 2011 I would lose another 5 stone taking me down to 15st.
- By the wedding in August 2012 I would tone up and possibly lose a couple more stone in order to get down to the lowest weight I've ever been as an adult.

Well so far so good. In 2010 I only managed to lose 4 stone in the end which was a bit disappointing but in November/December I started doing something I never though I would do - I started running, and more importantly I started to enjoy it.

Since then at the start of January I decided I would do a minimum 20 minute run every single day in January, and I did. That despite the fact I had a bombshell dropped on me by my fiancé when she said she wasn't happy and wanted to move out (we're working on it but she's still moving out in February and I think she's probably going to break things off soon after that if I'm honest). Normally that would have been my excuse to call it a day and give up, but I stuck at it and in January alone I lost almost 1.5 stone almost exclusively because of the running I did - just shy of 100km total in the end.

So there's you all up to speed. My weigh-in day is a Friday morning so I'll try to keep this updated a bit more than once a year from now on to try to keep track of how things have gone.

Starting weight: 25st 3lb / 353lbs / 160kg
Current Weight: 19st 11.5lb / 277.5lbs / 126kg

Total lost: 5st 5.5lb / 75.5lbs / 34kg

Read more...

The danger in going public...

... even if it is kind of on the quiet in a little corner of the blogosphere, is that someone will always notice. Thanks to Capt'n John I'm now stuck with this whole silly idea and I guess I now hove to stick with it :)

So to the very vague (for now) plan. My logic goes something like this - having tried a number of times to lose weight I have failed every time. How do I know that? I'm fat you idiot so I must have. So I need to figure out what all my previous attempts have had in common and I think I've nailed it down. Speed. Every time I've lost weight in the past - whether it be last year when I lost about 2 1/2 stone in 10 weeks, or when I was in my mid 20s when I lost about 4 stone to get down to my record low weight and did it in 4 months - I've done it quickly in a short burst and thought the hard work was over. Each time its involved between 1 and 3 hours a day every day in the gym and that's not something that's maintainable - its just too much of a big change to my life and normal routine for me to keep up with it for any sustained period of time, and that's what's needed - a long term commitment not a short burst and 'back to normal'.

So what's the answer? That's pretty simple I guess - rather than deciding that I need to be a certain weight by a certain time, I need to start with a completely different goal, and not put a time limit on it. In an effort to come up with a new goal I've had to think about what it is that I actually want. One of the most depressing things I find about being fat is not weighing too much but being too big. Too big for normal clothing shops. Too big to push through crowded pubs. Too big to fit properly in airplane seats.

Its not that its embarrassing - I stopped being embarrassed about my size years ago because people pre-judging on looks is something you just have to live with or you'd never leave the house - its that its uncomfortable. Physically that is. I'm due to go on a long haul flight to the Dominican Republic in a month or so and I'm dreading the flight because last time I went I had huge bruises on my hips because of sitting in a tight seat for 11 hours.

I'm not looking for sympathy here - far from it. As I said in my last post I'm fat because of me and only me, and just because its an increasing trend that people are getting bigger doesn't mean its society's fault. But what this leads me to is to start formulating a vague idea of a goal. Its still in its infancy but I think I've kind of decided on the basic premise which is that I'm not going to try to lose weight this time around. I'm going to try to lose SIZE. Almost every time I've lost weight in the past I've kept track of my weight and how much it goes down. Often that's been pretty quick, but I have found that my size doesn't change at anywhere near the same rate.

My biggest weight loss ever was down from 19 stone to 15 stone, but that only resulted in a loss of about 3-4 inches off my waist size from a comfortable 42 inch to a tight 38 inch. Now after losing almost 1/4 of my body weight I would have expected a much more radical change in my size but that didn't happen - what did happen in the end was that my weight went back up again, but I do remember noticing that my size stayed pretty much the same for quite a while.

So after all that drivel and waffling here's the basic point of the whole thing in list form:

1. I want to lose size more than I want to lose weight

2. Losing size will inherently mean that it will happen more slowly and therefore force me to stick at this thing in the long term

3. I still need to put some specific targets in place.

That's enough for now though. If you got to here without falling asleep then congratulations - you're as bored as I am!

Read more...

The start of something...?

Since I have this blog, I may as well use it for something useful right? Well maybe - let's see how it goes. I had an epiphany last night - if I don't start losing weight and soon, I am getting to the age (31 at last count, though I do have to think really hard to remember sometimes!) where it's going to kill me. Its not like I haven't had this kind of thought before (3 or 4 times a day for the last 20 or so years in fact...) but I'm finally starting to realise that I'm at a point of no return and I need to get something done about it. More after the break...

As I sit here very busy but also very bored at work I realise that rather than just randomly surfing websites reading bad posts about worse subjects (for the most part at least - there are some gems in there) I could be doing something more useful to kill the time while my motivation to work returns. That was the initial idea behind the blog when I set it up ages ago but I made two posts and got bored almost immediately as is often the case with these things when I try them.

So to get myself a little more motivated I have decided to chronicle my most recent decision to drop some pounds in the hope that I will be able to firstly get myself to the age of 40 without the assistance of a medical miracle, and also to get this 'out there' so that I'm not just doing this on the quiet so that no-one knows if I fail.

So to the statistics. I currently weigh in the region of 25 stone. That's 350lbs or 159kg for those that like metric.

That makes me fat - really fat - and there's nothing and no-one to blame but myself. I eat too much, and I spend all day sat down - either at work sat at a computer working, or at home sat at a computer playing Warcraft. Does that make me the typical fat geek? Yeah I guess it does. I'd like that to change though.

The lowest weight I've ever been in my adult life was 15 stone, and I think that would be a reasonable target to aim for in the longer term. How I'm going to get there I don't quite know yet. Maybe I need to apply the same logic as one of my favourite Bloggers Ixobelle applied to stopping smoking which in my case would be a 2 step plan of 1. Don't put crap into your mouth; 2. there is no step 2. I'll put some thought into it and get back to you!


Read more...

Anti-jackboots at the ready?

The BNP list recently published is quite interesting reading - the more interesting reading is the reaction to it in the media and around the Internet. One guy's blog entry and subsequent comments stated quite clearly that "there are more [BNP Members] in Leeds than any other city by far. Having lived in that area for 13-14 years, it’s sad to say they’re rife." Just goes to show how a personal prejudice can skew your perception.

There are actually 267 members in the 'LS' postcode area. Unfortunately for our 'learned' friend above there are 423 in the Birmingham area, which even taking into account the larger population of Birmingham is a larger number - and that's just major cities. There are 259 in the Blackburn postal district, which has less than a fifth of the population of Leeds.

Dull stats aside something tells me that 'Mosher' was unfortunate enough to live next door to a Nazi when he was in Leeds - hence his poor opinion of the place. I've been around the City all my life and outside London and Bradford its one of the most ethnically diverse and tolerant cities I've seen. The fact its the capital of Yorkshire - the best county in the whole universe by far - is probably the reason I'm jumping to defend it though - you see how opinion can skew the truth...?

One of the most frustrating things when reading down the list of members is almost that I don't recognise ANY names on there. Part of every reasonably open-minded person I think is keen to make some sort of stand against this kind of thing. I'm not saying that if my neighbor was on the list I'd be knocking their door down for a war of words - more likely I'd rant away at the girlfriend in a loud voice hoping that they'd hear me through the wall and then avoid them for the next week for fear of reprisals.

That's the way of many people today (me included) - they talk a good fight, generally in their own head, and get themselves all riled up with the injustice of it all; then inevitably the next topic comes along and the whole cycle starts again. Perhaps there are so many good fights to fight that we end up fighting none.

My sister is a good example of those who don't just 'grin and bear it'. I remember her getting into an actual fist-fight on new year's eve after talking to a guy dressed as a Nazi who then proceeded to tell her he actually WAS a Nazi and proud of it. She ended up getting a walking-stick in the face for her trouble, and I remember falling out with her in the kebab shop later as she relayed the story because I told her she was wasting her time trying to change his mind, despite the fact she had actually come away with a trophy - the offending stick.

Looking back I kind of wish I'd have been there as it happened - maybe seeing a bigoted racist skinhead trying to attack her might have spurred me into action and I would have an 'I stood up for my beliefs' story to tell. Unfortunately I'm reduced to writing on a blog no-one will ever read.

Ah well. Viva la revolution and all that...

Read more...

Awww look at the doggy...

I suppose the best way to start a blog is to tell you what I spend most of my time doing. Wagstaff (or Sir Wag of Staff, or Wags, or Waggles, or Waggy, or WigsWags, or ...) is our dog. No for those of you thinking it I don't spend my time 'doing' him, I spend most of my time 'doing' the job of dog owner.

This is him when he was a cute little puppy with big sad eyes. I could hold him in one hand. Yes he used to crap all over the house, but he was new then and him being our first dog we didn't mind, and to be fair he picked up the whole house training thing pretty damn quick really...


...Unfortunately he now weighs 4 stone, is still growing, and as Glen Lampshade might say he's not so much a dog as a lycanthrope. He jumps all over you when all you want to do is watch the TV in peace (in my case, he usually lands in the places where no man wants a 4 stone dog to land). He bites your hands constantly no matter how many times you beat the living crap out of him for doing it (that bit was a joke - thinking it doesn't count as animal abuse right??). His latest trick is to come up to us on the sofa all cute like wagging his tail, then like an SAS strike the TV remote's out of your hands and hes scrabbling on the laminate floor like roadrunner trying to get traction to scarper under the dining table with it.

Taking him to the park gets us out of the house, which is nice, until of course he sees other dogs when in his excitement he will either run round and round and round and round in circles pretty much forever or will lie on his back next to the other dog's owner and piss into the air because he's lost all control.

When he's not biting hands, mounting his cuddly toys (usually against us), running round like an eedjit or pissing all over strangers, he's asleep. His usual weekend routine is to wake up some ridiculous hour and wake us up by trying to eat our ears. He'll then moan and whine to go downstairs where he'll have what the girlfriend describes as a 'funny 5 minutes' (i.e. he runs around like an eedjit) which lasts just long enough for us to be wide awake. He'll then go back to sleep for another 4 hours while we watch teleshopping on the TV because most of the channels we watch DON'T START FOR ANOTHER 2 HOURS and all the shops are shut for another 4!

I really like my sleep. Why can't you just let me sleep...?

Read more...