Spent this morning again at the gym. Arrived early with the youngest daughter for her skating lesson at 7:00 a.m. and the wife dragged me off for a brisk walk around the lake having also made me stagger down (and up) a long flight of stairs. The wife wanted to go round a few times more, but after the first round of lake and stairs my left hip was hurting so much I decided to go watch the skaters instead of going around again… plus of course it was starting to rain.
Anyway, at 8:00 a.m. there I was in the gym with the trainer Sally having a whinge and a witter about the weight, general unfitness and how hard life is in general. Sally of course has none of it and makes me walk on the treadmill for 20 mins and has me pulling weights for another 10 mins just to loosen me up… or as I like to think… finish me off.
Still, there I was until 8:30 and then I wandered off into the cafe next door to meet up with the wife and to sit and chat with some of the other mothers. I was *still* was an hour and a half later, not because I was eating and drinking but because I was waiting for the start of the ‘Hills Biggest Loser‘ competition being run by the gym.
Yup… I’m off on the treadmill again (pun intended) trying to lose all this weight and to get fit again, as fit as I ever was that is.
I’m somewhat embarrassed to report that their scales *really* wouldn’t measure me and I was forced to visit a chemist at the local shopping centre to get an accurate measure. Turns out I was 157.9 kilos… some *30* kilos heavier than I was a year ago. Anyway, this competition runs over 13 weeks and the basis of the event is to try to be the entrant to have reduced body fat by as large a percentage as possible. Bearing in mind when they weighed me I was off their scales… it seems I might be in with a good chance of winning just by making alive it to the end of the 13 week!
The ‘before’ photos will be up on the site soon… and hopefully some slimline ‘after’ photos will be there in a few weeks. After the last few debacles I’m making no promises, but I have some internal motivation because I know I need to lose the excess fat and and external incentive in that there are some useful (if not wonderful) prizes on offer for the winners. Also there’s peer pressure from the other people I meet at the gym, including two of the trainers (my ‘own’ Sally, and ‘Donna’ whose daughter skates with my youngest).
So I’m off again trying to get fit. This means from here on the amount of time I’ll be spending on the net will be drastically reduced. I’m intending (currently at least) to get to the gym each day if only for 30 mins walking and to walk the dogs morning and evening.
Maybe this time it’ll work, maybe not. But if I don’t give it another burst now, I think I won’t be alive long enough to get another chance. Type two diabetes, strokes, heart attacks and the like are just around the corner for people carrying my weight so really it’s make a or break time. If I want to enjoy the closing years of my life I have to act. It may already be too late… but what the hell. I may as well die trying 🙂
The Eclectic Interweb 
I really do wish you good luck – talking to one of my friends this morning we said we wish we could get bottled willpower – we both lost a stone on tour (despite eating lots of chocolate and crisps but we were doing a lot of walking) and have now put it all back on – no excuse, just overeating and lack of exercise I am ashamed to say.
For me it’s just too damn easy to sit by this machine all day. My mind feels active but of course the body isn’t and the weight piles on… esp if I snack all the time.
Much as I hate to admit it, the only answer is to get out of the house altogether so there is less food around for me to just pick at.
At the end of the day I just *have* to move more.
Maybe I ought to just do what they said at the induction meeting and be totally selfish for three months. If I think of nothing but ‘me’ for a while and concentrate solely on the exercise and diet, just maybe I’ll get though it and the benefits for everyone else will last for years.