Into week 3

My apologies for the gap in posting. It's been a bit of a busy week!

I kept up my gym commitments last week. I even managed to get back on the treadmill (albeit with my foot plastered up where it blistered) and completed 2.km in under 19 minutes! Again, I know that's not terribly quick in grand scheme of long distance running, however when my initial target is a sub-40 minute 5km, I feel like I'm doing pretty well!

I also got weighed on Thursday night and lost 4.5lbs! So that's a total of 8lbs in 2 weeks! I'm delighted with the progress that's being made with this programme!

Total weight loss (from heaviest):

2st 5.5lbs / 15.2kg / 33.5lbs

I'm aiming for another 3lbs off this week, however, I'm getting weighed on Saturday morning instead of Thursday night due to another commitment this Thursday.

I'll make sure I update the blog on time this time around. 😀

Week 1 weigh in and a running injury.

My first week of this new plan is now complete, and I've lost 3.5lbs! Which bring my total weight loss (from my heaviest weight) to 2st 1lb (13kg or 29lbs). All-in-all I'm pretty happy. Hopefully I can get the same, if not more off next week. I'm hoping that my body has just been getting used to the cardio work this week and the weight loss effects will have a nice boost from now on.

On a more painful note, I ran just over 2km on the treadmill yesterday morning before having to stop (I was aiming for 2.5km) due to a rather nasty stinging sensation on my right foot instep. See the picture below for reference. It's about an inch and a half long blister. Ouchies. So I'm off the running for a couple of days. Today was a rest day, with it being the day of my weigh in, but I'll be back in the gym tomorrow for 6.30am again only this time I'll be on the bike. Hopefully I can get back to running by the weekend but it all just depends on how quickly this blister heals!

I'm still going!

Yes! It's been nearly 5 days and I'm still keeping this up! So many times I've been determined to do a programme like this and I've given it my all on day one, half effort on day 2 and it's gone entirely by the third day.

I was in the gym again just after 6.30am this morning (accompanied this time by my beautiful fiancée, Chloë!) and managed 2km on the treadmill at a pace of 7.5km/h which means 8 mins per km. Now, when I did ParkRun at Strathclyde Loch, my best 5km time was 40.19 which is slow for a 5k obviously, but that's going to be my target for the next time I do a ParkRun: sub-40 minutes.

In addition to this exercise, Chloë and I have been indulging in Slimming World meals which has resulted in some excellent low fat meals so far. We had spinach, chicken and tomato curry on Satirday night with some boiled rice, homemade onion bhajis and homemade vegetable pakora made with curried mash potato. See pics attached for this one. And last night (Sunday) we had a tomato and vegetable pasta with chunks of reduced fat sausage meat throughout. This was Chloë's work, no recipe, so credit where credit's due! On tonight's menu we have smoked gammon steaks with a selection of veggies on the side and new potatoes. 

Over halfway to my next weigh in! I can't weight (sorry) to see the results. Hopefully all this hard work will have paid off and it'll encourage me to get working even harder next week.

So here's the pics from our Saturday curry.

The pain has arrived...

As expected, after yesterday's run (first in a long time) as well as 50 reps on an ab/core workout machine (thanks mum) I'm feeling very sore and stiff today. 

Although it didn't stop me hitting the gym this morning (possibly because I wasn't in anywhere near as much pain at 6.30am as I am now!) as I managed to smash out 1 mile or 1.6km on the treadmill without stopping.

Not sure how abs and core will go this afternoon, if at all. I might have to give the abs a rest today and maybe do some arm, back and shoulders stuff from home instead. 

As far as tomorrow will go, I'm going to give running a rest and jump on an exercise bike instead. I intend to get a movie or documentary going on the iPad and just cycle through it. All in all, I'm feeling pretty good after these couple of days. Feeling very optimistic about being able to carry on with this lifestyle!

First weigh-in (of the blog)

Ok, so at the moment I weigh 17st 2.5lbs (109kg or 240.5lbs).

I was around 16st 8.5lbs or 232lbs before Christmas and New Year, but I pigged out and I don't really care because I don't believe in dieting over that period of time! Fat Jamie was well and truly on the go for the last 2 weeks.

Regardless, I'm going to take this current weight and start again from there. So going from my heaviest ever weight (19st / 120.5kg / 266lbs), I've currently lost 1st 11.5lbs / 11.5kg / 25.5lbs.

To give you an idea of what I looked like at that weight, he's a picture of me Andy mum on my 21st birthday in 2010. I hate to look at this picture, yet it gives me a level of comfort and assurance as to how far I've already come.

The first one

So I've been struggling with my weight for the better part of around 15 years now. I know exactly why; because I eat a lot of crap food. I like eating food. There's no mystery as to why I'm overweight. I'm not blaming the government for high food prices (veggies are dirt cheap, btw. Pun intended), I'm not blaming advertising of junk foods, it's purely my fault.

I'm getting married in the somewhat near future (not quite allowed to say when just yet) and I've realised that I'm running out of time to get into some sort of healthy shape for this. Now, I'm far away from the 19st+ (120kg+ or 270lbs+) I weighed at my heaviest back in around 2010, but I still need to lose about 3st-4st (19kg-25kg or 42lbs-56lbs) to get to where I'd like to make a new start. I've decided that the biggest way to incentivise this is to make it public.

Today was the beginning. I got up at 6am, had a couple of boiled eggs and crackerbreads for breakfast and got to the gym for 6.30am. I ran 1km on the treadmill and walked for a little while on an incline too. I know it's not much, but it's a start, and let me tell you that when you're as unfit as I am right now (that combined with the permanent nerve damage I have in my lower left leg), 1km is hard work! I'm hoping to repeat at least this for every day this week, slowly building up to a level at which I can comfortably to a 5km ParkRun every weekend. I'll also be incorporating some home workout routines to improve my core strength and for toning (eventually!).

Current weight: getting weighed later today, will edit this when I get results.