Changing My Lifestyle

Introduction

In September 2020 I wrote about how I needed to loose weight and get fit. Four and a half years later and I could copy and paste that post into this one and, apart from some dates, it would all be exactly the same.

I turned 52 at the end of December and I’ve been thinking about my fitness and life-expectancy for a long time now. My father passed away four years ago at the age of 75 due to skin cancer which became secondary lung cancer and ever since then I have been acutely aware of my mortality (to the extent that when an unhealthy-looking celebrity passes away I check how old they were and then seem to think it gives me an idea of how long I might have left).

Whilst I’ve had a growing obsession about my mortality and I know that my diet and general fitness are the way to address it I’ve been procrastinating, but with Christmas out of the way and my daughter back at university I decided to sort my diet out. However I had no idea what to do about exercise until recently when I found a very relatable, inspirational YouTuber.

The Diet aka History Repeats Itself

I used to be skinny until I was in my late 20s which is when I settled down with my then wife-to-be. I then quit smoking in preparation for our wedding and my weight started to get away from me. For the last 25 or so years, I’ve been around 100 kg. Then, about seven years ago, it increased and peaked at around 115 kg. After I realised (thanks to a photo my daughter had taken of me) I put myself on a diet where I cut out puddings, snacks, and sweets. It wasn’t hugely difficult and over the next year or so I got my weight down to about 95 kg. But then became lax about it all and my weight crept back up to 100 kg and there is has stayed.

In January I decided to go back to the same sort of diet. I’ve stopped buying snacks and sweets, started buying more fruit and vegetables and am buying as little processed, and particularly ultraprocessed, food as I can. Three weeks on and I am eating a much healthier diet. The silly thing is that I don’t miss the crisps, puddings or sweets but if I have them in the house I’ll binge on them so not buying them is a simple fix (and saves quite a lot of money too).

I also bought myself some digital scales a couple of weeks ago and it makes tracking my weight much easier since the readings end up in the Health app on my iPhone. The early results of eating better are encouraging. On 19 January I was 101.5 kg, on 26 January I was 100.1 kg and on 2 February I was 99.0 kg. Things are heading in the right direction.

I think that the key take-away for me now is that once I have lost weight (and I have a lot to loose… Ideally I should be around 55 to 75 kg) I need to keep it off by not letting my diet fall back into bad habits. I made that mistake before and I need to learn from it and remember it. But I also know that this time exercise will play a big part in the journey and will contribute to a longer-term lifestyle change.

A Bad History Of Exercise

I’ve never been a big fan of exercise. I grew up in a household where sport was not a big thing (although my mum played a lot of tennis and has always been very skinny). At school I was the one who tried to avoid PE as much as possible and in the years that followed I have been pretty sedentary. In fact, apart from a few months back in 2004 when my then-wife and I were regulars at a local gym I don’t think I can point to any sustained periods of fitness or regular exercise.

I always want to use cycling for exercise however because I love bikes, both the mechanical beauty of them and then sheer pleasure of riding them. I am one of those people who, as a kid, rode a lot and then, as they got older, they just stopped. I’d love to ride more now but the country lanes around me are narrow and people drive fast, the lorries from the local quarries thunder down them and I’ve had a few near-misses which have rocked my confidence. And the hills don’t help either.

But a few weeks ago I had been browsing and watching some YouTube videos about indoor cycling. The vast majority of the videos featured already fit people telling me how to be even fitter which is immensely discouraging if you are fat and unfit and don’t have even a basic level of fitness. But in the “If you liked this, try these…” list of suggested videos these was something a bit different.

Meet Ryan

Ryan Condon used to weigh 190 kg. He worked too much, drank too much, ate the wrong things and needed to change his life. The video that YouTube suggested to me was the story of how he halved his weight and it made me much more emotional than I expected. Being overweight, unhealthy and unfit is also a mental problem, not just a physical one, and so much of what Ryan talked about in his video struck a chord with me.

I then watched more of his videos over the next couple of weeks and discovered that Ryan has achieved his astonishing results by walking, running and cycling. And rather than it all feeling unachievable and unrealistic, Ryan is immensely likeable and normal and you feel that what he has done is something we could all do. His channel includes videos from when he started his journey and so you can see the immense changes he has achieved. The only “Superman” element is that he has immense drive and willpower and seems to be able to persevere where many people would give up (during one of his 100 km runs he broke a toe and carried on and finished). But this is all tempered by his willingness to show his failings (falling over seems to be a favourite) and also some of his insecurities and struggles.

He is very clear that he is not a fitness coach or expert and that what worked for him might not work for others and that his goal is really just to inspire people. And he does a great job of that. If only because he has inspired me to stop watching videos, stop feeling helpless and actually do something, I will always be grateful to him and his own story. Sometimes you just need to know that it is possible for someone like you to do something about the things that feel insurmountable to get you to make a change you know you have to and Ryan has been my catalyst.

The Next Steps (Literally)

So with Ryan’s on-going journey in my mind I decided that I needed to buy some shoes I could walk and, hopefully jog, in. Couch to 5k is something I want to do and I love the idea of taking part in Parkruns now that I have looked into that too. But first I needed some footwear.

At my age and weight, and having suffered with knee problems before, I knew that just going and buying a pair of fashion trainers was probably not the best idea. As well as wanting to avoid injury I have overpronation (your feet roll inwards) which is common but has varying degrees of severity. It was suggested that I should go to my local branch of Runners Need as somewhere the staff would be knowledgable but not fitness snobs.

Visiting a sports shop is always intimidating for me and going and asking someone about trainers felt embarrassing. However the whole experience was amazing and Joe (I think… I’m terrible with remembering names… sorry maybe-Joe) in the Bath store was fantastic. We talked about what I wanted to achieve and the sort of exercise I wanted to do and then we did a gait analysis. After explaining the issues he had spotted, he suggested a few pairs of trainers for me to try and talked me through how their construction would help. We re-did the gait analysis whilst I was wearing the pair that felt the best and I left with a pair of Asics GT-2000 13 Lite and a huge amount of encouragement and positivity. I’ll definitely be going back to see maybe-Joe when I need to buy more kit or just want some advice.

I want walking (and maybe running) to be a part of a new exercise regime but I don’t want the weather or more limited daylight in the winter months to restrict me or give me an excuse to sit on the sofa so I need a second option.

Gamification Of Exercise

As previously mentioned, last month I had been casually watching videos about indoor cycling and, late to the part as ever, I learnt about Zwift which was first launched back in 2014. Zwift is a virtual environment where you can go cycling. That’s everything from a gently pootle at your own pace through to organised races. It also has training plans, workouts and challenges as well as rewards. The usually boring grind of indoor cycling becomes something a lot more varied, fun and structured.

Whilst you can use your own bike and smart trainer with Zwift, for someone like me with very little existing kit to work with, Zwift’s indoor bike is ideal. Inevitably it is not cheap (although it is at the cheaper end of the market for these sorts or pieces of equipment) but in the end, after an unusually long period of consideration for me (a couple of weeks rather than a couple of hours), I took the plunge and ordered a Zwift Ride with Kickr Core. It arrived the next day, one week ago.

What’s Next?

I’m going to end this post here because it will all get too long and unfocused otherwise. I wanted to write down what has kick-started my journey to a healthier, fitter me and one which will hopefully give me a chance to live a little longer and live a better quality of life in my old age.