I’ve been giving some thought to what I should do, and the more I thought, the more I began to realise I simply have too much to try and keep up with, and I want to simplify my online life a little. This website is one place I can draw a line under and consign to the past.  I also plan to wrap up foursquare and a few other things as well.  Simplify, and enjoy more.

It’s been a great place over the 6 or so years, and in fact served as my project sandpit.  I learned about domain names, hosting packages, WordPress, RSS, and a whole bunch of other things.  I have learned a lot and I’m grateful for having had the time and opportunity to play around and even receive the odd comment now and then.

What’ll happen to this content?  I plan to leave things as they are for a few months, perhaps until the end of the year, and then I’ll take it offline.  In amongst a lot of chaff, I think there’s the odd little post that I want to hang on to and I’ll be keeping my little mitts on.  The ones about getting engaged, married, and children are all special.  I’ll also be keeping the Reading Lists I’ve kept for the past 5 years, as they’re kinda cool.

And so we reach the end part.  The goodbye part.  And the thank you part.  For reading this, thanks.  For reading other posts, thanks.  Eyes on words are a real treat and I liked being able to punch out the occasional thing for you.

Farewell.

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And that’s because I’ve fallen off the wagon.

There’s no single event or single reason to explain my failure, but I believe it’s a failure of willpower and strength. As my work days got busier and the home life got harder to fit in around it (par for the course with my job and ambition), I started falling back on old habits and taking shortcuts on food.

I was tired so I’d sleep too late and skip breakfast, then buy buttery raisin toast from the cafe near work.

I’d forget to make lunch so I’d grab ready-made sandwiches, full of fatty sauces and creamy dressings.

I’d grab chocolate bars in the afternoon for their sugar fix, because my body started the day poorly and was behaving poorly as a result.

Mostly, I’d just feel too tired to care, so I’d go with what comforted me – the good stuff.

Except it’s not good at all.  It’s BAD for me, and I know it.

So what am I going to do?  GO BACK TO BASICS. By doing these things:

• Forcing myself from bed at 6am every weekday, no matter what
• Eating a bowl of oats and fruit / muesli-type cereal
• Having a piece of fruit for morning tea
• Incorporating a 20 minute walk into a lunch break (by making sure I take at least that break!)
• NOT BUYING FOOD FROM SHOPS
• And getting back on to good water intake habits. (That’s half the problem I think.)

And that’s my plan. Do these things for 2 weeks, and then increase my goals to something closer to what they were at the beginning of this little project.

I need to break the cycle.

For those interested in stats, I honestly haven’t weighed myself for about 4 weeks, as I know I won’t like it.  I suspect though that I’m probably sitting on about 102kg, if my clothes’ tautness is anything to go by.

If I get brave I’ll weigh-in and report back.

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Food

I stuck to the meal plan specified, barring te odd occasion where it just wasn’t feasible. What I did notice though, is that when I absolutely had to eat out or at other people’s houses, I found myself carefully considering exactly what I would eat! That hasn’t been a part of my thinking for years, unless on a diet. WIN!

I now drink 3 – 4 litres of water a day, and notice when it’s been a while between sips. Colleagues are used to me filling my water bottles of a morning and working my through them over the day, often with a refill.

I’ve decided I really like oats and banana for breakfast, and it helps get me through the morning. Chicken/tuna and salad is a good lunch, and an apple or celery a good morning/afternoon snack if I feel peckish. Dinner is still baked fish and some steamed vegies, though I am looking forward t a good steak on the weekend!

Confessions

• I am still not getting to bed as per my promise. It’s really hard, but I’m determined to keep trying. What is even more challenging and difficult is the broken sleep owing from a 10 month old cutting his teeth. Tough!
• I’ve had a few beers, but stuck to low-carb where possible. I’m not beating myself up though, as I only have 2-3 at a sitting
• I had ice cream on Saturday night, because it was so damned hot and I wanted some!

Lessons

• Fish is tasty
• Salad, when done right and with yummy dressing (low fat) is quite filling
• When I’m hungry between meals, I have a big gulp of water, and generally a few minutes later I’m fine
• It really DOES take about 20 minutes for your brain to recognise your stomach as full. Waiting for that time to pass sees me eat a normal sized meal and not an oversized one.

The Verdict

3 weeks ago I weighed 103.5kg. This morning, I weighed in at 99.4kg – a loss of 4.1kg in 3 weeks! Quite pleased with that, as it’s a healthy amount of weight to drop and not a super-crazy 10 kgs in 3 weeks or anything. I actually feel better about that, believe it or not.

Tomorrow morning, I start getting up at 5.30am for a 20 min power walk… wish me luck!

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Food

My meal plan, the 7/21 metabolism kick-starter, saw me eat this each day in the past week:

Confessions

• I was out of bed as soon as my alarm went off half the time. The days where I slept for another 10-15 mins were the ones where I had gotten to bed later than I would have liked.  A lesson in that, for sure
• Friday night saw me at the new local with a mate, and we had a few beers. I stuck to the low-carb variety, but nonetheless it wasn’t part of the meal plan
• I also didn’t have time for dinner on Friday, so we ordered some toasted sourdough with tomato paste to snack on… carbs after lunch, NO NO
• Sunday was our lovely neighbours’ child’s birthday party at the zoo. I stuck to the meal plan mostly, except for a small piece of cake and a couple of honey joys. I tried to counteract this extra intake by walking more (pushing a double pram) and drinking a stack of water.

And that’s it – pretty good, I think, for a fairly fixed diet and a big change to my usual schedule. I’ve continued to take a multivitamin each day, as well.

Lessons

• Fish is quite tasty, when cooked in fun ways
• If I am to take my own lunch to work, I need to prepare it the night before
• The more water I drink, the more I love it
• Asparagus really DOES make urine smell gross!
• Habits are bloody hard to form. I see already I usually give myself excuses to break them – a fatal mistake. I need to be tougher on myself
• Early to bed, early to rise IS TRUE!

The verdict

At the start of week 1, I weighed in at a too-much 103.5kg. At the start of week 2, I weighed in at 101.7kg. A loss of 1.8kg in the first week – great start!

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And yes, I may make commitments here that are harder to achieve than I now think.  And yes, I may stumble, and fall off the tightrope I’m setting myself, but I do commit myself to making real change to my lifestyle and my general wellbeing.

So, now that necessary little bit is out of the way, let’s have a look at the motivations and challenges driving me, shall we?

Weight

I’m a fairly cuddly sort of a guy. And while not short, I don’t have the requisite height to carry the weight that I do.  Here are the cold, hard numbers for you, as they stand today:

180cm tall

103.5kg

See – I’m cuddly.  To look at me, I’m not hugely overweight or anything, I just look like I don’t hesitate in going to the dessert section of the menu. Which is true, generally.  Lately though, I’ve developed somewhat of a bad habit of eating up to a bag of Raspberry Bullets every day or two… THAT’S DISGUSTING, ME! STOP IT!

I have always been cuddly, though twice in my life I was actually ‘normal’.  The first time was my first year of uni, where due to financial constraints, I only ate once a day, generally.  I dropped back to about 75kg, and was – for me anyway – skinny.  Photos of my face then show something borderline skeletal, compared to today’s more rotund version.

The other time I was ‘normal’ was after I broke my pelvis and wrist in an unfortunate drunken incident, and spent 3 months in bed. Owing to my body healing itself, and an inability to drive around eating fast food willy nilly, I lost a lot of weight again, and looked quite good.

Over the past four years, I’ve done the CSIRO diet (twice) and had good results, and the Dukan diet, in the third quarter of last year.  All of these diets have seen me drop back to around 90kg, and feel good. But then I slipped into old habits… and so quickly!

You see, I have very little willpower when it comes to carbs and sugar. Very little. I am a sucker for sweets, especially if they involve dough and chocolate and cream, and yumminess all round. Gets me every time.

Fitness

I’ll tell you straight – I’m really unfit. Never been much of a fitness guy, and I haven’t really played any sport consistently since I became too old for junior football and was left to earn my place in the team on merit. Which I was incapable of, so I quit.

I’ve joined the gym a couple of times and got on a really good run for about 6 months, a couple of years ago, but then the realities and time challenges of parenthood and career got in the way.

See, I leave the house between 7am and 7.30am, and then walk in the front door between 6.30pm and 7.30pm. Straight away, it’s helping with kids dinners, baths, and bed times (I love this time, don’t get me wrong!).  By this stage it’s usually about 8.30pm. Sometimes I have work to do, or some study (doing my final 2 units of a literature degree by correspondence this semester!), or I watch TV, etc.  Between my need to watch DVDs and read lots of books, AND KEEP MY MARRIAGE HEALTHY BY TRYING TO MAKE TIME FOR ROMANCE AND SEXUAL LIAISONS, time’s a pretty precious commodity. So a gym session is out.

I now own, however, an exercise bike, a skipping rope and some free weights. Surely I can fashion some sort of a cardio/strength circuit using these items, and keep it to 30-40 minutes a session?  My only real options for this though, are to get up at 5am, rather than 6am as I do now, or to postpone dinner until 9.30pm, and sneak in a workout at 8.30pm once the kids are in bed.

HARD TO FIT IN, NO?

Anyway…

Mental wellbeing

Another truth – I’m a little fragile in the mood department. A lack of sleep makes me super agitated. And this builds, and builds, and I get snarly and irritated by the littlest things. Having two kids under 2 didn’t really help this, but I love my boys and just need to work harder at adjusting.

Being cuddly, sleep deprived and unfit, I obviously take a bit of a blow in the ‘general outlook’ area, and this needs to change. In losing weight and getting a bit fitter, I hope to increase my tolerance for things and basically just feel better, for longer throughout the day and week.

My goal is to wake up and not have the immediate thought of, “Fuck, I don’t want to get out of bed…”. That’d be swell!

What I am doing to make myself a better person

My list of challenges is this:

1. Be in bed by 10pm, with lights out by 10.30pm, EVERY NIGHT INCLUDING WEEKENDS IF I HAVE NOTHING ON
2. Make myself get out of bed at 6am every day, as soon as the alarm goes off
3. Starting this week (am 2 days in, going well thanks), do the 21 day weight-loss / body shock diet to start things off
4. Once that is over, continue the general principles of 6 small meals a day, with carbs before lunch ONLY and more fruit and vegetables
5. Beginning on Feb 1st, get out of bed at 5.30am every day, as soon as the alarm goes off, and do a 30 minute power walk
6. Beginning March 1st, start the Couch to 5K program.

6 challenges… I WILL ACHIEVE THEM!

What you get out of this

You get this – a ring-side seat to watch a bloke try and improve himself. More specifically, I’ll post here each Monday evening with my weight, and as the wake-time and morning exercise thing kicks in, I’ll record the truth about those things here too.

Sounds exciting, yeah?!

Check back next Monday for the first weigh-in, and see if I’m any lighter than 103.5kg.

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I’ve long wanted a recliner for our house, a chair I can make my own and relax in.  Being able to kick back in it is important – I can’t just sit somewhere, I need to lie back.

I have finally decided what sort of chair I want:

And the good news is that the wife has agreed!

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Cute and funny.

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A few years ago, I was an all FM, all pop and funny-jokes kinda guy.  I loved listening to giddy banter and prank calls.  Now, I couldn’t think of anything worse.  And I can trace back the time I started falling out of love with FM radio: the axing of Get This.

Tony Martin, Ed Kavalee and the late Richard Marsland were a little cult-following of a midday show, with raw skits and geeky discussions of TV, films, advertising and Warwick Capper.  After 2 years, the second of which involved doing 2 hour shows on a 1 hour budget, the show was sacked.  It was at the top of its ratings period and the highest rating show on the station, Triple M. It was the most blatant act of management ignoring both their customers and the numbers, and a little bit of my FM heart died that day.  I hung on a little since, with Pete & Myf and even a little bit of Bridge & Tom, but I never really found home again on FM.

Recently I’ve done what a few years was unthinkable – I switched the dial to AM!  And I am loving it.

I flick around between 3AW in the morning, ABC during the day and some SEN on the weekend.  I do make an exception for the big games though, and flick back to Triple M’s footy crew.  But the AM band is being good to me.  I like the news, the lack of muzak, and even the low-grade ads on 3AW are kind of homely, advertising businesses in this city, rather than things much bigger.

I like the AMs.  And I know that makes me an old man, but I’m ok with that. I’ll stop short of referring to it as ‘the wireless’ though!

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