#oneaday Day 478: Counting Cals

As I've alluded to a couple of times recently, the latest attempt at weight loss has been centred on counting calories. And thus far it's actually been going reasonably well — as is often the case when embarking on a new campaign of doing this, I lost a decent chunk of weight in the first week, but this week it's slowed down again, though it is still going down, which is good.

As my past experiences doing this have shown, the crucial thing is to be constantly aware of what you're putting in your mouth, and thinking carefully before you stuff anything in there. Recording everything helps you to be aware of such things, and in the process make some better choices.

Now, "better choices" doesn't have to mean "I stopped having any bacon sandwiches ever, and for breakfast now I have half a banana with a handful of chia seeds and am miserable for the rest of the day". No; it means "I had a big lunch, so I should probably go easy at dinner". Or it means "I treated myself to a McDonald's breakfast, so I probably don't need a lot for lunch". Or it means "I've had three bags of crisps today already, I probably shouldn't have any more".

Working within those simple boundaries, you can set limits for yourself without feeling like you're missing out on things. When counting calories, you absolutely can still have a nice cake if you feel like one, but that probably means you should hold back on the snacks (or have lower-calorie snacks) for the rest of the day. And it can sometimes be surprising how easy it is to save calories by making a few little swaps here and there.

I've never been hugely fond of salad, for example, but drench it in enough salad cream and it can be quite a pleasant (and filling) accompaniment to a simple meal, like a piece of breaded meat. And a plate of salad, even if absolutely drowning in salad cream, is quite a lot fewer calories than a big pile of chips.

As it happens, the only chips I've had since starting this time around were on our Work Day Out, when I was necessarily somewhat limited in my options for dining, so I thought I would just enjoy that day as I saw fit, without guilt.

My challenge in this upcoming week is going to come in the form of my monthly trip to the office, which usually involves me grabbing something to eat on the drive down, or perhaps from the supermarket next to the hotel, or the hotel restaurant. On previous occasions, I'm mildly ashamed to admit that I have made less-than-stellar choices when choosing what to eat — after a long, tiring, boring journey, all I want is to have something tasty. This time, I'm going to try and pay at least a bit of attention to the choices that I make. I can still satisfy myself; I should probably try and do so without devouring a huge bag of Doritos and two frosted yum-yums, as delicious as they are.

I'm still feeling pretty good at the moment, then. Things are moving in the right direction and, crucially, I'm not feeling bored or frustrated with what I'm eating. That last part is particularly important; there's nothing worse than being bored of what you're eating, because that's the time you're most likely to think "that was disappointing, I'll make up for it with an entire chocolate gateau".

Not enough calories left for a sandwich before bed, sadly, but I think I'll probably survive.

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#oneaday Day 468: Determination

Predictably, I put on a fair amount of weight during my time away, but rather than feeling despondent about this, I am using it to provide myself with a sense of determination to crack this thing once and for all. After we got rid of all the leftover holiday goodies, I started strictly calorie counting, and thus far (admittedly it's only been a couple of days) I have managed to stay within my budget.

The challenging thing with any diet, I find, is keeping it sustainable. Gimmicky and fad diets may sound like an amazing way to quickly get some weight off, but in practice it doesn't take very long for their limitations to become suffocating and oppressive — which makes you not want to pay attention to them, which in turn makes you feel guilty, and for many of us, that makes us eat… you see where the problem lies.

I'm looking long-term. I'm using an app called Lose It! which came recommended from a few people I know, and that seems pretty good about having a solid built-in food database to make tracking calories straightforward, and also at setting appropriate goals and giving you an estimate of when you should reach them if you keep going at your current pace.

The thing I need to get into the habit of is recording things constantly, rather than just when I feel like a day is going well. One difficulty I've consistently had in the past whenever doing any kind of food tracking — be it Slimming World counting Healthy Extras and Syns, Weight Watchers points or anything else — is feeling too guilty to write down when things have gone wrong. And once you break that streak of being disciplined, it becomes significantly harder to recover. The ideal situation, of course, is to acknowledge that, for one day, things didn't go quite according to plan for one reason or another, but not to let that ruin everything.

One day is not a lot in the grand scheme of things, particularly when you're doing something as long-term as weight-loss, so acknowledging that one day out of a much longer journey proved to be a bit of a "blip" is healthy. After all, what journey of self-improvement does happen without facing challenges along the way? The thing you need to do is face those challenges head-on, and see if you can figure out some ways to prevent them occurring again — or, at the very least, developing a strategy for what you will do next time they arise.

For me, I think a big challenge is lunchtime. It's always tempting to just go to the shop and get a Meal Deal, because what harm can a sandwich do, really? Except that Meal Deal isn't just a sandwich. It's a snack, too, which is often a bag of crisps, and shops seem to only sell giant "Grab Bags" of crisps these days. And then it's nice to have a chocolate bar afterwards too, right? And, of course, shops seem to only sell king-size or "Duo" bars these days. It's like they want you to overeat.

I've thought about this, and I don't really know why they do this. Some shops have, of course, made an effort to make the "impulse purchases" shelves near the tills have more "healthy choices" (usually bags of fruit and nuts) but most people going into a shop for a Meal Deal are going straight for the Meal Deal aisle, not the "healthy choices" shelves. And when given the option between a bag of wood chippings and a Star Bar Duo, what do you think most people are going to pick?

Or maybe it's just me. I actually find it genuinely quite difficult to fathom how people successfully live on the 2,000 calories a day we're "supposed" to have, when everything that surrounds us on a daily basis that isn't a handful of house plants and chia seeds seems to be absolutely packed with calories. How is it that people are going out for coffee every day and not ending up as big as I am?

Activity is probably the answer there, I know, but I refuse to believe everyone I see enjoying a cake in Starbucks is going to spend two hours in the gym working it off later. Maybe it's just about walking more, or cycling to work, or whatever. I don't really know. There are lots of things I probably need to get a better handle on to make this work over the long term, but for now, getting into the discipline of counting the calories is working quite well. We'll see how things go from here.

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#oneaday Day 347: The pump

I've gone to the gym for the last two days in a row! Go me. I think I will probably take tomorrow off, but I went yesterday of my own volition and today to make up for the bratwurst we had for dinner, since I'm counting calories at the moment.

I go back and forth on my feelings towards the gym. There are times when I resent "having" to go (and, honestly, with the state my body's been in for a while, I do "have" to go) but there are times like the last couple of days when I actually feel like it's quite a pleasant experience. And it's for different reasons at different times.

Yesterday, I was feeling a bit down and miserable; I was having one of those evenings where I spent several hours not really doing anything worthwhile, and got to about 9pm feeling frustrated at how I had wasted the evening. So I decided that rather than sit around continuing to do nothing, I would do something productive and go to the gym. I dug out my cheap-ass wireless earbuds that don't really block out any external sound but which are adequate enough for listening to podcasts or YouTube videos, queued up a video I'd half-watched earlier, then went to the gym and did 20 minutes on the treadmill followed by about 30 minutes of resistance stuff on the machines.

And y'know what? I felt pretty damn good afterwards. My mood had lifted and I didn't feel anywhere near as frustrated as I'd felt prior to leaving the house. I'd still wasted a good few hours of the evening, of course, but it didn't feel like it mattered (because, let's face it, it doesn't, really) — and anyway, I'd made up for it by going and doing something that officially falls into the category of Bettering Oneself.

This evening, meanwhile, I had made myself a little anxious by knowingly going over the calorie limit I'm supposed to be following with dinner, but then I recalled the calorie consumption I had recorded from yesterday's session, realised that this would more than make up for the "overspill", and resolved to go and have a decent session. Once again, I got the shitty wireless earbuds and set the latest Giant Bombcast to playing while on the treadmill, and managed 30 minutes without too much difficulty. It normally takes me quite a while to muster the motivation to do more than 10 minutes on the treadmill, but today it was easy.

It's all about how you occupy your mind while you're doing those exercises, I think. At least, it is for me. If I'm just walking on the treadmill and I don't have anything to distract me from the tedium of the endeavour, even just 10 minutes feels like an absolute eternity. But if I have something compelling, interesting or just plain amusing to listen to while I'm doing the tedious thing, the time passes way faster, because I'm simply not paying attention to the time.

It's the same phenomenon we found in secondary school German classes. We spent so much time clockwatching in those lessons that they felt five times longer than any other lesson we had at school — one time I really freaked my friend out by using the countdown timer on my Casio watch to make it look like time really was running backwards — but if they had been a tad more engaging and interesting, I'm sure they wouldn't have felt as long. No disrespect to my German teachers, who were doing their best, but National Curriculum and GCSE-level German are set up to not be very interesting and engaging to study. At least, they weren't when I was at school.

So yes. I think the secret of gym success is to have something to occupy your ears and, in the case of the treadmill, your eyes, too. If you're looking at a screen to watch a video, you're not watching the clock. Bonus points if your gym's treadmill has an arrangement where you can physically block the clock screen with your phone or tablet. Or just lay your towel over the top, I guess.

Anyway, like I say, probably going to have a day off tomorrow 'cause my muscles are a bit sore after two days of pumping it (at weakling levels) in a row. But, so long as I continue to have good stuff to put in my eyes and ears while doing the boring bits, I think I might be able to keep this up for a bit. Let's see how it goes.

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#oneaday Day 267: Do some exercise

For a little while, my left knee has been absolutely killing me. It hurt to bend it, it hurt to kneel down, it was even quite painful extending and bending my leg to go up and down stairs. It was getting so painful that I was reaching a point where I was genuinely quite concerned I had somehow fucked it up beyond all hope of recovery despite not having actually done anything to it other than "be fat".

Taking advantage of a brief (brief) moment of motivation earlier today, I decided to set up the treadmill my wife bought a little while back, and which the pair of us have failed to make good use of since it arrived in the house and we realised we don't really have a super-convenient place to keep it. I plonked it down in front of the living room TV (where it just about fits between the sofa and the media cabinet) and plugged its ridiculously short cable into an extension, then into the wall. Then I set it going at a gentle 3.5 speed (mph, I presume) and just did ten minutes while I watched a bit of an episode of Friends.

When I got off, my knee wasn't in agony any more. It's still a little bit painful, but it's not at the "oh my God, are they actually going to have to chop my leg off?" level of pain it has been in the last week. So I am forced to conclude that after many, many years of a largely sedentary lifestyle, my body is finally reaching a point where it is literally screaming out for me to do some exercise. Which is nice.

I joke, but it sort of is nice to have some actual, unavoidable motivation for doing some exercise. I'm not averse to the idea at all — numerous gym memberships, periods of going swimming regularly and even just about surviving a 10K in the pre-COVID days will attest to this — but summoning up the motivation in the last five years has been really difficult, particularly if "doing some exercise" involves putting in some effort before you can even start — getting equipment out, getting changed, rearranging a room or driving to the gym.

But the treadmill, currently propped up against the wall in our living room, is reasonably easy to set up — I just have to move the coffee table out of the way, plug it in and we're away. So I'm going to start doing just a little bit every day. Just ten minutes at a time to begin with, as I don't want to overwhelm myself and kill off that motivation before it leads to any sort of productive gain in ability level or fitness. Just ten minutes of putting these tired old legs to a bit of use, and apparently that works wonders.

Who knew? Everyone did, of course, but sometimes it helps to have a little reminder that people who tell you to get some exercise aren't just talking out their arse or trying to get you to do something you don't want to do. It actually, really does help. So I'm hoping starting slow will help with the feelings of physically painful lethargy that have been becoming increasingly apparent since COVID. And we'll see how things go from there.

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#oneaday Day 141: Progress report

It's been nearly a week that I've been following the NHS 12-week "Weight Loss" app programme so far, which basically just means I've been counting calories for 6 days. But I've been pleasantly surprised by a few things. I'm yet to weigh myself to see if anything has happened as a result of this week as yet — I've set "Monday morning after the really long morning piss" as the weekly weigh-in — but as with most things like this, the programme is as much about getting yourself into decent habits as it is about making number go down.

The thing I've been most pleasantly surprised about is how possible it is to eat "normally" and enjoyably without breaking the calorie bank. In the last week, I don't feel like I've really had to "give anything up"; when I've fancied some crisps, I've had some crisps, when I've fancied some chocolate, I've had some chocolate. The important thing is paying attention to those things and ensuring you don't do them to excess, and being honest about counting them. As such, even though I've had crisps and chocolate and a few other bits and pieces most diets would probably count as "naughty" on some diet plans throughout the week, I've still come to the end of each day below the calorie allowance I have.

Now part of this is because I'm a big lad and thus need a few more calories than someone who is normal-sized, but I figure cutting back can be a gradual process. In thinking about what I'm eating and counting the calories, I'm already finding myself thinking "well, I can probably do without that and it will save me 250 calories". For example, with lunch today I eschewed a bag of crisps and I didn't really miss them. I suspect long-term I can retrain myself to think that lunchtime doesn't have to involve a bag of crisps, and thus a bag of crisps can be mentally moved from "expected part of lunch" to "occasional treat". That seems like a positive step, for sure.

This is a positive move. One of the reasons I have found myself struggling with more "plan-based" approaches in recent years is the feeling that I'm "giving things up" and "missing out" on them. When you specifically rule out certain things from your diet, it turns out that you really crave them. And while when I did Slimming World 10 years or so back I could handle that, this time around I've really struggled. And thus it was time to try something different.

As I say, so far it remains to be seen if what I've done this week has actually had any tangible effect or if I need to step my efforts up a bit, but from next week I'm planning to start being a little more active again.

Y'see, part of the reason I'm in the state I'm in is due to the COVID years. The whole lockdown thing, coupled with general laziness, caused me to gain a bunch of weight, stop doing any sort of exercise and even start feeling a bit uneasy about going outside generally. That's not a good place in which to find yourself, so I need to start taking additional steps to sort that out, and getting back into a gym habit will be a good means of doing that.

The reason I haven't done that this week alongside starting the calorie counting is I did my back in somehow while we were away on holiday, and it's just starting now to feel like it's a bit better. I didn't want to agitate it with exercise, so I've been waiting until whatever the problem was appears to have "healed", and I think it's pretty much there. So from Monday, I'm going to make an effort to go to the gym at least three times throughout the week.

I think I talked about this elsewhere, but I also plan to not overwhelm myself by suddenly starting a long, intense exercise routine. I'm going to begin by just going and doing, say, 20-30 minutes walking on the treadmill. I have a bit of a mental block where I feel like "just" doing that is a waste of time, but when you're in the state I'm in, it's absolutely not. Ideally what I'd want to do is maybe one day 20-30 minutes on the treadmill, then the next day just do the strength training machines, then alternate back and forth between them. That way, over the course of the week, I can end up having done the "recommended" amount of exercise, and I'll have also done a bit of both cardio and strength.

I don't yet know if my mental wellbeing and willpower is quite up to that as yet, but it's something to aim for at least. For now, I'm going to count "went to gym at least three times" next week as a success, and anything more than that is a happy bonus. And that will kick off on Monday, giving me tomorrow to relax a bit, make sure my back is in working order and mentally prepare myself for what's ahead.

I want to beat this. I know it's possible, and I know it's going to be hard work. Right now I'm feeling oddly motivated, so I wanted to put pen to paper and actually express that. Whether I feel the same way on Monday remains to be seen, but these sorts of things always have to be one step at a time, slowly but surely.

And so here I am, taking those slow but sure steps. Here's hoping they prove to be both worthwhile and sustainable.

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#oneaday Day 136: Reset and Restart

Now that I'm back from holiday — and had a thoroughly lovely time, aside from apparently putting my back out because I am an old man — it's time to get serious about the ol' weight loss. I'm fed up of treading water and making no progress, so I'm trying a bit of a different tack. Slimming World unfortunately hasn't quite been working for me this time around, so I have instead decided to try the NHS weight loss app. This is pretty much just a glorified calorie tracker, but it has some helpful articles and things that pop up over the course of following a 12-week plan, plus encouragements to check your progress at sensible intervals rather than obsessing over things daily.

I'm also intending to get back into the gym when my back feels a bit better. I have a casual half-plan to alternate cardio and strength training days so I neither overwhelm myself with too much "stuff" on a single day, nor do I feel like I'm "taking up" too much of my personal time with exercise. I know I should consider exercise a valuable use of my personal time, but the reality of the situation is that I'm still in a position where I somewhat resent it. That needs to change, and it's going to be a gradual process. So establishing a simple, manageable and minimally intrusive routine is what I think will work for me.

Same with the food. I've talked a little on here about my experiences with food and why I've ended up the way I am, and based purely on anecdotal evidence, I feel like I'm struggling with a kind of "addiction". Y'see, I've seen people struggling with addiction (to substances other than food) and, as unpleasant as it is to think about and admit, I recognise a lot of similar habits in myself.

Where someone with an alcohol addiction can't resist buying a bottle of vodka from the shop and hiding it upon getting home, "self-medicating" with it in secret even if other people know that's what they're doing, I, too, will find myself at the shop telling myself I "deserve" something that is bad for me. Often multiple things that are bad for me, compounding the problem. And I know they're bad for me, because I'll inevitably scarf them down before I return home and take care to throw away the evidence of my secret shame before doing so.

And it absolutely is a form of "self-medication". I eat to relieve all sorts of things. Boredom, sadness, tiredness, loneliness; any sort of vaguely negative emotion, my body's conditioned response has become "eat something". And that's got me into a terrible situation that with every passing day it feels harder and harder to escape from. I'm ashamed of myself and disgusted with myself, and yet still these behaviours persist.

But I am, at least, aware of them. And gradually changing those behaviours is what I'm trying to do with this new, simpler approach. Today I have come in under my calorie goal and still have enough remaining for a nice glass of milk to accompany bedtime. I haven't accompanied every trip downstairs with a chocolate biscuit or a bag of crisps, and honestly I haven't really missed them. I had a decent breakfast, a perfectly acceptable lunch and a good dinner, none of which were the depressing sorts of things you read in slimmers' "success stories". And approaching things this way has not left me feeling like I'm "missing out" on anything.

Because that was one of the problems I was having with Slimming World this time around. While their plan is effective if you can follow it, if you get into the mindset that you're "not allowed" certain things, that just leads you to crave them more. And then you indulge those cravings a little bit "because just one won't hurt", and before you know it you're completely sabotaging your own efforts, completely conscious of the fact that you're doing so.

That's what happened to me this time around. I had got myself into the mindset that I could "get away" with the odd little "cheat" here and there, but the odd little cheat here and there turned into near-constant cheating, to such a degree that I was actively hampering my own efforts.

And honestly, there is nothing more depressing than reading something like this:

What I used to eat for breakfast:

Bacon sandwich

Fried Egg

Sausage

Beans

2 slices of toast

Large cup of coffee

What I eat now:

Small handful of chia seeds

Berries I foraged from the weeds in the back garden

A couple of twigs

Pond water

It is possible to lead a comfortable, healthy lifestyle without living exclusively off bits of old wood chippings and leaves. It has to be. There are myriad normal people around the world who happily exist on a day-to-day basis, able to enjoy an occasional coffee and a cake and a Tesco Meal Deal for lunch without ballooning to an absurd size. The key, as with anything, is not to do the "treats" to excess. And that is the difficult bit, because treats are delicious and can often induce a temporary feeling of what appears to be happiness and satisfaction

But it's temporary. Then comes the regret, and the self-loathing, which you end up wanting to… you get the idea.

Anyway. This is a fresh start. Nothing that came before matters. There shall be no guilt, no regret, just determination. I will see how things go from here. It can't hurt to try.

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#oneaday Day 108: Punch punch punch

Because I'm sick of feeling like a decrepit old man and I can't quite muster up the mental wellbeing to head to the gym right now, I dusted off my copy of Fitness Boxing 2 for Nintendo Switch and have been giving it a go for the last couple of days. I considered grabbing the new Hatsune Miku version of the game, but it's £50 and I haven't yet established a good routine with the two previous entries in the series I have on my shelf. So I thought I'd do something about it.

The trouble with exercise is that it always feels like it's going to be a bloody nightmare to get started, particularly after a long period of inactivity, but then once you actually do it it's rather satisfying. My two sessions of Fitness Boxing 2 over the past couple of days have been hard work for someone as out of shape as I am — though my rhythm game skills have netted me a "Fitness Age" of 24 on both occasions, thereby proving once and for all that such a metric is, as everyone suspected, complete bollocks — but I've come out of both of them feeling like I've done something worthwhile, and something that, in the long run, will be good for me.

For those unfamiliar with Fitness Boxing, it's a game that somewhat follows the mould of Nintendo's classic Wii-era fitness games, only with a bit more of a specific focus rather than providing lots of minigames. At its core, it's a rhythm game, tasking you with using the Joy-Cons to punch in various ways and, in the more advanced workouts, ducking, weaving and suchlike, too — though pleasingly, given how dodgy the motion detection can be on movements other than punching, you can turn any troublesome exercises off, or set the game to automatically score you "Perfect" on them, regardless of what the Joy-Cons tell the Switch you were doing.

A full daily workout consists of several stages, beginning and ending with some simple stretches. In between, you'll have a series of specific workouts of varying degrees of intensity and difficulty, typically following your opening stretches and preceding your closing stretches with something relatively gentle and putting one or more fairly high-intensity (and longer) ones in the middle.

Each individual stage tends to unfold in the same way. You'll start in "orthodox" stance (left foot forward, right foot back) and gradually be introduced to a complete combo, usually one move at a time but sometimes a bit quicker in the shorter, lower-intensity stages. You'll gradually build up to performing the full combo, and in a special "Zone" sequence where you get more points, you perform the full combo multiple times in rapid succession — typically four, six or eight times in a row without a gap in between, depending on the length of the combo.

After that, you switch to "southpaw" stance (right foot forward, left foot back) and then do the exact same thing, but the other way around. In the higher intensity, longer workouts, you'll then do another combo, again both in orthodox and southpaw stances, and then you're done.

Typically a short stage lasts about 5-6 minutes, and longer stages are about 11-12 minutes apiece. The "Normal" intensity workout for a day consists of stretches, two short stages and two long stages, totalling about 35-40 minutes of activity altogether; you also have the choice of doing a slightly shorter or longer workout, which equates to about 25-30 or 45-50 minutes of activity respectively by varying the number of stages in the complete workout.

As someone who is desperately unfit, the pacing of the exercises seem OK to me at the moment. The longer stages definitely feel like an effort to endure, but that's good — they're not so difficult that I can't make it through them, but I do feel like I'm doing some actual work that will be beneficial.

I could be doing them better, of course; the game suggests that when you're not punching, you bob back and forth in time with the music and I can't quite manage to keep that up constantly along with all the other stuff, but I'm sure I can get there over the long term. The important thing is, after all, getting started.

The trainer voices throughout are rather repetitive, but helpful in giving you cues and encouragement, and the visual demonstration of what you're supposed to be doing ("mirrored" so you can follow along more easily) is very helpful. The game-like feel to the whole thing makes it feel more "fun" than some other forms of exercise, and there's a wide range of musical accompaniments to go along with your workouts — including both instrumental versions of "real" songs and some original stuff composed specifically for the game. The original stuff is actually quite a bit better than some of the Kidz Bop-tier arrangements, but honestly part of the fun of the game is the absurdity inherent in aggressively throwing punches to something like Hot and Cold by Katy Perry or the frigging YMCA.

I have a long drive tomorrow afternoon after work, and then a long drive back home after work the day after, so I'll likely take a rest for at least tomorrow and possibly the day after also, depending on how I feel when I get back, but I intend to get back to this as soon as I can. It feels pitched at about the level I can deal with right now, and I think it'll just be helpful to get moving a bit in any way. Because I'm sick of waking up aching all over like someone twice my age, and I suspect a significant part of the reason that is happening is because I haven't been exercising.

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#oneaday Day 81: Pep Talk

I am failing hard at my weight loss and fitness goals, so I am going to use today's opportunity to give myself something of a pep talk. Hopefully laying down the things I've been feeling — and how I feel about things not going the right way — on "paper" will help me put them into perspective and move forwards.

First of all, I'll say that "failing" is probably the wrong word. I have suffered a temporary setback. It is a temporary setback that has been going on for probably a couple of months at this point, but if we're looking at the big picture, I'm still a stone lighter than when I started all this. That is Progress, and I shouldn't put myself down too hard when I have made Progress.

However, my trouble is that I've become complacent. My brain has figured that it knows what I'm "supposed" to do in order to keep the weight loss going, and it has led me to assume that it knows best and is able to do the "right" things instinctively.

Well, brain, you cannot do these things instinctively. You have been making a right hash of things of late. But it's not too late to sort things out. You need to take a moment to reflect why you're doing this, then recalibrate yourself to follow the Slimming World programme carefully, methodically and fastidiously. No thinking "oh, a quick Meal Deal won't hurt". No thinking "ah, one Greggs won't hurt". No thinking outright potentially harmful thoughts like "maybe I just won't eat for most of tomorrow".

No, brain, instead, you know you have a clear structure within which to work. And that means making an effort to prioritise the foods that Slimming World defines as "free" — for the unfamiliar, this includes not only the usual sort of fruits and vegetables that you'd expect, including potatoes, but also pasta, rice and some grains.

On top of that "free" stuff, you have two "Healthy Extra A" choices, which are carefully measured things in the dairy area, and one "Healthy Extra B" choice, which is fibre-related, and usually takes the form of something like a carefully measured bowl of Shredded Wheat, two slices of wholemeal bread, stuff like that.

And on top of that, you have your "Syns", which covers everything else. And these are the things that are probably the most important to count. Because while you can technically have anything on Slimming World, it's important to ensure you're 100% aware of what you're putting in your mouth and how much of it you're putting in your mouth, too. One or two little treats that are a couple of Syns each are fine; a whole "Sharing" bagful is not.

Since the first time I did Slimming World (and had a lot of success with it first time around), they've started to place a greater focus on "trigger foods", and I think that's something I really need to be mindful of. Trigger foods are the things that "set you off" onto a path that will harm your overall weight loss. In my case, it's things like getting a big bag of some sort of "treat", be it sweet or savoury, and telling myself "I'll just have a bit at a time". I inevitably do not have a bit at a time and end up eating the whole bag. This is, as I'm sure you can appreciate, a Problem.

Thing is, I am aware of the behaviours I'm exhibiting, and how they're symptomatic of someone with an addiction. I have seen them in other people who were addicted to things other than food. Trouble is, an addiction to food, which is clearly what I am having to deal with, is not something which is taken anywhere near as seriously as an addiction to alcohol or drugs, but clearly it can be harmful.

And it's not as if I don't want to fix myself. I'm fed up of not being able to sleep well because my whole body hurts. I'm fed up of not physically being able to do things because I'm too big. I'm fed up of it being difficult to find clothes that fit. And I'm fed up of still living with this fucking hernia that randomly flares up into excruciating pain on an unpredictable basis, and being unable to get treatment for it because I'm too fat.

Annoyingly, I've tried seeking medical help for this, and all I got was a useless "course" where I spoke to someone on Zoom once every two weeks, got no particularly helpful advice that I didn't know already, was repeatedly asked if I wanted bariatric surgery (I emphatically do not, for a variety of reasons) and made hardly any progress. So I guess it's up to me.

So brain, you have two options. Give up, which I know you don't want to do, or start taking this seriously. Start writing down everything you eat, including when you have "too much". Start measuring those Healthy Extras and counting those Syns. And be fastidious about it. Don't be afraid to mess up and acknowledge that you messed up; in writing this post in the first place, I'm admitting to myself that I messed up. And don't be in denial that there is a problem here which needs to be solved.

This evening, it is time to reflect and consider the situation. From first thing tomorrow morning, it's a clean "break" from the past, and a new beginning. Let's get this done.

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#oneaday Day 47: Making the Effort

I made it to the gym today. I didn't make it first thing in the morning because I don't feel that is going to work for me — at least not just yet. So I went a little bit after work instead. I walked for 20 minutes on the treadmill at 4mph (slightly faster than I usually walk, so enough to work up a bit of a sweat) and then did some stuff on the resistance machines.

And y'know what? It felt pretty good. I had that thing where three minutes into my walking I thought I'd made a terrible mistake, but I powered through that "wall" — helped along by having some entertaining stuff to watch on my phone and headphones — and made it to 20 minutes without too much difficulty. I could have probably done another 10 minutes, but the gym was reasonably busy, so I didn't want to hog the machine too much.

The resistance machines remind me that I have a lot of scope for improvement, but it is definitely satisfying to complete a few sets on them. I don't like all of them — and some of them are impractical or even impossible to use with my hernia — but the ones I do get along well with give me a decent workout in several different areas, which is good.

I haven't gone back to using the free weights just yet as I'm trying to just get back into the general gym groove. A few sessions on a semi-regular basis and I think I'll be back into a routine. I think I will rest tomorrow, then try and go again after work on Friday, then see how things go from there.

The trouble I've been having is that the weather conditions here right now are highly conducive to lethargy. The atmosphere is very stuffy both inside the house and outside, and it's a real drain on one's energy to just exist right now. I have somewhat reached the conclusion that you just have to sort of power through this, though, because waiting until it passes is a sure-fire route to doing absolutely nothing of use for a significant amount of time.

So it was a small step today, but I feel good about it. At times when I feel like I've been feeling, you have to take the little victories and celebrate them, because otherwise everything just becomes a bit overwhelming. So this is me, celebrating.

Yay?

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#oneaday Day 18: Attempting to Reset

I put half a pound on this week. This is not, in the grand scheme of things, a huge amount of weight, but I am a little disappointed and not at all surprised. I have not been particularly rigorous about taking care to be sensible with what I eat, and that somewhat laissez-faire attitude is being reflected in a lack of positive results.

All you can do in this situation, though, is hold up your hands, admit you made a mistake (or a few) and try to right the ship from hereon. What has already happened can't be changed; what's important is what you do next and what you learn from that mistake.

I've already started taking positive steps with the exercise. I made it out of the door and to the pool for a decent length swim this morning, after what was a surprisingly good night's sleep. I woke up a lot of times, but every time it was because I was convinced it was 7am and time to get up, only to get the very pleasant surprise when I looked at my bedside clock and discovered that "time to get up" was still several hours away.

What I need to do is focus on some of the things that Slimming World talks about in the sessions, rather than just nodding along. Probably the key thing I need to focus on is "triggers" — in the slimming sense, these are the things that aren't the greatest for you which you eat then immediately want more of. They are one of the biggest barriers to weight loss, because they are the things that are most likely to send you catastrophically "off plan".

In many respects it's like an addiction. I have some experience of dealing with people who have struggled through addiction to substances more harmful than food — thankfully, those addictions appear to be in the past for the people concerned — but I recognise some of the same behaviours in myself when I "lapse". A desire to make myself "feel better" through the thing that is the source of a lot of my troubles; an inability to stop once I've started that "self-medication" process; the mental association between feeling like I "deserve" something that is bad for me for [insert justification here].

Part of my trouble is not having what I think of as "safety nets" in place — and the fact I'm somewhat inclined to think negatively of those safety nets. My immediate reaction to seemingly obvious advice like "don't eat a bag of sweets, have a piece of fruit instead" is that this is an absolutely laughable statement, even though I know fruit can be perfectly satisfying and even delicious. I need to get out of that mindset — and to have those pieces of fruit readily to hand so I can start making positive associations with them.

There are countless other examples, but there are days when it just all feels like work. And it is work; work with tangible benefits over the long term. It's those long-term benefits I need to keep my focus on, because it's short-term factors — i.e. the way I'm feeling right now — that is causing me difficulties.

I don't need advice or anything. I know what I need to do, and putting it down on "paper" will likely go at least a little way towards fixing some of those things a bit further forward in my mind. I know I can do this — I've done it once before — so I just have to knuckle down and actually do it.

For now, though, bed. Without biscuits.

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