1274: Get Out

As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m feeling a little low. Whether this is a symptom of some sort of summer-related Seasonal Affective Disorder or if it’s just a symptom of my ongoing depression I don’t know, but I am feeling a little low.

One of the reasons I’m feeling low is because I feel fat and gross. I always feel fat and gross, to be fair, because I am fat and gross, but there have been times when I didn’t feel quite as bad about myself as I do right now. Those times had one common factor: I was indulging in a regular exercise routine, either at the gym and pool, or out on the roads running.

I haven’t done any real exercise for quite some time for various reasons — mostly a lack of motivation related to depression, which just feeds the cycle and makes it worse, I know, but also just recently the blazing hot weather we’ve been having every day hasn’t been helping either. The last thing I feel like doing when it feels like a greenhouse outside is picking up my pace to anything more than my usual walk, let alone persisting at that pace for 30-45 minutes at a time.

Consequently, most of the good work I’ve done on running in the past has been largely undone, and I’m a mess with regard to fitness. I don’t really know what to do about it, either; I just feel completely unmotivated and have absolutely no desire whatsoever to go out and “better myself”, but at the same time know that if I don’t I’m going to continue along in this funk not really wanting to do anything.

This Oatmeal comic got me thinking somewhat, because I recognised a lot of the things he was talking about therein. It’s almost — almost — inspired me to get up and go out this evening, but I’m not really feeling it right now. I may make a start on some sort of regime tomorrow, however.

What I’m thinking I might do is rather than jump straight back into the demoralising experience of being a fat guy trying to run, I’ll just try and do a long walk each day. That’s something that feels “doable” and “achievable,” and from there I can always work my way up to doing something a bit more strenuous. I’m not talking about a casual amble, just to be clear; I’m talking about a brisk walk for a significant distance for somewhere in the region of 45 minutes to an hour. I live right near Southampton Common, which is the ideal venue for such perambulations, so I may just start taking advantage of that fact.

Here’s my plan, then, which it remains to be seen whether or not I’ll be able to stick to: I’m going to try and get up reasonably early-ish — i.e. considerably more than half an hour before I’m supposed to start doing work — and head out for a walk in the morning before it gets too unbearably hot. Then I will come home, have breakfast, relax, chill out and start work. Hopefully that small change will have some sort of impact, if not on my body then at least on my mental state.

I’m making no promises as to whether or not this is actually going to do anything, but having good intentions is a first step at least. Let’s see if they lead anywhere.

#oneaday Day 903: Running Review

I’ve been running through the Couch to 5K programme again, no pun intended. If you’re unfamiliar with this well-paced running programme, check out the image at the end of this post for more information. Also, play through Emi’s path on Katawa Shoujo and you’ll really want to do it.

Ahem. Anyway. Tonight was the first day of my fourth week on the programme. I’ve done it through to completion once previously, but that was quite a while ago now and my fitness has lapsed somewhat, so I decided to start again. Week 4 is where the pace starts to step up a bit and the jumps in difficulty begin to become more noticeable. For example, tonight I did two three-minute runs and two five-minute runs; on the previous trip out, I did two minute-and-a-half runs and two three-minute runs.

I got on pretty well. I didn’t have to stop at all, and I paced myself well. Said pace is still fairly glacial compared to people who aren’t carrying around as much weight as I am, but I’m satisfied so far.

One thing I remember noticing last time I did all this and am noticing again now is the fact that running is good stress relief. It’s actually probably exercise in general, but I’m finding it particularly apparent while running.

When I say “stress relief” I don’t necessarily mean “making the stress go away”. If it was possible to just make stress dissipate… well, then the world would be a much nicer place. (I also don’t mean “stress relief” in the same way that J-List refers to “stress relief toys”. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry.)

No, what I mean, in fact, is that running seems to “shake things loose” in my head. Stressful thoughts which have been clogging up my head all day come to the fore, particularly when reaching the end of a session. This isn’t always a massively pleasant experience, but it can be helpful and cathartic in the long run. It’s easy for stressful thoughts to get “backed up” and simply cause you to “feel stressed” all day for no specific reason — releasing these thoughts helps dissipate that vague “meh” feeling, though naturally you still have the specific thoughts themselves to deal with.

The human brain is weird.

Anyway, I’m happy with my progress on Couch to 5K so far. I remember being impressed with myself when I made it through the last time I did so, and being even more impressed when I successfully made it through an entire 10K race in London. (Okay, again I wasn’t especially quick, but at least I didn’t come in last place!) I’m contemplating setting myself some sort of target such as another race somewhere so I have something to aim for — the end of the programme is all very well and good, but where do you go from there?

Well, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. For now I shall enjoy the small victory of successfully running for 3 minutes, 5 minutes, 3 minutes and 5 minutes without stopping.

#oneaday Day 861: Cycle of Life

Today I took ownership of a shiny new bicycle. It is red.

Technically I took ownership of a shiny new bicycle (that was red) yesterday, but said shiny new bicycle was far too big for me, meaning that my testicles suffered considerable (and uncomfortable) compression when attempting to stand astride it, and making actually getting on to the saddle without looking like some sort of Special Person an impossible task. It didn’t do wonders for my confidence, so I took it back and exchanged it for a smaller one. Now I can ride it without feeling like I’m going to fall off. At least, not quite as much.

I haven’t ridden a bike for at least five years, I think. I used to do it a fair bit and have always enjoyed it, despite not being very good at it. I’m fairly clumsy and cack-handed and balance has never been a particularly strong point, meaning that I’m not very good at doing things like signalling, or riding without my hands clamped firmly to the handlebars. (Any tips for getting over that particular phobia are most welcome.) I’m also not particularly good at going uphill, changing gear (with either hand) or bumping up onto a pavement. But I can, at least, pedal, move forwards and stay upright without falling off into heavy traffic and dying, which is a start.

Cycling is good exercise. I’ve been doing a lot on the exercise bike at the gym recently — up to an hour at a time — and it got me thinking I should get back on the “real cycling” at some point, particularly as the weather is so nice at the moment. Observations so far are that real cycling is significantly more challenging than gym cycling (at least on the resistance level I’ve had it set at, it seems) but you get to be outside and have the nice feeling of the wind rushing past you, which is most pleasant and one of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed getting on a bike as a means of transportation and recreation.

That “transportation” part is a good thing about real cycling. At the gym, you pedal and pedal and pedal for hours and don’t go anywhere, you just make the little numbers on the screen go up. On a real bike, you can actually go somewhere that is too far away to walk. Granted, the speed at which I cycle probably isn’t significantly faster than walking (unless I’m going downhill) but at least it makes some places that were previously inaccessible without jumping in the car a little more, well, accessible. This is nice. I could probably even cycle to the gym if I tried hard enough, though I then have to consider the fact that I also have to cycle back after exerting myself lifting heavy things and/or all the other stuff I decide to torture myself with.

I would very much like to get fit and lose weight, as has probably been made clear numerous times on these very pages. The more alternative activities I have to help achieve that goal, the less likely (hopefully) I am to get demoralised or bored with the whole thing. I’m doing pretty well with watching what I eat and trying to get more exercise on a regular basis — this is just another means to that end. We’ll have to wait and see if it helps. Hopefully it will.

#oneaday Day 847: You Must be This Skinny to Ride

I’ve been going back and forth in my mind as to whether or not I should write about this, but given subjects I’ve happily covered in the past on this blog I figured what the hell. In for a penny, in for a pound, or something. Hopefully writing about this will prove cathartic, as I’ve been feeling fairly shitty for a fair chunk of the day.

Today, as you’ll know if you have read recent posts, Andie and I went to Alton Towers. I was looking forward to this a great deal, as it’s been a long time since I’d been and I was very curious about the new rides — as well as going on some old favourites.

All was going well. We’d been on the Runaway Mine Train, the Rapids, the Flume and an awesomely fun rollercoaster called Air that suspends you in a “lying down” position as if you’re flying like Superman, and we were having a great time.

Then I tried to go on Ripsaw. I had a feeling there might be trouble when the seats felt a bit small. I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so mortifying, however.

To cut a long story short, I had to get off the ride because I was too fat. The attendant didn’t use those words, obviously (if he had, I would have probably yelled more than a few obscenities at him and/or punched him) but there it was. Apparently the (already very tight on most people) safety harness thingies couldn’t be lowered enough on to me, so I had to get off. They gave me a “Priority Pass” to get on something else immediately, but guess what? All of the rides it covered also had very similar issues. I tried one and didn’t dare get on any others after that, as I was so upset.

I don’t think I’ve ever felt so humiliated as when I was getting off Ripsaw and walking across the front of the ride area towards the exit. I didn’t hear anyone laughing at me, but it didn’t matter. I was mortified. I was The Guy Who Was Too Fat To Ride. I won’t lie, it upset me enough to make me cry. I have issues with my body shape as it is, and to have it “confirmed” by strangers was just the worst feeling.

I am totally insecure in my body shape. I’m not what you’d call “massive” by any means. But I have quite a “solid” upper body. I hate it. I feel revulsion when I look at myself in the mirror. I wish I could just be happy in who I was, but when a day out is spoiled by your own fatness, it’s hard not to take it personally, particularly when you’re already made to feel like a social pariah by the way the world is set up.

Every time I see statistics about the number of obese people in the country, I feel bad. Every time someone on Twitter makes some judgemental comment about obese people, I get upset. I gave up on Wii Fit in the end because I was getting so demoralised every time I did the Body Test and it made my Mii swell up like a balloon. I’ve even been insulted by complete strangers in the past because of my weight. The world is set up to make me feel like Being Fat Is Bad and that I should Do Something About It.

Here’s the thing, though: I am doing something about it. I am going to the gym regularly, doing at least an hour of cardio every time (plus some weights work) and burning anywhere between 600 and 800 calories in a session. I am watching what I eat, counting calories and trying to make sure I have a deficit of a decent size, but not so much I’m starving myself. And still I feel like a societal reject because the weight is hard to get off. I wasn’t expecting it to be easy, but I would have expected to have at least a little impact by now. Perhaps it has and I just haven’t realised or noticed. But it’s incredibly demoralising when you discover that despite your best efforts, you’re Too Fat To Do That Thing You Like.

I’m really not sure what I can do beyond what I’m already doing — perhaps trying to up the intensity further on my workouts, and making sure I’m being as consistent and disciplined as possible. But my experience today made me feel like absolute shit about myself, through no-one’s fault in particular. Besides my own, I guess.

I’ve known people who were pretty large who successfully managed to lose a buttload of weight and completely change their body type. I feel jealous when I see those people, and I wonder if I’ll ever succeed. On days like today, it feels like it won’t ever happen.

I have calmed down a bit since earlier. Shit happens, and the rest of the day was fun. I am thirty-one years old, and Alton Towers probably wasn’t built with thirty-one year old men in mind. Perhaps I just need to let go of the past and do things that are more friendly to thirty-one year old men instead of stuff I was doing around half my lifetime ago. Going to the gym. Sitting in the jacuzzi at our hotel (so relaxing — just the thing after a stressful day). Hanging out with friends and playing board games. Playing Diablo III. Being at peace with oneself.

I’m not sure I’ll ever manage the last bit unless I successfully manage to shed a whole buttload of weight. I certainly intend to keep on trying, but you’ll forgive me if I have occasional lapses in hope for my long-term success.

Thank you for indulging me with this post. We’re off to the Alton Towers Water Park tomorrow, so hopefully that will be a much more fun day.

#oneaday Day 825: Bull, Horns, That Sort of Thing

The Black Dog of depression has been rearing its ugly head a bit again recently for various reasons, and I’m sick of it. While there’s not necessarily much I can do about it showing up and being a pain in the arse, I can at least try and work on some things to make me feel a bit better about myself.

For starters, getting upset at one’s own reflection isn’t particularly great news, and it’s something that I can at least attempt to do something about. I have been fitness-ing off and on for some time now, but I figure it’s Time To Get Serious. That means I’m going to hit the gym every morning before I start my working day rather than leaving it until last thing in the evening when it’s easy to go “nah, fuck it”. (Of course, it’s easy to stay in bed and say “nah, fuck it” also, but I’m going to attempt to get out of this habit before it starts.) I won’t necessarily be doing everything every day, but I’m going to attempt to get at least an hour of cardio stuff in per day at the very least. This will likely mostly be done on the exercise bikes, where I can sit back and play Final Fantasy VI on my fancy-pants tablet while I’m sweating. At other times, I’ll use the crosstrainers and whack on a podcast — the Exploding Barrel Podcast from my good buddies Mike and AJ Minotti is always a favourite — or some inspirational music of some description.

As motivation and progress tracking, I’m going to be using Fitocracy, which I’ve posted about before here. I also considered resurrecting my Jedi Health Kick Tumblr from a while back, but given that Fitocracy provides the ability to post lengthy, blog-like status updates and has its own built-in community features, I’m going to stick with that. As well as tracking my workouts, I’m going to write a short post each day detailing how it went, how I’m feeling and what I’m aiming for. I’m also going to use Fitocracy’s excellent Quests feature to take on some challenges that I might not have otherwise thought of — this will help prevent complacency if I’m making a “game” out of it all.

I’d also like to eat better. I think I eat when I get depressed, and I get depressed a fair bit, which doesn’t help matters. I’d rather kick that particular habit in the face if possible — or at the very least change it so I munch on, say, carrot sticks instead of ALL THE BISCUITS, but that’s the sort of thing that will take plenty of teeth-clenching willpower to resolve. I have faith in my own ability to do this, however — if there’s one thing I’m good at it’s clenching my teeth and stubbornly resisting things. Sainsbury’s cream cakes are my most formidable adversary to date, however, so it remains to be seen whether I’ll be able to defeat them using the power of my clenched teeth (and/or buttocks) alone.

So that’s the plan. We’ll see how long I’m able to stick with it. I’m saying this publicly so I have a bit more pressure to follow through on it. If anyone would care to join me and work out alongside me or just offer some words of encouragement, come cheer me on over on Fitocracy — it’s free to sign up and there’s a nifty companion iPhone app too.

#oneaday Day 813: Fitocrat

I last wrote about up-and-coming “fitness social game” Fitocracy back in… [checks] Ooh. October of last year. I thought it was more recently. I feel less guilty about writing about it tonight, in that case.

For the uninitiated, Fitocracy is a site which gamifies your exercise regime. Completing exercises rewards you with points. Points mean level ups. Level ups mean… well, nothing actually, but they provide you with bragging rights plus also give you a rough idea of how much cumulative exercise you’ve done since you started tracking it (and, in theory, “got serious” about it).

Tracking exercises can be done in two ways: manually logging them or linking to a Runkeeper account. The former is necessary for exercises which can’t be automatically tracked such as resistance machines, free weights and bodyweight exercises. The latter is the easiest way to track cardiovascular workouts — particularly those where you’ve actually, you know, gone outside — but you can also track CV stuff directly within Fitocracy if you don’t want to plaster your information over yet another site. (Runkeeper is a pretty cool app, though, so if you’re serious about your fitness, enjoy attempting to draw GPS penises via your exercise route and have a smartphone, it’s worth a download.)

If Fitocracy was just an exercise-tracking system with a levelling system, it’d be pretty decent. But the team behind it has gone the extra mile and included a bunch of other stuff, too. There are Achievements for a variety of things ranging from engaging with the site’s social features to performing challenging exercises. There is a Quest system that provides specific, one-off missions for you to undertake — a good means of setting yourself long-term goals if you can’t think of any of your own. You can save your favourite routines so you can easily recall and record them. There’s a solid Groups system whereby you and your friends can work together and even set up mini-challenges to see who can earn the most points in a set time period. And the whole thing is wrapped in a straightforward, conventional but effective and highly-polished social interface that encourages interaction and encouragement between “players”.

All in all, it’s an excellent motivational tool. Everything combined together forms a powerful system that makes you feel like you’re being “rewarded” for bettering yourself when, in fact, you’re simply making a variable go a bit higher each time or occasionally unlocking intangible shiny things. The thing is, though, you are actually rewarding yourself. You’re bettering yourself. You’re getting fit. You’re learning how to self-motivate. And, assuming you’ve managed to badger some friends into joining up too, you’re also being rewarded by positive encouragement and reinforcement from other people who are going through the same thing. It’s a social network for people who are serious about their fitness — or who want to get serious about their fitness. And it does its job extremely well.

Fitocracy was in closed beta for a pretty long time, and during that period it was only possible to use the service if you had an invite. Now, though, the whole thing is open to the public and is completely free to use — though power users have the option of shelling out $4.99 a month to become a “hero” and get early access to new features. The service has had a fresh new coat of purple paint, its site looks great and the new iPhone app is a pleasure to use with its simple, intuitive and attractive interface.

So why not give it a try? Here’s my profile. I’ll be your friend! NOW GET MOVING, MAGGOT!

#oneaday Day 768: Two Weeks

Two weeks of my second runthrough of the Couch to 5K running programme, that is, and it’s going reasonably well so far.

Much as I discovered last time, building up stamina is actually a somewhat easier process than you might expect. I’m not sure if this is just because I’ve been doing semi-regular exercise for a while, a hangover from the last time I ran through this programme or something else entirely, but in the space of two weeks I’ve found that each time out there gets slightly, marginally easier than the last.

Of course, at this point in the programme I’m still only running for a minute and a half at a time, then walking for two minutes, then repeating the process. But still, every great journey starts with a single step and all that.

Running has, for me, always been one of the most challenging exercises there is to do, partly because there’s nothing “helping you”. Even when you’re running downhill, your body still has to do stuff, whereas on a bike all you have to do on a downhill stretch is stay upright and occasionally steer. But when you’re running, you’re constantly active — moving your body, lifting your entire body weight off the ground, shifting your legs, pushing forwards, pumping your arms, working all those muscles. It’s a pretty intense workout all round, so it’s perhaps not surprising that it’s pretty challenging.

As I found the last time I tried all this, though, it’s infinitely more interesting than running/cycling/rowing/whatever it is you’re doing on a crosstrainer on the spot, staring at a digital readout, trying desperately to ignore the terrible, terrible music the gym is pumping into your ears and also trying desperately not to look at the visible panty line of the woman with the nice arse in the yoga pants on the machine in front of you.

Sorry, momentarily distracted there.

But no. It is infinitely more interesting than working out in a gym simply because you have freedom, and that’s important. Okay, it becomes harder to control your workout so precisely when you have to deal with the sometimes unpredictable undulations of the route you decide to take, and at times you find yourself dodging pedestrians, dogs, low-flying seagulls and various animals’ poo. But that makes it interesting and exciting, even if you’re running the same route every day. You can mix things up by running at different times — that loop round the estate and past Sainsbury’s looks quite different when the sun has set to how it looks in the daytime. You can go the other way. You can take a random turning elsewhere and deliberately get lost in order to explore the area. You can run down darkened country lanes with a torch in the dead of night and pretend you’re Alan Wake. You can run down mysterious forest paths in the hope you might find some magical kingdom or The Faraway Tree inside (hint: you probably won’t, and all that is likely waiting for you at the other end is a large, muddy field that smells a bit like shit). In short, you can have a bit of fun with your exercising rather than enduring the businesslike approach of the gym.

That’s not saying the gym’s bad, of course — it’s good to have a sense of structure and “formality” to your workouts at times. But it’s also helpful to get out there and enjoy yourself with it, otherwise it simply becomes a chore, and chores are no fun whatsoever, and then they don’t get done and they build up and you feel guilty and obliged to do them all at once and then you swear never to let them get to that stage ever again and then you do and you swear lots and then you die.

Or something. Perhaps not.

This is my experience, anyway. I still go to the gym and I still enjoy doing so, but getting out there and running through my thrice-weekly Couch to 5K sessions has reminded me that going outside and Doing Stuff can be fun too. I recommend you try it.

#oneaday Day 764: Sports Day

Sports and me have never really got on. There are a variety of reasons for this but the long and the short of it is that said antipathy towards each other meant that 1) I was usually picked last for the teams in PE (when I wasn’t, it was usually Steven Finnegan instead) and 2) my body isn’t exactly a rippling temple of man-beef.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t tried to get involved with sports over the years. I was in my Cub Scout football team, for example, a team so terrible we were sponsored by a junkyard. Our best result ever was 1-0 to us. Our worst result was 20-0 to them. No, that’s not a typo. Twenty-nil.

Despite my ambivalence towards sport, I do also have some fond memories of various school sports days, particularly if it happened to be a nice day out at the time. I can’t remember a lot about primary school sports days, but secondary school sports days tended to be a pretty big deal, bringing most of the school to a standstill for a wide variety of track and field events.

My tutor group (the erstwhile 7FMQ, later 8QU, 9QU, 10QU and 11QU) were the very souls of apathy for the most part. There were certain events that people just plain didn’t want to enter, which would have put us at a significant disadvantage on the leaderboards (yes, this was in the day when it was still acceptable for school sports days to have “winners” and “losers”) had I not stepped in.

I’m not sure why I stepped in, given that I knew full well I was crap at sports, was not very good at running and wasn’t particularly agile. Therefore, you may be thinking, it would be somewhat foolhardy for me to enter both the 800m race and the high jump, but enter them I did, and I learned a number of things. Firstly, that I was surprisingly quite good at high jump, and secondly, that I was very poor at pacing myself when running — something which I still struggle somewhat with today.

The problem stemmed from the fact that I had never even considered running a long(ish)-distance race before, so I didn’t really know how they worked. As such, I was off the starting blocks like a fucking rocket and exhausted by the end of the first lap. This gave the rest of the pack, who had been pacing themselves somewhat more modestly, ample opportunity to catch up. I don’t think I finished last, to my credit, but it certainly wasn’t very far off. After the race ended, I went back to my tutor group’s area of the field, lay on the floor and didn’t move for a very long time.

The thing that sticks in my memory about that race, though, is not the fact that I ballsed it up so spectacularly. It’s the fact that for once, the rest of my tutor group was rooting for me. I spent a lot of my school days feeling like something of an outsider thanks to my awkward social skills, my weird accent, my crap hair and my forehead and nose’s tendencies to flare up with greasy zits. I was a geek and someone who did well, too, which made me pretty much the polar opposite of “cool”. Thankfully, barring a few exceptions, I was mostly left to my own devices to hang out with my equally geeky friends (most of whom had better hair than me) but this meant I didn’t feel a particularly strong sense of camaraderie with the rest of my tutor group.

Until that day. I heard them cheering for me as I ran past them on the first lap, and staggered past them on the second. And when I finished, far from being admonished for my poor pacing, I was congratulated and praised for getting out there and giving it a shot. It was a surprisingly special moment that’s stuck with me over the years. And while in short order things went back to being the way they had always been, for those few short minutes when I was on that track, I meant something. I was cool.

#oneaday Day 758: Keep Moving!

Thus far the return to a regular fitness routine has been going pretty well. I’ve shaken off all vague feelings of illness, so I can’t use that as an excuse any more, and I have a variety of activities that I’m able to do so I don’t get bored. Also, as stupid as it sounds, associating the act of running with one of my favourite characters from Katawa Shoujo — that’s Emi, for anyone not tuning out when I mention that game now — gives me a positive attitude towards it, even if I suck in comparison to people who are fitter and slimmer than me.

Fitness is tricky business, though, as anyone who has tried to get themselves into a decent routine and struggled will attest. Just arbitrarily deciding that you are going to “get fit” isn’t enough for most people, in my experience. You need things to aim for and the means through which to motivate yourself.

I thought what I’d do today is share what I’m doing in the hope that it might rub off on some of you. Feel free to pinch any of my ideas if you’re struggling with the whole “motivation” thing.

First up, I have a selection of things to do — I don’t do the same thing all the time. If you’re a gym member, it’s easy to think that you should be using the gym as much as possible, and when you’re there, it’s also very easy to get stuck in a rut doing the same routine over and over and over again. And sure, sticking to a routine can allow you to work on the parts of the body that you’d really like to focus on, but good grief it gets boring after a while.

So mix it up. When you’re at the gym, try some different machines. If you do weight training, use the machines sometimes and the free weights at others. Try using barbells if you normally use dumbbells. Challenge some different cardiovascular machines. Bump up the difficulty. Set yourself more lofty targets — ten minutes, twenty minutes, thirty minutes. Challenge yourself to meet those targets without stopping for a rest, or with only a certain number of rests, or completing a certain amount of distance in that time period.

But don’t necessarily stick to the gym. Go outside and do something like cycling or running. While you may feel horrendously self-conscious attempting to perambulate your wheezing carcass at a faster speed than your normal zombie-like shamble in an environment that contains other people, there are plenty of ways to tune out the outside world. Loud music, for example — and we’ll come back to that point in a minute. The clothing you wear makes a difference, too — hide your face under a hoodie or a hat and you’ll feel much less self-conscious, plus you get the added bonus of being able to pretend you’re Ezio Auditore running away from the city guards. That and keeping the windchill off your ears, too. Also bear in mind that there’s a strong possibility that anyone who sees you running — especially in inclement weather conditions — will be impressed at your dedication to bettering yourself. (This rule is also known as the “Fat People Shouldn’t Be Ashamed To Be Seen At The Gym Rule”.)

On the subject of music, pick something that inspires you. No-one else is going to hear it (unless you have crap headphones that leak sound everywhere, and even then only if you’re exercising around other people and playing your music at full volume) so it can be absolutely anything you want, even the most shameful of crap in your iTunes library. In fact, in the age of Spotify, you can feel free to try out different genres of music to see what gets your pumped up. You may find that 80s cheese does the trick, or thumping dance beats, or — God forbid — dubstep.

Podcasts are a good thing to insert into your earholes while you’re exercising too, not because they’re inherently energetic in themselves, but because they provide the illusion of time passing more quickly. By concentrating on the sound of peoples’ voices and what they are saying, you’ll find you naturally stop clockwatching, simply letting your body run on automatic while you listen to, say, the Minotti brothers yelling at each other on the Exploding Barrel Podcast, or the Squadron of Shame waxing lyrical about chin-strokey gaming topics.

My personal recommendation for listening material is to check out some soundtracks, both movies and games. Action movie soundtracks and games that are full of spectacle typically provide excellent soundtracks to work out to — particular favourites of mine include the soundtracks to Speed, the Matrix series, Metal Gear Solid, Split/Second, Shadow of the Colossus (particularly awesome when lifting weights), the bizarrely cheerful soundtrack to the iPhone version of DoDonPachi Resurrection and Space Channel 5. If you’re a JRPG fan, battle themes are particularly awesome to work out to. If you can create a crescendo of intensity culminating in the most epic final boss themes you can find, so much the better. There’s no better feeling than finishing that last set of reps as the choir starts belting out One Winged Angel.

Finally, and I think this is probably the most powerful motivational factor in my case: track your progress. It’s very easy to get stuck in a rut, but to see measurable results provides powerful inspiration to push yourself harder and go a little further. Exactly how you do this is up to you, but as a gamer and social media junkie I use Runkeeper to track cardiovascular workouts (including mapping my runs when I go outside) and the very excellent Fitocracy social game/network to log complete workouts. I also share my completed workouts on Facebook and Twitter. While some may not like the “spam”, it’s easy enough to ignore, and the few people who do congratulate me on a job well done after the fact makes it worthwhile.

On that note, if you can build up a support network for yourself — be it people you regularly work out with or online friends who cheer you on from afar — you’ll find yourself motivated to succeed, particularly if they’re the sort of friends who would rib you mercilessly if you give up. If you’re going through a programme like the Couch to 5K thing I shared with you all the other day, then work with a friend or team to get through it together.

Above all, though, have fun with it. It may feel like work at times because it is — it’s something you need to make yourself do, and made of activities that your body often doesn’t feel like doing if you tend to live a fairly sedentary lifestyle. But unlike going to actual work, you’re free to tackle it and make it fun in whatever manner you please rather than sitting in a cubicle allowing your soul to be sucked out through your ergonomically-designed management keyboard.

I hope that’s made some of you think a bit. C’mon, if I can get off my arse and get active, I’m pretty sure that you (yes, you, with the beard/glasses/pointy nose/weird hair/lovely hair/nice tits/flatulence/worryingly prominent erection/kind face/greasy trout in your hand/jar of olives clutched to your breast/smelly armpits [delete as applicable]) can do it too.

#oneaday Day 756: Emi’s Inspiration

Bettering yourself is a difficult thing to do. First of all, you have to really want to change, which isn’t necessarily the same as not liking something about yourself. It’s the difference between self-pitying cries of “I hate that I’m like this!” and inspirational yells of “I may be like this now, but you better watch out, cause I’ma kick your ass!” or something equally obnoxious.

There are lots of ways you might want to change yourself. It could be eating better, working on a new creative project, getting more exercise. Chances are, there is something you would rather do better — probably even several things. Once you’ve picked one, that’s where the challenge comes in — motivation to begin.

Inspiration can come from the strangest places. In this post back in 2009, I commented on the strange effect that changing my Second Life avatar from one which loosely looked like me to someone rather more buff an’ ting had on me. I suddenly felt inspired to better myself, and to attempt to hammer and chisel my flabby body into some sort of shape, to be more like my virtual self.

Well, I can’t say that it had a massive effect on me — I’m still overweight and would very much like to change that — but that initial push over the edge gave me some preliminary interest in fitness, and the knowledge that yes, I could do it if I applied myself.

Later on, I tried the Couch to 5K running programme, which takes 9 weeks to get you from wheezing, sweating mess up to someone who can run continuously for half an hour without stopping. It’s an excellent system, and one which has a very positive impact on anyone who tries it. But again, it can sometimes be difficult to get started.

One of the interesting things that those of us who have played Katawa Shoujo noticed was the inspirational effect that some of the characters had on members of the community. I’m not necessarily even talking in the “overcoming their disability” sense — rather, I’m referring to certain admirable character traits which a number of the girls in the game demonstrate to both protagonist Hisao and the player themselves proving to be a powerful motivational factor.

The most oft-cited example of this is Emi, an amputee girl and track star who describes herself as “The Fastest Thing on No Legs”. She overcame her disability to become a strong, fit runner, so why shouldn’t a person without a physical disability be able to do the same thing, too?

You can probably see where this is going.

What would happen, then, if you combined the infectiously cheerful, never-give-up personality of Emi with the well-paced Couch to 5K programme? Well, you get the following chart, which I include here after the break as a courtesy to that certain subset of you who have played Katawa Shoujo and are considering taking up running but having absolutely no idea where to start. Indeed, even those of you who haven’t played Katawa Shoujo but would like to be able to run for more than five seconds without HHNNNGGGGing can benefit from this. (To support the programme, I also recommend downloading this app for iPhone.)

As for me, I’m back into an almost-regular gym routine but haven’t done a long run for quite some time, so am planning on ploughing through the whole Couch to 5K programme again — with Emi’s help, of course — very soon. I shall be providing occasional progress updates on here when I can be bothered and/or when I don’t have anything interesting to write about that day.

Why don’t you get up off your arse and join me? See you on the track.

(Click Continue Reading if you’re on the front page to see Emi’s chart.)

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