#oneaday Day 12: Establishing a Routine

I successfully got up early and went for a swim today. I’m actually surprised that I’m not struggling to get out of bed at 7am, given that one of the main reasons I was getting up five minutes before starting work was feeling super-tired in the morning.

I suspect it’s something to do with circadian rhythms or something along those lines. There are apparently “sweet spots” of time when I am able to get up and get things done without difficulty, and times when it is not easy to haul myself out of bed and start the day. 7am appears, at the moment at least, to be one of those sweet spots. Around about 9am is another. 8am, meanwhile, is apparently a no-no for my body, for whatever reason. After 9am, judging by how late we tend to get up at weekends, the next sweet spots are several hours later.

Regardless of the reason for it, I’m feeling quite satisfied with myself for successfully making a start on establishing a new routine with morning exercise. It’s still early days, of course, but I have at least reached my goal for this week, which was to make it out of the house before work to do some exercise at least twice. Given that the relatively “sudden” amount of exercise is making me a bit achey and stiff (not in a fun way), I’m of course going to be careful not to overexert myself, so tomorrow will either be a rest day, or a day in which I head out to the gym rather than the pool in the afternoon rather than first thing in the morning. Probably the former, if I’m being completely honest. One thing at a time.

I’m glad I’ve made that commitment to be a member at the leisure centre for a year. Their facilities are pretty good, and their timetable is friendly to someone who works for a living. One of the problems I had with the last place I was at a member at — the university — was that the timetable for the pool in particular was very tricky to get along with, as, being a university facility, it was often in use for things other than public swimming.

I also didn’t like the university gym much; it tended to be a bit crowded, and it had a real problem with people just sitting on machines staring glassy-eyed at TikTok rather than actually getting the fuck on with their workout. I made sure to mention this in the obligatory “Tell Us How We Did!” survey after I ended my membership, and they did at least acknowledge that it was an issue. Whether or not they’ll do anything about it is anyone’s guess, but it’s not my problem any more.

Anyway. My cat Patti is bugging me for attention and keeps clawing my leg as I type this, so I guess I better leave that there. Until next time!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

#oneaday Day 10: A Success

I did it! I got up at a sensible hour rather than 5 minutes before work started, I had a cup of coffee, then I damn well went for a swim. Did 20 lengths at my excruciatingly slow pace (I’ve never claimed to be good at swimming) and came home feeling surprisingly chipper. I hate it when those people who say exercise is good for you are right. But hey. You have to celebrate the small victories on the road to lasting change, or something.

One thing I found less than good about my trip to the pool today was the fact they’ve installed lockers that eat your 10p coins rather than letting you have your coin back when you’re done. This would have been mildly annoying 10-15 years ago, but in an age where hardly anyone carries cash around any more it’s absolutely infuriating. At least it’s only 10p a time rather than a pound.

But I removed that from the equation, as the leisure complex in the town centre that I rather like and have been a member of numerous times in the past was running a very good deal on annual memberships, so I decided to make a proper commitment and signed up for a year of both swimming and gym membership. That gives me maximum flexibility without being beholden to things that have frustrated me in the past, such as the university pool’s schedule and suchlike.

Said centre’s pool is open from first thing in the morning (well, 7am) until mid-afternoon every weekday except Friday, and the gym is just… there. Having free access to both for the next year will be a positive thing, so long as I can motivate myself to actually get down there. And I think, as with anything, it’s just a matter of establishing good habits — a process that starts right now, this morning, with my trip to the pool.

I don’t like being unfit, unhealthy and lazy. In fact, it really sucks. It actively upsets me. But the trouble with being unfit, unhealthy and lazy is that it’s something of a vicious cycle: being unfit, unhealthy and lazy makes you more unfit, unhealthy and lazy, and then because you’re unfit, unhealthy and lazy the prospect of doing something to make you not at least one of those three things often feels like an insurmountable obstacle.

I’m feeling weirdly motivated right now, though. Perhaps I really am on the way back up after a bit of a mental health crash in the last few weeks or so. Here’s hoping I can keep up the momentum and go the distance. I’ll likely use this blog as one means of keeping myself vaguely accountable, so we’ll see how things go.

1512: Fatigue

I joined the gym again yesterday, and got up early to go this morning. Now I feel like shit. I feel the two things are not coincidental, though the “feeling like shit” part, to be fair, was lingering in the background before the “going to the gym” part, so going to the gym probably did not help matters.

I am in a frustrating situation in that I clearly need to do some exercise — I’ve been feeling super-crappy recently, getting out of breath far too easily, and something I’ve done somewhere along the line feels like it’s knackered my left knee — but actually getting back into a good routine looks like it is going to be difficult. It will, of course, get easier over time assuming I keep it up, but it’s getting that initial burst of motivation going that is going to prove challenging, I feel.

My most positive experience with fitness was back when I worked at the Apple Store in WestQuay here in Southampton, and the gym and pool complex was both practically next door to where I worked, and on the way home. Consequently, it was pretty easy to just drop in, do some exercise either in the gym or the pool, then head home and have my whole evening ahead of me. It got me into good habits and made me feel reasonably good about the effort I was putting in — I’m not sure whether or not it actually helped me lose any weight, but part of it was just the mental wellbeing it brought about. I still wouldn’t have described myself as particularly “fit” but I was certainly a whole lot better than I am now.

The difficulty with being unfit is that it makes the process of actually getting fit infinitely more difficult to get started with. When it’s uncomfortable and painful to engage in exercise, the idea of voluntarily putting myself through that is not at the forefront of my mind. But I need to; hopefully it will be something that gets easier relatively quickly and helps me improve my motivation. Because right now there’s not a lot of it there — though some of that may be due to the fact that I don’t think I’m very well.

Going to get some good rest and then hopefully kick this thing off in earnest at some point in the next few days. I’m looking forward to having a swim, actually; it’s been quite a while since I had a good swim, and while I’m not very good at it — I’m painfully slow, even when doing “fast” strokes — I do find it to be quite a relaxing experience, so that could be the ideal thing to ease myself back into things.

Anyway, for now I’m off to bed. Apologies for the self-pitying nature of today’s post but, eh, you’re probably all used to it by now. G’night.

#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 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 715: Try Again Tomorrow

Well, gym plans were stymied by feeling like I might throw up; likely a combination of tiredness, illness, inactivity, too much crap Christmas food and various worries weighing on my mind.

Ah well. There’s always tomorrow.

So it is, then, that I’m lying in bed at 9:15 in the evening, feeling a bit queasy and unsure as to whether the Lemsip I just had was a good idea or not. Too late now, anyway; time to just ride it out until I (hopefully) feel a bit better later. At least it means I didn’t have to put the groceries delivery away, not that I mind helping with that under normal circumstances.

I may have mentioned this on this page before, but I hate being ill. I try not to use it as an excuse not to do things but sometimes you just have to heed your body and go take a rest for a while. It’s frustrating when it’s difficult to tell what it might be that’s making you feel sick, though; was it something you ate? Something you did? Or just your body failing to obey Wheaton’s Law?

In this case, couldn’t tell ya. I know I’m anxious about a bunch of things including an upcoming job interview (not to mention the collapse of my precious regular employment) so that may well be the root cause of all this. Or it could just be that something I nommed on today was a bad idea.

Perhaps I’ll try and get some rest now, then, and I’ll either wake up refreshed tomorrow morning, or wake up at about 3AM, unable to get back to sleep. One or the other.

#oneaday Day 714: Run, Fat Boy, Run

It’s back to the gym tomorrow and, all being well, sticking to a relatively healthy eating plan. No, we’re not following a “diet” or anything, but we are going to cook a lot more rather than picking up convenience foods and nomming on whatever takes our fancy. It’s always good to kick off the new year with something like this, even if it doesn’t stick — the new year is, after all, a time for good intentions and all that jazz.

For me, it’s a topic that plays into one of my very many neuroses. I hate being fat, but unfortunately I enjoy the taste of food about as much as I hate being fat. I loathe my own body, but find myself eating things when I get depressed or upset or just for the hell of it at times — a habit which hasn’t exactly been helped by the enormous amounts of food we acquired over the Christmas break. If it’s there, it gets eaten, and it’s often hard to resist.

Why do I hate being fat? Fat people are supposed to be jolly, after all. Well, there are many reasons. First of all, I hate seeing myself in photographs and seeing that I’m bigger than I think I am. Given that I usually see myself from the inside out, it’s perhaps understandable that I have a slightly distorted view of my own body, but I still hate seeing myself in photographs. I hate seeing myself generally. I hate the way clothes hang on me, I hate it when clothes are too tight or I can’t fasten them up, and I hate it when I see photographs of myself from a few years back, when I thought I was fat, but was actually a fair bit slimmer than I am now.

I also hate people’s attitudes towards fatness. I follow a few people on Twitter who are otherwise lovely people, but have seriously discriminatory attitudes towards obesity. I’ve bitten my tongue a few times when reading what they had to say about fat people. I know they perhaps don’t mean it in the way I’m reading it — and since they haven’t met me face to face, they have no way of knowing what I really look like or how I feel about it — but it still stings a bit sometimes.

Along the same lines, I really hate it when random strangers feel the need to point out that I’m fat. This hasn’t happened for a while, but it really hurts when it does. The last time it happened, it was shortly after I’d split with my wife, and I was sitting in a park in Southampton by myself just trying to have a bit of peace and quiet. Some prick decided to start on me with his friends. It was all I could do to turn the other cheek and ignore him — something I’ve trained myself to do from a very early age, as I’ve always seemed to attract bullies. I take small comfort from the fact that I’m a better person than a dickhead who insults people he doesn’t know, but at least he wasn’t fat.

This may all sound like self-absorbed whining, and it may well be. The fact is, though, it’s not as if I haven’t tried to do anything about it. For a goodly proportion of last year, I was running, going to the gym, doing situps and pushups and all manner of other stuff. It had a small but relatively noticeable impact on my body, but I always seemed to “plateau” after a certain stage, and it gets a bit demoralising to continue on that path without seeing visible effects. I know it’s not just about the effects you can see but also those that you can feel, but it’s always far more satisfying to see a substantial dent in that belly than just to feel a bit better.

From this week onwards, then, I’m committing to a long-term plan — gym three times a week as a bare minimum, and running on the days when I don’t visit the gym as a filler activity. I’m going to put myself through the Couch to 5K programme again since it’s been a while since I did any endurance running, and I’ll certainly consider doing something like the BUPA 10K again. Andie will be joining me for the gym activities at the very least, and hopefully our making “proper” meals each day will help also.

Whether or not there will be any noticeable effects remains to be seen, but it’s better than doing nothing. Doing nothing just leads to a downwards (or, more accurately, outwards) spiral.

First day back at the gym tomorrow, then. If you want to follow what I get up to, then feel free to follow me on Fitocracy.

#oneaday Day 596: Back in the Saddle

(As an aside, I heard the song “Back in the Saddle Again” the other day for the first time and I thought it was incredibly dull. This means nothing to the following blog post, I just thought I’d share it.)

In the next few days/weeks/months I will be resuming some sort of fitness plan. I went out and investigated local gyms the other day — there are two nearby, one of which has a slightly inferior gym but also has a swimming pool, jacuzzi and sauna, while the other has a much larger, superior gym and a significantly more “hardcore” attitude, from the looks of things.

Hopefully after payday Andie and I will be joining one of the two (likely the former, as we both like swimming) and torturing ourselves into something resembling shape. Or at least slightly more fit. We shall see.

In the meantime, I found a cheap copy of EA Sports Active 2 for PS3 on Amazon, so I snapped it up while I had the chance. The original for Wii was very good (though I must confess to never having finished the “30 day challenge” mode) but slightly marred by a resistance band which offered very little in the way of resistance and a leg strap which repeatedly fell off. Having a Nunchuk and Wii Remote wired around your hands while faffing around with the resistance band was a bit of a pain, too. The PS3 version comes with its own arm and leg bands that can’t get tangled up in anything — apparently the leg strap is still a little prone to slipping off but I can live with that — and also doesn’t require any additional hardware, unlike the Xbox version, which requires Kinect.

I enjoy exercising with games and have done ever since EyeToy Kinetic brought the idea to my attention. EyeToy Kinetic wasn’t perfect by any means — though this was more down to the limitations of EyeToy than anything else — but it was proof that video games can get you up off the couch and moving around. That’s not to say (as some people assume) that all games must get you up off the couch and moving around. But if a few can, that’s good for everyone, surely.

Wii Fit was similarly good, though disappointingly lacking in structure and challenge — before I came across the first EA Sports Active title I took to doing the 30 minute stepping programme with my own music on (a combination of Space Channel 5 and Persona if I remember correctly) in order to up the challenge factor a bit. The muscle exercises were good but without the game forcing you to do specific ones it was easy to fall into the habit of avoiding the “painful” ones and doing the “easy” ones all the time. EA Sports Active, on the other hand, puts together a programme for you each day and you follow it. Sure, you can build your own to avoid the difficult ones again, but since the structure is there in the first place you feel more inclined to follow it.

I’m looking forward to trying it, anyway. It should be here in the next couple of days, and then I can support any work I do at the gym with EA Sports Active days. If the pre-made programmes work anything like the original, there’ll be “rest” days which I fully intend on using the gym on so the two things will hopefully complement each other nicely.

We’ll see. Good intentions and all that.

#oneaday, Day 99: One Away

Tomorrow marks my centennial on the #oneaday train. That’s pretty good going. I know some people are ahead of me already, but we should all celebrate each others’ milestones. And the way I choose for you all to celebrate my own milestone is to buy me cake. Particularly as it’s my birthday soon.

Anyway, cake aside, what I wanted to talk about today is exercise. I’ve managed, through some serious mental reconditioning that may or may not have involved an electric cattle prod, to get back into a gym routine. I’ve been every day for the last few days. That may sound like a lot to some, but the last time I jumped in with this intensity it had a noticeably positive impact on my body. I felt better and I looked better. I mean sure, I was still a tubby bitch, to quote Mr Kevin Smith, but slightly less so than before. Then various things happened, I left my job which was conveniently five minutes’ walk away from the gym, got depressed, ate too much, took on a job that was so far away from where I lived that by the time I got home of an evening I wasn’t able to get to the gym before it closed and finally quit that job. Clear? No? Never mind.

Now that I’m in that weird sort of “uhhh… what now?” phase without having a full-time job, I have plenty of time to get to the gym. Even on days when I do have some work, I’ve managed to get home, have a quick rest, maybe a quick blast on WoW and then head out to the gym before dinner. This time around, I feel like I’ve made much quicker progress than before. The day before yesterday I managed a 10-minute non-stop run on the treadmill, which I can’t normally do. I can’t do it consistently yet, as I need to be full of energy to pull it off, but it’s getting there. And I can do 5 minutes non-stop without too much difficulty now.

Experimented a little with some free weights today. Rhiarti has said she’s going to give me some suggestions for a Geek Workout using weights rather than machines. The machines are all well and good, but apparently the free weights actually work more muscles because you have to support the big lump of metal you’re lifting as well as, you know, lifting it. And certainly after I tried a few bits and pieces I’d looked up online today, my muscles felt like they’d had a much more solid workout than if I’d used machines for equivalent exercises. The side-effect of all this, too, is that I feel rather more positive about my body image. I know there’s no way that my shape would have changed over the course of less than a week, but I feel better about myself. I think it’s just taking the positive step to do something about it that makes me feel better. I have a lot of work to do, but I feel like I’ve got into a good rhythm now. Let’s hope I can keep it up.

No idea whether I’ll be working tomorrow yet. The irritating thing about supply teaching is that you have to get up super-early for no guarantee of work on most days. But even if there’s no work, I have some articles to write and some potentially paid freelancing gigs to chase up, so it’s not as if I’ll be short of things to do. I also applied for three jobs today, so hopefully something will come of one of those. Though going on past experiences with my saying “hopefully something will come of one of those”, I fear it will be unlikely I’ll hear back from them ever, my application lost in the Netherstorm for all eternity.

It’s time for bed. Before midnight! Good job, me.

Also, to the shouting drunken morons outside my front room window, kindly jump in the Solent.