#oneaday Day 638: Actual progress

I'm pleased to report that my weight loss efforts are actually making some meaningful progress. Not only have I crossed the "1 stone lost" boundary, I've also crossed a bit of a "plateau" I had felt stuck at for a very long time, meaning the big number at the start of my weight has gone down by one.

This is a meaningful, worthwhile step because although "1 stone lost" is also a milestone, it somehow feels more significant when your actual weight has a particularly noticeable difference in it — like the "stone" figure being different. This, to me, is a good sign that what I'm doing is working — and, more to the point, that it's something sustainable that I'm not about to get bored with and give up on in frustration.

The trouble with a lot of diets is that they become demoralising and boring. And very few things make you want to eat like boredom — at least that's the case for me. What I've found, by calorie counting each day, is that I can still enjoy all the things I like to have and still lose weight. Along the way I'm finding ways to be more "calorie efficient" with those things that I like, too, while not feeling guilty about having an occasional treat — usually within the boundaries of the daily calorie count, but I've found that having a day a week when you "cheat" does wonders for the morale.

I'm sure the challenge factor will increase as my weight lowers and the number of calories I can have per day falls accordingly, but one thing that I've found having successfully stuck to this for quite some time now is that I'm not feeling the same urge to want to overindulge that I have done in the past. I'm finding that having a modestly sized breakfast, lunch and dinner and a number of guilt-free snacks throughout the day keeps me going and well within the calorie count. Essentially it's following the principle of never allowing myself to get hungry enough to want to demolish an entire large bag of Doritos or something.

Like I say, though, the best thing I've found so far is that I'm able to enjoy things that I just plain like eating, and haven't had to turn to the sort of "success stories" you read in weight loss magazines — you know the sort of thing, "I used to have a massive fryup for breakfast every morning, now I start my day with a glass of water, half a banana and a handful of chia seeds". Nope, I can still quite happily have cereal with chocolate in it for breakfast, a bacon sandwich or noodles for lunch and pretty much whatever I want for dinner.

Of course, I might lose weight more quickly if I was having more salads and vegetables and fruit and whatever — but I have to be realistic about this. If I eat something that I don't enjoy or don't find filling and satisfying, then I just end up wanting to eat something I do like later, and I end up having much more food than I really need. Right now, with the weight I am, I need a decent amount of calories just to keep ticking over, so I'm going to continue enjoying the success I'm having the way it's working at the moment. When I weigh significantly less and will need much fewer calories per day to continue losing weight, then we'll have a look at even "healthier" options as means of keeping the weight off.

For now, this is working. And I'm pleased about that. It's making me feel like I might actually be able to do this; I might actually be able to beat this. Let's see how things are looking in a few months' 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.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 601: January progress

So, January has been coming to a close. How are things going?

Not all that bad, really. The only thing I've been lax on for Things I Wanted to Achieve In January is piano practice. I've been so tired and achey of an evening that I just want to zombie out, and sitting with proper posture at the piano has been the last thing on my mind. I am starting to feel a bit better, though, particularly with good progress in other regards, so I will try reintroducing that to my "routine" shortly, along with some more exercise.

The most notable progress so far has been on weight loss. Since I started sticking properly to the calorie plan, I've lost 10 pounds. This is good! Of course, there is still a lot more to go, but it's a good start, and proof that what I'm doing is working.

What's particularly good about what I'm doing is that I feel like I've found a plan that offers a good balance between me not feeling like I'm starving myself — which can end up with me just wanting to binge, which is counterproductive — and still allowing the weight to come off. I know, realistically speaking, that I can't expect 10 pounds to fall off every two weeks — the first weeks following a new plan are always the "easiest" for some reason — but as long as the general trend skews downwards over the medium to long term, I will be satisfied.

And the nice thing is that I'm by no means depriving myself of Nice Things. I had some digestive biscuits yesterday! I had some Cheez-Its at lunchtime! I might have a bacon sandwich for breakfast tomorrow! The important thing, as is probably obvious to the vast majority of people who are not My Size, is moderation. Eating a measured, weighed-out portion of Cheez-Its and taking the calories into account? Fine. Getting a whole big bag of Cheez-Its and eating all of them in a single sitting because I have no self-control in that scenario? Not fine.

It's easy to feel like a supposed "portion" of something is stingy, but in actual fact it can be quite surprising how satisfying a "portion" of something can be. To return to the Cheez-Its, a "portion" is 30g, which is actually quite a generous helping of them, and certainly not depressingly unsatisfying. The only thing I've found myself exceeding the "recommended" portion size on is sultana bran cereal; 30g of that really is stingy, and 40g is much more satisfying for not that many more calories, so that's where I've settled on that.

Of course, I've been here before, with Things Going Well for a couple of weeks and then just falling off at some point afterwards, usually with the flimsy justification of depression, tiredness, illness, frustration or any manner of other things. But right now I'm feeling pretty good about how things are going, and the possibility of being to maintain this over the longer term. So let's hope I can actually stick to that and see where things go from here.

I know I can do this. I've done it before. And it will make my life so much better if I can accomplish it again. So I will keep at it.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 595: A nice chat with my doctor

I went to the doctor today. My knee has been playing up for a while, and got particularly bad over the Christmas break when it was especially cold. I suspected it was little more than my knee going "you're too heavy, sort it out", but I just wanted to confirm that it wasn't anything more serious. (It wasn't. I am too heavy and need to sort it out.)

I came away from the appointment feeling oddly invigorated, though. I'd ended up being there for about half an hour in total, approximately two minutes of which were spent actually examining me. But my doctor apparently wanted to talk today. And I was happy to let him.

It started with a rant about politicians. I'd come to him as a result of one of those "e-consult" things because my surgery is apparently incapable of activating their online appointments system, and I hate doing the 8am rush to phone for an appointment. My doctor apparently doesn't think all that much of the e-consult system — I don't either, as it happens, but it seemed like the most reliable method of getting at the very least a call back without having to sit on hold on the phone for hours — and expressed some considerable frustration at how government guidelines have given him "quotas" of routine and emergency appointments to fulfil.

Now, I'm sure we're all familiar with the technique of requesting an "urgent" appointment for something that is absolutely not an emergency, and I suspect it's that sort of behaviour that has led to these quotas. But I was more than happy to let him go off on one about how politicians had no idea what it was like for actual surgery staff, particularly now that the practice he works at, originally intended for no more than 9,000 patients in total, is now serving more than 16,000 people, with more registering by the week, it seems.

After examining my knee and telling me I'm fat (in a more polite way than that, and he was apologetic about it) he then told me about his own personal history dealing with weight loss, a genetic predisposition towards being on the larger side, exercise and suchlike. It was an interesting conversation, even if it was a tad one-sided — like I say, the poor chap clearly wanted to talk to someone about absolutely fucking anything, and I was more than happy to let him. Although he was clearly frustrated about things, he's also a nice, friendly chap, and I know very well how helpful it can be to just have someone who is willing to listen sometimes.

So, all told, I have a feeling that my doctor may have got more out of my appointment today than I did. Still, it was reassuring to know that there's not actually anything wrong with my knee — I just need to lose some weight. And I'm working on that! It's been nearly a full week on the diet plan now, and it's been going pretty solidly so far. Let's hope that leads to some actual, tangible results.

And Dr. W? I hope you feel better soon. I know all too well how frustrating government interference in your profession can be from my time as a teacher, so you have my sympathies. I wish I could reassure you that things will get better from hereon, but… well, you can see the state of the world right now. Hang in there. You provide a vital service to the community, and I hope you know how much people like me appreciate your work.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 591: Joyless healthiness

One of the reasons a lot of people — including myself — find it difficult to stick to a diet is because so much "healthy eating" advice out there is seemingly designed to suck all of the joy out of anything to do with food.

I read a particularly good (bad?) example of this on BBC Food earlier, after it was linked to from the front page of BBC News. "Are we getting breakfast all wrong?" the headline asked. "How much does it matter what we eat in the morning and when we eat it?"

Having read the article a few times, I'm not entirely sure what its actual point is, because there seem to be multiple threads running at once. Firstly is the fact that here in the UK, we tend to be quite set in our ways when it comes to breakfast, while in other cultures they tend to eat "leftovers or [food] similar to [that which] you would have for lunch and dinner", according to NHS GP and chef Rupy Aujla. Then there's the question of when you should eat breakfast, for which the advice seems to be "whenever the fuck you want, or miss it completely and have a decent lunch if you feel like it".

Then there's the usual health scares — people who eat breakfast are "also found to be likely to smoke more, drink more alcohol and exercise less", while there is apparently "convincing evidence that consuming breakfast, compared to skipping breakfast, has positive impacts on short-term cognition and memory". So if you have breakfast, you'll spark up a fag and get pissed while lounging on the sofa, but at least you'll remember all of it the next day.

At one point the piece attempts to convince us that "a breakfast of tomatoes, mushrooms, baked beans and a glass of juice" is a "fry-up" and repeats the bizarre advice that "no matter how much [juice] you drink it will still only count as one portion", then goes on to shame the juice-drinkers because "fruit juice is basically as sugary as a typical candy bar". The piece then advises that we should "use an (environmentally friendly) straw to bypass your teeth" if you are drinking juice, but, of course, says that we should all just drink water because it's "a healthy and cheap choice" that "has no calories and contains no sugars that can damage teeth".

I get why all these things are said. We do all eat too much and do terrible things to our health, but the solution to having issues with food is not to make eating a joyless chore, because in my experience all that does to you is increase cravings for things you "shouldn't" have. And in the worst cases, that can lead to bingeing way more than you would have under normal circumstances.

As with anything, the real answer seems to be moderation. It is difficult to keep cravings under control, particularly if your brain chemistry is particularly prone to taking things to excess, but so far as I'm concerned, far better to have a good, solid breakfast that fills you up and makes you feel good first thing in the morning than a handful of nuts, berries and wood chippings that will have you reaching for the crisps and Penguin bars by 10am.

As for me, today I've eaten pretty much what I want and I still have a bunch of calories left over if I fancy something a little later in the evening. And that has happened because I have taken care with moderation in what I've eaten so far today. I don't feel deprived of anything and I don't feel like I "need" to demolish a packet of biscuits, say — but at the same time, I also know that if I do fancy a biscuit or a cake or something, I have enough calories left in the budget that I can have one if I want.

So you know what? I might just do that. I might just do that.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 586: Commitment

I'm back from The Day At The Office. I haven't set my office PC back up again yet though, so no tablet drawings for now. I'm tired and can't be arsed to faff around with wires right now, so it's plain text for today I'm afraid.

Anyway, as I said yesterday, I'm pretty determined to make 2026 the Year I Beat My Weight. Not, as in previous years, the year I beat my previous record for "highest weight Pete can be", but rather, the year I figure out exactly how to get on top of losing it.

I have a several-step plan that I will begin pursuing from tomorrow. (Today is a write-off due to all the travelling and the Wingstop we just had for dinner. We had the Wingstop with the full knowledge that we're both going to be Eating Healthy from tomorrow.) Here are the several steps:

I will use the Lose It! app to track my daily calorie intake, and keep below the daily recommended number of calories that will supposedly allow me to lose weight. In doing so, I will continue to enjoy the things I enjoy, but in better moderation. I will not be switching to a "half a banana and a handful of chia seeds for breakfast"-style diet, because that will probably make me want to kill myself.
I will count calories even if I go "off-plan" and have myself a "treat", to better educate myself in potentially how much damage I can do to my efforts if I "treat" myself too often.
I will do at least 30 minutes of exercise per day, on some combination of my under-desk elliptical machine and/or the treadmill that we have now set up in the spare room.
I will not use the calories burned during exercise as "bonus calories" to have additional Nice Things.
I will research and reach out to some form of psychotherapeutic support to help with my efforts.

That last one, I think, is going to be the big "different thing" I try this time, and I suspect it will be helpful. As I mentioned yesterday, while I mostly found my referral to the weight loss programme via the NHS to be unhelpful, the one aspect I really did feel like I was getting something from was the counselling aspect. Through talking therapy, I felt like I was able to start looking at my behaviours (conscious and unconscious) that have led me to this point, and to figure out ways I might be able to modify them. Unfortunately I had so few sessions that I don't feel like I really got anywhere — but I feel like if I had been able to spend more time with the therapist in question, we could have made some progress.

One thing that came out of those few conversations, and something that I find my thoughts returning to, is that some of my behaviours are consistent with a pattern of addiction. Anecdotally, having had experience with other people dealing with addiction, I would be inclined to agree. I recognise this. I recognise patterns in myself that I have seen in other people who were struggling with addiction. And I feel that is an important starting point. As with any addiction, though, the struggle will always be in breaking it, little by little. Because you can't really go "cold turkey" (so to speak) with food — unlike various forms of chemical abuse, you still need food to operate normally, and thus breaking any sort of food-related addiction is more about developing a healthier relationship with food rather than completely breaking your "attachment" to it.

But I'm probably getting ahead of myself there. Fact is, I think having some sort of Professional Help would be… well, helpful. Up until now, I've been hesitant, because Professional Help is 1) relatively expensive and 2) daunting to find your way into. 2) applies doubly in my case, because my social anxiety makes it a huge effort to be able to make contact with a stranger, but also it's overwhelming to see the sheer number of therapists that are out there, and having absolutely no idea who might be "right" for me.

Thus I think rather than taking the "roll of the dice" approach and just stabbing randomly at a huge list of therapists in my area, I'm going to try making use of an organisation known as The Empathy Project that operates in my area. This is a small, non-profit organisation based in the town I call home, and I can't remember how I stumbled across them, but I seem to have added myself to their mailing list at some point. What I have read about them online seems positive, however, and thus referring myself to them seems like it would be a solid starting point, if nothing else.

So, tomorrow, I am kicking all this off. I will be counting calories, I will be exercising, and I will be referring myself to someone who might be able to help me through this. I'm feeling oddly positive about this right now, so let's just hope I can keep this mental momentum.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#oneaday Day 585: Hotels and their unflattering mirrors

It's that time of the month again, when I haul myself down to sunny Letchworth in preparation for A Day In The Office. And as such, I am coming atcha from my usual hotel, typing on my phone.

This hotel is, as I've alluded to in the past, All Right. It's reasonably comfortable, but its rooms vary quite a lot in quality, so it's always a bit of a roll of the dice when you get here as to whether or not you, for example, have a bath or not. This time I have been unlucky — no bath, plus a bedside table that looks like it last saw a lick of paint at some point in the 1970s.

I don't mind these little idiosyncrasies, though. They add character, and this place has become quite familiar to me from my numerous visits. Not quite enough that I know from my room number whether or not I have a "good" room, but enough that it is comfortably familiar here.

One thing I do dislike, though, is that pretty much every room seems to have mirrors, like, fucking everywhere. And there's something about hotel mirrors that always seems infinitely more unflattering that the ones you have at home.

I never feel more disgusted with my own body than when I see it in a hotel mirror. I think part of it may be the knowledge that I am away from home and thus not able to "do anything" about the way I look — not that I can really do anything at home, either, but I always feel just a bit more… grounded and in control when I'm at home.

I can't continue like this. This year has to be the year that I beat this problem. It's not going to be an easy process, and there are going to be times that I want more than anything to give up, but there is nothing I want more for 2026 than to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say "good work — you still have a way to go, but you're doing good". (I am a realist about this stuff if nothing else.)

That hard work has to come from me, though. I have to want it. Seeking external help has only worked on one previous occasion, and I never recovered from my relapse. Granted, there were external factors beyond my complete control that caused said relapse, but the approach I took back then — Slimming World — is clearly not quite right for me now.

I've been to the doctor about this, too. I was referred to an organisation who offered nutrition advice and counselling, but I found most of the course to be useless. The nutritional advice came once a fortnight and amounted to "eat less" (no, really?) and the counselling was even less frequent — though I did find the couple of sessions I had in that regard to be quite helpful, so that might be something I pursue independently and privately. It costs money, yes, but if investing in yourself isn't a good use of your funds, what is?

I'm keen to avoid drug-based approaches as although I'm sure they work, I am exceedingly squeamish about poking myself with needles and am not sure I would be able to do it — and I don't want to force Andie to have to do that, either.

During my time with the nutritionist and the counsellor, I was also continually asked if I wanted bariatric surgery, and while I have seen people get great results with that, that is not something I want for myself.

Besides being scared shitless of surgery in general — something I will have to confront when I do eventually manage to lose some weight, in order to get my long-standing hernia fixed — I also worry that the surgery won't fix the main problems, which I have pretty strong suspicions are as much psychological as physiological.

To put it another way, I'm worried that even if they remove the use of part of my stomach or whatever it is they do, I still wouldn't be able to control myself. And if you overeat when you've had that treatment, you can really fuck yourself up.

So that leaves me with good old-fashioned willpower, which hasn't done me too proud up until this point. But I really do want this. I want this to be the year I can look at myself and say yes, I am on the road to recovery.

Sorry for the rather TMI post, but sometimes it helps to just express these things and get them out in the open, as much for your own benefit as anyone else. I don't need anyone's help, I don't want advice — all I do need is some understanding and quiet support. And thankfully, that is something that I do have already.

#oneaday Day 492: Character progression

On this particular stint of post-holiday weight loss, I have thus far lost 13.4 pounds, which is as near as dammit to a stone. (I have to look up how many pounds are in a stone every time, because Imperial is stupid, but it's still the default way one weighs oneself here in the UK, despite us being metric in every other area of life.) Granted, on said holiday I put on a lot of weight, so this is pretty much putting me back to where I was, but at least I know that much is possible, and thus it must continue to be possible to lose more.

There's no secret this time around, no fad diets or artificial restrictions on what I'm eating: just simple, straightforward calorie counting. And it appears to be working! For now, at least. So long as I stick to my limits for the vast majority of the week, I can even have complete days off — such as my work trip to London, or yesterday, when Andie and I both just fancied a nice treat from the local bakery — and still lose weight. This is good!

It takes a little mental adjustment to recalibrate yourself to a calorie limit, particularly if you've been less than attentive to your daily intake, but once you're there, I find you can gradually start to intuit how much you can allow yourself per day. And, given that I'm a big lad and thus naturally burn a fair amount of calories just by existing, I have not, to date, felt like I'm having to "deprive" myself of anything. I can even enjoy multiple chocolate bars per day — so long as they're not, say, 750g Dairy Milk bars.

I say there's no secret; I guess the one thing I would say that I've… I don't know if learned is the right word, but I've certainly established it firmly in my mind at this point… is that it pays to understand the things you reach for when you fancy a snack or a little treat during the day. By ensuring that we always have reasonably low-calorie offerings in the house for when we both fancy such things, it means we are much less inclined to go to the shop and buy a big bag of Haribo or the aforementioned 750g Dairy Milk bar.

I had inadvertently trained my mind into thinking that something wasn't "satisfying" if you could consume it quickly, and that really doesn't have to be the case at all. Lidl do these fake Kinder bars on their "Mister Choc" brand that are small enough to be about 100 calories each, and even though you can devour them in three bites, they're enough to stave off cravings for quite a while. If you want to go even lower calorie, then "Skinny Whip" bars or own-brand equivalent (I think Lidl's are just called "Whipped") are about 76 calories, and pretty much as good as something like a Milky Way.

I've also pretty much switched entirely away from cans of pop to squash with carbonated mineral water. I have a thing, particularly with diet soda, that I don't really know how to describe — I get to a point where it feels like it will be undesirable to drink them, because it… not burns exactly, but doesn't feel nice going down. I find this is much more likely with diet cola drinks than diet fruity sodas (Fanta, fake Lilt etc) but there are definitely times when my body goes "no fizzy pop, no". At those times it is seemingly absolutely fine with some orange squash made with carbonated mineral water, so I've been drinking quite a lot of that. And that, in turn, has been helping me just drink more generally, which I think is helpful.

I feel a bit better, too. After the holiday I was feeling exhausted, achey and generally Not Good, and the reason was because I was heavier than I'd ever been. I still have a very long way to go before I am where I want to be — the long-term, often unattainable-feeling goal is to lose enough weight to finally get this damn hernia that I've been suffering with for a very long time treated — but right now, I am feeling more positive about all this than I have done for quite some time.

Hopefully I won't find myself reaching a plateau any time soon, because that is always the worst feeling, and involves having to completely rethink the habits you thought you had established… but that hasn't happened thus far over the course of the last month, so here's hoping that things continue in the correct direction for at least a little while yet.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#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.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#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.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.

#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.

If you want this nonsense in your inbox every day, please feel free to subscribe via email. Your email address won't be used for anything else.