…well, someone has to be right?

I wasn’t going to post this, but I am struggling to contain myself at the moment.  In the last 3 weeks, I have embarked on a (long put off) journey of self-improvement.  Now, I don’t mean my mind, I accepted long ago that all hope was lost there, I mean my body.

I mentioned it in my recent Catharsis post.  I have talked, and then procrastinated like a champion, about my weight for years.  Being told that it suits me, that it doesn’t matter and to do it if I wanted to do, played to my vanity and allowed me all the excuses in the world to keep putting it off.

Here’s the thing.  I am a big guy.  I have always been a big guy.  Even when I was playing sport regularly and did not have “the belly”, I still weighed around 16-17 stone (or 101 – 108  Kilos in new money).  I am a big fella.  6’1″ tall and with what doctors refer to as a “large frame”.  So, as Ed Byrne said “If you want to know if you need to lose weight, you can use a mirror!”.  Well, my mirrors have been abusive towards me for years now and, I either need to stop projecting a reflection, or lose some fucking weight.

So, while I was hanging some clothes up a couple of weeks ago, I noticed that I had, inadvertently, picked up a dual purpose clothes horse.  It appeared that it doubled up as an exercise bike.  After getting over the initial shock, I thought I would give it a go.  Low and behold, it is an actual exercise bike….who knew?

After talking to a colleague at work who just happens to be a fitness fanatic…we worked out a diet that I know I can and will stick to, along with an exercise regime that uses the exercise bike properly.

So far, I am halfway through the 3rd week and I have lost over 15 pounds (7 Kilos).  It is such a great feeling.  All the cliches are true, I feel better, I have more energy, I am sleeping better.  And if it makes me more attractive to the ladies, so much the better.

However, that is all an aside..I am genuinely enjoying it.  Especially the food :)

So, some of you are probably thinking that I am only doing this in some futile attempt to demonstrate to her that I can do it and then maybe, just maybe, I can win her back.  Let me just take a moment to address that.

I thought long and hard about my motivation for wanting to do this.  Bearing in mind that I have procrastinated for years, in no small part due to her.  I don’t think that I have ever been so reflective in my life as I have for the last month or so.  So it is with absolute clarity and certainty that I can say that I am doing this for me and noone else.

To be honest, that feels really good.  I know how I feel about how I look to me.  Even if people play to my vanity and tell me it suits me etc, I don’t feel good about it and therefore I need to sort this out to a point where I am happy with myself.  When you are happy with yourself, you can be confident in yourself too.  My confidence hasn’t been too good for a very long time and it definitely took a substantial knock very recently…so I want it back.

Now, at the moment I am focusing on the scales a little more than I had planned to.  It’s probably not a bad idea at the beginning, but I will switch to mirrors in the near future.  I know it’s shallow, but I want to look good for me.  I don’t want to weigh a particular amount.  Doing some research shows that I should be around 14.5 stone (92KG) as a large frame man that is 6’1″ (186 cm) tall.  That is a target of over 5.5 stone (35 kilos) to lose…and also, doesn’t account for what I said earlier…at my fittest I was over 16 stone.

Hence, mirrors.  If I am happy with how I look, I can slow down and switch to being healthy with regular exercise, and not an extreme program designed to shift the weight.  I do NOT want to yoyo like a lot of people do.

I really thought I would miss my crisps and salted snacks…but I don’t.  3 weeks in and no cravings, no cheating on the diet, no skipping the exercise.  In fact, I am dialling the exercise up a notch.  Maybe my body still remembers what it was to be healthy, and is just helping me get back there…who knows.

I am just happy to be doing it and that it isn’t a chore.  If it was a chore, I know me and I know I would stop.  It isn’t, it’s fun and I am seeing results…the perfect combination for me to continue.

So, be proud of me….I am :)