About a year ago, I lived in London. I went to the gym three times a week. I was in okay shape: you could see where my abs were (I didn't have a six-pack, but you could tell where it would go if I did have one); my pecs were actually there, and my arms looked quite nice. My stamina was pretty good. My resting heart rate was 64. All that good stuff.

Now I live in Leicester. I go to the gym no times a week. I'm not in good shape. I have a gut, man-boobs and I'm weak as a kitten. My resting heart rate's 76, just standing up can send it to nearly 100 and I get tired walking up a couple of flights of stairs.

I'm getting married in six weeks, and I'd rather not look like a flabby keyboard-jockey on the big day. I've also got Crohn's disease (though not too badly, thank God), and during my stint of exercising in London, my flare-ups practically disappeared. At the moment, I'm suffering with it about once a fortnight. None of the literature I've read on Crohn's suggests that keeping fit will put it into remission, but I'm willing to give it a try.

So anyway, that's the background to my state of fitness. Inspired by this forum topic (though I think you have to be a member to access it), and this chap's excellent website, I've decided that I'm going to post my getting fit progress here. Hopefully the spectre of Internet scrutiny will bolster my nonexistent self-motivation.

Starting tomorrow (or today, if I get this stuff done in time), I'm going to be exercising like CRAZY! Hopefully. I'll upload routines and stuff here, as an easy way to keep track and so you can all laugh at my pitiful progress.
Starting weight (Thursday, 31st July 2008): 87.7kg
Come back tomorrow, and every day thereafter for updates!

I'm going to do daily updates, and then condense them into one weekly report after the end of the week (weeks starting on Mondays). I'm going to do the same after each month.

01 August 2008

Well, let's see now. I didn't get time to go to the gym yesterday, so I didn't do any exercise then. On the other hand, I hardly ate anything (two pieces of toast and a ham sandwich), so I don't feel too bad.
So far today I've only had time to go for a 20 minute run (well, I say run. My heart rate monitor threw a fit when I tried to run, so it was mostly a very brisk walk), covering 2.3km. The heart rate monitor says I burned 184 calories. I'll edit this tomorrow to update anything I do this evening. For now though, not a brilliant start, although I have at least done something.

02 August 2008

So, yesterday's run was a start, and I followed it up with thirty push-ups and twenty crunches before bed. I'm ever so sore today, which only serves to reinforce quite how unfit I am.
Today I've been at work, so haven't done any exercise yet. The plan is to do push-ups and crunches before bed again.
Oh, I've been checking my weight daily, first thing in the morning. Yesterday's was 87.7kg (same as the starting weight), and today's is... 87.7kg! No change. Mind you, I didn't expect there to be, at this stage. At least I haven't put any weight on, as I certainly haven't put any muscle on yet, so any extra weight would be pure flab.

03 August 2008

The routine continued last night: I did my thirty push-ups and twenty crunches. Work again today, so the plan (as yesterday) is to do push-ups and crunches before bed. Today's weight is... you guessed it: 87.7kg.

05 August 2008

No update yesterday, which was naughty of me. I wouldn't have had much to say though. I was at work again so I only did my crunches and push-ups. Weight was 87.7kg again.
Yesterday, I should have condensed the posts into one weekly report, since my weeks are running Monday-Sunday. I can't figure out how to do it though. My main inspiration for this page comes from John Stone's website, and he tabulates his information on a monthly basis. The thing is, he measures loads of stuff (weight, body-fat, the size of a bunch of muscle groups), and doesn't actually include any information on exercises. I wanted to copy his method of putting information in a table, but I can't figure out how to do it, as I'm not bothered about spending ages measuring the size of my biceps or whatever, and I don't have any way of measuring bodyfat (and I'm not going to spend money on buying a gizmo to help me).
So I've decided to put the condensing thing off until I can figure out a way to make a table I'm happy with. Hopefully I'll have come up with something by the end of the week.
Today, my weight is a reliably consistent 87.7kg. I'm planning on going to the gym and doing a real workout this afternoon. I won't update again today, probably, as I'm out tonight so I won't get a chance.

27 August 2008

Well, it's been a very long time since I last updated. I'm not happy about that, but the truth is, I haven't had time to tend to the website at all. I've been busy with wedding preparations and I've been on two holidays.
The first holiday was a city break in Barcelona. My fiancee and I spent three days there, walking around, exploring the city and looking at architecture and stuff. All the exercise I did was to walk for about three hours a day. I estimate we probably walked about 25 miles over the holiday. When I got back, my weight was inexplicably down to a welcome 84.9kg.
Then, last Thursday I went to North Devon, for surfing lessons. I spent about seven and a half hours getting battered by waves, paddling madly in the sea and trying to balance on a piece of polystyrene. It was pretty energetic stuff (and I wished fervently that I'd been going to the gym to prepare - my arms weren't nearly strong enough for all that paddling). I got back on Monday (today's Wednesday) and my weight was up to 86.6kg, which is still better than before I went to Barcelona. Today it's up to 86.9kg.

So, that's the update. Now for some news: I've decided to shelve this experiment for a month or so. I'm getting married in just over two weeks, then going on my honeymoon. I'm not going to have chance to do any real exercise before the wedding, and anything I do on my honeymoon will be incidental and unstructured. So, until I get back on the 3rd of October, this will be my last update. Hopefully, when I start again, I'll be more committed and we'll actually see some results.

13 October 2008

So, the 'month or so' is over. It's time to get back to work. I've decided to emulate John Stone even more and start to measure more than just my weight. I'm going to measure weight, waist size, chest size, arm size, resting heart rate and my heart rate after going up and down stairs twice. I'll do it in a table, updated weekly. Hopefully I'll update the page every day with a snippet of text about what exercise I've done, but to be honest it's unlikely I'll manage a daily schedule.
The wedding and honeymoon were brilliant, but really the only thing I've exercised in the last month has been my mouth. I ate pretty much constantly. Yum! Problem is, of course, that a month of prolonged gorging has turned me rather tubby again. Time to get back to exercise with a vengeance.
I've also decided that I'm going to change the 'exercise' page around a fair bit, and archive this particular page as 'old.html'. Sort of a fresh start type thing. Expect the new page at some point in the next couple of days.

So, for the final time in this format, here's the update. I currently weigh: 88.9kg. Fatty Fatty Fat-Fat indeed!

16 October 2008

I'm having an embarrassingly difficult time making the table for the new-and-improved Exercise page. Well, to tell the truth, it's not the table itself I'm having trouble with, it's making it work with the rest of the page (which is going to be more like the site's main page. I'll finish sorting it tomorrow and put it up then.

Abuse and encouragement to fatty@michael-bunning.co.uk