I don't really have an excuse, except that I'm lazy, but my exercise regime has fallen more than a little by the wayside. I have been doing bits here and there, but it's not really enough to make a big difference. I have still been eating pretty healthily but as I have said before on this blog, for me to lose weight I have to exercise - simply reducing calories doesn't seem to have any real effect for me. I have found a good upper body cardio workout which seriously taxes the arms and I have been doing that here and there, but I really need to get back into it big style and make a real concerted effort. My arms are an area that I really hate so doing some concentrated work on them can only be a good thing.
I have decided to take a leaf out of an old (and probably very outdated) diet book called Change One. The idea is you gradually change all your bad and lazy habits for good ones, one at a time once a week. Then you don't have a whole new regime to get used to and keep up with all in one go.
The first week you are meant to just make sure you always eat breakfast. I did try to for a while but the aforementioned laziness meant I soon decided 10 extra minutes in bed wasway better. I did start eating breakfast biscuits, which were better because I could (sorry Officer...) eat them while driving. But my teeth are very strange and they are extra sensitive in the mornings and are generally sensitive to biscuits (particularly digestives, why, I don't know). So I am going to aim to get up that few minutes earlier and have them dunked in coffee, which I have done a few mornings recently and has worked well with the teeth situation. So this will be what I do for week one.
Just eating a few breakfast biscuits isn't too taxing though and I think I can Change a Couple rather than just Change One. As I said before, exercise is paramount for me and simply eating better isn't really going to help. So after work, as soon as I pull into the car park and get out of my car, I am going to walk around the block. It should only take 15 minutes or so, which on the end of my working day really isn't much. It also doesn't give me the opportunity to sit down - sitting down is my biggest enemy. Well actually sitting down is fine, it's the getting back up again that's the problem! So if I do it before I even get into the house, there can be no excuses.
So for the first week, it's breakfast biscuits and 5x 15 minute walks. That adds up to 75 minutes over the whole week and that's pretty decent going as a starting point, if I try to keep a fast pace, and I also have a mammoth hill to climb on the way back up to my house so this will be a good daily challenge.
I will use the Runkeeper app to make myself accountable as it will track my walk every day,
Unlike normal diets when weeks start on Mondays I am going to start this tomorrow. No time like the present and if I give myself a few more days to put it off, I'm much less likely to start at all!!
Here goes...
