Don't do it

It’s been a slightly strange weekend. Gorgeous weather and a wedding on Friday meant a great start. And I think the choir did pretty well – one slightly hairy moment in ‘Oh Happy Day’, but the choral self-righting mechanism (known technically as ‘watching the conductor’ kicked in pretty quickly and all was well again. Lovely to be part of such a special occasion and I wish the happy couple well.

I did a lot of walking too. It’s ticked up to five or six miles a day in one go (that’s excluding the little trips to the shops which mount up too.) I've been finding in the last year or so that it is much harder to sleep in for the morning. I remember as I guess a teenager my parents always being up early and them saying that they just couldn't lie-in any more. And, unless I've been on a really late one the night before (which isn't then a lie-in, it’s just a time-shifted normal sleep) I tend to be awake by 7 even without an alarm. So on a non-work day I get up, have some breakfast and go out walking for an hour or so before it gets busy. There is definitely an endorphin release that comes from exercise, and this is magnified by being back home at maybe 9 / 9:30 and thinking I've done that already when a year ago I’d still be just getting up.

And I seem to have come off a plateau at the gym as well, in that I'm managing to use an exercise bike for longer and at more intensity than I had even a week ago. And I haven’t died of heart failure once. To illustrate what I mean, two weeks ago if I did 30 minutes on a bike which (according to the bike) burned about 330 calories, I was done in, and coasting for the last five minutes. I'm now doing 35 or 40 minute and pushing close to 500 calories, and maintaining the effort for the full time. And I had my first go on a cross trainer on Saturday. I don’t like it much because I have to think too much (bike just involves music on and subconscious brain takes over – not so the x-trainer (yet)).

I think this is quite easy to explain – since the end of May I've lost nearly twenty pounds in weight. I remember on various TV shows watching people who had lost weight being presented with the equivalent weight (usually in packets of lard or bags of sugar) and being told “this is what you were carrying around with you”. So that’s 9 bags of sugar or 36 packets of lard that I'm not dragging around on the bike.I may go and carry something like that around Sainsburys for ten minutes later, just to remind myself...

Other good stuff – I'm really starting to get into learning the Rachmaninov for the Prom two weeks today. It’s so fast that I still have some way to go, but I do now for the first time thing it is doable. And I'm also loving the ukulele – it got a thousand times easier when I figured I should cut my nails on my left hand. I can be really slow some times!

The weird (arguably not so good) bits? Well, this was the first weekend when I was largely left to my own devices since I moved house. And I still feel that I really need to be “doing something” all the time – that a moment spent doing nothing is a moment wasted (and I have wasted enough of my life I feel). With no planned events (rehearsals, dinners, catch-ups etc.) this got me a little edgy by Sunday night, because I’d done most of the things I needed to do, and still had some time left. This worries me because, as of Thursday I am on holiday, so if I am like that after two days, how will it be after two weeks? I hope (and suspect) this is just a short-term adjustment thing. I need to learn to relax, and to accept that an hour spent doing very little is by no means a bad thing.

I'm likely to be very busy the next three days* tying off loose ends at work, but after that I’d like to think I will be blogging quite a bit over the next fortnight – and perhaps on slightly more meaningful stuff – particularly if I don’t manage to figure out where my own personal off switch is!

* To prove that, whilst I wrote this at 7 o'clock this morning, this is the first time I've had the chance at work to take the fully 30 seconds required to upload it!

Virtual Friday

It’s the last day of July. The sun is shining and (even) Croydon looks relatively pretty today. Plus I am off work tomorrow in order to sing at a wedding, so I have a definite end of week feeling. Oh, and it seems we just won the Test match too!

The diet/exercise regime is obviously working because I have lost ten pounds in the month of July. And that’s dipped my weight down into a new number of stones which makes me happy.

Looking back at the month, what is odd is that there was a period of a week up until a week ago where I really lost very little, and I also really ate very little too. The obvious answer is that eating too little slowed my metabolism down and so I didn't lose the weight. Since then I have consciously upped the calories and the weight has started to shift again.

I think the exercise has a large part to play in this. In general I am at the gym four times a week or more, and there will be at least 30 minutes of fairly vigorous cardio involved in that. Plus I have also started to try and fit in a walk every day. It turns out it’s quite easy to fit in a walk of about 4km around Croydon over lunch, which certainly shifts some calories, and makes me feel better. And I haven’t been mugged once yet.

So, whilst I realise weight loss will slow as I move towards target, I am in sight of the goal now – the stones number is the right one. I may not make it during August, but a real prospect surely of hitting target by the end of September. And then comes the difficult part – maintaining it.

I can’t speak for women, but most men do like competition, and setting/beating targets. So I do walk more now I have a phone app that tells me how far I walked – “oh if just go that way that will get me up to…” and the little “yes” I express (perhaps out loud) when the weigh in is good. But maintaining will remove at least that second goal. “Yep – as is” is a lot less motivating. I’ll see how that goes when I get there.

In other news I've only three more days at work before I take some holiday. In part this gives rise to panic – as a just about manageable workflow looks anything but when I think I’ll have two and a bit weeks when I'm doing very little of it. But a larger part of me is looking forward to the break. I've started planning what I want to do – catch up with some family and friends, do some writing and quite a lot of music, and generally relax too. I suspect eating well will be harder – because it’s easier to be tempted by food when just at home rather than in the office. But then I have more time to spend burning calories too.

And I'm looking forward to tomorrow’s wedding – we are singing four pieces through-out the service, which will I'm sure be followed up by a catch-up in the pub. Happy days.