How did I begin my journey to lose weight and get fit? After thirty years of totally failing to stick to anything, what got me going?
The very first thing was cycling. Persevering with that made a massive difference, to my self-belief as well as my fitness, and despite occasional setbacks – including various bits of the bike breaking under the strain – I always got back on and carried on.
Getting to the point where cycling was part of my routine, an everyday commuting habit, took time but it was massive.
I got fitter, but stayed fat. I guess I probably lost some weight, but not dramatically and not continuously. So things were better and I probably swerved away from the fast track to diabetes and heart disease. That’s how things stayed for eight years or so.
Then, one day, I decided to buy a Garmin watch. It did everything my bike computer did, but had the advantage of being on my wrist which meant I remembered to bring it with me. I logged every ride, and every step into the bargain, and uploaded it to their app.
The strangest thing happened to me, which I would never have guessed. I became highly competitive with myself. I wanted to cycle longer and harder. I wanted to beat my personal bests. I wanted to do a certain number of km per week, and then more. I became interested in heart rate zones and steps.
For someone who had avoided measuring anything – particularly waistlines and weight – for my whole life, this was quite a revelation.
So, weight was next. I bought some fancy connected scales and started weighing myself every day. A tough thing to do but essential to avoid denial.
At some point, when I was paranoid about maybe being diabetic, I bought a glucose testing machine and started monitoring it. I wasn’t diabetic or pre-diabetic and that stimulated me to take action to keep it that way, and it reduced my stress. Worrying about something but being too scared to find out is stressful. Not having to confront the wagged-finger of the GP to do it made it easier.
Later, when I took up a keto diet, I bought a similar machine to measure ketones. Combined with the glucose monitor it taught me a lot about how my body responded to food. At one point I even bought a blood pressure machine becuase I got paranoid abut that too (it’s normal). Another stress-buster.
Some time after I started changing my diet I also started logging my food, with My Fitness Pal.
It turns out, for me, measuring everything was massively important. It made me aware of what I was doing constantly. The mere act of logging everything I eat means I am much less likely to eat too much. Because my watch logs calories “earned” through exercise, I can take it a bit easier on days I do lots of exercise. Which is one of the reasons I don’t let a day go by without logging at least a bit of running or cycling.
When the weight is falling and fitness is rising, its easy to keep this up. Now I’m in more of a stable place I am still logging all my exercise, all my food, and less obsessively my weight and blood pressure. It’s all there in my phone and my apps and it’s the bedrock of an ongoing habit which I intend never to break.
Suddenly thinner 