I need new scales. The ones I’ve got are crap – the numbers they show aren’t going down at all, in fact they’re going up!
Putting aside the fact that I was pretty bloody miserable on Saturday and comforted myself with a huge kebab, and Monday I was treated to a chinese take-away for trying to sort out a problem on my cousin’s laptop, and I spent most of the weekend watching the snooker on television instead of getting any exercise, I blame the scales completely. It’s all their fault, nothing to do with me at all, no sir.

Gah. 16stone 3lbs. All that walking and I still weigh 16 stone 3lbs. Maybe it’s all the extra food I’m eating in between walks. You know, mid-morning snack, lunch, getting-home-from-work snack, dinner, midnight snack, that sort of thing.
Maybe I should get an aerobics dvd and start jumping around the living room on the days when I don’t go for a walk. Maybe I should get my dumbells out of the cupboard and start lifting them again. Maybe this, maybe that. Who knows?
On the plus side, I may not be much lighter, but I feel a bit lighter (if that makes sense). My legs still ache a bit after the walk, and so they should, so maybe I’ve lost a bit of fat and put on a bit of leg muscle. Here’s hoping!
Besides, in the first week of Celebrity Fat Club (yes, the height of intellectual British television!) the 30-stone Andy Fordham only lost half a pound. So there’s hope for me yet (he says, deluding himself once again)

I’ve been debating for a while about whether I should post about this. Mainly because if I don’t keep it up you’d all moan at me about how I’m not keeping it up, haha.
Anyway, I’ve decided to bite the bullet and tell you that this morning I weighed 16st 4lbs (228lbs). I’m not going to give it to you in kilos, you can dig out your calculators and do it yourselves, you lazy swines. I’ve not been walking or cycling for a fortnight, but I have been trying to cut down on my calorie intake.
Instead of buying a full English breakfast or having a cheeseburger and chips for lunch, I’ve been buying a jacket potato with cottage cheese. And although I used to take a reasonably healthy packed lunch of hardboiled egg, potato salad, coleslaw, carrot, cucumber and a piece of cheese, I’m now taking a hardboiled egg, some carrot and an apple.
Of course the evening meals still need to be worked on….
A couple of weeks ago I weighed myself at 16st 9, but I can’t remember if I was fully dressed and just testing the new scales at the time!
Anyway, if I do decide that my weight is coming down steadily, I’ll get one of those corny trackers to put on the site so you can all see how ‘m doing. No idea what my target weight will be, let’s just say I want to feel more confident by getting thinner. If I do get a tracker I’ll set the start weight at 228, so that’s my official “I’m now on a diet” weight.
It’s a perfect day for cycling or walking today, but I’m off to help my parents dig their garden instead, so that’ll be today’s exercise.

Sunshine. Clear day. Perfect time. No excuses now – no rain, snow, sleet, no “I have to be somewhere else in ten minutes”. The time has come, ladies and gentlemen, to get the bike out and go for a ride. First one of the year. As with the walking, this was an improvement on last year, when I didn’t get cycling until late May.
Since I didn’t know how much my body would complain at being hauled out of bed and into the fresh air so quickly, I started gently today, doing a leisurely 4 miles in 25 minutes. When I first started riding the new bike last year I’d get back from doing two or three miles and hardly be able to stagger back into the house. I’d be dripping with sweat and fighting for breath. Today when I got back I was merely breathing heavily.
So I think I’m a bit healthier than I was this time last year. I’ve got a bit more stamina. And a lot more weight to lose.

I managed to do today what I couldn’t get done last weekend. Not only did I make it into town without my legs screaming in agony, but I made it back again, in one piece, having taken the long way round. I didn’t intend to go all the way around the reservoir, honest. Or get my boots all covered in mud. But still, six and a half miles (plus whatever I did while inside the shopping centre; the GPS doesn’t work indoors!) is pretty good going. I feel like I’ve achieved something today – let’s see if I can do the same distance tomorrow.

Following my comments at the start of the year, I thought it was about time I put one of them, at least, into action. Last Thursday I bought a Country Walking magazine, and was once again blown away by the breathtaking views this country has to offer. Right, I thought, this weekend I’m going for a walk. I’d spent the last two Sundays in deep prayer to the almighty god of laziness, just hanging around the house in my dressing gown, occasionally getting up to wash a plate or eat a bit of cheese or something. Not today. Today I was going for a walk, come hell or high water.
Fortunately the weather was on my side, and when I woke up at the crack of 10:30 (I’m a very religious person when it comes to worshipping the god of laziness) I noticed my curtains glowing brightly, as though someone had actually turned the light on outside. This is it. No excuses now. I going for a walk, and it was a walk with a purpose. I was going to head into town, to Halfords, and buy myself a foot-pump for the bike. I want to be fully prepared for when the god of strenuous exercise wakes up from his winter slumber and kicks the god of laziness into touch.
Although the weather was on my side, my body wasn’t. My legs were screaming agony after half a mile, and I was beginning to doubt whether I’d make it into town. I pressed on, however, knowing full well that every step took me further away from my front door (and with it the sofa and kettle). I slowed down and carried on putting one foot in front of the other. My legs gave up screaming and settled into a dull whinging moan instead, which I eventually gave in to and turned round for home.
I didn’t make it into town, didn’t get as far as Halfords. But according to my GPS unit, I did walk two and a half miles, which after three months of walking no further than one end of the office to the other, isn’t a bad start. I’m going to see if I can walk one and a half to two miles every day next week when I get home from work, and by next weekend my legs should have remembered what they are there for.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put the kettle on, collapse in a heap, and later on I’m going to drive to Halfords.

After my brother told me all about Geocaching the other week (detailed here) I got all excited about it, and by the Sunday had bought myself a GPS unit via eBay. Cool stuff, couldn’t wait to get going. Then I got blitzed with a cold, and thought “just my luck, I’m about to do something different and exciting for a change and I can barely drag myself out of bed”. I needn’t have worried, however, because by yesterday my head had cleared, the GPS had arrived and had been tested, and the rain had even cleared itself off somewhere else for a while.
Armed with co-ordinates, directions and clues from the Geocaching site, and my shiny almost-new bright yellow GPS telling me where I was, how fast I was walking, where I was supposed to be going and how far above sea-level I was, I headed off all full of excitement and adventure. Let’s see what’s been hidden!
But alas, no luck. I got close to it, I’m sure I did. The clue made sense and fitted in with my surroundings, and the GPS told me I was within 20 feet of it, but could I actually find it? Could I buggery. I spent half an hour traipsing through mud and brambles, trying not to slide down the very steep slope into a stream. In the end I gave up, disappointed but not downhearted. I knew from reading the cache logs on the main Geocaching site that this was a tricky one to find, and other more experienced Geocachers hadn’t been able to find it the first time they tried either. I know it was last found a couple of weeks ago, so it was definately there then. Better luck next time.
So I turned around and walked home again. As I approached my house, I thought I’d test how accurate the GPS was, and the answer it seems is “not as accurate as I thought it would be”. While walking up the road and looking straight at my front door, it was telling me that I lived somewhere just off to the right, and by the time I actually got to my door it was saying that my house was actually supposed to be 400 feet behind me. So either this GPS lark isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, or else it didn’t have a good idea where it was when I marked in the position of my house. Further testing is required, it seems.
Still, I walked five and a half miles and got out of the house for a bit, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time.

I posted recently about how miserable and bloated I was feeling and that I was damn well going to do something about it. Well, I have, and after three weeks on nothing more advanced than a sensible diet, I’ve lost 13lbs. That’s over 5% of my body weight. Yay me!
So if you want to lose 5% of your body weight in three weeks without having anything amputated, here’s what you need to do:
Cut out bread
Cut out massive amounts of diet coke
Go for a walk occasionally
Go for a bike ride occasionally (weather permitting)
Eat less in the evenings
That’s it – nothing more, nothing less. I don’t believe in fancy diets, they don’t work.