A brief Summary so far...

A friend of a friend who is also slimming this year, and doing an amazing job of it, contacted me on our mutual friends recommendation to find out what I was doing. I'm not sure if it was to compare notes or purely out of interest, but it was fun to write down some of the details of what I am doing for her. I figured I would share some of the details here as a sort of summary of events to date since I started on this amazing journey!

On 31/01/2011 I weighed in at 28st 13 lbs. As mentioned, I go to Slimming World meetings once a week to get weighed and do their "Image Therapy", which is basically the group chatting about whats working or not working for them. I have got some great tips hint's and motivation from that. I feel it's so helpful tobe held accountable for my weight loss or gain, and provide reasons for it.

In the 12 weeks since the start have lost 3st 6.5 lbs. Most of that simply due to a healthy diet. I don't know what diet you doing, but it sounds like its working, and so I'm going to assume it's probably healthy. I'm certainly not going to stand on my soapbox and shout that Slimming World is the 1 and only diet that works. Any diet, even 1 you make up yourself can work. Some diets are healthy and nutritious, and some are desperate and radical. I've tried a few, but they hardly ever stuck. This 1 works for me and I find it not only helps me lose weight, but has revelutionised my whole life and attitude towards slimming.

I have often turned to my wife and exclaimed; "I'VE NEVER EATEN THIS GOOD!". I love the food, it tastes great! Mostly though it makes me feel great! I'm way more positive, happy and excitable than I have ever been. I have way more energy than I ever had. And this all happened before I started walking. Or at least before i started walking seriously!

As mentioned, I started at almost 29 stone! For the last 5 years walking has not been easy for me. Popping into Tescos to buy a handful of things would hurt my back and calves would ache. Going to the park with the kids was never possible, unless I could drive to the park, and the play area had seats or the picnic spot was within 100 yards!

So when my "Virtual PT" (friend in Canada) piped up 3 weeks in and said he wants me to start walking, I was like: "Um, I don't think so! Not yet, I have a ton of weight to lose first!" His reply was simply that I wasn't going to walk far. Just 100m out, and 100m in. I raised an eyebrow, knowing that he had a "plan", and thought its pointless fighting (he is a good, OLD friend...no he is a BEST friend), so I gave in and said "sure I'll walk 200m a day".

I did that for the first week. The 2nd week was 300m. Nearing the end of that week, in my quest to find a circular route the right length, I had managed to do a few 400m walks, so the 3rd week jumped to 500m, which ended up being 600m. The next week was meant to be a "step back" week meaning I was to drop down to 400m again. I found that hard and instead increased again. The 700m week turned into a few 1km walks. Thats when the bug bit!!! I was hooked!!!

By now my friend had almost given up trying to control it and simply tried to guide me to reasonable increases and encouraged me to "Listen to my body". 1km weekly jumps turned to 2 or 3km jumps. Now 9 weeks into walking I'm starting to do short jogs in my walk. I do 6 - 8km / day. Saturdays is my SLD. Slow Long Day. I'm not sure about the slow thing, but last Saturday I did 12km. This week I have kinda let up from increasing my distance, and instead tried to focus on increasing my pace. The harder I push, the more energy, determination and motivation I find.
Monday (Easy Day) I did 8km@10:34min/km.
Tuesday (Speed Day) I did 6km@10:26.
Yesterday (Rest Day) I did 8km@10:14.
Today (Speed Day) I did 5km@9:48.

Both me and my friend can't understand whats going on. We don't know how to predict what to do next. We simply sing his "Mantra": "LISTEN TO YOUR BODY!"

I don't know what to expect next...I've stopped caring about how much weight I lose, or how fast I lose it. I just feel so great and know the weight is going to drop anyway, so I'm just enjoying the Amazing Ride at the moment!

The "diet" (90% Slimming World advice) seems to feed me with unbelievable energy and seems to have altered my frame of mind from that of a Computer Game addicted "fat slob" (harsh but true) to that of an athlete trapped in a "fat slob"'s body!

The "walking" (thanx to my friend) seems to have freed me of the "reasonable restrictions" that you would think a 25 stone man should have regarding exercise, and in turn seems to have empowered me with an unquenchable desire to get fitter, stronger and FASTER! Not to mention the amazing positivity I'm filled with through accomplishing the things I'm accomplishing!

That in turn motivates how I eat again starting the whole cycle over again! Not to mention either how the Positive Attitude is effecting other parks of my life!

My friend and I have now set some goals. I'm running my first 5km "Fun Run" in Loughborough in June. (I've yet to actually run 5km, but have no doubt by 18 June, I can!) Today in my 5km I must have run about 1.2km, and felt like I could have pushed for more! Based on how I perform in the next 3 months, we will maybe find me a 10km some time this year to run. And just continue to increase the goal. A lot of our future goals will be decided by what I achieve. As I said, we don't know how fast to expect this to go.

Our end goal is to have me run a Marathon some time in the first part of 2013.

Well I'm not sure if you have carried on reading or not :P But thats what I've been doing. Exploring the boundries of a second chance in life. I know I might have sounded like I'm trying to sell Slimming World, sorry, SW worked for me and taught me a lot of healthy eating principles. I could quiet easily continue to eat this way for the rest of my life! The main reason I keep going to SW is for weigh-in and image therapy. They help me a lot. I think if I stopped going I would quit weighing myself, and stop getting hints and help, and without those 2 things, I might lose control. Who knows?

But for the most part now, I dare not change how I'm eating because it's empowering me, and helping drive my new fitness addiction!