Introducing me again.

[Bingis]

Hi all, 

 

this is my 2nd introduction. My first one came over a year ago, but due to a lifestyle of travelling to work I quickly gave up, so this is somewhat of a restart now that my life routine has settled down. 

 

Anyway my story is this:

 

I'm an Australian living in London. Growing up I was relatively active, played sport and besides a few periods of putting weight on, I generally kept a reasonable weight. I don't know what that weight was, I never paid attention back then. 

 

I eventually went backpacking, travelled through Asia and Europe and settled in London. After living a backpackers lifestyle for the better part of a year, I was definitely trim, but I wouldn't say healthy (cigarettes and beer don't help the cause). 

 

I lived in London for a year while my girlfriend (that I had met soon after) arriving lived up north. For that year I kept a reasonable weight, but I kept up the old habits of going to the pub and smoking. 

 

After a year of travelling to see my girlfriend most weekends, I decided to move up to live with her and find work in the area. I ended up living there for 2 years, cut back on the drinking and smoking (because the girlfriend doesnt like it) and sorted myself out. We tried out the paleo lifestyle, jumping in completely and it worked really well and we lost a heap of weight. But as I was travelling to Manchester (2hrs each way at the time), we eventually gave up on this for convenience and my weight soared to the worst I had been.

 

As I was a freelancer at the time, my old work in London wanted me to come back and work for them, so I spent almost a year of travelling back to London on sunday nights, living in a hotel for a week and then travelling home on Friday nights. With living in a hotel for a week, came with it a lot of boredom and as such I would go to the pub with work colleagues a lot and resumed my beer and smoking lifestyle (mind you it was never as heavy as some people, so I did try to keep things sensible). 

 

To fast foward a little bit to 6 months ago, my girlfriend and I sold our place up north and moved to London for work and here I am now. 

 

Over the last year and a half I have had a Withings wifi scale which I use most mornings and I can see over time how my different lifestyles have affected my weight. Whilst my weight was never terrible, it has taking me almost 6 months to loose about 5kg / almost a 1 stone. So progress is slow. 

 

After turning 30 I vowed to get myself in shape because I never got around to it in my 20s. I am now 31 and finally getting the ball rolling. 

 

Right, so thats my story to date. Here is what I am doing health wise, and why I have rejoined the forums with the hope of making these habits stick.

 

Everyone in the studio I work at is going through some form of a health kick and it is good motivation. We did a monthly running challenge which helped me stop smoking because my internal competitiveness identified it as hindrance.

 

We are now a few months on from that and I have signed up for a half marathon. I have been going through my training and running 4-6km most days (with rest and cross training days in between), however the last few months of running has left my leg in a lot of pain. I am in the process of working out what the problem is, and I'll write a post in the right area for that later.

 

Not wanting to loose my motivation, I have still be going to the gym and I have swapped out my running for rowing. I am doing a walk, then cycle warmup and a 5km row most days. And I have really noticed it make a difference to the way I physically look and also to my weight.

 

I am not, however doing any weights. Whilst my gym is a well stocked, new (and cheap!) gym, it can also get busy and my only time to get to the weights area where it is empty is early weekend mornings. Well, I could probably use the weights at any time but that also means showing my inexperience. I know there are articles on this exact topic, so I need to work on a plan - once again I will post about this in the right area. 

 

So in a nutshell, after years of wanting to do something about it, I finally am, and after a few months of sticking to it I am seeing some small results and I want to make my training more efficient. 

 

I also think the reason for this post is for me to draw a line in the sand and actually give myself an official starting point, and for me actually read my story to myself. 

 

Thanks for reading and this time I will become an active member and hopefully achieve my goals. 

 

Luke

[MagicAnatomist]

Congratulations on your restarting and best of luck with your goals! Welcome back!! :]