So in the previous blog, I’d let you in to what my life was like back in 2010, the things I was struggling with and just how unhealthy and unhappy I’d become. Some of it wasn’t easy to read and crikey, it wasn’t easy to write. But…I did also say that the story ends well, so here we go, here’s part two of the story.
While I was in America, I had my ‘Aha’ moment – I thought about how much money I had wasted on a holiday that I couldn’t really enjoy. There needed to be some big changes and if I was going to make such a big effort, the focus would have to be lifestyle changes that lasted the rest of my life not just another attempt at a diet.
The trouble was though; I didn’t know where to start.
So I asked myself two questions: if I looked at my life in general, a) when do I get the best results and b) what hasn’t worked? The answer to the first one is easy – I work best when I work as part of a team. The second answer was a little more complicated because it required me to put the emotion of it all aside and admit when the strategy I employed had failed. The list of things that hadn’t worked seemed endless – I’d tried doing it all alone, gym memberships at different kinds of gyms around the city, personal trainers, both male and female. I’d tried numerous diet pills and calorie controlled diets and the more I tried the more I yo-yoed up and down.
I needed a fresh approach.
Now around about this time, British Cycling and Sky were just starting to come to everyone’s attention as they were setting up a team to try and win the Tour de France. I watched an interview with Sir Dave Brailsford where he talked about Marginal Gains. His idea was that you would look for 1% gains in all the different component parts of cycling such as nutrition, rest and recovery, bike technology, clothing, travel time, bike componentry and mental strength and over time all these extra 1% gains add up to significant gains and huge successes. I remember watching the interview and wondering if I might employ that strategy to my own journey. Essentially, if I made small, regular changes in lots of different elements of life, would it add up to a significantly changed life?
What I was missing was a clear understanding of where I was starting from so I set about creating my own dataset.
For a month, I changed absolutely nothing about my life – I covered my bedroom wall in paper, stuck a load of coloured pens to it and started noting everything down: when I slept, how well (or not) I slept, how I felt when I got up, what I ate, when I ate, what prompted me to eat (habit or hunger?) how I felt when I ate, when I moved, how long I was sedentary for, when I was active, what was I doing, how did I feel while I was doing it, what social activity I was involved in, how high my anxiety was when I was out with friends and family – I just wrote down everything.
After a month, I sat back and stared at that wall for a few hours and noticed that some really interesting patterns were starting to emerge. What I had learned in that month was just how connected everything was – how you eat connects to how you sleep, connects to how you perform at work, connects to how anxious you are about doing anything, connects to the way you engage with the people around you, connects to how people engage with you, connects to how much you socialise, connects to how much energy you have to actually move about or get into any form of exercise routine. Everything connects.
With dataset in hand I knew the next stage was to start building my team. To start with, I found a really good doctor who was able to understand that this was going to be a massive but gradual lifestyle change and it was unlikely to be fast or pretty!
Then I made the first and most important change. I stopped thinking about this in terms of weight loss and started to change the narrative – I was aiming to get healthy and fit again. Any changes in body shape and size would be a happy by-product of what came next. With the change in mindset it all started to feel very different. No longer was it about getting on a scale every day, worrying about the numbers. No longer was it about how many times I went to the gym in a week or how many reps I did. It was about how I felt, how my body responded to things, listening to the signal my body was giving me.
The next really important change was that I stopped getting the train to work and started walking the two miles from home to the office. In the first few weeks, I had to stop and sit down for a rest along the way but eventually I got used to it and was able to get there with no stops. Within a few weeks, I started to really enjoy being out in the fresh air in the early morning and I found I got into work ready for a busy day and at the end of the day, the half an hour walk home was long enough to process the stresses of the workday and arrive home relaxed and refreshed.
Being able to arrive home relaxed and invigorated by the fresh air triggered the next important change; I found I had more energy to do stuff after I got home so I got into the habit of preparing everything I needed for the next day, packing a lunch and a few snacks and actually thinking a little more about what I was cooking for dinner. As a result, I found I was eating smaller quantities, but more frequently and worked out that when I got hungry I got grumpy so I ate regularly and found that I was never hungry enough to eat those massive takeaways that I used to eat. As I was no longer spending three hours every evening, sitting down in front of the TV eating as much as I could, I had more time and more energy in the evenings I started to feel a bit less anxious and a little more sociable so I started making more of an effort to see friends and spend more time with family.
The more energetic I felt, the more active I got. My walk to work became a run/walk and eventually a run and occasionally I cycled in too. Oh I remember the first day I thought I might run to work, I set of at a hell of a pace and 80 meters later I was sitting on the floor feeling like I was going to faint. It wasn’t pretty. But I gave myself a moment, then got up, walked it off, and ran another 20 meters at a much slower pace. Then I walked a bit and when I could, I ran a little again. So it continued for weeks and months until eventually I made it all the way to work with no stops. That was a happy day.
I started going back to some of the sports I’d played all through my teens and early 20’s and picked up a few squash games, started swimming again and found real joy in cycling. The more active I got, the more I enjoyed it, the less I cared about any negative comments and the more determined I got. I felt like my body was my own again and I could trust it to go that little bit further every time I went out. It was a further reminder of how everything connects.
Now at the moment this all sounds like sunshine and roses and don’t get me wrong, for the most part, I was having more fun than ever, discovering how to push myself in the right (and sometimes wrong) ways and getting stronger all the time.
There were some dark times along the way, and I certainly made mistakes. Loads of them. But I learned from each mistake along the way and kept myself really positive. I found that if I focussed on having fun then it seemed less like hard work so I would ask myself every day ‘what do you feel like doing today?’ If the answer was ‘nothing’ then I had a quieter day. But similarly if I felt like I had loads of energy then I’d get out for a long walk, or a ride, or a run, or a game of badminton or football. I fell in love with all the sports I’d forgotten I used to love. As my body shrank and my clothes size dropped and people started asking me how much weight I’d lost, to which I’d answer in much the same way as I’d answer then today – I have no idea what the numbers are, I just know I feel better. That’s where the focus was. I felt better and wanted to hold onto that. I still feel better and hold on to that 6 years later. All I ever want to be is happy, healthy and fit…
Now, there is a little more to this story, but goodness me this is turning into a long blog so I’ll finish it off in next week’s instalment which will focus on what I learned on this journey to help me sustain this lifestyle.
