Fat Birds Fighting for Fitness

Towards the end of last year, my father proposed a family challenge - to lose weight. The person who loses the most weight, by April 1st out of my parents, my sister and her husband, myself and Stephanie would be treated to a weekend away at my fathers expense. We all signed up, agreed and now it is game on!

We could all be playing for a weekend in Allhallows, it doesn’t really matter, we all recognised that 2011 was a year of indulgence and our forever expanding waistlines needed to be sucked back in. Stephanie of course had the benefit of an excuse on her side, she was pregnant for most of the year and feeding for two - not that you would have known, she actually weighs much less now that she did before she fell pregnant so she must be doing something right.

It’s been interesting so far to see how all six of us have tackled this particular challenge, whether it is signing up to a diet scheme like Weight Watchers, skipping meals or cutting out various items of high-fat food and alcohol. For me personally, I never considered that I ate particularly badly in the first place, I just ate too much of it and at the wrong times.

Coming home from work, putting Oliver to bed and reading him a story, Stephanie and I tend not to eat until around 8pm, which I consider far too late for an evening meal. Our bodies don’t get time to metabolise before we go to sleep, so the more we eat then, the harder our bodies task is to do its job. My idea for this competition, rather than pay out for expensive diet campaigns and calculated calorie counts is to simply half my portions sizes of an evening, swapping out lunchtime sandwiches for lunchtime salads and cutting out the naughty indulgences, cakes, crisps and the odd biscuit or ten.

Just to make sure that I really am burning off fat, no weight loss campaign is complete without a little exercise. I’m not one of these people who enjoys exercise naturally, I find the gym a place for egomaniacs who love themselves more then they’d care to admit, but I do enjoy competitive sports like racquetball and football, even if I struggle to find someone equally as bad at both sports as I am to participate with.

Instead, I’m picking off where I left last year with good old fashioned running. When we were training for the Great River Race last year, my friend Stuart suggested to me that perhaps we could run down to the river from home, rather than drive. I surprised him with a yes and a new fad was born. Despite my initial lack of anything close to what was required, stamina, mental strength, decent footwear I slowly got better, a little faster, a little further, before Phoebe arrived as a convenient excuse and my running stopped before it really got started.

Nevertheless, with a new incentive, the running has got back on track and with eating better it won’t be long until I’m more a more comfortable, healthier size as part of a more comfortable, healthier family. And just maybe, in three months time, when the competition is over, it will be Stephanie and I on the beach at Allhallows supping from a can of diet coke and tucking into a batter-less fish on a wholemeal sandwhich thinking how worth it the whole thing has been.

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