What happened to 2014???

So yeah, its just over a year since I was last here...

Don't worry it seems that we didn't miss much.

A lot did happen over the year but none of it good by the standards of what I wanted to achieve for my health.

I moved in with my amazing girlfriend in to an amazing house, had an amazing holiday in Boston and put on a stone I weight....

However (again with the however...) its a new year...heard that before haven't you!

I have two new places I now frequent online with regards to fitness and inspiration.

I am on Tribesports  (great for info and tracking activities manually), Nerd Fitness forums if you are looking for no BS help and chat away form other sites that appear to be with the look at me jock types...check them out. If your looking to get details about bodybuilding and lifting checkout Bodybuilding.com (I use this now just to track my weight and body fat).

Its one of the things I have learnt is to study your information sources and compare to your needs and check to see if they are selling something with their message!. I still find great inspiration form my sources from previous posts but I find the first two great communities to chat with people.

Today I start a six week challenge (see the Nerd Fitness Forum) that will hopefully increase my ability to lift weigh and therefore make it easier to move my own bodyweight, I am to cut out soft drinks and increase my fruit and veg intake, all sounds easy enough, but so does the idea of keeping a blog...time will tell!

2013 has came and went...and i stood and watched it go by

Hello

Remember me?

I'm the guy that had big plans this year!

I'm the guy that failed in all of them!

I'm the guy that let things get in the way!

I'm the guy that didn't look after himself properly!

I'm the guy that didn't look at injuries properly and let them get worse rather than better!

I'm the guy that over the last couple of months joined www.tribesports.com and set new challenges and goals!

I'm the guy that knows he did wrong and knows where he went wrong and knows his next steps!

OK all that sounds a bit AAish but its all true, I know that I need to be aware of my failures as well as my successes. I'm not going to kid myself, I know that there are people out there who said at the beginning, "Yeah right Scott"..."Of course you will Scott"...and i know that these are the people i need to beat next year.

2014 is a new year, a new start, my support groups have changed, there is the great folk on Tribesports who all see themselves in it together and push and support each other, I have my wonderful girlfriend.

So here we go, goodbye 2013, hello 2014 may it be a better year for everybody!!!

oh and if you join Tribesports search for @crackerwatson and add me :)

Well this hasnt been fun.

Hello again.

So last post was April and it is now August...

First event is next month (Spartan Sprint) and the honest result is that it isn't going to happen, i admitted this to myself a few weeks ago on the Google+ Spartan Race community.

Why?...Well I'm (or have been) a broken man...

My trip down the stairs caused more damage and pain and what ever else my plans started to fall away, as did my mental resilience.

I knew it was going to be a challenge, but once again injury gets in the way and it has brought me down a bit, yeah i have been out walking to keep moving, even been out on the bike a few times and been for a swim but between the pain in the ankle and the re-occurring pain in the coccyx it put me further and further behind in my schedule that i knew my target was going to have to shift.

I guess it just means that i have no excuses for the next years event.

Since my last post i have joined a number of communities on Google+ and there has been some greatly informative articles and post from folks and as usual with every failure its about dusting myself off and picking myself up again.

On the upside i have started a new role at work and this has lifted me mentally, i no longer work two jobs so i have my weekend and evenings free, I'm sleeping better and resting better and maybe this will all help in the (physical) healing process.

So goodbye for now and again hopefully it wont be long before I'm back tracking my successes (yup I'm sure there will be some of some kind!!!)

Where did the time go?!?

OK so it seems to be sometime since i was last on here reporting what i was up to...really need to get used to doing more on this thing!!

So what can i say to update you???

I made a good start, changed my eating, got more active, was really starting to do well on the getting into the exercise grove and keeping it moving... and then it slowed down and then it stopped...

Yeah i did my usual, the weather got poor, other things going on in life took over my head, i spent more time in bed watching telly in the evening (i live in a studio flat so the bed is comfier than the sofa) and the exercising stopped, the motivation escaped me...

However...

I realised the error i was making and recognised that i was doing the same thing over and over again and i did start making changes, became more focused on doing stuff in my flat, started again on the exercising target that i had hoped i could get ( the small target thing i mentioned before) but it really was like starting all over again.

As i said before i wanted to keep this blog to keep a record of my successes and failures, i know that i am not going to make a massive difference over night and i know that i will continually need to be making changes if i wish to get to the ability of the original aims of my Spartan Race and Survival of the fittest events.

I'm sure there are folk in this world that will mock me, but hey at least i know my faults and i know that i am the one that needs to do some thing about it.

so where am i today?

Well not a great place, i took a slight fall on a set of stairs that has given be a sprained ankle and a bit of pain from up behind the knee...so this has set me back a few days...but i need to remember that this is only a setback!!! and although the lower body is having difficulties i will be seeking upper body work to keep me going

So yeah...here we are, now in April, first event is September the clock is most definitely ticking!!!

2 Weeks of learning!

I'm back! Did you miss me???

So it’s been 15 days since my last post what have I been up to in that time?

Well....

Started hitting the 16kg Kettlebell again working on 4 sets of 25 to hit my 100reps, been dropping in the odd fitness DVD (Tae-bo, YRG) and took in a fitness class at work.

Now the fitness class was a learning experience!

I learnt that I clearly am not pushing myself as hard as I could/should be. The class I went to was a Krav Maga class run by a trainer in the office gym, what actually happened on the day was that the trainer was off still for the Christmas period and the class was now a circuit class. This is where my second lesson came in...My fitness level has been demolished!

Working the kettlebell has kept my squats at a good level but everything else was shot. The circuit was this:

30reps of each x 3sets of:

Pushups
Sit-ups with punches
Squats
Dips
Leg raises
Lunges (1 left and 1 right counted as one rep)

Now I have never been at a point where I could have sailed through this, but I certainly would have been able to manage it in my own time...not anymore! Got through the first set (just, it took me ages and it wasn’t pretty) and then even at half reps I failed to achieve most of the way to the second set and the third set was just a joke!

The third lesson of the day is about sleep! Always make sure you get plenty of rest!

Fat bloke + Exercise - Good sleep = Wreck on floor with feet raised and a discussion with the first aider!

I didn’t collapse or blackout, it was just a wee funny turn where I thought it would be better on the floor before my body took me there!

So that was the downside!! Is there an upside...Kind of.

I have made my first goal the ability to do the circuit without stopping, starting small 10 reps of each for one set, I am then going to add maybe 5reps to each every couple of days until I am up to the 30reps. Then will try and add sets...watch this space I guess...

What about my eating?

Breakfast rolls have been replace with a mixture of Fruit, Yoghurt, the odd scone, lunch has been replaced with usually a soup but have slipped in the odd Panini so a bit of work needing done there. Dinner is still a problem area and depends upon what I'm doing so really need to knuckle down on that, should be making a big pot of soup (Chorizo and Sweet Potato) which is good for a few meals ( I can make it into pasta dish, curry and other meals just by adding stuff, I'm rather proud of this one!)

Second positive of the period:

Its working, the small differences I have made so far are having an effect! I have noticed that some of the clothes I wear regularly are actually feeling a little bit more comfortable on me!

Although I am looking to lose weight I am not focussing on that as my measuring tool. I want to see my bulk/belly reduce so I can get back into some old clothes and also be able to go out and buy myself smaller jeans again! I also want to see my abilities improve I will be happy to go to a class in a few weeks/months down the line and do the circuit and have the guys say "well done"!

Made the first step, time for the second

So here we are a whole 3 days into the new year of 2013 and I'm not doing to badly.

Haven’t made any major leaps into exercising, but instead found other ways of doing it.

On the first I spent a couple of hours moving furniture and cleaning in a bar, now not exactly your usual exercising method, but the lifting, carrying, sweeping and mopping and likes certainly go me moving and sweating, isn’t that what exercising is?

On the second I had a bit of a long lie and then hit the streets, I spent a few hours walking around town and if you know Edinburgh there is a good few hills and steps to get you going, so I took each one as an obstacle pushing a deal harder to get up it, even to the point of jogging up one set (the steps at the mound by the galleries if you know them).

Tonight I plan to take on a Tae-Bo DVD...Yeah before I get the trolls saying anything (as people like to criticise anything and everything) I am doing all sots to get moving!

I don’t want to jump straight into destroying myself with huge runs and sessions at the gym as I probably would just destroy myself, by doing it this way I keep my steps manageable and therefore less disheartening and at least I know I am actually doing something and moving in the right direction rather than spending the whole night on the sofa!

I have also noticed an opportunity for another challenge. The Tough Mudder (http://toughmudder.co.uk/ and on twitter @ToughMudder) is another obstacle course similar to the others mentioned previously (Spartan Race and Men’s Health Survival of the Fittest) but seems to be crazier! The event is 12ish miles with some of the craziest obstacles ever invented by members of the Special Forces if you go by the website. So the question I am asking myself is, is 8 months enough time to prepare for it?? They have some great training resources on the site that again I could add to the schedule, so might see how that goes to see if I can get to the top set anywhere near the event. I may potentially just volunteer this year and make it one of my other targets for next year as I already plan to attempt the Coast to Coast event (http://www.scotlandcoasttocoast.com/).

I am also going to be hassling my friend who came up with the idea of Man Mornings with his missus. He liked the idea of heading to the meadows with some of the guys, doing some training and then chilling out for a bit with them on Saturdays or Sundays. I agree that it is brilliant and I might even be able to recruit some of the guys for the other events too! :D

Well that’s all the updates I have for now, please help me to make this interactive and comment, all info and conversation is greatly appreciated, internet trolls will be handled differently :D

And so it begins!

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." – Confucius

Hi I’m Scott and I’m fat!

Yup there I go I said it admitted it to myself and everybody else. Why am I fat? I am fat because I am lazy and I eat too much of the wrong stuff.

Why am I being like this, ultimately, as I don’t wont you the reader to get the wrong idea about me. I have been here before, sitting thinking to myself “what can I do to fix this?”, “where did I go so wrong?”, but that was the problem, all I did was sit there and think. Yes I could say that the bad back that I endured months and months of physio to fix stopped me form doing this or that, or the faulty Achilles that I developed that seems to hurt when I stand up after just sitting at my desk in the office. But you know what, these aren’t reasons, they are just excuses that I hid behind. Like most of the people in my situation (I.E. the ones that lie to themselves rather than actually having a real long-term problem), I am week willed and find it easier to sit on my backside and do nothing rather than getting out there and doing stuff.

So why now?

Well as I write this, it is the last day of 2012, I have consumed my last “Big Breakfast” of the year from the staff canteen and yeah it isn’t a sudden change of heart, but like most people the new year makes people think about a new them, the old favourite is back again of needing to lose weight and get more active and be more healthy. It's easy enough to say, but what about the doing?

I know that nobody can do it for me, its me that needs to put the effort in and I have a good reason to put that effort in, I really am to darn old to be this darn fat! It must be seriously having a negative effect on my health, no doubt at this stage there will be long-term damage to my body, who knew when the primary school got my mum to take me to the doctor as they thought I was malnourished in primary 1 that I would be like this by my twenties (boy did I show them! :D).

So what am I going to do about it?

I know all the things I’m doing wrong, I just don’t know all the things that I should be doing right, but there are some changes that I can make that will make huge differences, like:

Move more!

I have a bike, I should be using it to get back and forward to work! Ill even save the money that I would have spent on bus fares (an extra £40ish a month back in my pocket, never mind the stuff I spend to get the change for the bus)

I should get swinging more! (behave yourself!) I own a kettlebell obtained via Rannoch Donald at Kettlebell Scotland and who blogs from Simple Strength he also does courses so check him out and if you don’t know what a kettlebell is have a look, it is an amazing tool I just need to start using mine again!

To be honest Rannoch is a massive influence to me, he tweets from @RannochDonald you really want to follow him if you are interested in functional movement, Rannoch doesn’t do fads! He is also behind the 100 Rep Challenge which also has a twitter feed @100RepChallange and is one of the simplest ways of adding some movement to your day.

I also have a gym in the office and the meadows near my flat, I should have no excuses for places to go and just get moving.

If I’m moving more ill need to eat more!?!

Nice thought, but I know I need to just eat right, a two litre engine is a two litre engine, but you don’t want to put diesel in to a petrol engine!

The food part is where I need to do more research but I know I should be cutting back on all the bad (but nice tasting and moreish stuff) soft drinks, sweets, crisps, sarnies general crap food. I need to make more of an effort on fresher ingredients make the stuff from scratch a portion that is fit for one person. Get more fruit and veg inside me for a start!

So what is driving me?

Well other than trying to add sometime to my life and cause less of a burden on the NHS in future I have planned for a couple of goals in 2013. In planned chronological order there is the Spartan Race (www.spartanrace.com) in September. The Spartan Sprint (as it is titled) is a 5km run with about 15 obstacles over the course, the obstacles include barbed wire crawl, water features, rope climbs and the fiery leap and that is the nice sounding ones! They even have Spartans at the finish line that you need to battle to complete that race! The Second is the Men’s Health Survival of the fittest (www.mhsurvival.co.uk) in October. A 10km event with obstacles at every km! The hay bale scramble is amusing and the last challenge is an 8ft wall to be scaled.

So can I do it? I hope so, being honest with myself only I can make it fail. But that is why I am starting this blog. I want to share my journey with people; I don’t want to just keep it in my head. I hope that by sharing and doing updates ill keep going, maybe get support from people and maybe even get some people off the couch themselves, but if I don’t then I will just have proven myself right, that I am just a lazy good for nothing J

Also being fitter might help attract the ladies J

I hope you will share my journey as I have seen the results when people apply themselves and I hope that I can do the same!

See you soon!