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!