Recently I wrote about how my weight had increased since leaving high school back in 1997, reaching an estimated peak of 120-125kg and in more recent times hovering around the 110kg mark.
After not doing anything about my weight for such a long time, sitting by passively letting my weight control me, I’ve made some great progress and I now weigh in under 100kg for the first time in over 10 years!
My weight loss progress started about this time last year when I began weighing myself semi-regularly and keeping a log of it in a speadsheet. However, it wasn’t until the start of 2011 that I made a conscious effort to not only measure but to actually take action and do something about my weight. That action was a Surfers Paradise gym named Anytime Fitness, which is located in Circle on Cavill near my office.
I deliberated long and hard about whether or not I could make a Surfers Paradise gym work for me by going during my lunch hour. Over the years, each time I’ve used a gym on the Gold Coast it has always been either before or after work, so I was sceptical about the prospect of exercising during my lunch break. However it wasn’t possible to go in the morning as Claire likes to go walking & going at night would mean that I wouldn’t see the kids before they go to bed. My only option was lunch time and I was going to make it work for me, because it was time for a change.
Between January and April I did nothing but weights at the gym and by pulling my eating back a notch, I managed to lose around 5Kg of weight and put on a bunch of muscle.
During May I began introducing a small amount of cardio into my weekly workout schedule, primarily high heart rate cross training. That turned out to be really successful and I lost another 1-2Kg of weight, but more importantly I felt a whole lot fitter on the squash courts.
Directly beside the cross trainers are a bunch of treadmills, which I’d been eyeing off for a while. In the past when I walked or jogged, my shin muscles would get incredibly fatigued and it’d stop me from exercising. In the second week of June I thought I’d change it up and went for a walk and to my surprise, my shin muscles didn’t complain. I did that a few more times to make sure it wasn’t a one off and so far my shin muscles haven’t complained.
Onward and upward!
Well done Al! Keep up the good work :)
Yeah, definitely well done. It’s a big step from walking on the treadmill to running. I tried making that step a couple of weeks ago and think that I did it too early. My shins were hurting for a couple of days and my calves were tight for a week. I just need to find more time and motivation to make it to the gym more then once a week and I’ll be hopefully echoing your success.