Changing My Spots
Today's Weight 206.5lbs (Yep, I thing there's something wrong with me, 'cos it's STILL TOM!!)
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It’s just beginning to dawn on me how much time I’ll need to devote to attaining and maintaining a healthy lifestyle…and I won’t kid you, it’s pretty scary.
Because I’m an accountant I don’t get any physical activity as part of my daily job, and instead of being integral to my daily work, exercise is an addendum, something I have to set aside a specific time slot for. I guess this concept would be completely alien to someone of my parents’ (they’re 79 and 76) and grandparents’ generation – they walked everywhere, did long hours of physical labour, sat down for frugal meals at the end of the working day, and then pretty much went to bed to recharge their batteries before the whole cycle started again the following day. It would never have entered their head to do a ‘sport’ or to ‘get some exercise’ – there was simply never a need for it.
Unfortunately my lifestyle is the polar opposite of this. I get up at 5am, shower and make myself a sandwich for lunch. I drive to work (19 miles), sit at a desk from 6.30am until 5.30pm, drive home again, get in around 6-6.15pm, eat dinner (prepared by my lovely K), hit the ‘puter or watch something on the box for an hour or so, then exercise for an hour between 8pm and 9pm. Then I ‘relax’, which comprises a mixture of chatting with K, reading, hitting the ‘puter again or watching more TV, before heading for bed at around 11pm.
That lifestyle is crap, right? Artificial, alien to the natural human pattern, and fundamentally unhealthy. One hour out of 24 is devoted to ‘exercise’, and the rest of the time I’m imitating a Buddha and sitting on my arse. I spend so much time sitting it’s a wonder I haven’t got calluses forming on my bum cheeks!
Sadly I’m not in a position to give up work or change my job to farm hand or coal miner, so I’m stuck with a large swathe of my working week over which I can do little to control the amount of activity I do. It’s a horrible thought, but in an average week I spend 65% of my time (or 110 hours!) sleeping, working, getting ready for work, and commuting.
However, (I’m determined to keep positive!) that still leaves me 58 hours each week in which I CAN control my activities. Admittedly most of those hours are at the weekend, but I could still make better use of my workday evenings. I have around 4.5hrs each night between getting home and going to bed. I could – and should – make better use of them, rather than squander them watching telly or browsing the internet.
Because I’m an office-based worker, I’ve got to accept that if I want to get healthy and stay healthy, then I’ve got to get myself out of the vegging-in-front-of-the-telly rut. I’ve got to make the best use of my free time and develop better habits. I’ve been guilty of thinking that after I get to goal I can ease off on the gas and hit cruise control. It was this sort of sloppy thinking that contributed to me regaining 56lbs in the 80 weeks between October 2002 and April 2004 (after the blood sweat and tears it took me to lose 48lb in the previous 8 months). I can’t and won’t let that happen to me again!
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I have to admit, though, that I’m just fundamentally an idle person. Unlike some folks who are fidgety and who just can’t sit still, I can happily sit for hours and hours doing basically bugger all. Whole weekends go by with none of my good intentions (to go lots of gardening, to wash my car, to spring clean, to do some DIY) having come to anything. I need to fundamentally retrain myself into more active, healthy patterns, so that ‘exercise’ isn’t just an oasis in the middle of a desert of inactivity. Hmmm, fundamental change – can a leopard really change its spots?
