So this morning I woke up at about 6am and got up and did my weigh-in and I am down to 107.1kgs this morning. I started the year at 107.5kgs so I have only lost 0.4kgs in a year.
Although my weight loss has been minimal at best from just over a month of walking over 10000 steps a day (10889 steps a day average since 24/11/2023) I am so much fitter than I was this time last year! I am able to ride or walk to the track up a really steep hill without being totally dead when I get there, I can do full speed half tracks and not be totally dead (Full laps are a different story!) and my asthma is way better that it was this time last year! My shoulder and ankle are now pretty much 100% healed so I have a really great base to build on with consistent training over 2024 and I am confident that I will get to my goal weight of 85kgs and stay healthy all year! Looking back at my weight over the year I topped out at 109.3kgs on 16/11/2023 which was the reason that I decided to concentrate on walking consistently on 24/11/2023 and was when my ankle was still too hurt to walk much on and I was fully depressed about being injured again after a year or more off of the bike! The lightest that I have been this year is 105.1kgs on 21/06/2023 so I am still a fair bit heavier than that at the moment 🙁
If we take just the past 37 days when I have been walking I started off at 107.8kgs and I am 107.1 kgs now so I lost 0.7kgs in the last month just by moving more. I haven’t changed up my diet or done any weights or much BMX in that time so the weight loss is 100% due to walking over 10000 steps a day! The treadmill that I use when working has really helped to make walking 10000 steps a day much easier as I can fit in a lot of steps in while I am working which is really good. It also means that I have at least 2 hours a day when I am walking not sitting so my back helps a lot! Also all the walking has meant that I am feeling way less achy that I was a month ago especially in the morning when I used to be really sore for the first 15-20 minutes of my walks which doesn’t happen any more!
Mentally I am much happier now from the walking and over the past 3 weeks I have actually been learning new skills for work and have even been learning/ playing at night and at weekends which is a stark contrast from before the walking started consistently as I didn’t want to look at a computer after work or at weekends and literally just stayed in bed watching TV and doom scrolling on my phone most of the time! Over the past 2 weeks I have been learning automation and I have been automating a bunch of my highly repetitive tasks that I do at work so next year I will have more time for doing new and more exciting work 🙂 I will continue to automate my day to day tasks while I am on holiday for the next 10 days so I should be in a really good place when I start back at work on the 10th Jan 🙂
On the negative side I have been drinking fizzy drinks since xmas eve and I am getting up to about 2l a day again and I am starting to feel the negative effects from that (poor sleep, acid reflux, cramping in the legs!) So tomorrow I am going cold turkey again and I will try and do 1 whole year without fizzy drinks to see how I feel at the end of the year! I know that most of my health issues and being over weight stem from the amount of Fizzy drinks that I consume especially the acid reflux so a year without fizzy drinks should help me fell loads better!
I have also got out of the habit of leaving the house and walking as soon as I wake up and have instead been lying in bed and doom scrolling and putting off walking until later in the day as I can now as I have the treadmill! This is fine but walking first thing has way more positive benefits than just getting in the steps later so I need to make sure that I at least go out for a 30 minute walk first thing and stop all the doom scrolling and procrastination that has been creeping into my routine!
I also didn’t start training as much as I wanted to over the past month but in hind sight I think that that was the right thing to do as I let my body get used to going from basically sedentary to being able to walk 10000 steps a day with little or no effort in a month was a good move. Now adding BMX and weight training will not be such a big thing. I am thinking as I have 14 weeks before my first race, I will get into my training a bit slower than I was planning and instead of starting sprints and weight training in one go I will add them one at a time so that I build up slowly and have more chance of not getting sick and having to stop training due to over training! I also need to start stretching as although I am less achy than I was I am still really un-flexible and my muscles are always wound pretty tight so I am alway near something snapping so working on my flexibility will not only help with performance it will hopefully reduce the chances of injury!
I think that I will add BMX training first as that will benefit me most in preparing to start racing again and then on 01/02/2024 I will start weight training as well as BMX training. I got some good news yesterday too, the building work at the track will be in phases so first phase will be the start hill so while that is going on I can still ride the 2nd, 3rd and 4th straights then there will be a 3 week break before the berms are done so I can get some full lap work in then when they come back to do the berms I will either have to go to the pump track or maybe I will be able to ride single straights we will see!
So for January my training week will be something like:
Monday AM – Walk (Ride BMX to work)
Monday Lunch – BMX Sprints (60M on cycle path near the office)
Monday PM – Get rest of steps in + Stretching
Tuesday AM – Walk
Tuesday Lunch – BMX Track Work
Tuesday PM – Get rest of steps in + Stretching
Wednesday AM – Walk
Wednesday Lunch – BMX Sprints/ Track Work (30M)
Wednesday PM – Get rest of steps in + Stretching
Thursday AM – Walk
Thursday Lunch- BMX Track Work
Thursday PM – Get rest of steps in + Stretching
Friday AM – Walk
Friday Lunch – BMX Sprints/ Track Work (15M)
Friday PM – Get rest of steps in + Stretching
Saturday AM – Walk
Saturday Lunch – Gates/ coaching Session
Saturday PM – Get rest of steps in + Stretching
Sunday AM – Walk
Sunday Lunch – Rest
Sunday PM – Get rest of steps in and rest.
As Monday is my in office day and I am stopping doing Friday evening on call so no Monday afternoons off any more I have decided that I will do sprints on the cycle path near my office at lunch times and as its really long and flat I will do 60m sprints and I will do them on my heavy old GT Power Series that is slightly over geared! That way I will basically be getting some weight training in as well as sprint training 🙂 Before I do that I need to buy a new break for it as the current one is really bad so I will get a dxr caliper and lever so that it is the same as all my other bikes! I also need to get a comfier warmup/cool down seat and a brightly coloured sprint stool so that people can see it while I am sprinting.
I have just bought a dxr caliper and left hand lever from Amazon as well as a bright green folding stool to use as a sprint block! The Stool will arrive on the 3rd Jan and the brake and lever will arrive on the 4th Jan so the GT will be 100% functional by the time I am in the office next 🙂
I will also put the Burgtec MK4 pedals off of my DH bike onto the GT so it is 100% ready to sprint on!
I will get the GT back from my parents house and replace it with my jump bike as I am not riding the jump bike so its just taking up room in my bedroom so I can free up space in my room for the gym area 🙂 I am seriously thinking about selling the jump bike but I’m still mulling it over!
This week I will make some stickers to stick on the stool so that I can leave it at work and people will not steal it! I am just scouring ebay for a cheap second hand seat that will work with my cooldown post.