walk the earth, my friend

I decided over the weekend that I was going to start walking.

A few weeks (or was it months?) back - roughly when the weather started to perk up a bit - I started doing walks on Sunday afternoons. This lasted for a little while and I even had what I thought was a really good route worked out.

The route was about 2 miles or so, which isn't a huge distance, but one of the key points about it was that the last stage involved a really steep bit of about half a mile. The meant it was quite decent exercise for someone who is horribly out of shape like me, but also didn't take forever.

However, my main problem I encountered was timing. As the summer got going I started to get a nasty clash - both F1 and MotoGP races tend to start at around 1 or 2 in the afternoon and go on for about an hour and a half. This was right when I'd made the slot for walking, so I kept finding myself making the "oh, I'll fit it in next week instead".

But of course I didn't, so I basically stopped do the walks.

So what's different this time?

Well mainly, my plan is to take a very short walk every morning. For about the last 2 years I've been getting up at about 6:45 and going into work very early. Quite why I do this when I spend that first hour basically browsing the web, I don't know, so instead I've decided I'll go for a short sharp walk first thing and not worry about getting in quite so early.

And it really is a short walk - about 15 minutes, so probably less than a mile. But that's part of the aim - by doing shorter walks for time being I'm hoping I can build up. My hope is that I may then be able to do a short walk some evenings as well.

I also think I've hit upon a strategy that allows me to basically replace my bread consumption during the week. I'll still bake myself a fresh loaf at the weekend, partly as a treat and partly as I can control what and when I eat a lot more easily at the weekend.

I'm still too embarrassed to say what I replaced the bread with, but I think I'm feeling okay about admitting I want to loose weight. Previously I was simply saying it was about being a "bit fitter" and while I still want that (it'd be so nice to go up stairs without getting totally of breath) I can admit that a big part of it is being morbidly obese (no matter how fit you are if you were giving a piggy back to someone who weighed the same as you up those stairs, you'd be out of breath too).

As such, I ordered a set of bathroom scales to actually weight myself and determine the extent of the problem. I know it's going to be horribly scary - the scales I've ordered are "XL" if you will and I've still got a feeling I'll be over their maximum weight. And I'm not kidding there - I genuinely think that even though they measure way above what normal scales do I'll weigh more than that.