Author: rakeempeebles

Can someone explain to me why quitting smoking, after 21 years and six months was easier than trying to control what I eat?

I was properly, well-and-truly… ADDICTED to cigarettes! I had smoked from the day before my 13th birthday and I had always smoked as many as I could afford when I was a kid (mainly because I couldn’t afford packs of 20). I had inhaled deeply from the beginning. I had smoked and smoked until I was, in the last few years of it, smoking 25+ per day.

The attempts at quitting had been increasing in regularity and no longer just attached to periods of illness (this was usually one of those chest infections where your bronchial tubes feel like they’re on fire). I wanted to quit, but I was convinced – 100% certain – that smoking had me in it’s clutches forever. I thought I was going to die young, like a lot of people in my family and I was absolutely sure that smoking was going to be the main cause of it!

Fast-forward to six years, five months and 15 days later… I don’t smoke. There has been ONE moment of weakness (not that long ago… late December) where I ended up very drunk and smoked less than 1/3rd of a cigarette. It was disgusting and I really didn’t enjoy the head-spinning sensation that went along with it. I sobered up and felt a great sense of disappointment in myself. All of that combined has proved to me that I am utterly over this most insidious addiciton.

Working in an office is definitely not good for your health (as with many sedentary jobs). Doing ten-hour shifts Monday to Friday and another five hours every other Saturday morning is enough to make you exhausted. This was the main reason behind me not having the energy to stay active or go to the gym.

The other reason for me getting way out of shape was the fact that we had our own little kitchen just off of the main office and a fridge freezer standing in the middle of the room. We didn’t even go anywhere at lunchtime… we would get up, fix our lunch and then sit back down (very often I would just work through my lunch hour).

It got to the point where my work clothes were cutting me in half. It was a very relaxed office anyway, so I started going in wearing jeans until those started doing the same. The weight gain carried on and I left that particular job. I had to buy new work clothes for the new one.

Since I was now doing normal office hours, I decided enough was enough and did what a lot of ex-soldiers will do in a similar situation… I went out and absolutely beasted myself! I didn’t measure it until afterwards, but I went from my front door up to, and twice around, the park. Later, while in serious pain with my back, I measured the distance and discovered that I had done three 10K runs in the space of a week.

Running around in a green, baggy suit gave me experience of what straining your back through exercise feels like, but I had mistakenly taken actual damage occurring for my lower back muscles complaining because they hadn’t been used in such a long time. This kind of pain I’ve felt many times in the past and have had to run through it. I should have probably stopped after the first run.

I gave myself prolapsed discs and pretty severe sciatica that summer. My doctor referred me for an MRI which confirmed the diagnosis, and also for physiotherapy. We explored many versions of pain management with all sorts of types and strengths of painkiller. This was met with limited success.

The doc referred me to a local spinal consultant who told me I was going for ‘facet joint injections’ and an epidural. I only knew what one of those things is and I was pretty sure that it was the go-to thing for pregnant women!

Months later I had my injections. They rid me of the sciatica within days, but the back spasms and excruciating pain in my power back has never gone, despite having two more lots of injections.

Now… in all this time, I have become more and more sedentary and have gained lots more weight. This isn’t through choice, you understand. It’s just very painful to be active and move around. I have tried as much as I can and with various things to help my muscles recover and to make being active easier. It is clearly not working.

A good friend told me a while back: “Forget exercise. Forget physio. You need to diet. You need to manage your weight and bring it down in a way that doesn’t involve you needing to move around.”

This is great advice, but I am finding being sensible and grown-up when it comes to food pretty much impossible. Part of the problem is that standing in the kitchen to cook a proper meal is really painful – way more than normal. I also don’t sleep much (or well) which makes my energy levels utterly pitiful!

No. Instead of doing what I know needs to be done, I end up ordering takeaway food. This has caused so many more problems of it’s own… the main one being that I am gaining not losing weight.

I know that being ill for so long has caused a not-unforeseen-case of severe depression and that this adds to the overall problem, but I can’t understand how I can kick something as addictive as cigarettes and yet struggle so hard with doing something about my diet. It is so ridiculously simple a form of being grown up… we are all armed with the scientific knowledge that x  is a good way to eat and y will lead to health problems and, ultimately, early death.

Stopping a pattern of behaviour that you know is killing you shouldn’t be this hard.

I did it once before…

Happy New Year to you all!

It’s January and it’s cold! Despite this, I have gotten the bike out a few times this year already and there were a few times just before Christmas too.
The main reason for this is that I have piled on the weight again, sadly. My back seemed to take it badly when the weather changed to cold back in October/November. I have also identified a rather vicious circle that accompanies such a change – when my back gets back, it gets really  bad! Like, can’t-stand-up-for-very-long bad! This then leads to me not wanting to put any effort in to making myself food, quite simply because standing in the kitchen to make it is agony. The upshot of this is that I ended up ordering far  more in the way of takeaways and the rest of the time was crap like sandwiches that only take a moment to make.

All of this led to a marked increase in my weight. Add on to that the usual Christmas weight gain… oh, I didn’t go anywhere or do anything… I just found myself comfort eating all the lovely things the supermarket were shoving into our faces, like mince pies and boxes of Quality Street.

I feared the scales and didn’t brave them until a few days ago when I was 19st 7½ lbs.

The bike has been out. Salad, vegetables and fruit have replaced the sandwiches and takeaways. I have started to lose weight again already.

A lot of us go through this period in January which is a mixture of new hope, self-loathing, determination and, ultimately, pain in order to reset what we have done with our indulgences.

My back is still bad (it’s still cold!) and most days I can cycle, but not walk very far. Sleep still eludes me most of the time, but I have been binge-watching box sets, so that’s something.

Today’s weigh-in was 19st 3½ lbs. My goal for January is to get down to 18st 7lbs.

The birth certificate and passport weren’t enough

Now I have to have .com after my name too! I’ll admit it… it looks a bit odd and… grown up, I think. Either way, it’s official. The domain name is mine. Well, for a year, at least.
Now all I have to do is find the motivation to fill it with things worth visiting the site for.

Today is just me playing with my new toy. I will, over the coming months, be detailing how the progress of my book is coming along and I may even run a competition to see if I can’t find a decent title for it, because, despite knowing the whole story, I’m stumped when it comes to thinking one up.

There will also be posts of my artwork and also any good photography shots  that make it past the recycle bin on my desktop.

Let’s face it – 2016 has been a horrible year. We’ve had everything from mass shootings and terror attacks, to natural disasters and the deaths of a huge number of greatly loved and admired celebrities.

I will be drawing a line under the year and then grabbing 2017 by the scruff of the neck and dragging it along with me, if it can’t keep up. Next year is going to be stellar! I hope you will come along for the ride.

Set new personal best for distance

This week has been a real push on – mostly because the weather has been favourable and I’ve been itching to get out more.

The first day of decent weather was on Monday 21st, although there was still a chill in the breeze and more than enough of it to cause a headwind (one thing I am not is aerodynamic!) I pushed hard and made it round Victoria Park four times. This is what my old training routine was and I was really glad to get back up to that level, even if it was a struggle.

Tuesday’s weather was similar, but felt warmer. Perhaps there was a change in the direction of the wind that made it feel warmer. Whatever the reason, I was glad of it and managed the four laps again. I mentioned before that the mapmyfitness app failed on me twice, so I fixed that and went out again on Wednesday. I’ve posted the results of that session already, but by the end of it my legs were dead. I’d been pushing through the usual amounts of pain in my back anyway, but the midweek workout left me empty. So much so that I ended up having a hot bath to soothe the muscles. This may not sound extraordinary to you, but for me it really is – I hate baths – the idea of sitting in what I call ‘me soup’ is disgusting! I have always been a shower kind of a guy, but there are times when needs must.

Thursday was the day I had planned for my rest day, but I needn’t have bothered with the planning; I was dead on my feet! I am very pleased at the difference a day makes! Even last night my legs were like lead and my back was worse than normal.

Today I felt like a new man (a new man with a crocked back, but still…) It’s a Bank Holiday, the sun’s out. The temperature and wind conditions were extremely favourable, so I went out for my usual ride. I knew Victoria Park would be busy and the local Borough Council have recently painted signs on the ground at each entrance to the park saying:

‘PEDESTRIAN PRIORITY

CONSIDERATE CYCLING

WELCOME’

It’s a park. It’s sunny. It’s busy. I was more than prepared for a much higher volume of people in the park. What has bugged me is that people seem to think that these signs now mean that they have every right to do whatever they like to cyclists! They also seem to think that this warning sign also extends to dogs and skateboarders/roller-bladers! I nearly hit several stupid people and/or their pets, simply because their ignorance left them blissfully unaware of the damage that a 19 stone man who is travelling at about 10 mph will do to them and theirs should they decide to veer wildly to the left or right with no warning at all!

Okay – rant over. Even these dullards could not dampen my energy today. I got to four laps and felt like the lead was well and truly gone from my legs, so I decided to push on and see if I could manage six laps. I am pleased to say that I got to the end of the six feeling like I could have managed more. Common sense prevailed and I stopped there, so as to preserve my energies for further days and also to stop me from injuring some rudderless dolt.

I don’t think I will be doing this distance every day from now on… I would like to try and work my way up to longer distances gently in order to avoid injury. The last thing I want to do now is stop.

If it can go wrong for me, it usually does

Okay, so, the weather has been nicer and I’ve been out twice this week. One of the things I like about using the mapmyfitness app is that it tracks me the whole way around the route and I can also link the workout I’ve done to this blog.

The last two times I’ve been out (not including today) the gps on the app has failed and it has told me that my workout was χ minutes, but 0 miles and, therefore, 0 calories and so on.

I had to input the info manually, so it came down to best guess. In the end I have had to uninstall the app and then went to re-install it. This, for some unknown technical reason, wouldn’t work. While I was searching the app store to find it again I saw that there was one by the same people called mapmyride, so I figured what the hell and installed that instead.

The upshot is that I now have a working gps/workout tracker again, but I’ve also discovered that this one talks to you (if you have the hands-free kit in) and tells you your time at 5 mile intervals as well as splits and calories burned.

In other news, I had a very crappy week last week, so my weight went back up. Having weighed myself this morning I can report that I have lost weight, just not as much as I would have liked. I am now 19 st 4 lbs, which is a loss of almost 4 lbs since I started. It certainly would have been more if I had not been comfort eating.

So, without further ado… here’s today’s workout around Victoria Park, during which I am 99% sure that I was passed by Boris Johnson and a big, black Range Rover staff car. He was already past me before I could yell obscenities at him. Next time, Boris… next time!

Time to get the bike out

It’s been a while since I put anything in here. That’s because it’s been cold.

It’s been cold and I’ve turned into a big Jessie! I just can’t handle the cold like I used to.

One positive thing to take from all this is that I will be out more and more as the weather improves.

With that in mind, I’m off out while this lasts. More later.

Today’s entry is more by way of a check-in due to fatigue

I am very pleased to say that I managed to go out again today. It was a matter of waiting until the rain had stopped and it had dried up sufficiently for me to go out.

The bike desperately needs a service; the gear and brake cables need adjusting and I don’t know what I’m doing, so it will have to wait until I can find the money to take it down to Halfords. The bolt that had come undone when I uncovered the bike has vanished completely, obviously somewhere along the way, so the pannier cage now rattles.

My back and chest still hurt before, during and after, but I’m hoping that will start to ease sometime soon as my workouts continue.

So here’s today’s link: 4 laps of Victoria Park, again. I haven’t even checked to see whether the times compare – I only ever look at the calories burned.

I have lost weight, but I am going to wait until Friday and make that my weigh-in day, since I started this on a Friday.

There have also been some messages of encouragement from friends I haven’t heard from in a while, which has been a massive boost to my state of mind and really made my day today!  🙂

Two forms of exercise. One winner.

Yesterday evening, the missus and I went for a late Sunday afternoon stroll. Braving the elements, we decided on a route less traveled (assuming that the park would be closing since the sun was going down) and walked to the Southern end of Mile End park. The very leisurely amble was intermittent and very painful. The pain from my lower back and my chest screamed at me with every step. Annoyingly, it was only subsiding when we were almost home.

As well as being agony to do, it was also very disheartening. The unfortunate part is that I know I have to fight through the pain before things will improve.

Today was a different story, I decided to try and tackle one of the aspects of cycling that was putting me off; the cold weather. Today I chose not to dress for sport, but more for a walk in the cold February air. Jeans, fleece ‘under-trousers’ (I don’t know what else to call them – I bought them on a trip to Chicago, which was about the same time of year, but shedloads colder!), base layer top, t-shirt, hoodie and scarf. I probably looked more like I was more used to using my bike for transport than keeping fit.

Not that it matters. What does matter is that I managed to do my old training session of 4 laps of Victoria Park with only the same kind of pain that I have if I am sedentary. It does cause me quite a lot of pain, but I am now of the opinion that if it’s going to hurt anyway then I might as bloody well!

Bizarrely, I may have to cycle lots before I can walk properly again.

After 4 months of hibernation my bike isn’t dead

In an attempt to lose weight and get healthier, the missus and I got bikes last summer. I have to confess that my years of living in London have made me soft and we only ever got them out on the nicer days. I stopped trying to brave the conditions sometime around October. When we got them, I made sure we had everything needed to keep them in good nick; weather covers and tools for maintenance. I didn’t get any lubricants or cleaning stuff, because I wasn’t sure which ones to get or the best way to apply them. I am always reluctant to look on YouTube or Google for answers as there are always several hundreds of ways how not  to do it.

I have quite a few friends who are keen cycling enthusiasts and a few that I would consider expert level cyclists. As I mentioned before, I have been suffering from depression and, as such, I am considerably more withdrawn than I have been for a great many years. I want to contact people, but don’t. I want to visit my friends, but never have the money, the time or the inclination to push through the pain. I have discovered that people are very reluctant to take the time out of their schedules to make the trip all way the to London or even across the city to visit. That’s not to say there haven’t been visitors – just very few and infrequent ones.

I finally got in touch with a friend, Nick, who gave me some useful advice and some great encouragement, as well as a link to a cyclist named Ernest Gagnon, who is substantially larger than myself. He not only cycles, but competes in races and has the backing of a good few equipment suppliers.

So, with this in mind, I finally uncovered the bike yesterday, expecting to find rust and masses of sheltering insects and spiders. Happily, this was not the case. The only tiny bits of rust were on the chrome brackets holding on the pannier frame and no insects. There was, however, plenty of dirt and a bolt that had undone itself and fallen off. How this happens to a stationary bicycle, I have no idea!

The temperature was very cold yesterday and was made worse by a stiff breeze coming from the North-East. In May of this year, I will have lived away from Scotland for 18 years and I have definitely lost my resistance to the cold. I admit it – I have become a soft Southerner!

In order to make the most of this determined state of mind, I am conscious of doing too much too soon and restricted myself to two laps of Victoria Park before heading back. My usual workout during last summer was to do 4 laps of the park. My lessened version seemed like a good way to ease myself back into cycling.

The cold is still going to be a major factor in how long or how often I want to go out, but I also have to contend with those days where my back pain means that I can hardly straighten myself. Other factors that I have to find the determination to fight through are the usual ‘saddle-sore’ pains and numbness caused by my weight cutting off the blood to my lower body and of course the reclusive/depressive state of mind.

Great to know my bike hasn’t died waiting for me to love it and use it again. It was far less painful than walking around the park, but I think I will save the walking for the days where it’s too cold and I want to wrap up in clothes not conducive to cycling.

AVANTI!

This is my journey back from the point of no return

I weighed myself this morning. It’s something I seem to have done a lot less lately.

Every weigh-in is like a trip to Guinness World Records. It’s always a new high for me and, at the same time, a new low. This morning I was 19 stones 7¾ lbs. I have, at this weight, suffered ever-increasing amounts of health problems, as well as a general feeling of discomfort. When I awoke today I did so with an unrelenting feeling of pressure around my diaphragm and rib cage. I have been putting up with a great deal of pain for a long time – so much so that it has become ‘normal’. You know, it feels weird actually writing that. This discomfort was as well as my usual constant pain.

It was making it difficult to move, difficult to breathe. It didn’t let up as the day went on. I initially wondered if it was down to trapped wind or perhaps brought on by the day-to-day constipation caused by my pain medication (sorry for being so graphic, but this ain’t a pretty story). As the morning went on, the usual things that would alleviate both of these things happened in their natural course, but did nothing for the pressure.

I know in my (almost certainly) enlarged heart that it was down to one thing – fat.

It would be easy to look at this situation and say: “Just get off of your fat, lazy ass and do some exercise!” And normally you’d be right. Here’s why it’s not as easy as all that…

What landed me in this mess in the first place

After university I found getting the kind of work I’d trained for extremely hard to do. Sure, there is journalism work out there, but with every man and woman and their dogs offering their written work for free, getting a job in the industry either pays peanuts or the work is expected to be handed over for free for the chance to get your work in print.

Anyway, cutting a long and boring story short, I ended up doing what a lot of people in my position do – I took up a temporary admin job. The issue was that I was working Monday to Friday from 7 am to 5 pm and 7 am to 12 noon on every other Saturday. The hours themselves are totally doable – many people work far worse shift patterns and don’t end up the size I have. What caused the start of my expansion was this: I was far too knackered after getting up at 5 am every day to have the energy to go to the gym or play sports after work. On the weekends I just wanted to do nothing; to relax utterly so that I was ready for the following week. The office was very small and more like a corridor than an office with all of the desks down the one wall that had windows. On the other wall were a series of doors, which had various things in them like files and the toilet, but the one door that was my downfall was the kitchen.

It was too small to have the large fridge/freezer in it – that stood just outside the door, in the office. At lunchtime, we rarely left our desks and I often worked straight through. So, basically, I was seated for a minimum of 10 hours a day at work and then, exhausted, recumbent in front of the t.v. of an evening.

Let’s take February 2013 as the point of origin for all of this. I wasn’t exactly what you’d call skinny to start with! I have, since about aged 15, had a rugby player’s build. Once I was old enough to drink, my body only fleetingly came close to have any muscular definition. I know that I did wear 30″ jeans years ago, but I couldn’t tell you when I moved up to 32″ and then through the sizes to the gargantuan ones I wear now.

In case your wondering, being 6′ 1″ tall (I used to be 6′ 2″ – I assume the weight is making me shorter) and weighing 19 st 7¾ lbs means that you’re fairly likely to have a 42″ waist. It may be bigger. Those are the sizes I squeeze into. I recently bought some new ones and they already feel like they don’t fit very well.

That particular desk job was followed by two more and it was in May 2014 that I decided that I really ought to do something about my ever growing waistline. I’d been a soldier before (twice!) so it really shouldn’t be all that hard to whip myself back into some sort of shape, right? Wrong. Dead wrong. It turns out that all that extra weight doesn’t go well with running (well… jogging, really) three 10km routes in the space of one week.

I had to push myself through the pain I was feeling in my lower back. At the time I put it  down to nothing more than my muscles screaming their displeasure at being used. Two massive prolapsed discs later and I was using a walking stick to go to work. I’d only just started there and had been offered a permanent position off of the back of being agency staff. The job came with a standard three month probationary period. I couldn’t afford any time off, so I got used to dragging myself into work anyway. They seemed genuinely concerned and got me a special chair and even went as far as having the Health & Safety consultant that they kept on retainer come in and assess my work-space. He told me that my screen was too low, but concluded that my bosses had done everything they could to help my plight.

To cut yet another long story short, I was referred by my doctor for an M.R.I. scan, which revealed the two prolapsed discs that my sciatica had all but proved I had.

Scans, tests, physio and painkillers

September 2014 saw the first of two M.R.I. scans and confirmed the diagnosis of my doctors and physiotherapists. I have now had three lots of facet-joint injections in my spine and the epidurals that went along with them. The first lot of injections sorted the sciatica out, but did nothing for the latent lower back pain. I strongly suspect that this may be due to me having put on so much extra weight in the interim. The painkillers I have been prescribed have changed, but only increased in their potency. I am now on a dosage somewhere the coherent side of unadulterated, unfettered opiates. My body has now formed a tolerance for these too, which means that I don’t much feel or look stoned when I’m taking them, but my physical dependence on them for ‘normality’ comes to the fore after only 24 hours free of them. It resembles the onset of a terrible cold or flu. I discovered this at Christmas, when I tried to wean myself off of them in order to have a wee drink. It most certainly wasn’t worth the ill feeling.

My local hospital, which is mercifully close by, does have a hydrotherapy pool… which I am not allowed in, because I am over their 100 kg Health & Safety weight limit!

I am waiting to see a specialist at the local Persistent Pain clinic (if my Mother were still alive I have no doubt she would have seen this as very amusing.)

The straw that (almost) broke the camel’s back

I have not worked now for almost 18 months. This has been a great strain on my body and mind as well as my relationships. I don’t go out much; I’ve hardly seen my friends for all this time. I don’t go on holiday. Being stuck in the flat day after day sounds great, but not when you’re in loads of pain and discomfort. My mental state has suffered immensely and my doctor has now got me on antidepressants too. I haven’t been taking them long enough to know if they’re doing any good yet. They do give me the most vivid dreams – not always nice.

In short, I have come to the end of my rope and the strands are fraying. Not a good place to be when one weighs 19 st 7¾ lbs/124 kgs! I have to do something before my genetics take over and kill me off in a stunningly dull, stereotypical Scottish manner.

Exercise has been painful for quite some time now, but it is being joined by activity of any sort and that I find wholly unacceptable. I have been walking this morning, but it is a very small start. The walk around Victoria Park was slow-going and extremely painful, but it is that one step that all great journeys start with.

This blog, too, is my way of documenting my progress back to being a healthy weight and a far happier person. Not worrying about dying at any moment is surely a goal worth striving towards. The 22-year-old me that left Edinburgh and moved to London never thought that one day I would wish to be able to fit into size 36″ waist jeans.

This is gonna hurt, but let’s see if I can find the same determination that got me into the Army twice. It would be nice if you checked in with me now and again just to see how I’m getting on.