Fitness for the Skinny Guy

Migration

2008-07-29T15:19:00.001+01:00

Please note that I've migrated over to a new blog that you can find here:

http://fsg.mirius.co.uk/blog/

Goal Setting - Long Term

2008-06-27T12:12:00.009+01:00

Podcast - audio track from webcast

Here is a short video in the context of fitness for the skinny guy, the picture size is perhaps a little small but it was a balance of getting something small enough to play. Ah well, it's all about learning and growth.

My thoughts for today revolve around goal setting and in particular, setting yourself long term goals. Fitness is for life, no matter what you are interested in, be it muscle or strength building, long distance running or whatever. If you've got a long term vision, and be prepared to be very courageous about setting that long term goal, then you can start working shorter term goals that work to achieve it. If you find yourself doing something that isn't going towards your long term goal then it gives you a chance to pause and perhaps to change course. If you don't have a long term goal then you may not realise that you in fact going round in circles or even worse going in completely the wrong direction!

Maintaining your motivation

2008-06-24T17:57:00.001+01:00

When we finally make the plunge and start something new, it may be something that we've wanted to do for a while or perhaps it's just something that has caught our attention, we often have a flush of enthusiasm about it. It's interesting, fresh and perhaps we have some emotional attachment or commitment to it and I think that enthusiasm and emotions are very often interconnected because enthusiasm is an emotional response.

The problem with enthusiasm is that it's a finite resource and after a few hours, a few days or perhaps a week or two our enthusiasm will wane and yet another unfinished project will bite the dust. Often we feel a little bit regretful, perhaps we feel guilty if it was something important to us so we try and revive it, but now we've lost the emotional push, the enthusiasm, and most likely the attempt will be in vain.

The answer is to understand that we have patterns to our behaviour, which I want to go into more detail in another time. The truth is that we are driven by habit far more than we realise or wish to admit. We might make excuses about preferences or external forces but the time we get up, the time we go to bed, the clothes we wear, what we eat and so forth often have a large part of habit about them. Rarely do we challenge our habits with any vigour because they are comfortable, we don't have to think about them. That isn't automatically a bad thing, but changing habits is quite hard and is likely to take at least three weeks of new behaviour, safer to say a month, before a new habit will replace the old. Hardly surprising then that a flush of enthusiasm doesn't last long enough to really impact.

The solution is to plan for failure. We know that the enthusiasm will not be enough on it's own and it certainly won't last long enough. The biggest problem most of us face is that our lives are already full. In order to start something new, something old must give way, something we are in the habit of doing.

What we need to do is to focus the enthusiasm on changing our lives so that the new thing has a chance to grow, and not to use the enthusiasm to do the new thing. If we can restructure our lives or do whatever is necessary to allow the new thing to develop then we have a much higher chance of succeeding. Remember though that the enthusiasm won't last long enough to maintain that lifestyle change, but success is more likely if we focus our attention on structure instead of on the project.

Breakfast - why you'd be a fool to miss it.

2008-06-23T22:13:00.004+01:00

Today I thought I'd share an email I received from Dr Bryan Walsh. Now, you might wonder why I think it's relevant, but I think that it has a couple of points that are key to the health and fitness of the skinny guy. I'll say outright that there are some slightly dubious points about this piece of research, but the contentious points aren't really related to the point in hand here.

Dear David,

Every time I turn around . . . it turns out my mother was right.

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” she’d say. And she was right.

But she didn’t believe in breakfast for the reasons I’m about to tell you . . .

Earlier this week, researchers presented their findings that a big breakfast is important for . . . get this . . . losing weight.

Yes, you read that correctly. A big breakfast – as much as half your daily calories – can help you lose weight.

This means the “I’m going to skip breakfast today because I’m too busy” mentality is the exact opposite of what you need to be doing if you want to lose weight.

The Study

In this week's annual Endocrine Society meeting, it was reported that obese women lost almost five times as much weight eating a large breakfast than did women eating a restrictive low carbohydrate one.

And just how much weight did these women lose? After eight months, women in the control group eating a restrictive low-carbohydrate breakfast lost an average of only 9 pounds. The women eating the “big breakfast” diet lost almost 40 pounds!

Forty pounds of weight loss over an eight month period by simply eating a big, balanced breakfast. Wow.

Why it works

According to researchers involved in this study, when you wake up in the morning, you are primed and ready to eat. If you eat right away, your body uses the food for energy and helps set your metabolic rate for the whole day. If you don’t eat however, your body starts looking for other sources of energy, namely your own muscle tissue. Then, later that day when you do decide to eat, your body is already in “energy saving mode” and stores what you eat as fat.

So based on this, researchers created what they called the “big breakfast” diet. Their breakfast, which accounted for a full 50 percent of the daily calories, included milk, 3 ounces of lean meat, two slices of cheese, two whole grain servings, one fat serving and one ounce of milk chocolate.

Now that’s what I call breakfast!

In fact, their “big breakfast” diet was almost 1,300 calories. A far cry from your typical coffee-and-bagel breakfast.

A bigger, better breakfast

While I philosophically disagree with their breakfast menu mainly because of the inclusion of dairy (far too many people are sensitive to it these days, causing gut inflammation and a host of other issues - see my previous post Dairy Does Not Do It), I love the fact that they have shown the importance of a big breakfast on weight-loss.

There are many ways to eat a “big breakfast” each morning, but here’s one example:

3 to 4 ounces of good-quality, organic meat (last night’s leftovers work well)
a bowl of slow-cooked oatmeal with some flax seeds, coconut milk, a little honey, cinnamon and fresh berries
Tea or black coffee

Again, there are many options but the point remains the same . . . a big, balanced breakfast, as much as half your daily calories, is a great way to start your day.

And your waist line may end up shrinking because of it.

Yours in health and happiness,

Bryan P. Walsh, ND

P.S. Please, share this information with your friends and family, and then have them visit www.fatisnotyourfault.com to sign up for future emails such as these. Skipping breakfast is one of the big myths of weight-loss and this study needs to be shared with people interested in losing weight.

DISCLAIMER: THE CONTENT AND INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS E-NEWSLETTER ARE FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. IT MAY NOT BE CONSTRUED AS MEDICAL ADVICE, AND WE DO NOT INTEND FOR THIS INFORMATION TO BE USED TO DIAGNOSE OR PRESCRIBE FORMS OF TREATMENT.

Now, most of you aren't going to be losing weight, but I think this strikes to the heart of why we have trouble gaining weight. I often read people commenting about fast metabolisms and the like, but I think that's often just an excuse. Most are skinny because of poor nutrition. Gaining muscle is hard work. Make sure that you don't allow your body to burn that hard won muscle because you can't remember or be bothered, whichever is the case, to eat properly.

Chicken - a good fitness food?

2008-06-19T14:36:00.001+01:00

Food is something that interests everyone who is concerned about their fitness, skinny or not. One of the foods that we is always on the recommended lists is chicken. Now, you'll note that it's nearly always lean chicken breast that is on there, but the story may not be as simple as we think.

According to tests done by Professor Michael Crawford, an expert in dietary fats and essential fatty acids and who has studied chicken for the last thirty years, some of us need to think twice about just what it is that we are eating. Modern, factory farmed chicken actually can have as much fat as a burger according to the Professor. The birds are fed a diet that promotes growth and get no exercise. It should come to no surprise then that those chickens in his test had fat levels of 12.7%. Back in the seventies, chicken was just an important a source of omega 3 as fish is now, but the test showed the factory farmed chicken to have less than 0.1% of Omega 3.

In order to develop omega 3, chickens need three things; greens in their diet, especially grass, exerise and they need to live long enough for the muscle fibres to actually develop. Factory farmed chickens are slaughtered when they are between one and two months old. Corn fed chickens are even more fatty, no matter how well they are raised.

So, it's not just a matter of animal welfare, it's in our interests too. Free range chicken can contain ten times the levels of Omega 3 and 25% less fat than its factory farmed equivalent. So the message is - think before you next eat chicken. Any chicken that has been processed before you eat it - burgers, KFC, sandwiches etc is going to be a factory farmed bird.

A final thought, most of that Omega 3 is in the brown meat, not in the breast.

Prof. Dr. Michael Crawford
The Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition, London, UK

Dr Michael Crawford is a leading expert in brain chemistry and human nutrition, specialising in work on dietary fats and the health benefits of Essential Fatty Acids to humans. After 25 years as Head of Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition at the Nuffield Institute of Comparative Medicine, London and 16 years as Special Professor at the Dept of Applied Biochemistry and Nutrition, University of Nottingham, Dr Crawford has a notable record of achievements and honours acknowledging his academic research, business and government activities.

Dr. Michael is the founder and Director of, The Institute of Brain Chemistry and Human Nutrition, London Metropolitan University. In his 1989 book "The Driving Force: Food, Evolution and the Future" he presented significant evidence in favour of the Aquatic Ape Theory, principally that the modern human brain is unlikely to have developed on a savannah diet, but could have found the long-chain fatty acids it is built from easily in the seafood of a littoral environment.

Building Pecs,

2008-06-03T22:57:00.001+01:00

Powerful Pecs Video Lesson

If you've ever wondered how to develop those pecs that'll give you a great chest? I came across this very interesting video which has a lot of information on how to go about it.

Working well on the TT beginners program

2008-05-30T18:16:00.002+01:00

Missed yet another interval routine this morning, that really is
starting to annoy me, though it's a bit of a catch 22 at the moment.
I've decided not to be afraid of my current weight but to focus on
converting it from fat to muscle and perhaps even gaining some weight,
though I really would like to be rid of the love handles before I go
gaining too much just yet!

Still the routines this morning were good and I started to push myself
in them, which is where I want to be. The step ups were very hard and I
found that my grip on my left hand isn't really strong enough, the
dumbell felt as though it were slipping out of my hand. The dumbell
press was fine, a balance between pushing more weight next time and
keeping a good technique on it. So far I've been keeping the same
weight for the press and the step up and I'm fairly sure that I'll
break down on the step up first.

On the remaining bodyweight exercises I started to push myself,
including running the pushups to failure. Overall I thought it was a
good routine. It pushed me fairly hard. But I do need the interval
training in there because I'm resting too much between sets - which is
purely down to a lack of fitness.

Increase in weight, skipped intervals

2008-05-28T18:01:00.001+01:00

Today was another disappointment because I only got the weights part of the routine done. It doesn't overly worry me just yet because weight loss isn't my biggest issue, in fact it isn't an issue at all, but I do want a balanced program which beefs up my overall fitness levels and that isn't going to happen if I keep skipping the intervals. Now I could try and slot the intervals in tomorrow, but I don't want to set that pattern. I don't know I'll have to see. Finally though I did get the weights up on the weighted routines up to something that was an effort to do. Still not very heavy mind, only 14 kilos (30lb) on the dumbells. I'm beginning to wonder if at some point I'm going to have to upgrade all of my lifting gear into something a bit more professional. I'm still a long way off the sorts of weights I will end up lifting once I get into more strength routines (not peeked yet into the TT for muscle growth) but I guess I should start keeping an eye open for second hand kit.

Just what is a skinny guy?

2008-05-27T16:05:00.002+01:00

Now, I'll have to admit that this one made me smile. Now we all have our own mental image I'm sure, but I'd not seen anyone put numbers to this before, so this little table was quite interesting.

A rule of thumb is at least 1kg for each cm above 1m (use this converter). Anything less you'll always look skinny. There's no upper limit, if you want to weigh more go for it. Examples of minimum goal weights:

# 1m70/5′5″ at least 70kg/154lbs
# 1m75/5′7″ at least 75kg/165lbs
# 1m80/5′9″ at least 80kg/176lbs
# 1m85/6′1″ at least 85kg/187lbs
# 1m90/6′3″ at least 90kg/200lbs

Aside from a slight eyebrow raise at the metric conversion there, I weigh about 160 lbs which is a lot heavier than I was, but I'm still a long way short of the 176 lb the table gives me. It does however ring true as there is no doubt that I'm still fairly skinny.

How to Gain Weight for Skinny Guys (with Meal Plan) | StrongLifts.com
Technorati Tags: Fitness, Weight Gain, Skinny Guy

Bodyweight exercise tutorials

2008-05-27T14:11:00.002+01:00

Now I've been making excellent progress on my training using the Turbulence Training formulas. Craig, the guy who developed the system is an excellent trainer, even over the distances of the internet. Now, most of the exercises I've come across for the skinny guy are all about gaining weight. Now that is an admirable thing in my opinion, but in my case first I need to get my body into a state where I can start training it.

Nutrition, as I've commented before was the thing that was really holding me back, as it is with nearly every skinny guy out there. We tend I think to be perversely proud of our weight and absolutely paranoid about gaining anything. I am now so over that it's not true. After a couple of weeks not only have I not lost weight, neither have I gained it and that despite eating quite a bit more than I was. What I am seeing is a return of muscle tone and the growth of muscle even on the relatively light beginners program I'm on at the moment. I do have the advantage of having had more muscle in the past and I think that is a big hurdle to overcome.

Once I get my body back into trim and exercising is once more a part of my life then I' going to go for both strength and bulk. Which brings me to the point of this blog. I absolutely love what this guy has put together. Now, he isn't huge but he is very strong. I do want to be bigger for sure, but I don't just want bulk, I want agility to go with it. Oddly enough that's what I like about the TT routines. It might not be the fastest route to bulk but I think it's a very balanced route to it.
Beastskills bodyweight tutorials

Back on track

2008-05-21T16:08:00.001+01:00

Last night I was aftraid that I wasn't going to make my workout today. I'd stayed up late as I'd expected but I'd been involved in some physical exertion that I'll leave to your imagination but I'd felt awful, out of breath, feeling weak and dizzy. Looking back now I realise it was probably because I'd not eaten in the evening. I don't have any medical issues as far as I'm aware but I'm really starting to wonder if I've got some sorts of sugar level issues. It was however a clear slap around the face that left no doubts in my mind just how important it is for me to be here and now doing this.

This morning I was up later than I should have been but I was determined to get todays workout under my belt. The warm up started shakey and I realised after I'd done it that I'd actually used up half the time it should have taken for the whole thing. I rest too much, but I think it's down to my poor recovery times. Of course it's important to respect the times and not to recover too much, but I'll get there.

I upped the weights again to twelve for the dumbell presses, and it needs to increase again for the next workout. I could feel the pressure so I know I'm getting there but it was still too easy. Amusingly though I find it hard to get up off the bench, there must be a technique to it. The rest of the workout went well and the interval training was good, though less work than the last time I did this set. It pushed me, which was great but I didn't have the sheer effort of the last time.

One week on, fitness for the Skinny Guy

2008-05-19T21:50:00.000+01:00

I've been working on my turbulence training beginners programme to improve my fitness and fat loss. I did my measurements yesterday as I'm now a week in, but there wasn't any real change. Some small variations are likely down to my measurement so I'll wait for next week to see how things look.

Of course there was some disappointment that nothing had changed but really I'm quite happy. I've not exercised for months so a slow start will minimise the injury risk.

Today though I didn't do my scheduled workout. I was up late last night and I was too tired to get up this morning. While skipping one workout isn't critical, it does sound a warning bell because it'll be all to easy to skip another and then soon after it would all come crashing down. That's how my last attempts at exercise have foundered, so Wednesday will be a key date, and it's going to be awkward since I've got another late night Tuesday.

Nutrition wise I've not made any major changes to my diet but I've made some subtle changes which are aimed at improving it, so things like dropping the evening biscuits when I get home from work and I've changed my cereal to a lower sugar version as well as dropping the honey from it.

Workout A

2008-05-16T13:57:00.001+01:00

've had a couple more sessions now and even though today when I was back on Workout A and feeling that I was working harder with less time between sets I still ran over! But the session itself was about on time, so I reckon I need a quicker way of setting up and putting stuff back after!

It was a good session this morning, even though I'd gone to bed late and I was later getting up than I should have been as a result. The warm up quickly blasted away the mental cobwebs though and I was able to concentrate much better than I'd expected. I have to say though that I dread the stability ball exercise. It's just a bodyweight exercise but it absolutely kills me! I think that I've spent so much time over the years on isolation type exercises that I'm just not used to decent quality core muscle exerises.

I upped the weights from six to ten which was fine for the squats but oddly was still too light for the curls. It's really strange that my legs which are so much more heavily muscled than my arms seem to be so weak.

I was a bit better prepared mentally for the intervals, but they are still hard work, as they should be of course! Overall I'm really glad that I'm running this set of exercises, it fits really well into what I think of as a good course. I'm seeing a definite improvement in muscle tone and I think that the weight has peeled off a little bit too. I'll be checking that this week and publishing it as an update. I'm very interested to see if there has been any changes - though of course it's far too short a time!
__________________
Technorati Tags: Fitness, fat loss, Turbulence Training

6 Steps To Beat PE - Men's Health

2008-05-15T19:58:00.001+01:00

OK, this isn't exactly fitness related other than something that improving stamina would help, but since it does affect more men than would admit to it, I thought it a worthwhile thing to link to.

6 Steps To Beat PE - Men's Health

Technorati Tags: Premature Ejactulation, mens health, better sex

Workout A, Beginners Turbulence Training

2008-05-13T21:08:00.001+01:00

I found a new body fat calculator, which also has some commentary on body fat which I'd not considered before though it's obvious enough.
Taking the second calculator which gives me 18% body fat, since that's worse than the first one, it gives me a lean body weight of 133 lbs, so 29 lbs of fat in total. If I want to get that down to 15% of body fat it's a loss of 9 lbs of fat, to 10% is 16 lbs. Now I know these are very rough guides - hence the discrepancy between 15% and 18% of fat between the two calculators, but it'll be interesting to see how that lean body mass changes.
I did my first workout from the TT beginners program yesterday though during the intervals I was beginning to wonder if I should have started out on the introduction process.
First run through on Workout A. It took me a lot longer than the advertised 45 minutes but the extra half hour it took also included the time it took to set up, not a quick process in my small house, but also fiddling about learning how to do the moves and guessing what weights to use. Much of this I expect to be able to cut out with a bit of practice. I was I think heavily under on the weights for those exercises that weren't bodyweight ones, so I need to increase those the next time round.
The intervals were the hardest part of the whole session. The last training sessions I've been doing were weight only and I hadn't realised just how out of condition I was. Listening to the last audio file from Craig I realised that I'd been doing it a little wrong so I'll correct that next time.
Overall though it was good workout. The last workout I did ended up with aches that lasted a week. This time I didn't have that. OK perhaps that means that I didn't put enough effort in. OK I didn't put enough effort in! But I'm OK with that because a slow start is what I should do, and not leap in head first and then drop out because I've over done it.

A fresh Start - TT Members Forum

Fat Is Not Your Fault Audio Interview - TT Members Forum

2008-05-10T09:32:00.001+01:00

I'm listening to a very interesting interview between Craig Ballantyne and Dr Bryan Walsh - I'll go into why Craig interests me some other time, but it's interesting because it fits well into some of my thoughts from yesterday. Dr Walsh is talking about why some people have difficulty in losing weight and comes back to the question of genetics, but also adds in that there can be other medical issues. He makes the point that someone with a healthy body should be able to lose weight easily enough, and I'd extrapolate that to say that it should apply to weight gain too.

So, if you are having problems with either, then perhaps you need to understand why you are having problems and adapt what you are doing. Some people for example might have a sugar craving which means that they tend to dump their diet for a binge, and then they give up because of that.

He was talking about getting medical intervention, but knowing how men hate doing that, perhaps when we fail we should be more critical of why we fail. We learn from our mistakes, so let's do that. Let's look at why we fail and then instead of beating ourselves up over it, let's attack it. We know that is a weakness, we know that it's going to be an issue, so let's come up with a management plan for it which compensates for that.

He also makes some very interesting points regarding stress, adrenal issues and attitude. Now there are some things that I need to take on board!

Fat Is Not Your Fault Audio Interview - TT Members Forum

Fatisnotyourfault.com

Nutrition

2008-05-09T12:53:00.001+01:00

It's strange, I had this nice little plan in my mind of how I'd work through things in my mind in a nice logical order, but yesterday was something of a blank for me. It did provide me with a good dose of motivation though. I went out for a walk at lunchtime and ended up taking off my shirt. The white, slug like body that was revealed by the bright sunlight as it bulged over my belt was not a pretty sight.

As you can see from the link on the right I've been playing with the FitDay calculators to track what I'm eating. I'm something of a tyro when it comes to that and I don't find it easy to track what I'm eating. It certainly isn't something that I've ever done before. What it does reveal though, inaccuracies about my ability to use the measurements and such is that my nutrition isn't great.

There are a lot of theories as to why some people are thin and others fat, a lot of which hinge around genetics or nurture. I'm not entirely convinced about it. My family certainly tend to the thin side, but is that genetics or just because my parents programmed us by their own eating habits? I do feel that there is an element of genetics in there, but I guess I shy away from it because it's too easy an excuse.

Genetics or not, how much weight you carry is down to how much you eat. It doesn't matter if I have a fast metabolism and others have a slow one, or if my body isn't good at processing food. Theses are just environmental factors. So what if you need 2000 calories a day and someone else 1500 to maintain without putting on or losing? It might not be fair, but what on earth has that to do with anything. Eating habits can always be improved, and poor nutrition will cripple your efforts. I need to improve my diet because I'm pretty sure from the FitDay calculators that I'm not getting all the nutrients I need from my normal diet and that in itself might be part of why I feel tired and lethargic.

Getting fitter

2008-05-07T18:38:00.002+01:00

Drilling down is a lot easier said than done.

So why do I want to lose those love handles? This is where I find two tracks to follow. One says that my trousers are tight. Let's face it, I've been the same waist size for the past decade and now I seem to have gained an inch. The inch is however less of an issue than those love handles I can feel wobbling about back there. So partly it's because I don't want to have to buy new clothes, partly because I don't like the feel of the excess flesh.

That's one leg of it, the other is that I want to get that beach body. Why? Because I want to impress my submissive, I want her to be attracted to me and not turned off by my slobby body. Well OK, that particular leg covers both the fat loss and the muscle gain, of which more next time.

Now that was mildly embarrassing I have to say. I'll be glad to get past the analysis and onto the workouts!

Goal Setting

2008-05-06T16:38:00.002+01:00

As it would happen, goal setting is one of the reasons that I've started this blog. It isn't as though I have a huge need to share, but I do need to get the things that are inside my head out and down in written form so that I can sort through them and get them into some sort of sense. All the time that they lurk inside my head it's very hard to either prioritise them - because every time some new thought comes along they get sidelined, or to actually have a clean perspective on them.

How many times have you said something off the top of your head and then realised that it either wasn't quite what you meant or it didn't really make sense? You haven't? OK, well then perhaps it's just me! I do find that the act of writing things down crystallises them for me. Writing it out allows me to vent a bit, to say some things that are lurking around in my mind, and then think, OK, maybe it isn't really that bad.

Goal setting to me is something akin to that. I've got a lot of 'stuff' that lurks around in my mind, things that I like doing, things that I want to do, but they don't get any further than that. A lot of that 'stuff' is an emotional, gut feel about things, but what's missing is the real reasons behind that - what and why do I feel like that or want that? This is where the real value comes in writing it down because you can then start to probe around and explore why you have that emotive need. I think it was Dax Moy who said that getting to that core rationale was like peeling an onion. You start by deciding that you want something - say to get fitter. Then you ask why you want that. Maybe it's to lose a few pounds. So why do you want to lose a few pounds? Eventually you'll peel back to what it is that is really at the back of your mind - the core issue. Now that is the thing that you need to address. It might well be that you decide that a different course of action is what you need. Perhaps those few extra pounds are just because you have self image problem. I'm not suggesting that you don't want to lose them, but perhaps losing them won't cure the problem, all you will do is to fire fight - putting out that fire will just leave you another fire to fight. What you need to do is to put out the cause of the fires.

That drilling down is what I'm trying to do right now, but it's not so easy to do, a lot easier to say, and it just isn't that clean. Everything that we do is inter-related. If I decide to do more fitness, it might well mean spending less time with my wife, or with my submissive. Spending more time on one thing will mean spending less on another - or working more efficiently. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First I need to set out my goals, then try and find a way of making those goals compatible and possible. But I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that I'm finally making progress and no longer wasting time on things that aren't important to me.

Setting out

2008-05-05T20:02:00.001+01:00

I've lost track of the number of times I've tried to do something about my weight and fitness. Like many people, I daresay most people, I've failed every time I've done so. Like most skinny guys I'm what they call a 'hard gainer'. We're skinny because we don't put on weight easily even when we want to. Many people face issues with too much weight, so I don't get a lot of sympathy from them, but strangely enough the issues and the solutions are very much the same.

Why now? Well I'm at that age when the mid life crisis is starting to bite and I've come to realise after a few years of attempting to come to terms and the taking of medication to cope, that in fact something specific has happened. Indeed the reason I think for the whole mid life crisis is that over the years I've done many things, started and abandoned them, in other words I'd not really achieved a lot in my own mind. When I was younger I started whatever interested me and pursued it until I left it and moved on. Eventually I came to the realisation that I'd dabbled in many things but achieved very little. I started to reach back to things that I'd enjoyed but left. It's the classic reaching back for your past, the thing that the mid life crisis is so notorious for.

One of those things that I'd dabbled with was exercise routines of various sorts. When I was in my early thirties I was at my peak of fitness, using a gym on a regular basis, building muscle and even doing some running. The running didn't last because it aggravated a knee injury, and the gym died a death when a change in circumstances meant I couldn't afford it. I had full intentions of continuing the exercise after that but it never happened.

Now I'm struggling to come to terms with where I am and where I go from here. I've done a fair bit of reading around, and it's a process that I'm still continuing. I've realised that I need to set goals, good quality, effective goals that I work to achieve. It's where I went wrong with the fitness. I'd had a gym membership given to me by the office, a membership that I ended up paying for eventually when the office withdrew it. But I had regular lunchtimes when I went over there. I'd also joined the TA, though I didn't stay in for long and learnt a lot about my fitness and it was what started me running. I carried on with the exercise, reading, learning about it and designing my own training programs. But once I lost the regular slots, gradually I drifted away and I lost the condition, then it was too hard to get back. I've tried many times to start again, but it's never worked.

Time to change that.