The first week started unexpectedly – everyone knows that ‘diets’ start on a Monday. It’s an irresistible law of the universe. Anyone who doesn’t start on a Monday is doomed to failure and a lifetime of eternal lardiness. I have spent the last 18 years slavishly observing this law.
The week starting 24th March 2020 was crazy. By the end of the week I was reeling from 5 days of lockdown and endless meetings trying to sort out how on earth my business partners and I were going to keep our business going.
I’d been training with Luke at his studio for the previous 3 weeks and on Friday 27th we FaceTimed to discuss whether or how we were going to continue with training over the coming weeks.
We agreed that I would cobble together the dusty exercise equipment that I had languishing in the garage (mostly from the 90s) and that we would FaceTime once a week. I also agreed that I would send him pictures of everything I ate for accountability.
If I am completely honest the reason I agreed to continue training through lockdown was because I liked Luke so much. He is a lovely bloke with a young family, we have a great rapport and he, like me, is self employed. In that first week were all scared about what The Virus had in store for the world and whether our businesses would still be standing at the end of it.
Luke and I had been training together for 3 weeks, and I’d enjoyed every single session, but it would have been so easy to abandon training during lockdown and head off down the cul-de-sac of wine and crisps.
I’d love to be able to say that my sole focus was on losing weight, but it wouldn’t be true. I wanted to support Luke’s business for as long as I could. He deserved the support of his clients and I wasn’t going to abandon him.
When, on that overcast Friday afternoon Luke said with his usual optimism “great – so shall we start tomorrow then?” I agreed without protest. I made suitable offerings to the Monday Diet Gods and started on Saturday 28th March.
I wasn’t quite sure how I was going to send Luke pictures of everything I ate, but I’m a big fan of goodnotes on my iPad and it occurred to me that I could design a food journal page, import each day’s photos and then WhatsApp it to him each evening.
My journals were only supposed to be shared with Luke. I would occasionally put in notes to make him laugh or pictures of my trainers (we both love trainers). I had absolutely no thought of writing a blog, sharing my journals or even sharing my progress photos (with anyone) let alone putting it all on the internet.
My journals may be illegible in places – I haven’t been back to polish them for my blog – I’ve got too much proper writing that I want to do and I don’t want to spend my time reinventing the wheel – I’d get bored.
Before I add the journals I should explain that they are completely honest. There is full disclosure of absolutely everything I ate. If I ate some cold roast potatoes (the food of the Gods) on a Sunday afternoon after lunch, I wrote it down. I did the same when I ate 4 crisps in the car on a long journey.
There are lots of occasions on which I failed, and I learned over the weeks and months to forgive myself for those failures. If this new way of living was going to last for a the rest of my life then I couldn’t set myself up to fail. I couldn’t set out on a path so strict that I could never stick to it – as I had done so many times before.
In the first weeks there are notes about a knee problem. In January/February 2020 I had given myself housemaid’s knee attempting to do Kayla Itsine’s post-pregnancy workout programme. The programme is very good and my inherent weakness is no reflection on the quality of the programme.
In addition to my knackered knee, I have a dodgy shoulder, hip and an even dodgier wrist. The pain in my tight right glute stemmed from attempting a couch to 5k programme which I did for 3 weeks and gave myself 18 months of sciatica. Luke worked his magic programmes around my pre-existing decrepit bits to ensure that I could train effectively.
I should also add that I don’t drink tea or coffee – I haven’t done for 15 years. liquids amounts written in blue are water and black are herbal tea – usually Pukka Cleanse, which is my favourite. I have learnt that caffeine makes me feel really ill. When I was accidentally given a green mint tea instead of mint tea while travelling abroad I ended up spending 3 hours locked in the bathroom in terrible pain and suffering with ‘digestive unpleasantness’.
I am also the proud owner of a Garmin watch/heart rate monitor. I’d been given it for my birthday the year before. It turns out that owning a fancy wrist based GPS watch doesn’t make you thin or fit; for the previous 9 months I’d simply been a fat woman with a very large watch.
Day 1:
I was totally unprepared for the high speed non-Monday-based start. With hindsight I think that doing a daily journal (something that I had never done before) gave me something to think about other than the impending doom engulfing the planet.
I’d spoken to Luke about breakfast and increased the amount of oats that I had for breakfast from 30g to 50g.
Day 2:
Sunday lunch had been planned prior to the high-speed start. I bloody love roast potatoes.
Day 3:
This was my first proper day of training. Luke had sent me some programmes and said that I could choose which one to do. I chose the one that I thought looked the easiest.
The exercise box at the foot of the journal shows what I was supposed to do in black ink and what I actually managed in red ink. My dodgy knee prevented me from doing kneeling press-ups so I did them inclined against the landing bannister.
I was supposed to do 4 sets of 30 squats but I only managed 4 sets of 20. As I write this on Day 75 (when I did 50 squats immediately into 100 squats to overhead press TIMES 3), Day 3 seems like a very long time ago. It’s great to look back and see how crap I was. I couldn’t do 10 tricep dips without being in agony and stopping; now I can do multiple sets of 30 without flinching (well flinching a bit).
When Luke asked me how I found the training I replied “It was way harder than I thought, my arms are still shaking”. Ha! What a wimp I was 70 days ago.
Day 4:
Day 4 started with a text from Luke saying “How are you feeling?” I sent one back saying “My arms hurt, my legs hurt, my shoulders hurt but I can’t wait for training tomorrow.” I was really sore but I knew that I had to get to grips with my lack of strength and fitness.
I felt that I was starting to find my mojo with eating. I was working on 3 meals and 2 snacks a day.
I love looking at my old journals – I’d forgotten about feta muffins. I shall make them again this week (week 11).
I did attempt to go out for a walk, but they were muck spreading in the fields around our house and the smell was so awful I had to turn around and go home.
I was still struggling with the concept of actually writing down my current weight in my journal.
Day 5:
I trained with Luke via FaceTime. I set my first goal of getting to my target weight of 9st by the end of June. Luke told me that it was extremely optimistic but I was fired up with enthusiasm and a new found sense of determination. It gave me something to think about other than the global crisis.
21s are a bicep exercise – you have bar and do 7 bicep curls to half way, 7 from half way to the top and then 7 full bicep curls. I hated them and did 4 sets which killed me. On day 73 (the day before yesterday at the time of writing) I did 6 rounds of 3 sets of 21s and I could have done more.
Day 6:
I was aching so much from head to toe that I barely slept. However, I hauled my arse out of bed and did a long walk first thing to try to loosen off before sitting at a desk all day. I still wasn’t crazy about telling my journal what my weight was.
Day 7:
I managed to get a full nights’ sleep without waking up in pain. However, I was disorganised. I had to go into the office at short notice and I hadn’t planned to still be there at lunchtime. By the time I got home I was starving but I’d missed lunch and didn’t want to ruin dinner. I was tired and in a bad mood, probably from not eating enough.
This is the first time that gluten free oatcakes and sachets of nut butter feature in my journal. I’m like a little squirrel and I stash them in my handbag, desk drawer and glove box of my car. They are pre-packed and great in a hunger related emergency.
Progress photos:
I fully accept that the photos aren’t the same scale. I didn’t start using body tracker until week 2 so the first photo isn’t quite the same. But it doesn’t really matter – it doesn’t change the fact that I’m fat and carrying 34lbs of extra body fat.
