Well I’ve been exercising for nearly a week now, and I think it’s starting to have an effect. I’ve started off slowly. On the first day I did 25 sit ups and 10 push ups (proper ones mind, not silly little ones that involve your knees) and I’ve been slowly increasing it so now I am up to 35 sit ups and 13 push ups. Not an earth shattering increase granted, but still going in the right direction. Also, on Saturday we all went swimming at the local water park, and we both made an effort to do some proper swimming while we were there as well. I managed to do 16 lengths of the (small) pool before feeling as though my entire body was going to shut down and I was going to sink to the bottom like a paperweight.

But while some things are going in the right direction, others aren’t. At the weekend we invested in some new scales, seeing as the other ones we had were varying dramatically over the course of minutes. At one point I put on three pounds in the course of a minute. So we got some more, and they are a lot better, but they are just confirming what I pretty much already knew. I haven’t lost any weight in about a month. I have been really really strict, and as far as I’m aware I have only gone over my calorie count once this year. At first I lost a stone on two weeks, but since then, nada.

But while this is certainly dispiriting, I’m not going to let it stop me. My aim was not about weight, it was about getting in shape, so the key for me now is to keep up the good work with my diet, but to start taking the exercise more seriously. I’ve made a start, but in the next few weeks I need to think of some ways to step it up a gear. I really feel as though I’ve got the smoking beat now (I’ve been off the patches for four days now, and I’ve not killed a single person!) so this has to be my focus now.

-Paul

Sorry for the lack of updates over the last week, very bad form I know. Rest assured though that we are both still here and doing well, now on day 8 of healthy eating and for me, not smoking. I had a bit of a hairy day today when I forgot to put on my nicotine patch before I went to work, and as a consequence I ended up eating all my food ridiculously early out of sheer frustration and then sitting and stewing for the rest of the day. I got through it though, and went to my Doctor to get a prescription for some more. (American readers yes, over here we can get things like that on the NHS, yay NHS!) Other than that we’ve been mainly enjoying and cursing in equal measure the constant snowfall in York.

Ellen will be back shortly to give a bit more comprehensive overview of the week, and I may be back over the weekend at some point to talk about the hell that is leaving a nicotine patch on overnight. In the meantime, though, thank you to Jennie and Kerri for the nice comments, and to everyone else who has said nice things on twitter and to my actual face.