Mentioning the initial success of my weight-loss campaign was always going to be a hostage to fortune. Perhaps predictably, the wobbly downward line on the graph immediately turned horizontal, and even rose a bit, as soon as I’d issued my self-congratulatory remark on how well I was doing.
But this is meat and drink, albeit lean and sugar-free, for a health-campaign veteran like me. The infamous plateau. You spend five days under-eating and over-exerting, only to find that you’re heavier at the end of it than when you started. But the same veteran also knows that this is part of the mystery, and that if you keep going, some sort of visible progress will reassert itself. Of course, the fact that I call myself a veteran of such campaigns is an admission of failure: “Giving up smoking is easy. I’ve done it hundreds of times!” Ah, but of course, this time is different…
And it does feel different. Trying to lose weight and get fitter while working full-time is difficult. You have to renew your vows every morning to try to deal with the temptations and obstacles: work lunches, post-work drinks, minimal free time to organise exercise. Eventually the delicate soufflé collapses, and you dive in after it with the largest spoon you can find. I always used to say that if only I was working from home, or not working at all, it would be much easier. So far, that’s proving to be true. Daily exercise on the rower doesn’t get interrupted by work, or anxiety about that meeting with the boss later, and the need to prepare. Once again I’ve embarked in the Pete Plan for Beginners which, despite its name starts off with 5,000 metre sessions — not beginner lengths in my book — and builds up over 24 weeks to 12K rows and around 30K in weekly totals. Not that I’ve ever got close to week 24. Traditionally, weeks 7 or 8 are the flagging point. It’s not that the 8-8,500m sessions are getting too hard. You build up to those slowly. But something distracts me. I get bored. What’s the point? Then I remember those decent clarets in the Keller that need drinking up, and the house of cards collapses. This time, with no work and fewer distractions, I might fare better. Lockdown may be dull but it offers a blanker canvas than usual.
We all now know that weight loss is driven more by diet than exercise, though exercise helps to keep the head pointing in the right direction. As a faddy type, I’m re-exploring the low-carb approach but this time mixing it with intermittent fasting. They go well together. Low-carb seems to flatten your appetite, making it easier to go extended periods without eating. Anywhere between 16 and 24 hours is very doable, and I tried 40 hours at the start of this week without much of a problem.
Next week I’ll start my 5K programme in earnest. But tomorrow, and again over the weekend, I’ll try out the first tentative run-walks to see how it feels. As I reach for my egg and bacon salad, I will ponder my final hours as a retired runner – then start gulping.
