The Cult

So, as January 2011 dawned all fresh and hopeful with a blank calendar for a new year a friend of mine via facebook status sought followers to join her cult.  She proposed a weight loss / healthy living competition where anyone wishing to go up against their mates for a period of 10 weeks simply parted with a tenner to her, the cult leader, which would then be placed in a pot.  After 10 weeks a gold, silver and bronze medal would be awarded to the lucky winners.  The rules were simple - weights in kilograms because we're all too old to make sense of them and they don't seem real.  She would publish pretty graphs each week showing percentage body weight lost.  No rules on how to get there; whichever variant we pleased of the eat less, move more persuasion was legitimate.  Some talked about high GI diets but mostly we all did our own thing.

I realised early on that I'm not great at discipline over food, and didn't want to be a slave to a diet.  So, with the eat less option curtailed somewhat, although not ignored I went ahead with the second option; move more.  I planned to meet the government standard on the thing, 30 mins exercise 5 times a day and looked into how "exercise" was defined.  Raised heart rate and lungs in use.  OK, I could do that.

I tend to make excuses.  But I also have anal tendencies towards planning.  So every Sunday in January I sat down and planned out just how I was going to manage in the following 7 days to get to that amount of exercise in one week.  Before long I was doing spinning classes after work twice a week, and every weekend had a plan, whether it was a few hours walking, the geeky geocaching or a mountain bike ride.  If I wasn't going to do a spinning class I made sure I at least walked to the library.  Before too long, 3 hours exercise a week became 4 which became 5, which soon became 6 or 7.  6 seemed to be my minimum by the end of February.

With the increase in fuel prices something interesting started to happen.  Finally cycling to work had tangible savings to be made.  £2 a day in petrol for every return journey made by bike ... also, I reasoned, if I cycled then I would also not need the £4 a throw spinning class.  So, that's a saving of £6 every time I biked to work.

The weight loss "Cult" is going well; I'm in bronze position with the final weigh in tomorrow, reduction from 68.8 kilos to under 63 with any luck.  If I need a kick start from a plateau, I simply get on the bike.