Fighting Fitness

Introduction

I am writing this from a position of reasonable healthiness and fitness, but I have not always been that way, in fact only in the last ten years have I really started to realise what an unfit lard bucket I really am.

The music, fairly appropriately, is "Fat Man" by Jethro Tull from their album "Stand Up".

Many Years Ago

I never realised I was fat as a child, though looking back I know that I really was, until I hit secondary school. My mum had to adjust pants for me, but I was encouraged to eat the "build myself up".

While I am not an advocate of putting kids on diets, also they should be encouraged to do physical activity and not to eat more than they need to. Luckily I was encouraged to do lots of outdoor things so though I may have been fat, I was also fit. This meant by the time I was at secondary school I was fit enough to captain the class football side in the first and second year, and we won the league while I was captain, though most of the time I was a goalkeeper or defender (we got a great goalkeeper called Nigel Mulhall so I became an outfield player and managed to score a hat trick in one match).

As I got older, while hardly slimline, I was not morbidly obese and had no problem walking or biking long distances.

Me In This Century

As I got older I drank too much, which probably contributed greatly to my diabetes and cirrhosis which eventually turned into Liver Cancer. If you are interested you can read about that here:

At some point, I tried pedometers and walking, but nothing too serious. I didn't really have a way of tracking what I did without a lot of work from myself, and you know how lazy I am.

As we moved into this digital age, my eldest daughter Juliet badgered me into taking her old mobile phone, which I took for when I was working away. Eventually, I started as a contractor at Orange, which then became Everything Everywhere which became EE. Mobile phones metamorphosed into handheld computers only a little less functional than a Star Trek Tricorder.

I eventually settled on a Samsung Note work device and kept that when I left and they are still my network provider.

Sometime after Fiona suggested I sign up for the Diabetes UK Million Step Challenge.

This seemed like a good idea but the timeframe was wrong for me and I started this in May 2014 and the July to September timeframe was moving toward winter. So I did eleven thousand steps a day and recorded is using Google Fit and Google Sheets, but when I finished I wondered what to do and then decided to turn it into a rolling program and walk a million steps every three months.

Then my Samsung Note died.

I briefly had a Sony phone which took some amazingly psychedelic photographs. That only lasted til I accidentally smashed it when I dropped it visiting Matt and Less.

My youngest daughter Kirsty recommended a Google Pixel so I got a reconditioned one and I have had one ever since using Google Fit to keep track of my steps. I reduced my daily target from eleven thousand steps a day to seven thousand but that is just so I don't have to go out twice a day, but I still usually go over eleven thousand steps a day.

Google Fit also has this thing called heart points. It recommends 25 heart points a day / 150 a week, and you get a point for each minute of brisk walking. I usually hit the 25 a day, and often hit 50, and sometimes 100. Yesterday I hit 77.

So while I am overweight, I still feel in good physical condition, and doubt I would have come through the cancer if I had not kept up my walking. I am grateful for the software on my Pixel because it means I know that I am doing what I need to keep me in the best condition I can be in.

Conclusion

Thank you so much for reading, I intend to keep as fit as I can for as long as I can, and I believe that will be a very long time.