Fat Man attempts to Slim (Alt title - The Gym Sucks, but....)

Those regular followers of my facebook status updates (thanks both of you) might be aware that I have a love / hate relationship with the gym. Actually that’s not true, I have a hate / hate relationship with the gym. It’s not just the smell and the grunting and the way they look at you when you put your Special Brew in the drink holder on the treadmill. The fact is that gyms are stupendously and unbelievably boring. You see I don’t have a problem with sport or exercise. I love playing football and cricket because they are everything the gym isn’t. Social, team based, tactical and skilful – and you can have a pint with your team mates afterwards. Team sports are the antithesis of the gym. The gym, broken down, is just you, an LCD screened automated torture implement and a soundtrack so gay Club Revenge would consider it stereotypical. I had a more interesting time watching Titanic, during which I had to be woken up four times and physically restrained from yelling “the boat sinks!”.


So why am I going more and more? Sadly, I have reached that age where if I want to keep playing the fun stuff like football and cricket I have to train. Gone are the days where I could go clubbing all night on Friday, smoke myself silly on Saturday and still play a full cricket game on Sunday. Clubbing till midnight would have me confined to barracks for a week. I get wheezy looking at the stairs. So if I am to continue playing the sports I love with people I like very much the gym is becoming a necessary evil.

Also I noticed (unfortunately) on my last visit that the gym has scales and stupidly I got on them. I am not what you would call my target weight. Not even in the same postcode. I’m not quite at the stage where I’m ruling out ever returning to Tokyo in case I get harpooned but it’s not far off. So I need to lose weight. Recently I received very sage advice on exactly on this subject from a man I actually consider to be a sage. But it won’t work fast enough. I will have to combine the beer, pizza and ice-cream with gym attendance. Win / win.

So why this blog? Call it public shaming. I want to lose a stone and a half and I’m employing every tactic going. Dropping the equivalent of a bottle of Chateau Rauzan Marguax every month for gym membership was a start. But succeeding – or failing – publicly is a bigger drive.

And there is a serious end game. At a friend’s 4th July BBQ this year the host was wearing a Brighton Marathon finishers t-shirt. Strangely I wasn’t thinking ‘nutter’. I was admiring it. Now I know what you’re all thinking. If I liked it why didn’t I just steal it? Well Richard’s bigger than me. Actually that’s not true, he’s taller than me. But I’m not about to take up marathon running. Luckily part of the training regime is lots of sleep and with baby number 2 due in October I’ve given up on the idea of sleep till September 2029. Plus the buses would start running again before I finished and I’d be far too tempted to hop on one in the direction of the nearest Gin Palace. However, I am going to aim for the Great South Run in 2011 (not the one in a months time!!). This seems like a realistic target – at least from the comfort of my armchair.

So to keep me on track for both aims I am going to blog my progress, weight lost and training progressed. Of course there will be other stuff as well. I can’t imagine that in an autumn that will include a new arrival, football matches and my continuing fascination with just how ugly the panellists on Question Time really are that I will keep totally on topic. But I’ll try – when I’m not busy working out.