#oneaday 51: spin spin sugar

Today I went to spin class. For those of you not familiar with the concept, what it involves is sitting on a racing bike in the dark with 10 strangers and getting the most knackered you’ve been in a long time whilst the trainer barks at you to GO HARDER.

I make it sound a lot worse than it was, I actually really enjoyed it. My legs are bloody killing now and I’ve no idea how I’m going to stand up and watch Mogwai tonight for a couple of hours. I’m going to have to find a seat and be like someone’s mum at a gig. For shame.

#oneaday 40: Weightloss Wednesday

It was without trepidation that I mounted the scales ce soir at Tub Club, knowing that I had gone hard instead of going home at the gym and had eaten brilliant, healthy food all week. I was hoping for the best but even if the worst had happened, I wouldn’t have been disappointed as I felt good about how the week had gone.

So, this week, the scales said…

#oneaday 19 – what a loser

Today I’ve taken a proactive step in terms of being healthy, inspired by Faye’s Weightloss Wednesday posts. I aim to lose a stone and four pounds in the next twelve weeks with a combination of gym, gym, gym and healthy eating. Now I have a goal, and some good support (I don’t mean a sports bra, although incidentally that will come in handy), I know it will happen. I’ve oddly been motivated by another blog that I follow, which charts the progress of a man battling with all kinds of demons and yet he keeps going, despite various setbacks. Quite inspirational.

I’ll hopefully be posting success stories every Wednesday from now on, but for now, some thinspiration… (and before anyone says it, no, I don’t mean the ridiculous pro-anorexia/bulemia kind)

#oneaday 15 – Reasons to be Cheerful

Yes, it’s January and yes, everyone is skint, miserable and fed up. So here are some reasons to be cheerful:

1. Exercising.

Since Christmas, I’ve been going hard at le gym and I’m really enjoying it.

Now I have a deadline, and a goal. I’m going away in 14 weeks to celebrate the fact that one of my best friends is getting married. So I’ve set myself a target of three gym sessions per week and lots of healthy eating. I vow to be a massive hot WAG-type person by the time April gets here.

2. Birthday parties

Tonight I’m hitting up my beloved hometown of Sheffield for one of my friend’s birthdays. We’re going to our favourite little Italian, BB’s, and will no doubt indulge in some cocktails and dancing too. I can’t wait to see everyone and to visit the mothership. Plus, it means I get to bake a cake when I get home from the gym.

3. The fact that lots of people are still actively doing #oneaday

The amount of people still blogging for #oneaday is impressive, part way through the month and enthusiasm is still strong. If you’ve read any of the one a day bloggers’ stuff and liked it, take a few secs to click on the banner on the right to help our charities for free, or you can donate cold, hard, (virtual) cash to Cancer Research UK via the justgiving link on the right,

#oneaday 2 – To move forward, we must first look back

I just got this summary emailed to me by wordpress, so I thought it’d be good to share it with anyone reading and then do a comparison this time next year when I’ve got stats that are much more juicy. I’m now off on a new-year cleaning session followed by a massive workout. Then tonight I’m going to curl up with Will Self and Simon Pegg and geek-out in bed with their books. Lush.

Right, here comes the science, concentrate…

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Endorsing endorphins

Slave to the gym. Addicted to exercise. Fanatical about fitness.

Three mindsets that I’ve always struggled to believe actually existed, despite the protests of even the most convincing health propaganda campaigns/gym marketing teams/charity marathon runners. I just never saw how you could crave something that was so, well, horrible.

That is, until I discovered Classes. Now, I’ve long been a huge fan of fads. From fashion to food, I’m always the first to excitedly jump on a new kind of bandwagon (and often the first to leave it just as enthusiastically a few weeks later). This permeates unavoidably into my (loosely titled) ‘fitness regimes’ of the past. I’ve tried joining the gym only to spend five minutes on the cross trainer followed by 45 minutes in the spa, convincing myself that a steam bath was the equivalent in cardiovascular exercise to a hearty 5k run. I’ve signed up for charity runs and completed them, I’m proud to say, but only after a hastily cobbled-together training programme of not eating crisps  the week before the run. I got so good at forging notes to get me out of P.E. at school that I started teaching calligraphy behind the bike sheds. You get the idea. The mere sight of a treadmill and a pair of trainers has generally had me running (okay, okay, lolling along at a snail’s pace) for the hills.