Blog time, late winter 2026. The southwest (Devon & Cornwall) has taken a real winter battering with two named storms and several lesser ones : coastal erosion, wind and wave damage, regular flooding of the roads and the heavy rain worsening the many potholes even on major routes. Throughout all of that plus the cold snap that gave us ice and snow iv’e been doing my best to keep up an exercise program despite several health problems (for both of us) that make exercise a grind rather than a disciplined and satisfying feature of our everyday lives. In my own words, or those of Jocko Willink it’s been a time to embrace the suck.
Monday morning & it feels personal
From being able to say to myself ‘Ten’ at the end of my exercise week last time around, I stepped out of the house this morning saying to myself ‘One’ as I started the count for my exercise week. This week I had it in mind to step up the cardio exercise component so as to make my use of exercise time that bit more effective. My problem is that it was yet another day turned to high wind and heavy rain and I think it has been like that nearly every day of the year so far – some days it just feels personal even though I tell myself it’s the same for everyone. It was so horribly cold and wet today that I recorded the experience as full southern ocean but lacking my heavy ocean going oilskins.
In the first full month of my new approach to exercise and diet I did the one thing of great importance that I was sure I would fail with and yet I seem to have ,surprisingly, succeeded with (at least for now) It’s hardly of ground breaking news but last month was my first ever biscuit free month and i’m well on the way to going mostly cake free – my personal new deal is that allow myself one, once per week only and ultimately I intend to hit cake zero, Iv’e also gone Jam free which was relatively easy although I could go cold jam or cold biscuit any day that I take my eye off the ball.
At the end of week 5 I also did what I really wasn’t looking forward to which is weigh myself : I was as heavy as I expected and I decided to make a habit of weighing once per fortnight only rather than what I did in the past which was a daily weight – recorded and graphed. It was way too frequent as my daily weight could bounce by as much as a kilo from day to day mostly changing with my fluid state.
As I write, which is during week seven. the thing that I expecting and anticipating happened and that is that a bad night’s sleep resulted in a slump of enthusiasm and that unfortunately coincided with the yearly onset of the winter blues (SAD). I thought there was a bit of a problem the previous day when I couldn’t settle down to do anything : I was restless and unable to concentrate all day. Even having completed my two planned exercise walks I wanted to walk again but didn’t as I thought that a third long walk (in the rain) might well have caused me to want to then take a day off and with this venture I think that consistency (discipline) is essential. As it is I rather plodded around the route today and the only consolation was that I got through it despite really not wanting to be out at all.
A staged approach to modifying my diet.
Walking seems to give me the space and time to think so today/this week iv’e been thinking a lot about the idea of what the most harmful things in my diet actually are but then expanding that to first work out what I consider to be the most harmful food-like elements in diet full stop – my answer is probably high fructose corn syrup as used in full fat Coke (which I don’t drink), then seed oils which I think were responsible for my new arthritis some ten years ago. After that it would be added sugar in the form of biscuits and cakes and once again i’m lucky in that I dislike sugar in my coffee. After that but fairly low down the score board is soft fruit (Mr banana is not our friend) and below that is a whole load of fast carbs. Anyway….that’s my view.
You could say that i’m on the right lines with that but i’m wondering what else might be harming me unknowingly and i’m talking actually provable causation here rather than the garbage that gets passed off as science : usually weak association which certain elements of the press seem to treat as gospel truth. What i’m doing is trying to work out my own scoring system that doesn’t rely on laboriously calculating calories or trying to estimate macronutrients.
The results of my exercise and diet regime at weeks 8&9
What’s happened so far is that iv’e kept up a decent average with my number of exercise walking sessions completed each week : my GPA (Grade point average) is around 9.5 so i’m happy with that. What I haven’t done so well with is ensuring that I take a day off once per week and just rest – at least physically. In week 6 for example I had a sudden rush of enthusiasm after i’d already done enough for the week, went and walked again but came back super tired and I wasn’t up to much the next day. I almost got to the point in my exercise progress that I seriously considered (for a while) increasing to three sessions per day or fifteen over a week. What stopped me is knowing that the rubber band was just as likely to snap if a likely slump in enthusiasm came along or if I picked up a minor injury. What happened instead is that I took the physio’s advice and started on a body weight exercise (squats) done on the back deck at home and i’ll get to the point that i’m doing a set of 25 after each walking session – which would then become a kind of warm up.
In terms of actual M(measurement) then i’m really waiting until the end of 12 weeks of consistent effort (exercise) and attention to diet before I can give a definitive answer as to whether what i’m doing is working or not. I have done a couple of random intermediate weigh ins and i’m cautiously positive about going the distance and time that iv’e specified in my SMART plan – 20 months, but I do think that i’ll have to add some other resistance exercise to my regular routine.
Dirty Wet Dog, the great adventure. 