Something feels different.
I’ve had plenty of attempts over the years at becoming fitter, losing weight, drinking less, eating better and generally looking after myself a little more. Starting isn’t necessarily the difficult bit. I’ve started lots of times.
The difficult bit is when the things that require conscious effort start competing with everything else in life.
That’s normally where the wheels begin to come off.
This time, however, some of the things that felt like a considerable effort only a few weeks ago are starting to feel surprisingly normal.
When effort becomes routine
Going to the gym is becoming something I just do.
Logging my food is becoming something I just do.
Getting on the bike is becoming something I just do.
Planning training into my day rather than hoping I’ll somehow find time and enthusiasm for it is becoming normal too.
Yesterday I went out on my bike on my own and rode almost 24 miles. Last night I went to the athletics club and ran. Today I went to the gym by myself.
Written down like that, none of those things sound particularly extraordinary.
That’s precisely why they feel significant.
Not very long ago, every one of them would have required a negotiation with myself which I would more often than not lost.
Do I really want to go?
Maybe I’ll do it tomorrow.
I’m tired.
People will be looking at me.
I’ve got other things I should be doing.
Increasingly, that conversation isn’t happening.
I get changed and go.
24 minutes
Last night was particularly important.
My calf has dictated quite a lot of my training recently. I’ve been deliberately cautious about returning to running because the last thing I want is to turn a relatively short interruption into a long-term injury by trying to prove something.
So the return has been gradual.
Last night’s session at the athletics club consisted of six four-minute running efforts.
Six times four minutes.
24 minutes of running.
There’s nothing spectacular about that number. Once upon a time, 24 minutes wouldn’t even have constituted a particularly long training session for me.
Right now, though, it means something completely different.
My calf coped.
I coped.
And another little piece of confidence came back.
That’s becoming one of the biggest changes I’ve noticed during this process. Fitness isn’t the only thing I’m rebuilding.
I’m rebuilding confidence in my body.
I’m starting to trust that I can ask it to do things again.
Then there’s the alcohol
This is probably worth talking about because it has been a significant part of my adult life.
For roughly 25 years I’ve consumed alcohol regularly.
Sometimes socially. Sometimes I’ve binged. Sometimes I’ve drunk very little.
But over time it had increasingly become something else:
a habit.
There didn’t necessarily need to be an occasion.
A beer in the evening was just something I did.
One could become another, and another. Not necessarily because I particularly wanted them, but because that routine had become established.
Four weeks ago, I decided that I needed to break that routine.
I haven’t touched alcohol since.
What has surprised me most isn’t that I’ve managed four weeks without drinking. It’s that I don’t particularly want it.
I’m sleeping better.
I’m waking up feeling better.
Training doesn’t have to compete with the effects of the night before.
And I’m beginning to question how much of my drinking was actually about enjoying a beer and how much was simply because drinking had become part of my routine.
I’m not declaring that I’ll never drink again. That’s not what this is about.
Right now, though, I’m quite happy without it.
And if something that had been part of my life for 25 years can quietly stop being part of my daily routine, perhaps routines aren’t quite as permanent as we sometimes convince ourselves they are.
Confidence breeds confidence
There is another change happening which is harder to measure with Garmin, Strava or a set of scales.
Confidence.
Going to the gym on my own would previously have been something I’d have spent far too much time thinking about. I’ve written before about being self-conscious in that environment.
Today I just went.
Yesterday I rode nearly 24 miles alone.
Last night I turned up at an athletics track and ran.
Each one is relatively insignificant in isolation, but together they’re starting to change the way I think about myself.
I’m no longer waiting until I’m fit enough to behave like someone who exercises.
I’m exercising.
I’m not waiting until I’ve lost enough weight to walk confidently into a gym.
I’m going to the gym.
I’m not waiting until I’m capable of running continuously for 5 km before calling myself someone who runs.
Last night I ran.
Perhaps confidence doesn’t arrive before you do these things.
Perhaps doing them is where the confidence comes from.
The unexpected benefit
There has also been a secondary effect that I hadn’t really anticipated.
I seem to have more mental capacity.
For a long time, looking after myself felt like another task competing for space in an already crowded head. Exercise needed motivation. Food needed thought. Going to the gym required overcoming self-consciousness. Even deciding whether or not to have a beer involved another decision.
All of those tiny negotiations consume something.
As these behaviours become routine, they seem to be giving some of that capacity back.
Training is in the diary.
Food gets logged.
Alcohol currently isn’t a consideration.
The gym isn’t a major psychological event.
And instead of those things consuming mental energy, I’m finding that doing them actually creates it.
There is more room to think about other things. More enthusiasm for projects. More willingness to tackle things I’ve been putting off.
That may ultimately turn out to be one of the most important benefits of this entire journey.
164%
When I started Shift-Spark, I deliberately chose to describe my weight as a percentage of my target rather than publishing the number itself, 174%.
The destination is 100%.
I’m currently around 164%.
So let’s not pretend I’ve cracked this.
There is an enormous amount of work still ahead of me. There will almost certainly be difficult weeks, interrupted training, bad decisions and occasions when the enthusiasm isn’t there.
That’s partly why this website exists.
I want something I can come back and read when one of those periods arrives.
And this is what I want that future version of me to remember:
At 164%, it started to feel normal.
Not easy. Not finished. Not inevitable.
Normal.
I was riding my bike because I wanted to.
I was going to the gym by myself.
I was carefully starting to run again.
I’d gone four weeks without alcohol and wasn’t missing it.
I was eating with some thought about what I was putting into my body.
And instead of all of that making life feel more restrictive, somehow it was creating space for more of it.
There will be a long way between 164% and 100%.
But for perhaps the first time in quite a while, I’m not just hoping I’ll get there.
I’m starting to believe I will.
