The Dirty Dozen

That’s my last 12 days. Very little exercise and horrendous over consumption.

On the afternoon of the 20th August I was able to look back on a pretty solid couple of weeks in terms of weight loss and exercise, and my mirror image and feeling of energy confirmed the good news the scales were telling me. So where did it go wrong?

I suppose it started that evening with a trip to an Indian buffet and an unsurprisingly large and difficult to calorie count meal but the problem really set in on the Saturday morning following a short run with Beth. I’d felt a slight twinge in my back the previous day while doing a side plank exercise. The pain was to the right of my spine, very low down where back blends to buttock and an hour or two after the run it was considerably worse with bending or twisting very difficult.

I have no idea how I did it but the cramp like pain was unpleasant and pretty soon the whole area tightened up so that any sort of movement was as painful as it was difficult. That ruled out the planned trip to the gym on Saturday afternoon as well as Sunday’s run, so I found solace, as ever, in eating.

By Monday it had eased a fair bit – still there but far from debilitating - so I ventured another short run with Bethan and if anything it helped loosen things up. That should have been the end of that but maybe because the core exercises had ceased as soon as the back went my groin now started to give a few twinges of pain and tightness. I continued to seek comfort in food.

Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were similar. I didn’t feel I should try anything at the gym or do core exercises until the back was completely pain free and didn’t feel I could run until I could do the core exercises to ease the groin...so all I managed was another short jog with Beth.

I was frustrated and continued to eat with a vengeance but added excessive amounts of chocolate to the daily shopping list.

I think Saturday was then the worst day when I managed a large Dairy Milk, a large Milky Bar, a small Milky Bar and a bag of jelly beans AFTER a Chinese takeaway. Some going huh?

Saturday had been especially difficult as we had been due to go camping for the weekend but by Friday evening my back seized up again and there was no way I could pack the car let alone put a tent up. Saturday morning felt similar but after a hot shower, then a hot bath and 400mg of Ibuprofen I was able to keep my back moving and it seemed to respond well to that and eased off hugely.

Trouble was I’d had the expectancy of meals out on Saturday, Sunday and Monday which not only made it feel difficult to think anything other than ‘Oh sod it’ during the week but also meant we felt we needed to go out at the weekend in the absence of camping- particularly as it was Sue’s birthday weekend. Result being that Sunday meant a trip to a pub for a huge gammon and chips followed by sticky toffee pud and Charlotte’s leftover chocolate fudge cake (with a box of Milk Tray – of all things – consumed when I got in...), and then Sunday was another trip to the Indian buffet for an enormous meal.

At least on Sunday I did manage to fit in a fairly gentle 4/5 miles walk on the moors and showed marginally more restraint before and after the evening meal than I had in the previous days.