it’s been 2 months now since I embarked on this journey, and I promised I would be transparent about it all on my blog… mainly to keep myself honest. I posted about the reasons here, and put a number of baselines in place. In this post, I want to give an update, and talk a little about how I got to where I am today.
The Journey so Far
My last day of work was about a month before the end of school holidays, and with one less income coming in, we decided that I would look after our 9 year old son this holidays to save some money on holiday care. This was great as one of my big motivators in taking this time off was to spend more time with my son. The challenge was that it really didn’t help me get into a rhythm. I was grabbing a swim when I could, going for walks with my son from time to time, but it was very irregular. After he went back to school, I began to settle into more of a routine, broken only by my son’s gradge 4 surf camp where I was a parent volunteer.
The rhythm I have been successful in getting into is:
- Swimming at least 3 times a week.
- A long walk on non-swimming days.
- Almost daily back exercises.
I have managed to lose about 3kgs, my blood pressure is coming down, and is almost in an acceptable range, and my calesterol is also now in a good place. I still notice elevated heart rate when I walk uphill, so I know I have a way to go yet.
So far so good.
Short digression
One thing I’ve found in my time is that health is a holistic thing. Bad health in one area of your life can have consequences on a seemingly unrelated aspect of your health. One health problem I’ve had since my early 20’s is severe back pain caused by a compressed disk in my lower back. I was at university playing squash with a friend when I overstreched for a ball and ended up in agony on the floor. For the next 2 weeks I could barely standup, and for months afterwards, just walking was a real challenge. I tried a chiropractor and a physio, none of which really helped. Eventually I found some releif by doing a set of daily back exercises. The pain flared up again throughout my 20s, and has followed me all the way into my 50s. I soon discovered that the best thing I could do for my back was swimming. This is why I am so keen on swimming, but the pain does often stop me from walking as much as I know I should. It has also been known to keep me from my passion of Argentinian Tango when it gets bad. I say all this to better explain how I got to where I am now.
How I Got Here
Back in 2007, I noticed that I had started putting on a bit of weight. I was 102kg, which was the heaviest I’d ever been. Having a back problem, I knew I really couldn’t afford the extra weight. I was swimming at least twice a week, and dancing tango about the same. I was also riding my push bike a fair bit as I had no car (or motorbike), so the issue wasn’t exercise… it was diet. I was eating too much sugar and carbs, and drinking too much alcohol. To combat this, I decided to go on the only “diet” I’ve ever been on in my life. The diet I choose was the CSIRO total wellbeing diet, which had just come out. It copped some flack because it was sponsored by the meat board of Australia, and surprise surprise, the recipes in the book had a lot of meat (not much joy if you were an overweight vegetarian). Despite the controversy, the diet had solid science behind it. The basic principle: cut back drastically on carbs, eat lots of protein, ensure you have a good mix of fruit and vegies and do lots of exercise. For 5-6 months I followed this diet fairly strictly and cut back significantly on alcohol and managed to lose 12kg.
Buenos Aires
Not long after losing all this weight, I made my mandatory tango pilgramge to Buenos Aires. Although this wasn’t your usual 3 week tango holiday. I had decided to take an entire year off work in order to really immerse myself in Buenos Aires.
Of course the notion of any diet completely went out the window when I got to Buenos Aires. I was eating empanada’s, choripan (Basically Chorizo hotdog), pizza, hamberguessa completa con papas frittas (hamburger and chips), alfajores, lot’s of dulce de leche, and my restraint on alcohol had vanished. It’s hard to resist when you can buy a decent bottle of malbec for as little as 10 pesos (about $AUD2.50). The diet wasn’t completely bad, I did eat plenty of steak, but I was sure I would end up putting all the weight I’d lost back on.
To my surprise, a year later when I returned, I was still exactly 90kgs. The only thing I could put this down to, was the high intensity life-style I was living in Buenos Aires. I would be out dancing tango about 4 nights a week often til 4am. Sometimes, I’d even go on to another bar that was open til 7am. I’d do somewhere between 3 and 5 classes a week, and I’d walk almost everywhere. This level of activity managed to negate the increase in carbs/calories I had started consuming.
Post Buenos Aires
On my return in 2009, I made no effort to reduce the calories, but of course due to work commitments, I was unable to maintain the level of activity… slowly but surely the weight started to creep back on. I was still dancing tango at least 3 nights a week, and I tried to get my swims in (something I couldn’t do in Buenos Aires), but it was nowhere near the same level of activity. It took a while, but by the time I had my son (2016), I had re-gained most of the weight and was back to 100kg. Of course with a baby, it became impossible to maintain my tango, but I found other ways of exercising. I got into a regular swimming pattern (3-4 days a week), the baby required stroller walks late at night to get him to sleep etc… This kept my weight steady at 100kg for a while, given my tango had slipped to once a fortnight.
Covid and Lockdown
The thing that really caused me the greatest problem was lockdown. In 2020 as covid rampaged through the world, our leaders in Victoria made the decision to lock down the state of Victoria in order to avoid a run-away crisis. Of course public swimming pools were immediately closed, which meant I lost my main means of exercise, and let’s not even talk about tango. I was working fulltime, and this quickly became a very stressful period at work. To add to it, during the worst of the lockdown, I was unable to take my child to daycare, so was balancing stressful work, and home childcare at the same time. The stress really started to get to me, and I started turning to my favourite coping mechanism…. drinking alcohol. My drinking increased significantly throughout this period as a result. With the pools closed, and my days split between child care and work, I tried to get exercise by taking a nice long walk after 9pm at night. This was … working … until the government decided to bring in a curfew at 8pm in an attempt to stop people who were breaking lockdown rules.
By the time we finally came out of lockdown, I was 112kg, I had no regular exercise routine, and now I had a genuine drinking problem which I have been struggling to wind back ever since.
Post Lockdown
With work and life stress not abating, I struggled to get into a good healthy pattern that I could sustain. My weight kept increasing, and about 3 years ago, when going for an unrelated operation, a nurse noticed my blood pressure was unusually high, and suggest I chase it up with my doctor. By the time I started noticing the heart issues, I had topped out at 118kgs. I had tried a number of times to get back into my swimming, but was finding that just as I got into a rhythm, I’d have severe asthma which would last for between 6 and 11 weeks, keeping me out of the pool.
So What Next
I think the lesson from my journey so far is that it all comes down to habbits. Good habbits done regularly will boost health, fitness and keep weight under control. Bad habbits repeated often enough will result in poor health and uncontrollable weight gain. Obviously I need to take this time to begin to undo some of the damage I’ve done to myself over the years. I won’t go into specifics here (I’ll save that for a follow-up post), but I know there are some immediate things I need to address.
Firstly, my back problems are causing me some challenges, and hindering me getting back into walking and tango. I am seeing an Ostropath for this, as well as doing my back exercises. Swimming is by far the easiest routine to implement, especially with no work in the way. I can go for a swim after dropping my son at school, instead of dragging myself out of bed at 5:30am. Having discovered that my astham is essentially triggered by allergies, I have been taking antihistamines for over a year now, and so far have not had any more bad asthma attacks since. The biggest challenge is cutting back on alcohol. I’ve done Feb-fasting in the past, and while it’s not a huge challenge to do it, I have found that as soon as March hits, I’m back into my usual habbits, especially if I have any stress.
That’s all I really wanted to say in this post. I will write more as my journey progresses.