Argh

Someone over at SOI posted a very useful link (which I must add to my profile) for SparkPeople. This is broadly speaking a motivational website that allows you to enter your food and exercise within the context of a supportive online community (it's there should you want it, kind of thing, but you are encouraged to actively participate in that community).

Anyway, that was yesterday. I decided that as I'd had a really positive day (I have been trying to eat rather more healthily) that I would input my food intake and set up a few things like exercise goals, weight loss goals and so on. It reckons that at 2 pounds a week I can be at target by Boxing Day! Jeez!

I am discovering that I don't really eat enough fat. How weird is that? It's not like I go out of my way to cut it out of my diet, not knowingly. I think I must have just had picking healthy options drummed into me so much that fat is one of the things I automatically omit. Of course, it helps that I have taken two days to nibble one plain chocolate Flake bar, and haven't been stuffing crisps down my neck.

Tonight I went swimming after work for the first time since October 2006. 36 lengths in 45 minutes, ten of them breaststroke, the rest my version of front crawl. My technique sucks again after three or four laps and my breathing goes to pot, but I think I could quite quickly get back up to 50+ lengths in an hour.

This was what I had to say about the experience, however:

I want to be rich enough ...to have a house with a full-size pool.

*grumping*

the local leisure centre is all well and good, but...i don't really want to have squealing children jumping in from the side and landing on top of me or slap bang in my path so i bump into them, or am half-drowned by the tidal wave created.

i don't want to be pushed so far off my line as the pool is too damn busy that i scrape my hand off a broken tile on the pool wall and skin a knuckle.

i don't want to spend my session swimming an extra ten lengths just trying to swim up and down and having to avoid the couples, and larger groups, who swim abreast ever so slowly whilst chatting.

yes, i've tried going before work. no kids, but twice as busy.

no, i don't hate kids: but there are set times for children to horse about, and when it's an open swimming session, let's do just that.

and yes, i could join a private gym. but i don't happen to have a spare £50 a month plus the £200 up front that the local private gym would require.

i tell you, as soon as it is light at a time of day when i can see the roads and paths, i am off out walking and running! i might even buy a bicycle...i know where i can pick one up for about £70, and as a one-off i can manage that.

/end rant.

Not too impressed, was I?

Ah, well! If I am going to do all this walking, I need to get fitter. Quite a bit fitter. And as it is too dark for walking in the evening during the week, swimming will have to do for now. But I really do think a reasonably inexpensive bike is a good plan. I always did find it bloody hard work, though. So it probably is a really good idea, in that case. And cross-training is better for you than just sticking to the one exercise.

Time for bed, I think. Night night!