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Its cold here in the mornings still. Spring time officially but cold enough for a jacket on my early morning walks. I have been walking for the past three weeks in an effort to be fitter and lose some of hte 10kgs I need to lose to be within the OK range for waist measurement and my BMI.
I am at an age (52) when I have become more conscious and been reminded often enough that I am more prone to illnesses that if not picked up now and remedied can become chronic conditions that plague me for the next 30-40 years. I want to be healthy in my old age and now is the time to remedy the excesses and lacks of the past 10-15 years since I began putting on weight.
You see I have a good history of being fit, having run competitively in my teens and early twenties and run one marathon at age 25 years. But since about the age of 35yrs I have focused on building my business and let physical wellbeing slide off the agenda. I have relied on my residual fitness to carry me through and I am now finding that i can’t rely on that anymore.
I recently had my annual physical check with my GP with the usual battery of blood tests and measurements. It all added up to borderline glucose and cholesterol, and overweight by 10-15 kgs (20-35lbs), with a waist measurement over by about 6-10 cms (3-4 inches). Waist measurement is a good indicator of diabetes risk. So I am keen to get that down.
I also use alcohol in excess at the end of the week to relax and wind down. That is not good as my measurement of a glass is the glasses we have at home and not the standard drink which is 10gms of alcohol (http://www.health.gov.au/internet/alcohol/publishing.nsf/Content/standard). By volume of wine at 13% alcohol that volume is about 110mls of white wine. Recommended daily intake is 2 standard drinks to remain healthy and 4 at any one sitting.
So my guess is that my glass contains about 1.5 standard drinks I am going to measure it out to take hte guess work out of it. Once I have a clear understanding of how much of my glass is one standard drink I will try to stick to 2 standard drinks per day . I already try to limit it with reasonable success to Friday and Sunday.
I have been walking for three weeks so far and today I noticed that I strode up hte hill through the bushland near our home with much more confidence and less puffing at the end. I am getting the feeling that I want to run and I will do that next week. 2 minutes running and 4 minutes walking for half an hour. Lets see how that goes.
Are you getting fit? How are you doing it?