The golden goal.

Once again I am thinking about getting into shape, losing a bit of weight and regaining some fitness. I have two reasons for this - I am doing a 10K run with the boys next year and I have a foreign holiday to fgo on that I'd like to be able to fit into some nice summery clothes that I currently own, but are not the greatest fitting. Generally being fitter means better sleep at night and better concentration and mental faculties etc. during the day that would be enormously helpful in my line of work.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking to get ripped and run off and do the Insanity P90X routine. What I want is to lose some weight, especially around the midriff and tone up a bit - tighten the tum, get a bit of stength in the arms and become fitter. Importantly, though, I don't want to lose too much weight. I have my reasons for this that I don't want to share publicly at this time.

The amount of information out there is incredible and often contradictory though. About the only thing that everyone agrees on is that diet (note: not "going on a diet") is 80% of weight loss, and 20% exercise. But everything else is at odds with each other - carbs, no carbs? Proteins? Healthy fats? Calorie counting or not? Trying to find a decent eating plan is impossible and, sad to say, my own motivation to do exercise is really poor right now.

So, starting at the weekend, I'm going to try and research an eating plan. Right away I know that I will have to cut out the booze (if stuck, drinking gin and slimline tonic has been recommended in the past by GC) and I will have to cut out my much loved foods of cheese and crisps. The new eating plan will require me to be more stringent about what I buy at the supermarket, doing weekly shops instead of when I need them so that I have time at the weekend to cook my own lunches and always have things in the house so I don't resort to unhealthy snacking.

I've said this before, but I will have to work all this in gradually - stopping the boozing, radically overhauling my diet and rapidly increasing my exercise will not last long if I do them all at once. I need to gradually phase them all in. I'll knock the booze on the head in October for a few weeks as I'm already booked up for the pub for most of this month. The diet thing will probably be the second thing as I see that as taking a good few weeks to research properly, so that means that the first thing I need to to is up my exercise routine - find things I can do in the house without too much impact (i.e. pissing off the downstairs "neighbours") cand turning up to the gym again maybe once or twice a week - and ultimately aimn to be doing something perhaps four nightrs as week for an hour (or more) at a time.

I'm not looking forward to it, but it's something I need to do.