Davey_Sprockett
New member
Lol, loved Spartacus: Blood and Sand, just thought it might be the appropriate way to erm, break the ice and entice people into my fledgling weight loss diary.... did it work? Hope so.
So, a bit about myself. I live in London, love football, MMA, video games, subtitled European and Asian movies and lot's of other stuff besides.
YAWN, what an incredibly run-of-the-mill introduction, oh well moving on swiftly. I've been trying to lose weight on and off for at least the last couple of years, prior to that I really hadn't needed to at all. I trained in Muay Thai for a few years in my early twenties, but gave that all up at the age of 24 to pursue a quite different career in the art of making my way home from the pub, while not actually knowing how I got there. Dire, indeed.
Throughout the early to mid part of my twenties my weight was always pretty consistent, never going over about 11 stone (154lbs), even after I gave up training and devoted pretty much all my free time to drinking, smoking and eating takeaways. But a good thing can never last forever, as I reached the latter part of my twenties, I started putting on weight like never before. It probably took me till I was 28 to realise something was going very wrong, tipping the scales at 15 and 1/2 stone (217lbs), and I decided to resolve the issue. Up till then I'd been totally confident, but I was finding myself stumbling over my words and could feel my chubby little face going bright red at the hint of the slightest interaction with women, even in a situation as simple as buying a basket of groceries from a pretty girl at the checkout in a supermarket. This was not me, well at least not the cocky, witty and womanising me that i'd been cultivating and perfecting in and around every decent drinking establishment in South West London. And I was absolutely horrified.
So, in the first week of January 2009 I marched into my local gym, signed up and got to right down to working on my physical appearance.......
For one whole month.....
Then I got bored and gave up.....
Fast forward to around the same time 2010, to cut a short story even shorter, see above for details. Seriously I did the same thing twice!
2010 wasn't an entire loss though, although I had dropped out of going to the gym by early february, in march I had managed to regain my senses and also realised why I hadn't had the motivation to get off my butt and head to the gym. Everyone in there was as physically perfect as they could be, and there I was huffing and puffing for 20 minutes on the treadmill in clothes that fitted me like sausage skins, expecting the transformation to be instantaneous and I got frustrated. So I quit.
Armed with the knowledge that I was never going to be successful in a conventional gym environment, but well and truly getting the fitness bug, I started buying up my own gym equipment and fitness accessories. So far to date I have:
Treadmill - the priciest of all my equipment cost £500
Skipping/speed rope - the simplest, cheapest and also my favourite
Weights bench
Weights plates (4x20kg, 4x10kg, 4x5kg, 8x2.5kg, 8x 1.25kg) bought all of my weights equipment from my boss at work for £75, which I thought was exceptionally cheap.
A decent mountain bike - great since I have a beautiful royal park 5 mins from my house. I think a ride round the outskirts of the park is about 12 miles.
And just some smaller items like a football, and some tennis rackets which are great during the summer.
So I got on with working out, was doing quite well, at one point in 2010 I even got down to 13 stone (182lbs)..... and then summer happened, to be precise the World Cup happened. Although England put in their worst appearance at a World Cup, I was in full party mode, and didn't really turn my attention back to training until mid-september. By this time I was back above 14 and1/2 stone, and basically had to start all over again. Which I really didn't. Training happened "when I felt like it", and thus I didn't really get much done, going out drinking just as much as I trained. That's pretty much the entire story up until Christmas day, which I emerged from looking and feeling approximately like the contents of a port-a-potty at the Glastonbury festival. In fact, probably a lot worse.
This may actually be the turning point, I was put off alcohol so much so that I totally boycotted New Years Eve. I didn't show up at the pub, I didn't attend any parties, I didn't even go to my best mates house for a few quiet drinks with him and his wife. I stayed in, had a run on the treadmill, played Xbox all evening, watched the midnight festivities on BBC news and then went to sleep after checking my lottery numbers (which I didn't win by the way). And it was refreshing to wake up without a hangover, and before 9am on New Years Day.
They say you should start the year as you mean to go on, and I do believe I've started the year very positively! With a bit of luck and the encouragement of the people on this website, I hopefully will fulfill the goal that has proved elusive in previous years.
Anyway, I intend to post on here at least once a day to keep a record for myself (and to inform others of my progress, should they find it in the slightest bit interesting), I look forward to getting your feedback, wishes of good luck, encouragement, fanmail, hatemail, pictures of your dogs etc!!!
Starting weight - 196lbs, i'll post up the rest of my measurement (arms, legs waist etc) when I get in from work tomorrow.
So, a bit about myself. I live in London, love football, MMA, video games, subtitled European and Asian movies and lot's of other stuff besides.
YAWN, what an incredibly run-of-the-mill introduction, oh well moving on swiftly. I've been trying to lose weight on and off for at least the last couple of years, prior to that I really hadn't needed to at all. I trained in Muay Thai for a few years in my early twenties, but gave that all up at the age of 24 to pursue a quite different career in the art of making my way home from the pub, while not actually knowing how I got there. Dire, indeed.
Throughout the early to mid part of my twenties my weight was always pretty consistent, never going over about 11 stone (154lbs), even after I gave up training and devoted pretty much all my free time to drinking, smoking and eating takeaways. But a good thing can never last forever, as I reached the latter part of my twenties, I started putting on weight like never before. It probably took me till I was 28 to realise something was going very wrong, tipping the scales at 15 and 1/2 stone (217lbs), and I decided to resolve the issue. Up till then I'd been totally confident, but I was finding myself stumbling over my words and could feel my chubby little face going bright red at the hint of the slightest interaction with women, even in a situation as simple as buying a basket of groceries from a pretty girl at the checkout in a supermarket. This was not me, well at least not the cocky, witty and womanising me that i'd been cultivating and perfecting in and around every decent drinking establishment in South West London. And I was absolutely horrified.
So, in the first week of January 2009 I marched into my local gym, signed up and got to right down to working on my physical appearance.......
For one whole month.....
Then I got bored and gave up.....
Fast forward to around the same time 2010, to cut a short story even shorter, see above for details. Seriously I did the same thing twice!
2010 wasn't an entire loss though, although I had dropped out of going to the gym by early february, in march I had managed to regain my senses and also realised why I hadn't had the motivation to get off my butt and head to the gym. Everyone in there was as physically perfect as they could be, and there I was huffing and puffing for 20 minutes on the treadmill in clothes that fitted me like sausage skins, expecting the transformation to be instantaneous and I got frustrated. So I quit.
Armed with the knowledge that I was never going to be successful in a conventional gym environment, but well and truly getting the fitness bug, I started buying up my own gym equipment and fitness accessories. So far to date I have:
Treadmill - the priciest of all my equipment cost £500
Skipping/speed rope - the simplest, cheapest and also my favourite
Weights bench
Weights plates (4x20kg, 4x10kg, 4x5kg, 8x2.5kg, 8x 1.25kg) bought all of my weights equipment from my boss at work for £75, which I thought was exceptionally cheap.
A decent mountain bike - great since I have a beautiful royal park 5 mins from my house. I think a ride round the outskirts of the park is about 12 miles.
And just some smaller items like a football, and some tennis rackets which are great during the summer.
So I got on with working out, was doing quite well, at one point in 2010 I even got down to 13 stone (182lbs)..... and then summer happened, to be precise the World Cup happened. Although England put in their worst appearance at a World Cup, I was in full party mode, and didn't really turn my attention back to training until mid-september. By this time I was back above 14 and1/2 stone, and basically had to start all over again. Which I really didn't. Training happened "when I felt like it", and thus I didn't really get much done, going out drinking just as much as I trained. That's pretty much the entire story up until Christmas day, which I emerged from looking and feeling approximately like the contents of a port-a-potty at the Glastonbury festival. In fact, probably a lot worse.
This may actually be the turning point, I was put off alcohol so much so that I totally boycotted New Years Eve. I didn't show up at the pub, I didn't attend any parties, I didn't even go to my best mates house for a few quiet drinks with him and his wife. I stayed in, had a run on the treadmill, played Xbox all evening, watched the midnight festivities on BBC news and then went to sleep after checking my lottery numbers (which I didn't win by the way). And it was refreshing to wake up without a hangover, and before 9am on New Years Day.
They say you should start the year as you mean to go on, and I do believe I've started the year very positively! With a bit of luck and the encouragement of the people on this website, I hopefully will fulfill the goal that has proved elusive in previous years.
Anyway, I intend to post on here at least once a day to keep a record for myself (and to inform others of my progress, should they find it in the slightest bit interesting), I look forward to getting your feedback, wishes of good luck, encouragement, fanmail, hatemail, pictures of your dogs etc!!!
Starting weight - 196lbs, i'll post up the rest of my measurement (arms, legs waist etc) when I get in from work tomorrow.
You'll find plenty of motivation and inspiration around here, and keeping a diary might just be the difference- it certainly seems to be for many of us 
