About Andrew
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My name is Andrew and I’m on a journey to get fit. I’m taking it one day at a time as that is what seems to work for me.
A few years ago I got on the scale and found I weighed 139.9 kilograms (307 pounds) which is actually classified as morbidly obese. I couldn’t face the idea of hitting the 140 kg mark so I decided to do something about it.
I started going to the gym and eating healthy. I made reasonably good progress with this but things had stalled somewhat.
Late last year one of my friends (who I thought was a fellow couch potato) mentioned in passing that he had been running. To be honest this shocked me somewhat as I had never expected it. After thinking about it for a few weeks I decided that if he could do it then so could I.
I decided to do some research and I came across a lot of references to something called C25K.
C25K, is a fantastic program that’s been designed to get just about anyone from the couch to running 5 kilometres or 30 minutes in just 9 weeks.
The plan tells you exactly how much to run and how much to walk and it gradually builds up the amount of time spent running.
I started the plan in mid January and it was tough doing any running at all in the beginning, but I persevered. I got bronchitis about half way through the program and had to take a week off but I persevered. I finished the program in mid March when I managed to run 5 kilometres non stop. That was quite an accomplishment for me.
I ran my first 5K race at the end of March which was another major accomplishment for me.
I’m now working my way up to running 10K non stop and at my current rate of progress I should be there soon.
I have come to enjoy running and I’m very happy with my weight loss progress. I’ve got a preliminary long term goal of about 85 kgs (187 pounds). I probably haven’t seen that weight in the last 15 or so years. I’m already lighter than I have been in the last 12 years.
During the course of running, I decided I wanted to run a half-marathon and I’ve picked the Auckland Marathon in November this year.
So, the purpose of this blog is to share my journey to fitness through running and eating right.
I also use it to keep myself accountable:
I weigh in on a daily basis as I find if I record my weight it seems to go down as I’m more accountable. I use Skinnyr for this:
My weekly weight log (which is longer term) is here:
I started this blog in January this year. You can see that since starting it I haven’t backslid like I did late last year.
