Welcome to LosingTheBelly.com - I'm Dominic Pannell and this is where I'm going to document my attempt to lose weight and get fitter over the coming months. This has been a long time coming - I've always been 'big-boned' even though I was relatively fit as a youth and played lots of sport, including athletics (I was a sprint champ at a very young age) and rugby (no surprise that I was a prop forward). In the past few years I have been piling on the pounds and in the past three and a half years I have added three and a half stone in weight. I've never been as big as I am and it's not making me happy. It's time for me to turn back the tide and start losing the belly! |  |
I have planned a dual
strategy that is based loosely on the Body
For Life programme (hey! I'm in the UK, so I'm not permitted to enter the
BfL challenge and I reckon I have the right to tailor it to suit me!). This
involves eating better and exercising more, so I'll be following the basic
equation of
CALORIES IN < CALORIES OUT
or
CALORIES IN (those consumed) must not outweigh CALORIES OUT
(spent on physical activity)
Now I know it's a lot
harder than that. What's more, Ken Mierke explains that a better equation is
FAT STORED < FAT
REMOVED FROM STORAGE
I accept that this is
probably true, but in an attempt to reduce obstacles, I’ll focus on the easy version
to start with and hope to keep going long enough to apply the second later.
This venture is going to
require a great deal of will-power from me, especially when the weather's bad
and I don't feel like going for a run (OK in the early days, due to my lack of
stamina, I'll be walking more than running but bad weather will still put me
off).
I'm also drawing on other
sources of advice and inspiration. David
Grisaffi has an informative blog
and a newsletter, which is helping me distinguish between what is fact and what
is fiction in the over-populated world of health and weight-loss expertise. He also has an exercise plan that eases readers into a programme in well-thought out stages rather than jumping straight into a heavy gym schedule and risk disillusion (if not injury).
I'm not only listening to American experts and I was pleased that in their online TV show, British fitness experts, Adam Stansbury and Simon Howard confirmed the effectiveness of several of the exercises I've picked up from Grisaffi and an excellent physio, Juliet Herbert who treated me after I put my back out playing squash.
I'm under no illusions -
this will be a massive challenge for me. I have always found excuses not to
exercise more or to cut back on what I assume, so this time I'm coming at it more
prepared...
