Long-term readers of this site will know I don't do exercise. Heck, recent readers of this site will know I don't do exercise. Anyone who has only been reading since 4 August has to realise I don't do exercise.
I am very disdainful of the 'gym culture'. Obviously, I know there are exceptions, there always are, but I feel a large number of people who regularly attend gyms, and 99.9999999999% of people who think they ought to, do so because they've been told. Told by advertisers, and by lazy journalists whose livelihood depends on the advertisers. Some silly twit I used to know (I quite liked him, but he was a silly twit) had the temerity to ask me why I don't go to the gym. I said something like, the time you spend honing your body, I spend stimulating my mind. He said that he finds that going to the gym stimulates the mind. Oh god, I thought, this discussion is going nowhere fast. As he had no experience of exercising his mind, he wouldn't begin to understand me.
All the experts who aren't paid a fortune to sell a product, state that somebody who eats a reasonably balanced diet can keep perfectly fit by walking, housework etc.(Except that a great many people never walk, anywhere). And, indeed, up until about five years ago I was perfectly happy with being a bit plump but able to run for the bus. All that changed with CFS (and then got worse when I got pregnant, briefly).
I don't do diets, because they patently obviously don't work - if they did work, there wouldn't be a new one invented every week. I used to be aware of waistbands - from time to time a tight waistband would signify a need to move about a bit more and eat a little bit less (especially chocolate, cakes and alcohol). I don't weigh myself - if one's weight is falling, the worst thing one can do is get obsessed by fractions of kilos. If it's ballooning it's depressing to have stark confirmation of what you already know. If it's staying stable, your waistbands tell you that.
Years ago I was told at a hospital that my ideal weight was x kilogrammes. At the time I weighed x+10. It was relatively easy to get down to x+5. Then other stuff got in the way. I then thought, hey, I was x+10 despite exercising three times a week. I got to x+5 by giving up exercise. You can see why I don't do exercise!
However, I went to the doctor a few months ago and was weighed - it was a condition they set before I could get a repeat prescription of my Tramadol, and I can't live without my Tramadol 'It's strong' say various medical professionals. Erm, yes, but not actually strong enough. At that point I weighed x+25.
Having been doing the exercise thing for six weeks, and all but cut alcohol out of my diet, I now weigh x+25. I know that because I read that you should weigh yourself before and after exercise. For every pound you lose you should drink a pint of water. After I had been out on the bike for an hour - not very streneous (except for climbing up the hill to the top of Brockwell Park...) - but in the surprising heat of the afternoon, I weighed myself again and discovered that I had put on a kilogramme, quite surprising considering that I had drunk about a quarter a litre of water (not enough...).
So I suppose it would be good to get rid of some of the +25. But slowly. Over maybe a year. Maybe two years. And not by using the bathroom scales. We shall see.
