What's been happening?

Haven't posted anything here for a while: things have settled down a bit. I have been cycling most days, so that's good. However yesterday I felt really knackered and booked a room in a B&B near to work. Much cheaper than a hotel, cosy, informal. So that was alright. I think I might have to do that now and again in order to just be able to "have a night off".

To my surprise...

I've got thru a whole day sticking pretty well to the detox diet. After the soup of lunchtime, in the afternoon I scoffed: nothing. No Kit Kats, no Galaxies, no Mars Bars, no Snickers, no Bounties, no Minstrels, no Yorkies, no pains au chocolat, no croissants, no espressos, no teas, no Boosts, no crisps, no panini, no sandwiches, no baguettes, no Topics, no Maltesers, no Ritter Sport mit ganzen Mandeln, no Twixes, no Picnic, no Flyte, no Aeros, no Dairy Milks, no Whole Nut, no Fruit'n'Nut. No. Chocolate. Just drank healthsome H2O.
This evening, got home, drank water and consumed a Stir Fry of Extreme Virtue, featuring kidney beans, beansprouts, etc. Followed by some stewed apple. Taken plain. With no lashings of ice cream and maple syrup, like usual. And that's it. I'm not even going to have a bedtime cup of tea. I have had, in principle, no dairy, no wheat, no alcohol, almost no salt, no sugar (apart from the banana and apple). Not much of a headache. See how it goes tomorrow....

Monday morning

Got up late this morning, although wasn't TOO lazy. At least managed to drag myself from the comfy pit with a bit of spare time for ablutions. Got the 09:01 train though, just, and of course no bicycle. Still feeling achy, throat is still inflamed, still generally blech. Sauntered into work at 10:45-ish. I think my low health status makes me immune to the cuts, thrusts and pressures of corporate life, however, which is a mercy. People are rushing around and panicking about stuff, and I'm very much like that guy in that lovely film Office Space who just decides that he couldn't give a toss anymore, goes into work, but takes it REALLY EASY. So there's a problem with the E2E Test Feeds run, so what?? Next I'll get a memo about the cover sheets on my TPS Reports...
However, a plus positive on today's chart is that my diet is offically sorted. Oh yes. Breakfast = 1 banana (OK and some coffee, but come on! It's my first day.). Then no snackeries or anything til 12:30 when: Potato and Leek Soup. Equals Vegetables. Equals Virtue. Now, this is CANTEEN L&P soup - so is no doubt brimming with salt and artificialities, and is disturbingly gloopy which suggests some form of thickening agent. But at least it's not wheat... I've had no bread anyway...
Am drinking quite a few glasses of water. So far so good. Just one coffee today is in itself progress....

Time has passed...

And bugger all cycling has been done. Maybe it's back to the old wobbly regimen of indecisive avoidance? Yeah, maybe. Or maybe it's something to do with the real MUTHA of a cold bug thing that I've unendingly had the last fortnight. Bloody awful, it's been. Flu, aches, coughs, sneezes, inflamed throat, all the usual suspects lined up and mugging me every morning and night.
So now I need a serious detox. Am thinking about taking a late-ish train into work tomorrow, maybe cycle/maybe not, maybe find a B&B and stay over tomorrow night, get some serious sleeping done with no bastard journey to get thru (other than the pleasurable cycling bit). Might look into B&B possibilities tomorrow.
Anyway, maybe I could now move onto to using this weblog as a drone-sink for my further attempts to slap my willpower into some sort of shape. Having wrestled with, and prevailed against, my inherent laziness and risk-aversiness with regard to cycling to work, perhaps I could use this to record my upcoming battles with that ever-present bugbear of my waking life: food.
Appropriately enough, given the title of this weblog, my eating tends to go in cycles. I try to keep to a good diet, and sometimes it works for a bit, but I always, ALWAYS, fall into bad eating habits again. I managed to keep the Atkins diet going for a good few weeks - months even. But it stopped, and I before I knew it I'm back on the doughnuts and gaining weight again.
Ten years ago I was 82 kilos and pretty fit. Now I'm 106 kilos (maybe more, I haven't been near a gym to find out as Helen won't have scales in the house (apart from the culinary variety!). The last five or six years have just been a slow decline into compulsive scoffing, junk food, mad dieting, vague attempts at regaining fitness, and failure. Each cycle has got worse - in the sense of leaving me heavier, flabbier, and wheezier than the previous one.
How to kill the cycle and get back into a proper eating mode? I often eat to kill a gnawing emptiness inside me. I'm not actually hungry, of course I'm not. It's amazing when I hear fit people saying things like "Gosh I'm so STARVING!" when they had to skip lunch due to an ill-planned work schedule. Really? Starving heh? Like they do in Africa maybe?
OK, so, but for me I compulsively eat, scoff, gobble, cram because I feel empty. Unloved, unlovable. Etc, etc. Sometimes when I stuff a massive stack of choccie bars into my slavering gob I can literally hear this baby screaming inside me for food. I munch, it bawls. Then it's quieted for a bit. Then the cycle begins again.
So I thought I could combine cycling, exercise, diet, self-esteem, etc. etc., all those elusive things which turn my life into a confusing haze, into a diary subject. Get some of that confusion down in print. And also note the turning points, celebrate the successes, see if this method can help keep me on a path which I seem determined to fall off every time I try it.
Like at the moment, I'm thinking of trying out a new and quite radical health-food-freak-type diet. I could write down stuff about that. Combine it with how things are going exercise-wise. Try to get the measure of it all.
Gotta sleep, bugger it. I have to show up at work tomorrow or I am seriously for it.
Night.

Spanner in t'Works

It's now Thursday and I haven't cycled since Monday. What happened? OK it's not exactly down to laziness. Monday I cycled back home and it was fine. Old Brompton Road route and it was barely much more than 30 mins, really. Tuesday I knew I was going to be off because I had a doctor's appointment, also the woodworm-checking-man was coming to check for woodworm, and also Sophie was off with a bad cold. So I was "working from home". But about 2pm I was feeling shite myself and took myself off to bed where I remained for the rest of the day. Felt very flu-ey, achy, generally shite. And so it continued. Wednesday I was officially off sick, but in fact worked most of the day on feeds (groan). Thursday (today) I was supposed to be doing more feeds (more groan) but spent most of the time farting around with a facility to upload a file to a JSP page on the intranet and cause it to be emailed as an attachment to Helpdesk. This is for Sebastien who needs this facility. I got it more or less working (we will see tomorrow) and wrote some notes on it on my other weblog.
I think I will probably stay off again Friday and go and face the music on Monday...

Monday again

Just a quickie. Monday again. Did the route via Hyde Park Corner, Thurloe Square, Old Brompton Road, Earls Court, etc. 5 miles by my reckoning. Was amazed to find myself almost there before I realized I would be. Could be 35 mins? Or less? About that anyway... I'm sure that going back will be worse though...

Friday Morning

Got up without too much of a struggle - but feeling a bit stiff. Strange that once again I woke up at 03:30 thinking it must be time to get up - went back to sleep straight away though I think. Train was normal - I must remember not to let anyone on the train in front of me! They parked themselves in the bike bay (=disabled bay!) and someone else meanwhile nicked my favoured seat next to my bike. I went thru a pantomime of struggling with the bike, suggesting by means of feigned (OK, mostly feigned) clumsiness that it might end up all over his business suit. He got the hint and moved. I feel a bit guilty though - he can of course sit where he likes, I would have coped somehow and I can't assume I'm going to get that seat every day...
This time I went to Charing Cross and carried the bike down the stairs to Embankment. Then up the Mall, Eaton Square, Sloane Square, Kings Road, out thru Fulham, almost to Putney Bridge and then up towards Hammersmith. The actual trip took 40 minutes today - plus then I have to get showered and all... Roads not bad at that time of the morning - and when you hit the Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, the cycle lanes suddenly get a lot better...

In One Piece

The journey back from Hammersmith was kinda scary. This morning, it was mainly a pleasant run without vehicular snarl-ups - but on the way back (I should have guessed), I found myself in queue after queue of nose-to-tail, diesel-belching traffic.
The first bit was fine - West Fulham seemed pretty quiet. But it soon got very snarly as I got near Chelsea Embankment. I think I'm gonna need to find some nice, quiet bike-shaped rat-runs. Once thru there, it was a part-exhilarating, part-terrifying zoom thru Pimlico, up to Victoria (where I seemed to wait at endless traffic lights - once again, some rat-runs are needed I think...), then in front of Buckingham Palace (which I hardly dared even glance at), down the Mall to Trafalgar Square and up to Charing Cross. Only took 45 minutes, including a couple of wrong turns and some map-reading stops...
So was in plenty of time for the 18:00 train and I felt so at peace with the world I even wandered off the train to get a drink, and even bought the train guard a drink of orange juice. Maybe he'll be nice to me at some point in the future...
So I'm back in one piece. Not quite sure how I feel about doing it all again tomorrow: on the one hand I'd like to refine the route a bit to avoid some of the problem spots from this morning, on the other hand, can I be arsed? We will see...

!

Well, I finally did it. To no one's greater surprise than my own. Yesterday I deliberately went out and bought a train ticket that would only get me as far as Charing Cross - no tube included. I slept fitfully - waking up at 03:30 (thinking it must be about time to set off), then again at 04:30 (thinking I'd overslept), then at 05:30 I actually managed to get out of bed without much struggle, dressed in my new cycling gear, bowl of rice pops (all there was) and a banana, then out into the fairly quiet streets. Train was on time, I got a space in the disabled bay for me and the bike, and snoozed til Waterloo East. Manhandled the bike down the stairs, and then had a fairly confusing few minutes picking my way round the sidestreets near Waterloo. Then down Lambeth Palace Road to Lambeth Bridge, down Millbank and West towards Chelsea Embankment. You see the strangest things: a group of Buddhists beating drums by the river opposite the Buddha in (?)Battersea Park. The worst bit was the part from Chelsea Wharf to Putney Bridge - tight little streets with loads of traffic. Must try to find a way to avoid that. Got to work and showered by 08:30, but surely I can cut down the time quite a bit - I had to stop and map read a few times. The showers here are pretty good - and there are lockers too. So now I've had my double espresso and in theory should feel raring to go... hmm we'll see...