Topic: The Health, Fitness and Exercise Thread

@AgentCooper Great work!

So much of bad diet (and drink) is just based on habits though isn’t it.. I’m a fiend for biscuits but think I manage to balance it out elsewhere!

And with running it’s a similar thing that I found I have to make it a routine to make myself get out; I feel very twitchy if I don’t get my Thursday or weekend run. Strava goals really help me personally as well as they encourage me to keep pushing on for distance and climbing over the month.

@render @Thrillho Thanks, appreciate it. Without getting too ahead of myself, I definitely intend to stick with it as I just don’t feel alcohol is compatible with where my life is right now and it just isn’t good for me physically or mentally.

I’m not new to running but I’ve been off the wagon for too long and now with the baby I’m struggling to find the motivation, though I know once I’m out there I’ll be getting the itch back, just have to find a way to fit it around everything else. I’ve been considering using strava, do you reckon it’s a good motivator then Thrill? My friend circle is almost single figures these days so don’t really know anyone with experience of using it. As for food, I’m in constant battle with an addictive personality, I can’t just have one biscuit or one slice of toast and having no alcohol has only exacerbated that, but like you say this is all habits primarily, just need to find a structure or routine that provides a nice balance.

Don’t know if that made any sense 😂

@AgentCooper I go through patches like that as well where if I've not got an event planned I often find a good excuse to not bother. At the moment I'm feeling the opposite and want to get out at every opportunity so I'll use it whilst I can but you are right, kids don't make it easy. The worst time for me was during lockdown as the only time I got out running was when I took the kids out for their daily exercise. I'd get them on their bikes and I'd run, and as my son was quite young still I'd be pushing him along for the extra training 😅.

During that time I remember Strava being a great thing for me as even though I couldn't meet up with other friends for activities we could motivate each other by posting our runs / rides on there. I'm a bit more on and off with it these days as quite often I just want to go out and not worry about how fast or far I'm going but do still post and look at what others are doing. There's a load more functionality in the app than that even but while I haven't really bothered with the segments stuff for a long while I do like having a look to see other routes people do around me. There's also some groups stuff in there now as well where you can join a group with similar goals for extra motivation. I'm sure @Thrillho will have some better advice on it but hope you find something that works for you.

@AgentCooper I find Strava useful to track what I’m doing and having the 100km monthly badge to aim for (and the 2,000m climbing one) pushes me to try and get them each month. I’m on a streak of doing those and a half marathon every month since Jan 2022!

You can set weekly goals too but I think that’s a paid feature. I pay for it now, mostly to use the route planning feature if I’m thinking of trying something new. Being able to see other routes near you is handy too.

But as I say, I find the routine is what helps me. My wife knows I’ll want to go out Thursday and Sunday morning so we try to work it into what we want to do.

The great thing with running though is that you can just throw shoes on and go and remember that getting out there for 20 mins is better than not bothering at all!

@AgentCooper well done mate! I haven't counted the days but I think I'm roughly the same without alcohol. I stopped drinking in early/mid December. Admittedly I didn't drink much anyway but I stopped for similar reasons I think. Basically I just wanted to not have my mood influenced because my moods had become super intense.

Alcohol is such a wild card as well, like it can make things much better or much worse so always a bit of a gamble. I haven't missed it though to be honest. I think my main day associated with drinking were board game days/nights but I switched out for Punk AF and it's fine tbh

Totally feel you on the food replacement though and addictive personality. I need to curb it. I attempted to do so and started recording calories on the app a couple weeks ago but Easter was particularly hard on me unfortunately :/

I'm going on holiday next Friday so I reckon I'll try and start it all up again once I've got back from that. Hopefully there won't be many interruptions to a regular schedule and by the time I do get interrupted (a wedding in June) I'll be in a good enough place to write it off as "one weekend" instead of "omg I've failed, there's no point in carrying on!" 😅 which is how I felt about that middle of the night tub of ice cream I had on Good Friday 😭

@render @Thrillho Thanks for the advice and support gang, really appreciate it. I just need to get out there and get some miles under my feet as they say, incidentally I now have a Strava account and have charged my tracking watch 👍 I’ll let you know how I’m getting on , some accountability might be good for me.
@ralphdibny Congratulations on your milestone too, I hope it continues to benefit you. Recording calories is not something that I thought would work but I’ve found it to be really beneficial for me, especially rewiring my brain on portion size. As the other guys have said above, a little bit of what you like can be ok but you have to find the balance. If you’re giving up one thing it can be harder to curb other cravings so I wouldn’t judge yourself too harshly, as long as you’re on the right track hopefully you’ll find a healthy balance that works for you.

Alcohol has been fairly problematic for me over the years and I’ve certainly been here before on my attempts at sobriety. I used to look at people who could have a couple of pints and move on with their lives with envy but now I’ve accepted that will never be an option for me and I’ve reconciled myself to that, there is so many other wonderful things to occupy my time with.

@AgentCooper One of the other things I find useful with Strava for running is using the audio cues to check my pace. I have it set to tell me every km my distance, overall time, and current pace.

The latter was useful when starting out to make sure I was going at a steady pace and not pushing too hard, whereas now I use it more for the other way around!

You can set it to update you every half km too which is more useful for shorter runs. If you’re not doing couch to 5k (or doing your first continuous runs) it can help with pacing and it’s really nice to help see when you’re making improvements.

Good luck though as the first month or so getting into/back into it is always the hardest.