Fit To Drop: Time for a healthy scientific approach

It's all about a good life balance - but this chap is taking it to extremes over the City of London (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

When I’m especially self-deprecating, I just say I’m a “fat old bloke”. The last word I don’t want to do anything about, the middle word I can’t (better than the alternative), but the first niggles me.

When I’m not being quite so hard on myself, I say I’m not as fat as might be. You know, not THAT cramped to be sitting beside on the Tube. But it would be nice to lose an inch or two round the middle – and wipe the complacency from faces at the firm holding my pension funds.

Some of you lasted the course of my Marathon Man blog (I finished the London course last year in 4h 28min), but that was centred around 6/7 hours’ training a week. What about the holistic and more realistic approach? How can we improve fitness not just in energetic spurts, but across our everyday lives?

I started walking a couple of miles to the station several days a week, climbing the 144 steps from the Tube train to the ground at Queensway, running a 10k each week – and resurrecting my boyhood joy of horse-riding, albeit once a week.

Alas, it’s not enough. The waistline still delivers an uncomfortable challenge for my belt.

So I’m planning to employ some science into the eternal tussle of food vs exercise vs weight. And am commiting myself to the various constraints by sharing it all with you.

Each blog will be tagged “Fit to drop”. That’s fit to drop a tad of weight, I hope.

Recent Posts on Notebook

• Enslaved to maize: Why we need to re-think Malawi's agricultural future
• The real ghetto superstar: Why Floyd Mayweather is no Muhammad Ali
• The fight for social equality in Brazil
• Barking Blondes: Other people's dogs
• Secondary Breast Cancer: Good news but feeling blue

• TheBeans

  I would like to see exercise taken because it’s enjoyable. If you lose some weight along the way, wahay, good for you. But if not, you will still be healthier for it.

• http://twitter.com/Broxted Ciaran Rehill

  Take up weightlifting. Start with Julie Burchill. Or Howard Jacobsons ego.