Category: January 2025

Weight = 108.3 Kgs

Steps Completed = 15526

So this morning I woke up an hour and 15 minutes after my alarm and had somehow turned off my alarm without knowing how! I then got up and made my salt water and then did my weigh-in and I was surprised that I had dropped from 108.3 kgs to 108.0 kgs today so my weight is steadily dropping which is good. More importantly when I undressed to go in the shower I noticed that my chest and especially my stomach is getting much thinner 🙂 My stomach shelf has almost gone now which is a really good sign that I am dropping a lot of body fat even if I havent lost a lot of weight!

While in the shower I was thinking about the way that I am training and I I decided that I will take Monday as my only day that I don’t wear the weight vest so it will essentially be my rest day instead of Sunday as planned. My thinking behind this is that I have loads of free time at the weekend so I can do longer rucks than I can during the week so it means I can get well over 10000 step rucks in at the weekend when I only have time during the week to do the 6000 or so uphill short route before I have to start work.

The late start was actually a good thing as it was light by the time I got to the 2 tunnels so I could walk down there traffic free home so it was super piecefull and way more relaxing than walking on the pavement near the road! Even when there is no traffic you have to be vigilant but on the 2 tunnels I can fully switch off which is nice 🙂

As you can see I walked for 1 hour 26 minutes got 10224 steps done and walked 4.42 miles and climbed almost 500 ft. All while wearing a 10kg weight vest 🙂

The snow had almost gone until I got halfway up the hill and it got increasingly heavier as I got to the top but it was pretty good until I started to decend towards the 2 tunnels and the pavement was really slippy so I walked in the road and it was fine. Again about 1/2 way down the hill the snow had pretty much all melted so I went back on the pavement again!

When I got home I opened all the windows and doors for 10 minutes of Lüften which has helped a lot to make the flar feel way more airy and fresh and also way less damp. It has also made the flat warmer and heat up easier too so its definately a reallly positive gain for very little energy expenditure so I will keep doing it!

I am now on Amazon ordering a year wall planner so that I can track my main goal of walking first thing and doing 12000 steps a day to make me more accountable and make it harder to not do it every morning.

I am still going to use the fridge calendar too to track my monthly progress as I like the fact that I see it all the time so it keeps me motivated throughout the day which I think is helping to keep me more active 🙂

This way I will see the yearly progress in the bedroom next to my daily habit check board that I tick off my habits every time I complete them. I also have 2 new whiteboards to track weight lost since the start of my walking streak and also the number of days I have been walking to try and add extra motivation.

This afternoon I need to make stickers for all the boards to update them with permanent category names etc.

I am going to move the weight off of the daily tick board onto the weight board and split the board in half so it has today’s weight and weight lost since start of year at the bottom.

The days consecutively walked will have its own board.

The year planner arrives on Wednesday so it xan be my birthday present from my son 🙂

Weight = 108.3 Kgs

Steps Completed = 15526

This morning my alarm went off and I struggled a bit to get out of bed but I talked myself into it and got up and made my salt water and then did my weigh-in (down 0.5 kgs this morning to 108.3 kgs). I noticed that my chest and stomach are getting less chubby so all the rucking is helping burn the fat.

I have also noticed that getting up and walking first thing seems to lead to me being more relaxed and more active for the rest of the day. I also noticed yesterday that stress from work triggers my craving for sugary foods! Yesterday was stressful and I noticed that I was craving sugary sweets and choclate really badly when I hadn’t been all week! I did eventually cave and buy a bunch of crap which lead to having takeout last night too 🙁

This means to make it easier to not eat badly or eat takeout is to reduce my stress at work! This means that I need to learn to say I am too busy and only do one or 2 tasks at a time instead of juggling multiple tasks at the same time and getting that feeling of being pulled in all directions at the same time and getting nowhere! Another bad habbit to work on in the future!

After my shower I got dressed, drank my salt water, put on my weigh-vest, coat, beanie, gloves and shoes and left the house on my morning ruck. I went a way longer route today which was nice for a change and it means that I walked 10565 steps in one walk so about 4000 steps or more further than my normal loop. Weirdly enought the hardest part of the walk was still the hill at the end of my road which is always a shock to the system 🙂

It was nice to walk a different route as I get to walk in places with a better view than my normal route during the week and its definately nice to change things up.

When I got home I did my Lüften which was made easier by me adding another velcro patch to make it easier to open my bedroom blind open to allow for better airflow 🙂 While I was waiting the 10 minutes for the house to air out I started writing this post and I am now in bed updating it while chilling for a bit before waking up my son ready to get the car loaded ready for the tip at 9 am.

We got to the tip and unloaded all the stuff with no issues and I was home again by 9:30 and I had completed my 12000 steps for the day already!

When I got home I bought some flooring and stuff to fit the flooring so that I can use my week off next week to sort out my bedroom as its been annoying me for so long that its about time I sorted it! I went for the cheapest option which is vinyl roll flooring but as long as its dry and easy to clean I will be happy 🙂 I have been wanting to move my room around for a while too so this gives me an excuse to do that!

While I am changing the flooring I will also paint the bedroom to make it easier to do without making a mess. I will start clearing things out of my bedroom and pull the carpet up today after I sort out my desk as its really annoying me and I need to clean up the lounge to make room for the stuff from the bedroom.

Tomorrow I will try and organise the garage a bit so that I can fit my bike rack and bikes from the lounge into it and hopefully the sofa too and my vinyl cutter to get that out of the way too! I will then move my rollers and bike parts bins into the shed to free up space in the front hall and then start moving the cupboards and other stuff out of the bedroom into the lunge. I am not sure how I will get my bed out yet.

By the end of the day I had completed 15526 steps for the day and i also did a cleaning hour not cleaning 1/2 hour and organised the area under my desk and put a shelving unit in the dead space between the wall and my desk where the aquariums stop the desk fitting against the wall. I have now organised the virgin router, a switch and my Proxmox cluster servers that I only have one installed at the moment. I have ordered some velcro cable ties to allow me to organise everything properly to make that area clutter free.

This is the morning routine that I have built up over the last year or so and which I have perfected over the past week or so:

Wake up with alarm

Turn off alarm

Get up and make the bed

Go to the kitchen and make my salt water

Take salt water back to the bedroom

Go into the bathroom and go to toilet

Do weigh in

Go to bedroom and write my weight on my task board

Get clothes for my walk and take them to the bathroom

Have a shower and get dressed

Clean teeth and gargle with listerine

Go to my bedroom and drink salt water

Put on weight vest and coat

Go to the lounge and grab earbuds

Put on shoes and beany and leave the house

Start strava and put an audio book on audible

Walk

Get back from walk and open all the windows and doors and power on laptop

Do morning tasks for work on laptop

Shut and lock doors and windows after 10 minutes

Get changed and pack bag for work

Ride to work on ebike

Work until 11:30

Ride home

Get home, make food and eat it

At the moment this is my morning routine but in the next couple of weeks I want to add at 12:00 go to the track and ride my BMX until 12:45 when I go home and start work again until 16:00

My evening routine needs a lot of work but for the past week I have been doing the following which has helped a lot:

At about 8pm do 10 minutes backwards walking

When I finish the backwards walking go to the kitchen and clean then kitchen then hoover through the flat before going to bed.

At 9-10pm I have been doing the following:

Take phone put it on silent and take it to the lounge and plug into charge on my desk

Go to bathroom and clean teeth and gargle with listerine

Get dressed into pijamas

Put dirty clothes in dirty washing basket

Go to bed and sleep until alarm goes off at 5 am.

For the next few weeks I want to add an hour of learning to my evening routine then next month I want to add an hour of riding on the rollers too but I am still thinking where I will add them. Once my flat and garage are organised I want to add weights 4 nights a week to.

The attomic habits talks about triggers before doing habits and my morning routine is pretty good for triggers but my evening not so much:

Morning Routine:

Alarm going off leads to waking up

Alarm going off leads to turning the alarm off

Turning the alarm off leads to getting out of bed

Getting out of bed leads to making the bed

Etc Etc until I get to work then I do whatever I have to do until 11:30 (at the moment this is not strickt but I want to make it strict going forwards) when I pack up and ride home and eat before carrying on working until 12:00 when I am supposed to get ready and go to the track all lunchtime. This part of my routine need some work over the next few weeks as there are too many outside influences stopping me from leaving on time and taking my lunch on time.

With my evening routine I want to start:

16:00 finish work and closing laptop lid leads to going to the bedroom and doing 10 minutes on the backwards treadmill which leads to 1 hour of study/ reading which leads to going to the kitchen, making food and eating the food which leads to going to the bedroom and watching TV for 1 hour before going on the rollers with the bike for an hour which leads to going to the bathroom and having a shower then getting into pijamas which leads to going to the kitchen and doing the washing up and hoovering which leads to going to bed and watching more tv etc etc.

As stated before I will next focus on getting my lunchtime routine dialled in and then move onto the evening routine and add learning hour, rollers and weights over the next few months and play around with timings from there.

Weight = 108.8 Kgs

Steps Completed = 15507

This morning I woke up at 5 am again with my alarm and got out of bed, made my salt water then did my weigh-in and I am up 0.1 kgs to 108.8 kgs today! I then showered and got dressed then drank my salt water and then put the weight vest, coat and beany on and then left for my walk!

Out of habit I put spotify on not my audio book and it took me until half way up the hill until I realised and swapped it over. I realised today that I had subconsiuosly been habit stacking with my morning routine as well as setting systems as goals too so I guess that I remembered more of the book that I thought that I did which is good.

When I got home I opened up all the doors and windows and did Lüften while I did my morning checks and then once I was finished I closed the house up and went to work.

I was at work until about 1:30 then headed home and worked from there until 4pm so I missed lunch again today 🙁

I am on holiday Tuesday to Friday next week so I will use that week to get used to stopping what I am doing at 12 and heading to the track for a couple of hours so that when I get back to work I will want to go to the track more at lunch times. Next week I am going to do the timing to go to a pump track to see if it’s possible to have a decent ride at a pumpo track at lunch time or not! I should be able to ride for an hour and still get back to start work on time so that would be better for me at the moment than 2 hours at the track!

I am also crazy to try out my S&M .38 special that I bought as my pump track bike and havent used yet!

When I finished work I sorted out a bunch of stuff around the flat and put on a load of washing as I didn’t have any washing powder left so I sent my son to Lidl to get some. I am going to spend most of this evening washing and drying clothes as I need some clean pants for walking tomorrow!

This evening I have been online and bought myself a standing desk frame and a couple of 27″ monitors from ebay to take to the office and get my PC setup properly with 4 monitors. It currently has a desk riser with a 2 monitor stand with 2 x 24″ monitors and 2 standard 24″ monitors on the desk in portrait mode so they do not line up and have a big gap between the 2 middle monitors and the 2 outer monitors which is not ideal to say the least! It also means that I can not use the riser as only 2 of the 4 monitors are on it so I can’t stand up. With the new frame I can get all the monitors on the same level and put them together so that they are all together and I can raise everything to standing height! I have also found a stool so that I can leave the desk in standing mode 100% of the time and sit on the stool when I want to sit 🙂

I have just done my backwards treadmill and cleaning 1/2 hour so I’m all done for the day other than waiting for the dryer to finish 🙂

Tomorrow morning Iwill wake up at 5am and then go for a longer ruck to finish the week off stong and try and get most of my 12000 steps done first thing. I have an appointment at the tip booked in for 9am so when I get back I need to empty the car and fill it with all the stuff that I need to take and then wake my son up and get him ready to leave the house for 8:45 to go to the tip.

After the tip I have to take my son to his mums and drop him off and then I think that I will go to my parents for a bit to do some cleaning then head back home before it starts to snow at around 4pm 🙁

Obviosly this may change depending on the weather but that is the plan.

By the end of the day I was on 15507 steps 🙂

Weight = 108.7 Kgs

Steps Completed = 13652

This morning I woke up without an alarm at 4:15 am so I chilled a bit on the phone until 5 am then got up, made my salt water then did my weigh-in (up 0.3 kgs to 108.7 kgs this morning. Iwas amazed that just cleaning through the flat last night before going to bed mad me feel so much more relaxed and happy this morning getting up to a tidy flat and it seems to make my morning flow so I will definately work of keeping that in my evening routine!

I then got dressed, put the weight vest on and went out for my ruck as usual! When I got the area that I lost my earbud yeaterday I walked up and down a bit with my torch on the phone but I was not able to find the lost ear bud so I gave up and carries on with my ruck! I didn’t find the earbud so I guess that its lost forever!

As you can see from the summary above I covered 2.92 miles in 59 minutes, climbed 359 ft and did 6518 steps. Fitbit is saying that I am on 6844 step so I am just over 1/2 way to my 12000 step goal this morning.

When I got home and doing my Lüften 10 minutes I had the bright idea of looking for just a right earbud and I found one on ebay so I have bought it so that my son can have my old earbuds when it arrives.

While walking today I listened to the Atomic Habits audio book and I realised that subconsiously I had set goals that built a system rather than result focused goals 🙂 So I am hoping that these goals will be more productive than all of my old goals.

I have just finished my early morning work tasks and I’m not sure if its the fact that I have been on holiday or the morning walk and clean flat but it was way less stressful this morning! I would even go as far as say that it was ALMOST enjoyable 🙂 To be honest I was starting to get a bit bored of being on holiday so its good to be back at work!

I am now waiting for my shopping to be delivered between 7-8 am and then I can get showered and head into the office to start moving servers again 🙂

I have been trying to do a chin-up for 4 days in a row now and I still can’t get above 1/2 way but I will keep going until I can get 1 then push for more!

By the time that I got home about 13:30 I was already over 12000 steps but I was really cold and tired so I went to bed for a couple of hours and slept.

I woke up at 15:30 and did another hour or so’s work then finished work and cooked some pasta.

I am now chilling for a bit and then I will do my backwards walking and then I will do my cleaning 1/2 hour and then most likely go to sleep again!

I really enjoyed being back in the office and especially riding to and from work although it was really freezing when I rode into work this morning! It was way colder than it was when I was walking at 5:30 which is weird! My hands were red and frozen when I got to work so its time to get the winter gloves out for tomorrow’s ride!

I have decided that this month I will focus on building the habits that I have started this month so walking first thing, 10 minutes of backwards walking and 12000 steps a day as well as going to the track at lunch times this month then I will add rollers next month when I am used to the walking.

As predicted I am not struggling at all to not drink fizzy drinks at all so I think that will be an easy win and will make it way easier to know how long it has been since I drank fizzy drinks in the future.

I’ve also noticed today that I have definately trimmed down as my trousers are way looser and my stomack is getting flatter too so even though I haven’t lost any significant weight so far I think I have definately chosen the nest habit to build for the year! I am also way more relaxed starting the day with a walk so its a win, win.

By 20:00 I had finished my backwards treadmill and my cleaning 1/2 hour and I am now chilling with my feet up on my xmas present from my son 🙂

By the end of the day I was on 13652 steps and I didn’t even put my fitbit in my sock for my backwards walking either!

I have changed my goal a little bit to be 12000 steps + 10 minutes backwards walking a day from now on!

Weight = 108.4 Kgs

Steps Completed = 12515

So I didn’t go out last night and I was sound asleep by 8pm and then woke up at just after midnight and couldn’t sleep again! So I have been thinking about my training and I think that my knee is stong enough now to start rucking in the morning! (its 2:30 now so not long until my alarm goes off!

I have been looking online and there is a lot of evidence that rucking is rellly good for weight loss so I am hoping that after a year of rucking consistently (Mon-Friday probably) I can get to my goal weight of 85kgs by this time next year pretty easily!

So I finally fell asleep at 4:45 ish and woke up at 8 am so I got up made my bed, made my salt water and did my weigh-in and I am 108.4 kgs the same as I was on monday again!

I then showered and got dressed and while I was drinking my salt water I ordered as mini mortar and pestle set from Amazon as the salt is really big rocks so its a nightmare to break it down to put in the water in the morning so I will grind a bunch of the salt down with the grinder and then the mortar and pestle then store it in a container to use in the mornings.

I have just got dressed and put my weight vest on so I am now off for a morning walk and I will go along the 2 tunnels as I am later today and it is getting light as its 8:30 not 5:30 🙂

The Ruck was really nice and relaxing until I was half way home and then it started sideways raining and I lost one of my ear buds when I out my hood up and I was unable to find it 🙁 On a positve note I didn’t get hit by the deliveroo driver on a moped that rode around a blind corner not looking where he was going and didn’t see me until I shouted at him. I then found my hoover in the garage when I got home so 2025 is a bit up and down so far but not too bad 🙂

I have jsut bought a new pair of the Anker Soundcore Liberty 4 NC earbuds which are the same as the ones that I lost but this time I went for metalic blue so that I will at least have a chance of finding them if they fall out again! Also the blue ones were £20 cheaper so thats a result too 🙂

So in the end I rucked 3.89 miles in 1 hour 12 minutes and climbed 452 ft and did 8698 steps as well while carrying an extra 10 kgs over my 108.4 kg bulk and to be honest it was pretty easy and more importantly my knee was fine 🙂

According to the fitbit I have currently done 9448 steps so I think that Strava undercounts my steps a little bit!

I am going to try and remember to bring my glasses on my walk tomorrow and hopefully I can find the lost earbud then I can give the black set to my Son to use as his headphones are on their way out! If not that’s life!

This morning I also deleted Deliveroo and Uber eats from my phone so from now on if I don’t have it in the house I can’t eat it 🙂

I have just done a massive shop at almost £100 but that did include more vitamin drink than normal as its only £1.50 instead of £2 at the moment so that made up about 1/3 of the shopping price 🙂 Today I am going to clear out some of the old food in the freezer ready for recycling on Monday then next shop I can grab a load of fresh meat to go in the freezer going forwards.

While I have been doing Lüften and hoovering I have been thinking that hoovering the whole flat literally only takes 10-15 minutes so I think that I should add that to my evening routine so after I have finished riding on the rollers and getting all my steps in and finished cooking and eating for the day I will spend 30 minutes cleaning the whole flat and on Monday nights I will mop through the flat too so that it is really clean for the week ahead 🙂

I am now making bacon, eggs, hash browns and baked beans for breakfast then I will chill for a while before doing a bit of work I have to do so that the builds run tonight before I can chill for the rest of the day!

I am back to work for a few days and then I am off for most of next week as its my birthday on wednesday so I take my birthday week off every year to get some time to sort my shit out before the work year really begins! This year is going to be worse still as we are moving the office over the weekend of 17th-19th Jan so thats going to be fun even though I have moved about 1/2 of the servers already I expect that weekend to be hell!

At 6pm I did the little bit of work that I needed to do then did my 10 minutes of backwards walking then cooked some food and then did the washing up and ran the hoover through the flat again so that the flat is clean when I get up in the morning as I am back at wotk tomorrow 🙁