I have recently started running.
Why? Why on Earth would a person put themselves through this willingly?
Well. I am a very unfit person, determined to get to a healthy weight again. I LOVE food. Food is delicious, food is a hobby, food is life. I have tried many times and many different ways of losing weight through dieting over the years, but none have worked for me in the long term. The best method I found was Slimming World. I actually lost a couple of stone a few years ago on Slimming World, but then I got a desk job and promptly piled it all back on, and more. The plan is great, but I found I could only really gel with it once for long enough to lose weight without going to group, and I am a penny pincher extraordinaire at the moment so I cannot justify £5 a week (doesn't sound like much, but it adds up). Besides, I love baking and this is very restricted on SW. It can be fun to play around with recipes, creating low syn treats, but there is only so much fun I can have with eggs and sweetener. Sorry. Anyway, my point is, I struggle with restricting my diet. I can eat healthier most of the time, but I wanted to try a different approach: exercise.
I am determined to become one of those people that actually enjoys running. I used to work with people who would make time most days to go running because they loved it, and I have been assured that after a certain point I will too. If I can get fit, lose weight, and not have to restrict my diet (within reason), I am going to be incredibly pleased.
I also want to prove to myself that I can actually do a thing and stick to a thing. Historically I am bad at that.
This is where couch to 5k comes in. It's a 9 week plan which builds you up week by week, starting with a series of one minute runs, all the way up to being able to run 5k. The plan is specifically designed for people like me; unfit, overweight, self-confessed potato. I have the app from Change4Life, which is a bunch of podcasts which tell you when to start and stop running, and full of helpful tips. I highly recommend it. You can even listen to music at the same time cause it dims the music automatically while the podcast is talking.
I have tried the plan before, but I always managed to make excuses to give up. My main excuse was "I don't have the time". Well, now I have plenty of time so any excuse I'd have to come up with now would be super weak, So weak, even my laziest self would see through it.
I'll be honest, at first it does seem insurmountable. I thought how can someone like me, someone who struggles to run for even a minute, ever expect to be able to run 5k?! Well. I just completed day 1 of week 4. I ran for three minutes, then five minutes, twice, with intervals of walking.
I ran for five minutes.
I ran for a total of sixteen minutes.
After only three weeks, I have gone from struggling to run for a minute, to being able to run for five straight minutes. More importantly I actually enjoyed it. To people with any real level of fitness this will probably seem silly, but to me it is so significant. I believe that in five more weeks I will be able to run 5k. And I will feel like I have achieved the impossible.
