It’s been a while since my last blog post, and there are a couple of reasons for my absence. First and foremost, I haven’t made much progress to report. In fact, things have taken a turn for the worse. After an initial success with weight loss, I hit a plateau. Despite maintaining my exercise routine, fasting, and sticking to my diet, the scale stubbornly refused to budge.
Speaking of scales, I just checked, and my last weigh-in—documented in a blog post from late September last year—was at 18 stone 5.8 lbs (257.8 lbs / 117.2 kgs). Currently, I’m hovering around the 18 stone mark (252 lbs / 114 kgs) – so I guess that is progress, just very slow – and I’m just being hard on myself.
It’s hard to believe almost a year has passed since my last update! Time flies!
Now, let’s talk about the second reason for my silence: relocation. The Bank of England’s base rate hikes over the past few years hit me hard when my fixed-rate mortgage ended. Suddenly, my new mortgage was over £1,000 a month more expensive—an unaffordable burden that added significant financial stress.
Relocating became the logical choice. My house has appreciated considerably in equity since I bought it 22 years ago, so tapping into that equity made sense. Living in London was no longer a necessity for work, so I decided to move out. Little did I know that the process—marketing, selling, house hunting, and the daunting task of packing—would drain me completely.
Fatigue settled in, affecting not only my energy levels but also my motivation to exercise. Initially, I attributed the fatigue to stress-induced high blood pressure. While my blood pressure medication helped, it wasn’t a complete solution. Recently, an updated HbA1c blood test revealed that my type two diabetes (T2D) had returned to last year’s levels—a blood sugar reading of 56.
Thankfully, my doctor is prescribing medication to stabilize my blood sugar levels. I’m eagerly awaiting its arrival, hoping it will restore my energy.
Meanwhile, the legal process for the house move has dragged on, causing additional stress. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel—I should be moving within the next three weeks.
And where am I moving? To a tranquil house by a river, where open water swimming and stand-up paddleboarding will be literally on my doorstep. Long walks in the countryside and traffic-free bike rides are on the horizon. My new bedroom and office will overlook the river, complete with a balcony where I envision sipping coffee and enjoying croissants on summer mornings.
With this change of environment and a significant boost to my finances, I’m confident I can regain my equilibrium, reduce stress, and improve my health.
In the meantime – I did manage to get back to a fast this week. It was entirely unplanned, but I found myself not hungry at dinner time, and just extended through to 36-hour! It was surprisingly painless. I’ll share more updates in the coming weeks.
Exercise wise I’ve been trying something completely different as an attempt to circumvent my fatigue/energy level issue – I read somewhere that for diabetics doing micro-exercise strength training sessions (like, a set of deep squats every 45 minutes or so) is better than trying to do longer sessions so I started that a few days ago.
To be honest – me being me, one set of push ups just didn’t seem to be enough, so I started with a set of incline push-ups and squats. I was only doing about 10 of each but I was struggling! And 45 minutes seemed too short and was interrupting my work, so I pushed it to an hour, but then by the fourth set of the day I realised it was just too much!
On day two my pectorals were feeling really sore from the unaccustomed effort so I switched things up – and did leg raises and a modified rowing exercise from a door frame (like a decline row movement using the side frame of the door), and aimed to do another four sets.
On day three I switched my upper body again to shoulder press and did squats again but a wide-stance for variety. Again I did four sets.
I have to say I’ve really felt my muscles responding which is good, and I’ll try and increase the sets I’m doing this week – maybe aim for five sets a day. Let’s see how that goes combined with some fasting.
Anyway – hopefully will get back to you soon with more updates on the weight loss, exercise and the house move!
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