In which I start a new fitness/health plan...

So I've decided to get fit and lose some weight (again, more on that below). Partly because it is a good idea to do so and also as work towards Project 0 - which I haven't forgotten about, honest!

Tom 3.0

Why is this Tom 3.0? I hear you cry. Well Tom 1.0* would be me up to the end of my undergraduate degree. During my first year I weighed 18.5 stone and come graduation with some exercise and healthier eating I had managed to get down to 16.5 stone.

In 2010 I made a concerted effort to improve my health and the results are plain to see:

I have slowly gained weight since then. I was able to motivate myself for a while with Project Thor but I have let myself creep back up to almost 15 stone (94 kg)!

I need a new plan - Tom 3.0.

*And presumably iterations which I never bothered to determine.

The Plan

So the basic plan is to hit exercise and healthy eating hard and maintain it as long as possible. It can take quite  a while to form a habit, the average is 66 days, and I want to get into a regular routine for running.1 The diet (which I'll discuss in more depth next week) is not one I intend to maintain but should help me with the inital loss of weight which always improves my confidence and helps me stick with a plan. It should encourage me to reduce portion sizes and eat healthier though.†

The basic plan:

1. Run daily.‡
2. Considerable change in diet towards healthier food.
3. Follow the Tim Ferriss 4-hour Body plan to increase lean muscle mass.2
4. Maintain this long enough to get into good habits.

†A lack of upcoming holidays will probably help too!

‡I accept that I won't always manage to run every day but even if I manage 5 days a week that's a significant improvement over my current lack of exercise.

Running & The Gym

Last year I ran the London Marathon, since then I've let things slip considerably.§ I want to get up to running 5 miles daily again as this will be a) healthy and b) good practice for a 10K I'm doing in September.

I won't go into much detail of the 4-hour body plan as I've mentioned it before.

§In 5 hours 19 minutes :)

Tom 3.0

I'm going to be posting weekly updates (probably on Mondays) with my weight and measurements and other data. Then you can all see if this works for me and also I will hopefully stick to it better :)

Tom Out!

References

[1] Busting the 21 days habit formation myth, 2012. B. G. Sood. [online] Available at: http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/hbrc/2012/06/29/busting-the-21-days-habit-formation-myth/ [Accessed 10 July 2013].

[2] T. Ferriss, 2011. The 4-Hour Body: An uncommon guide to rapid fat-loss, incredible sex and becoming superhuman: The Secrets and Science of Rapid Body Transformation. Vermilion: London.