So many plans to loose weight come and go. I did very well for a couple of years simply going to the gym a lot, then good old “calorie counting” moved me on some more. At one point I got the weight down to a reasonable 79kg. Then a period of high workload and high despondency with life combined with more than an hour commuting daily set in and I now find myself back up at 95kg. Of course, this just makes one more despondent and everything gets worse. My move from 90kg to 95kg was pretty much fuelled by depression – not big-D depression I think, just a suffusion of self-loathing and general dissatisfaction.

So, as a “reboot” for getting out of my current rut I’ve signed up for the Prince’s Trust Wild UK Challenge. This is supposed to give some motivation, especially since I’m competing in a team. (One team member does Iron Man events and another is training for triathlons.) Motivation not to fail and look like a git is one thing, but planning and discipline are another. So, here’s step one of a plan, written-down, like.

I Must Earn My Beer

Beer… In the last 3 years I’ve starting drinking too much of the stuff – I blame BrewDog and CAMRA. Not drinking “too much” in the alcoholic sense, I believe, but enough that it is a significant calorific intake & a drag on my general productivity. Solution: I now have to earn beer by pre-burning the calories. (Well, it is worth a try.)

Cycling earns me half a pint (or a 330 ml bottle) for every 9km. The assumption is a cycling speed of a mere 16kmph (10mph) on average which should burn around 16 Calories per km. Calories in beer vary wildly depending on ABV (alcohol is 7 Calories per gram) and sugar content. Some examples: Sharp’s Doombar (4.3%): 233 Cal; Guinness (4.1%): 210 Cal; Leffe Brune (6.6%): 346 Cal; Skol Super (9%): 375 Cal. Skol is something I’d never drink, but I do drink a fair amount of craft beer that comes in at similar strengths. So I’m going to take a punt at my typical “pint” being 280 Calories (hopefully an over-estimate). This means I need to cycle 8.57 km to “burn” half a pint – which I’m rounding up to 9km for convenience.

However, I’m not simply going to start drinking what I cycle. There are 2 hurdles and a reset.

• 1st: The km count resets every Sunday morning.
• 2nd: My daily commute doesn’t count! (57km per week.)
• 3rd: I cannot drink in a week until I have done a gym session.

Basically – each week starting Sunday morning I cannot drink at all until I have tallied up over 57km (combined weekly cycle commute) and been to the gym at least once. If I want to have a pint on Sunday night then during the day I have to cycle 66km and do a gym session, for reference 66km is more than the cycle route I take to get from Hitchin to Cambridge. (Sunday beer is going to become a rare occurrence – which is a good thing!)

To help this I have bought a nice new wireless odometer for the bike with 2 mounting kits (to cover the cross bike and the hardtail). I tried using MapMyRide with my Desire HD but it isn’t reliable enough I’m afraid so I’m sticking to older-school technology. I do also use a reliable handheld Garmin GPS sometimes too, but that is a bit of a faff for everyday use.

The scheme starts today! I’ll be tracking weight & measurements every Wednesday, we’ll see how it goes. Also have already made some diet adjustments already, cutting out all carbs and filling up on lots of tasty salads.