The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

I played rugby for the school.
I was one of the fastest 100m runners in the county.
I played football with my mates every single night of the week.

I loved everything, and then – aged 21 – I got a detached retina and everything changed.

The seriousness and fragility of my eye meant anything that could cause trauma was off limits – so apart from not being allowed to do any sport, I wasn’t even allowed to lift anything heavy … and so very quickly, I went from active life, to sedentary life.

Unsurprisingly – yet ironically – the impact of this shift meant that while my eye was OK, the rest of me wasn’t.

And this was my normal for over 30 years.

That doesn’t mean I was happy with what was happening, I wasn’t. In fact, in my darkest days, I really hated it. I hated me.

Who I was. How I looked. How I felt.

And what made things worse was I didn’t know how I could change it.

My eye was still fragile. My work was full-on. And food was one of the only things that gave me momentary joy.

But – as I have documented in the past – things changed 2 years ago when I was convinced to eat well for 3 months.

What’s hilarious is this was not because of my weight, but something else entirely … but something inside of me clicked, and I mentally chose to do it, rather than argue against it.

One of the biggest surprises was how much I relied on food to manage stress. You’d think that would have been obvious but it wasn’t. I remember how one of the things I did was go for a walk every time I found myself going to the fridge outside of breakfast, lunch or dinner.

So I walked a lot.

A hell of a lot.

So much so that it not only was the biggest contributor to me getting healthy again – arguably, healthier than I ever have been – but it got me falling in love with walking and now, running.

That image at the top of the page is a perfect example of that. It is my December result.

That’s right, I walked over 750,000 steps. Over 550 kms.

For someone who used to complain about walking the bin up his drive, that’s pretty amazing.

But then, it was December as I’ve detailed many a time … NZ festive season holidays are brilliantly long.

However, just to prove that was not a fluke, here’s the results of last week.

Yep, proportionally, I walked more than when I was on holiday!

How?

Well, let’s just say I have a lot of walking meetings …

Plus, the more I walk, the more I can eat the bad stuff I bloody love, haha.

But this is just to say, if exercise freaks you out, start with walking … doesn’t matter how far you go … because as long as you do a little bit each day, you’ll not just seamlessly improve on what you can do, but also who you are and who you can become.

Not because weight defines that, but feeling a bit healthier does.

Happy to chat to anyone who wants help with it.

Probably while I’m out walking.