I should be more disciplined...

My weekends invariably start with exercise: a ride on the bike, heading out into Northern Kent through Surrey. I write extensively online about my cycling, but I don’t consider myself to be anything special. I ride twice a week, Saturday and Sunday, and while there are various destinations, these days we’ve honed it down to what we call ‘the slow way to the bus stop’. Our recent lack of imagination in terms of final destination has its reasons, the main one being time. While my cycling pal, Andy, and I could happily ride off for miles and miles and return later in the day, we both have responsibilities back home and they limit the amount of time we can devote to our sport. 

I leave the house around 0700hrs on most Saturdays and Sundays, I meet Andy at 0730hrs and off we go; we tend to get home before 1000hrs, which is normally acceptable. Sometimes, if we head for Godstone or Flower’s Farm or even Westerham, we might be out until 1030hrs or 1100hrs, but that’s about it. 

I’ve been blogging about our cycling for 10 years almost (the anniversary is 27 September this year) and I call the blog No Visible Lycra for one reason: we don’t wear Lycra. Not for us the stereotypical skintight outfits and dropped handlebar racing bikes. We ride mountain bikes even though we rarely go off road, and we’re not too bothered about ‘precious grams’ either, preferring instead to bring a huge flask of hot water along with us, and a few teabags, not forgetting the milk. Andy brings the biscuits, although I’ve stopped eating them now as I’m trying to cut down on eating rubbish, which is proving difficult.

Towards the end of 2017 I gave up drinking alcohol and I’ll be honest, it hasn’t been a hardship. I haven’t missed it one bit and I do feel better. The trouble is I’m compensating in other ways, by eating rubbish. My consumption of cookies, bread and chocolate has risen considerably and it’s got to stop, but having said that, I’ve just polished off two teacakes when one would have sufficed. I don’t know what it is that has started me on the road of cake and biscuit eating, but one reason is because they’re there. At work it’s particularly difficult, especially if somebody is celebrating a birthday, as the rule is that they buy the cakes. The quality of the ‘spreads’ vary. The more tight-fisted people rock up with some sub-standard cakes from the market, but people on the receiving end aren’t stupid. When one individual left a couple of low-grade Swiss roll affairs on the table in the kitchen where everything offered up is displayed, it was there for weeks and weeks. But most people ‘do their bit’ and put on a good show, which could mean crisps, doughnuts, chocolates, tarts, cakes and savoury items and I can’t get enough. Just knowing they’re in the kitchen is enough to keep me on my toes going back and forth with handfuls of Miniature Heroes or bite-sized caramel slices. I lack willpower.

A few years ago I went on a diet and lost a fair bit of weight. It wasn’t anything special, I just stopped eating between meals, limited myself to three slices of bread per day and stopped eating sweets. At the time I was still drinking alcohol and I noticed that all the things I shouldn’t be eating began with the letter B: beer, biscuits, buns and bread. I ended up losing about two and a half stone, just over 40lbs. Not bad! My waistline went down two inches and I got a better night’s sleep. On the beer front, I never gave up, but I still lost the weight and realised that the big problem was bakery items, cake in other words. But today I throw caution to the wind and eat everything on offer. Perhaps its boredom, I’m not sure, but during the week it’s bad enough and then at the weekends, a trip to a National Trust property invariably means a cup of tea and a slice of coffee and walnut cake, last week I had two bits and I’d also been round to mum’s for tea and fruit cake (two slices!). There’s no stopping me.

This morning I was downstairs at the usual hour of 0600hrs for breakfast. I eat a healthy breakfast of porridge and fresh fruit, plus a decaffeinated tea, but when I went back upstairs to change for the ride, my wife asked me how much I was eating.

“Why?” said I, sitting on the edge of the bed putting on some socks.

She pointed out that I was getting a slight paunch. Now there’s a horrible word if ever there was one, but she was right and I vowed there and then to stop eating cake, except that it didn’t last. Alright, I’ve cut out milk in my porridge, I’ve stopped eating biscuits on the ride, but later in the day teacakes were purchased and rather than just eat one, which would have been fine, I opted for two and I’ve felt fat and worthless ever since. It’s simply got to stop.

During the week, I try to pay at least one visit to my favourite cafe, the Pop Inn, where I have a jacket potato and chilli for lunch. It’s great, but I can’t resist the apple pie and custard for dessert, it’s simply too good to miss; not as good as that served in Sergio’s Continental Bar & Diner, but alas, Sergio is long gone and the Pop Inn is the next best thing. All I know is that something has got to give, I need to get back to the days when I was a more disciplined individual.