28 Days of Pain - Day One

By Jamie Hill

You know you're overweight when.... a friend tells you that you resemble a Fat Boy Slim album cover just because you've put sunglasses on.

And you especially know you need to lose weight when you realise this soon to be ex-friend is not joking and meant it in all seriousness.

Right. I get it. I'm fat. That is now what I'm dismissed as by most people. That fat bloke. As if having a bit of extra weight means that I've lost any other cipher of personality and it has become the sum of all that I am. I am fat. I can't be anything else in other people's minds now.

As you can probably tell I don't like being fat. I don't like people dismissing me and my opinion just because I've got a belly. It's a bit humiliating.

They dismiss me because they 'blame' me for being fat. It's my fault. And they're right. I'm constantly hungry and I'm constantly snacking and I'm not doing enough exercise. I know all of these things but I still snack and I still can't get the motivation to run. So in a way they're right to 'dismiss' me.

So rather than just sit here and prove all of these slightly narrow-minded people right, I've decided to take the bull by the horns and do something about it. Namely this blog '28 Days of Pain'.

Those of you who know me from Facebook will know that this is my third attempt at '28 Days of Pain'. I completed the last two in January 2011 and January 2012. They're great while they last but as soon as they finish I soon start going back to my old ways of not moving and lots of snacking. So this time I'm going to be doing it slightly differently with the plan to get to serious fitness levels that it will be no trouble to carry on running for two to three times a week afterwards.

Here's the rules -

1. Run four times a week.

2. Fast for two days a week. This means for two days a week (not on running days) I eat no more than a 1000 calories (which is about a third of my normal intake).

3. Only snack on fruit. If I feel peckish I'm not allowed sweets and cakes (the devil's work!) and have to have fruit to fill the gap.

4. Have three square meals a day (this will hopefully stop the snacking).

5. And then after the 28 days of pain, that this will definitely be, I am going to undertake a massive run (in my eyes anyway) where I emulate Mo Farah's 10,000 metres. I've never run this distance before. As far as I'm concerned it could be running to the moon and back as it just seems impossible at the moment. This is the distance I will be working up to and I will be doing this run on Saturday September 29.

That's the rules.

To kick all this off, I went for my first run in three months this morning. Despite getting back two hours ago I'm still sitting here sweating like the Niagara Falls.

I normally run across Marlborough Common towards Rockley. I quite like running but I didn't like this run at all.

I saw the normal people I usually encounter on this run - the dog walkers, other joggers, the model plane enthusiast, the circus folk and the golfers. Wait a minute, rewind there slightly, did I just say circus folk?

Yes, it just so happens that there are circus folk on the common at the moment. As I ran past they were making horses run around in circles which made for a slightly interesting sight. Little did they know that a potential goldmine was running straight past them. Yes, if they had paid a tiny bit more attention they could have bagged themselves 'The Incredibly Sweating Overweight Wheezy Man'. That would have drawn in a few punters surely?

So how was the run?

Within 300 metres I wanted to stop and I had a stitch. Within 1,000 metres it was all I could do to keep one foot in front of the other. After 2,000 metres I thought I would die. And after 3,000 metres I had to stop as I think, the way my heart seemed to be threatening to explode in my chest, that I literally would die.

So I ran three kilometres for my first run. Not bad. Totally exhausting. The true test is how I will feel tomorrow.

Here's my plan for the rest of the week -

Sunday - Day of rest and weekly weigh-in!

Monday - Next run!

Tuesday - First fasting day!

Wednesday - Third run of the week!

Thursday - Second fasting day!

Friday - Fourth run of the week!

That should do it for the first seven days.

Only 27 days left before my Olympic-inspired Mo Farah 10,000 metre run that will probably kill me!