'Laps'

When I was a teenager I used to be constantly eating (e.g. eat my lunch at 10am and then eat my friends’ lunch during the rest of the day, then stop at the newsagents for chocolate while waiting for the bus, home to a hearty home cooked meal from mum).

However, I was reasonably thin (as a typical teenager, I did of course think I was vastly overweight).

A few years ago, I read an article about French women’s habits with regard to eating and exercising and instantly fell in love with the idea of eating what I wanted, not having to go to the gym and just generally loving food and drink.

Reading these articles, books and reliving my childhood memories made me remember that one of the main reasons I was thin when I was younger was because I was so active. I used to walk miles a day! I wasn’t particularly sporty later on but I was constantly walking.

Then, being a work at home person, I was pretty much glued to the sofa, so I decided that I would start with a bit of walking here and there – my aim was to start by replicating the walking between classes at school, so every 40 minutes I would walk for 4-5 minutes.

I have a reputation for not liking the outside (far from true by the way), so I would just walk up and down the hall, snug and living room. This is where I got a bit geeky – I love spreadsheets, so I calculated a route that was 20 steps per ‘lap’ (it’s actually 22 but I count it as 20), I then just count the amount of laps I do, add it to my spreadsheet and can easily keep track of how many steps I am doing each day.

I did also measure the length of my ‘lap’ – 15 metres, so I can keep track of the distance I walk each day.

Just 67 ‘laps’ of the downstairs circuit is a kilometre. That might sound a lot of effort but I do 25 laps in the ad breaks!

Why not give it a try, just try one set of adverts, take your mind off everything for a few minutes and start  a cheap and easy way to lose weight.

I would love to hear how you get on.