I would consider that up until my teenage years, my life followed what you would draw as a blueprint for any average childs life. I had turned vegetarian at age 5; something that continued until the age of 18. I did pretty well in school. I was in the top echelon for most of my classes. I wasn't especially popular, I wasn't especially unpopular. Everything was pretty normal.
Unfortunately, though, you have to age at some point. I was never deliberately active as a kid, but just because of who I was, I was pretty slim, and athletically pretty fit. In my first year of secondary school, I remember finishing an eventual 7th in a cross-country race that the year was made to run in P.E. That was out of 100 or more students, and was a race I was in the top 2 for much of. What a difference a year can make though. The next year I finished in the 40's, and the year after that, I wasn't too far from last. For me, getting to my teenage years brought with it the desire to do... nothing. I exercised... never. I ate... crap. And by the time this third race was run in year nine, I had put on a fairly significant amount of weight. I never weighed myself to find out exactly how much weight. I was too lazy to find some scales, but it was an era for me where Playstation was king. Food was pizzas and chips. Health was nothing. It was also a time where my grades started to drop. Why waste time on essays and homework, when I had a Playstation? I think when you're younger, you're like a little dog that does what its told. You'll go to school. You'll learn. When you hit puberty though, independence hits. Why am I going to school? Why am I learning? I never consented to any of this crap.
I got my first job, a paperound aged 13. Unfortunately you like to look good while doing nothing all day, and that takes money. Though getting up at 6am everyday was even more detrimental to my grades. I spent most of my days thinking about going back to bed. I was unwilling to go to bed early, so for a long time I got into the habit of sleeping twice a day. Once at night-time, and once when I got back from school.
Fast-forward a year or so, and things went off-track even further. If it wasn't bad enough that I was weighing the same as an elephant, let's improve my health even further by starting smoking. Aged 14 I started. It was never to "look hard" as people often incinuate. For me I started out of curiosity. People tell you from before you can understand them, "Don't smoke. Smoking's bad. Smoking will kill you." Yet just because you're a child, doesn't mean you don't have eyes. You see people smoking. You see it a lot. You see how much money people spend on cigarettes. Would they really be doing all this if it was really so bad? And being a teenager, being "independent," and being curious, you may as well find out for yourself. That was my motivation to start. I've always had, even in my teenage years, an attitude of if you're going to do something, then you should do it properly. So I didn't just want to try smoking, I wanted to get addicted to smoking, just to see how good it was. I don't think anyone has ever smoked their first cigarette and enjoyed it. Yet so many people smoke. Maybe this is one of the reasons why. But if I was going to smoke, I was going to be the best smoker. So from aged 14, I was smoking 20+ cigarettes a day.
And as they say, there's no smoke without fire. Once you start smoking tobacco, marijuana isn't too far behind. Unfortunately, I enjoyed this too much. I didn't just smoke socially. I didn't even enjoy smoking socially. I always preferred smoking alone, and this was dangerous. I was a teenager without much money, so I would smoke however would get me the most fucked up the quickest. To the point, that I'd got so used to smoking a joint before bed, one night when I'd ran out, I lay there awake all night. I couldn't sleep without cannabis. This was a wake-up call to me. Another was the night I spent a night in police cells for possession of cannabis. This kind of told me that enough was enough, so I very slowly phased out cannabis from my life.
I was lucky in school, in the sense that I had learnt enough before hitting teenagehood, that even though I lost the will to learn, I still got the grades on my G.C.S.E's to get me into 6th-form college. I think it was 3 B's, 4 C's and 2 D's. Had you seen my grades 4 years earlier, they would have read 9 A's. But I got through. And it was around this time in college that I started to shape into the person that I am now. I bear little to no resemblence to the person who I was through those last few years at school. I am a completely changed person.
My weight started to annoy me in college. I didn't care I was a fat-fuck in school, but now I did. I didn't care about the damage to my health, or the money I was spending on cigarettes during school, but now I did. And I wanted to change. For a long time, all this was, was want, though. There was no direct action. But I remember the individual catalyst that pushed me over the edge, was when I looked around the class room one day, and thought to myself: "Fuck. I'm the fattest one in this room." Then in my next class, "Fuck. I'm the fattest one in here too." Luckily in my next class there was the really wobbly fucker, so I was ok in that class, but this was the final straw. I finally had the motivation to do something about it.
This started with running. I remember the first time I went out, I must've run about less than half a mile before getting to the point of exhaustion. A milestone I find laughable now, but it was a start. 2 mornings a week, I was go out running, wobbling along the towpath next to the river, trying to outlast my previous effort. And I kept this up. At this point, exercise to me was about as fun as sawing off my own foot, but I kept at it. About 4 or 5 months after starting running, I decided I'd finally had enough of smoking. From my first cigarette there was always doubt in my mind. Smoking costs you money, and smoking hurts your health. At my worst point when exercise was non-existant, and cigarettes were constant, I couldn't climb a flight of stairs without getting out of breath.
Anyway, to quit smoking, I thought, rather than quitting instantly, I'd set a date, 6 weeks in the future when I'd stub out my last cigarette. That'd give me time to prepare, mentally. That'd give me time to "achieve" anything I wanted to achieve from smoking, for lack of a better way of phrasing it. Anyway, to this point I remember choosing February 16, 2003. It was the first day of holiday from college if I remember rightly. I chose it because it'd be a good time to break out of any routine, and it's be time where I wouldn't have to see anyone, or be in regular contact with people. Exactly what you need when you won't be in the best of moods for days. I had always envisioned having a 'last cigarette'. One that I'd stub out, knowing that'd be it. But on the night of the 16th, I got copiously drunk, and instead of having this last cigarette, I passed out in my bed. This almost threw me off the next day. I'd planned how everything would be, and not having that last cigarette; a time to say goodbye to smoking if you will, wasn't part of it. But I stuck with my plan. As I woke up that morning, the first thing I did was reluctantly take all the tobacco I had in my room, & threw it out the window. And that, as they say, was that. For 3 years I was like a chimney. Normally 20 or more per day. The first thing I'd do as I woke up, the last thing before bed, and always after a meal. Now, gone. It was hard. It wasn't fun, but I'd pledged to myself that I would not buy any more tobacco. Just as importantly though, I'd told a lot of people I'd be quitting, and the thought of failure dogged me just as much. Even when I was an unfit, smoking, fat-fuck, I'd always prided myself on my heart & my will. The heart of a lion people used to say to me. And to fail a test of will as this was, was as motivating a factor as anything.
Anyway, days passed. The first 3 were the toughest. Then weeks passed. Then months. Then years. I remember having the occasional craving up to 9 months after I quit, but after that, it was out my system and gone for good. That was a start, but I was still carrying a lot of excess weight, something that was now really playing on my mind.
I finished college, achieving grades I really had no right to achieve. I finished with B, C, C, from my A-levels. Grades that absolutely complemented the effort I had put in. But was the nature of my thought when I applied to college, I had at the time picked the courses I thought would be easiest, rather than those I'd enjoy or those I'd benefit from. That lazy attitude of taking these doss courses was what eventually got me these grades that would eventually allow me to go to university. Anyway, I had always planned on taking a gap-year before going to university, so this Summer I took my lifeguarding qualification before getting a full-time job at my local pool.
My gap year plans had always been, work for 6 months, travel for 6 months. But up to this point, I had only ever had part-time jobs in pubs and restaurants, and paperrounds when I was younger, that would fit inside my education. Now, I'm working full-time, and such is my desire to earn money that I'm taking all of the overtime I can get. Some days I would be there when the pool opened at 06:00, right through to when it closed at 22:30. 16 and a half hours staring at water. I would sometimes manage to fit 90 working hours into a week. It wasn't fun, but it kept me out the pub, and when you're working that much, you're earning loads and you don't have time to spend it. I think there was a time I worked something like 28 days without a day off. Even though I was on little more than minimum wage, the £££'s were rolling in. And come February/March time, when I was originally scheduled to have my 6-months travel, I just didn't want to go. I'd never had this much money before, and I liked it. So I stayed on, and worked my entire gap year.
During that time I got my university applications in order, and accepted a place at the University of Hull, with one of the main reasons being the guaranteed year abroad that the course offered. And how much did I save during all of this working? I started university with around £8,000 in the bank. Not bad seeing as most students start with nothing.
During the latter half of my gap year, though, a couple of key things happened that would impact on my life. Even though I was still going out running, 5 times a week now, my diet was still absolute crap. And as such, I was not losing weight, despite being able to comfortably run 3 miles by now. So after a few miserable attempts at dieting, I decided that I'd be losing weight. Fast. My knowledge of fitness and nutrition at this time was virtually zero, despite working in a health club. But I was savvy enough to know, that if you stop eating, you lose weight. So essentially, this is what I did. For about a month, the maximum I ate was one small meal a day. There was one period I remember going a full 48-hours without food, and I was dangerously malnourished at one point. I was in the bath, and I stood up to put on some shower gel. But I guess the heat and the steam from the bath had affected me, because a couple of seconds after standing up, I remember my head getting light, and I fell back against the wall that was right behind me and passed out. I don't know how long I was out for, but the next thing I remember, is pulling myself out of the bath by the sides. I was so malnourished that I had passed out under water. I was careful in the bath from then on. I never knew how close I was to actually drowning, I may've only been out for a split second. But then again, it might have been minutes, I'll never know. But as was my desire to lose weight, I had driven myself to this
I had been on this somewhat extreme, and in retrospect, very stupid diet for a couple of days, when the other key event happened. I got home from work one night, to find out my parents were splitting up. My mum was moving out, and I would be staying with my dad and my sister.
This was a shock to me. For everything I'd ever known in my life, the structure of my family around me was one thing that was always there. And suddenly, this was gone. I didn't take it too well, but as always, I bottled up any emotion. I don't know why, but this is the way I am. I carry a poker face every day of my life. It's just the way I am. The shock of this happening, almost threw off this so-called "diet" that I was on. But despite all going on around me, I stuck with it and lost weight at a record pace. The exact figures of the weight I lost aren't known, but I've come to the conclusion that in a 3 week period, I lost a minimum of 4 stone (56 pounds). I think my family was worried that this was a reaction to my parents splitting up. Quite the contrary in fact. That almost threw me off to the point that I stopped dieting. But anyway, after 4 or 5 years of looking in the mirror and seeing a fat cunt looking back at me, now I was almost dangerously skinny.
I hadn't gone out running during the time that I was on this diet, and on my first run in about a month, I remember cutting my time down from around 24 minutes, to 21 minutes, just because I wasn't carrying this weight. And now it was gone, I was determined that it would stay gone, so high-fat foods; pizza's etc. were now banished from my diet. Instead, I had a diet that consisted highly of veg. Tortillas filled with veg, pita breads filled with veg, that kind of thing. And this was the way things stayed until I started university.
I live by the opinion that the smallest decisions in your life can have a snowball effect that can massively alter your life for good. And when I came to uni, I was walking around the Athletic Union bazaar. I had come here to join the running club; without the excess weight, I had become quite a formidable long-distance runner. But that club looked boring, so I collected flyers from many of the clubs. I remember the scuba diving club being in there, the sky-diving club, all sorts. One of which happened to be a flyer for the American football club. I figured that there was no harm in having a go, I came to uni very open-minded, and with the knowledge that this was the only club in the university with its own cheerleaders, I thought it'd be worth a go. And that was it, I started playing. And even at around 130 pounds, it was like a drug to me. I was training at running back, getting beasted by people twice my size. But the harder they hit me, the more I wanted to get up, and that's how it started. And if anyone knows the sport of football, 130 pound players aren't much good to anyone, so what did I have to do? I needed my weight back. This is what started me in the gym properly, and by the end of my first year, I had gained back nearly all of the weight that I had lost, though it came back in much better shape this time. I was getting to the gym a lot, lifting weights a lot. God knows what it looked like seeing a 130 pound guy trying to do a bench press, but you have to start somewhere, and this is a trend that has carries on today. I now class fitness and nutrition as a hobby: I get to the gym normally 5 times a week, I spend some of my spare time reading fitness books, looking at websites. And everything I ever eat nowadays will be the right food, at the right time of day. I don't even eat for taste anymore. It's all about the nutritional value of what I take into my body. I take vitamins, fish oil supplements, flax oil supplements. Fruit and veg is a heavy part of my diet. As are lean meats. This is me just 5 years on from the 20 a day guy who got out of breath climbing a flight of stairs. Now I go running more as a hobby. Now I'm good at it, I actually enjoy it. And running 12 miles for no reason other than I'm bored isn't unknown. Incidentally, I started eating meat again once I came to university aged 18, after 13 years of vegetarianism. Outsiders always view this as a consequence of playing American Football. In truth, it had been playing on my mind for a long time. The morals that turned me vegetarian when I was 5 no longer stood true at age 18. The timing was little more that a coincidence. Although what did push me over the edge was having a plate of food containing sausage put in front of me after an away game.
Anyway, that was my first year of university. Learning the game of American football and gaining weight. I didn't play much in that first year. Unsurprisingly considering my physical condition. Plus that I fumbled my first, or one of my first ever carries, in the 4th quarter, up by 2, against the conference champions, in our own red-zone. The coach didn't have much faith in my ability to carry the football after that, even though we did get the ball back a couple of plays later and go on to win the game.
In the Summer break this year, I went off to Canada for 4 months. I won't go into great detail here because it is much of the focus of the before I left page. I think I went on this trip for 2 reasons. The first was a desire to explore, and a desire for independence. The second, much more interestingly, was due to a lack of fear. I would literally go everywhere. If I was told not to go somewhere because you're likely to get mugged, or raped, or killed, or any other fun stuff like that, then that would be my first stop, and I always find it interesting as to how this fearlessness became.
When I was young, up until, at a guess, the age of 17 or 18, I was always scared of dying. A weird thing to be afraid of I know. But I was. And it would often play on my mind. How will I die? When will I die? Will it hurt? I think the real fear came from the pain that it would cause. But as time bore on, and as I though about it more and more, I eventually stopped caring. My attitude changed from fearing death, to embracing, and in some respect, even looking forward to death. I had overcome this fear, the only thing that has ever really scared me, and it was gone. And because of the nature of what I'd overcome, death, there really is nothing left to be scared of. If you have accepted the fact that it's going to happen, then what else is there to be scared of? I do not believe in an afterlife. So for me, when I'm gone, I'm gone. I won't remember anything, I won't know, I won't be going to hell, I damn sure won't be going to heaven. And overcoming this has left me with an absolute fearlessness. If I do something stupid, or dangerous, then what's the worst thing that'll happen to me? I'll die. I don't care. I've already accepted that. And now I live my life without any fears, as strange as that sounds to some people. But there is nowhere I won't go. I'm not stupid just to prove a point. If you said to me, "if you're so fearless, then why don't you jump off that building?" I would reply to you, "because I would die you dickhead," but at the same time, I will now never be scared into backing down or staying away from somewhere. It's kinda hard to explain what I mean here, and I'm rambling on, but the bottom line is, I think a lot of people don't do things because of fear. I've overcome mine now, and it has become a non-issue to me. I will not be scared of whatever is put in front of me.
Anyway, come my second year of uni, I am now of the size where I can actually play football. Started every game this season at corner. Football (American), became as important to anything to me in my life. I was now working out regularly, and was beginning to educate myself about sports and nutrition. Football was almost a full-time job. It only took 3 sessions a week in training, but eating right, getting to the gym, watching professional football; it was a lifestyle more than a sport.
I finished this year with a 62, a low 2:1, so not great results, but on track for a respectable degree, but more importantly, I had arranged my year on exchange, back in Canada, only this time on the East coast in Nova Scotia.
At the time of writing this article, I am currently trying to arrange a further year in Canada, and people always ask me why? What is my affiliation with Canada. A third time in just over 3 years. In truth though, in 2005, it was a spur of the moment decision, this time around, it is a convenient, English speaking country to start my travel, and when I went there on exchange, it was actually my second choice. I wanted to go to Denmark to the Copenhagen Business School, but with only two places available at each school, I ended up in Halifax.
If I had to describe this year in one word, the first thing that comes to mind, is "fun." I don't really feel that I gained too much from this year beyond education. In 2005 I found out a lot about myself. About my metle. This time though, it was all about having a good time. The first semester was party-filled. There was a group of around 12 of us who would see each other a lot. Drink a lot, go out a lot etc. But I never really felt there was an especially strong bond between the group. I think this has been proven by the lack of contact since this semester. The puny attempt at a reunion fell by the wayside very quickly. I am still close to a couple of people, but as a group, I think we just filled social needs.
It was the much more relaxed second semester that I feel people bonded a lot more closely. Most of the people I knew from the first semester left come December; they were only there for one semester. I remember arriving back from my Christmas travel, almost in a state of shock. All the people that I'd known had suddenly gone, and it was like a ghost town for those first couple of days. Fortunately I never seem to struggle to meet people and things soon took off again. Although nearly all of the people going to Mexico a couple of months from now for a reunion, were there in this first semester, I didn't know them that well. It is from the fun in the second semester that I am going. I just felt there was much more of a bond formed between this group of people. And despite the geographical distances being even greater than with the people I knew in the first semester, we're still meeting up this Summer.
Anyway, unfortunately living in North America has its consequences. It's cheaper to go to the local pizza shop for dinner than it is to cook yourself, and a pub meal will only set you back $5 or $6 (£2.75 - £3.00), so it's easy to get out of shape. And I did. It's not that I wasn't exercising. It was pretty common place to go to the university running track and do 25 laps, which was about 6.5km on this 260m track. And I was lifting weights, so it wasn't like I was overly unfit. It's just that it is so damn easy to get out of shape in North America because of the food. You can see why so many American's are fat. Unfortunately for me though, getting back to the UK, I wasn't really willing to stay in this shape, especially with the American football season kicking off around 5 months from now.
That meant gym at least 5 times a week, eating food that tasted like piss. It wasn't rare for me to workout 3 hours at a time combing cardio and weights. But it did the job. I was around 90kg when I got back from Canada. By the time I was going back up to university 5 months later, I was down to 80kg. On top of that, the weights I was lifting had gone up, so my muscle mass had obviously increased, so I conclude that I lost more than 10kg in fat. Not bad for a Summer's work. Not something I especially want to go through again though.
Anyway, I spent this whole football (American) pre season playing at safety. Before the first game of the season, due to numbers I suddenly get moved to DE, and this was where I stayed for the rest of the year. Unfortunately, this change in position once again required me to gain weight. I never got above 85kg's through the season, but it was still 5kg's that I have now lost again, and now the season is over, and most likely my football career as a whole, I'm aiming to get myself down to a toned 12 stone by the Summer, where hopefully I'll stay. I don't know why my physique is such an important issue to me now. I'd guess because of the shape I was in as a teenager, but it is now key to everything I do and everything I eat. I have spent long enough educating myself about nutrition that I understand the foods I should be eating, at the times of day I should be eating them, and how to identify them. It's almost a sad state of affairs to be in, but any new food product I haven't eaten before, I will normally spend 30 seconds studying in the supermarket. And every meal that I eat, is based upon the time of day, and the type of exercise and time of exercise that I've had that day. I can't remember the last time I chose a meal based upon taste. It's a strange state of affairs to be in. Especially to other people who will see the mixtures of food I put together with a puzzled look on their face. Thinking as most people do, only about taste, they wonder why I eat, what I eat, but my health, and secondarily, my physique have become so much to the forefront of my mind, it's just the way I think now.
Unfortunately this year, the football team didn't do too well. We won the first game of the year, but it went downhill from there. My grades are looking to be ok. I got a 70 from my year abroad when converted, so I entered this year averaging out at 66, a medium 2:1. And my grades since have consistently been around the 2:1 range, so writing this as I am now in mid-April, during time I should be spending on an assignment, it's looking like I'll finish my degree with a 2:1. Acceptable. Enough to be worthwile, but hoping to travel as I do, I wonder the impact that this degree will actually have on my life. I started 4 years ago, and should I travel as long as I wish, my travelling will out last my degree. And a lot can happen in that amount of time. But at least it'll be there for when I return
And that, is a very brief version of how I got to where I am. Depsite the poor football season, I took an individual glory in finishing the teams sackleader, with an embarrassing total of 3. Mexico is looming, just under 11 weeks from now, and I cannot wait for that. And all going well, my academic education will be over on May 29th, less than 7 weeks from now. A scary prospect as it's been going for 18 or 19 years now, barring a gap year.
Page written: April 2008
Edited: 27 August 2008
