With no posts since March, you would be forgiven for thinking that How Many Miles had ran its course and if I am honest, I did contemplate whether it was the end of the road for this blog and my journey.
I have careered off track so many times and made so any failed attempts to regain my fitness that I had started to question the relevance of my blog while certain other events have also kept me away from blogging….for How Many Miles, that is (but more on that in a wee bit).
Firstly, there was the hack (you might have seen the links to some dubious pharmaceutical products that promised increased performance – no I won’t be doing an Honest Review) that took 3 months and the talents and persistence of the brilliant web developer Jem Turner to fix and then my surgery on the collar bone that had been broken since my Wee Beastie blog back in July 2018.
Post surgery (and pre surgery, if am completely honest) I struggled to one, stay active and two, stop eating. All the excellent work with Paul Jewiss ( I managed to get down to 245lbs) had been in vain and you had seen it all before.
I was in danger of becoming yet another addition to the long list of biggest losers that regained all of their weight.
By August of this year, I was weighing in at 277lbs, only 77lbs shy of my highest weight and it didn’t look like stopping.
I had returned to a sedentary life stuck in front of my Mac often watching Netflix as my collarbone healed while I was finding more and more excuses to avoid people.
But I had also began writing content in a niche away from health and fitness.
Over the past year I have established myself as a competent cryptocurrency writer with a few bylines and roles with three blockchain business start – ups.
These have kept me busy and possibly took over my life for a while. My work/life/crypto balance was out of kilter and my diet, sleep, moods were all affected, especially as this new world introduced me to a level of fat shaming that I had never ever experienced before.
I have since reduced this to two projects (Howdoo and Travala, if you are interested) and blocked the fat shamers and I am managing to find a better balance with more sleep and a better diet, although I am possibly still a little cranky at times (sorry Teresa, Danny and Jack).
But thankfully, weighing in at 277lbs in August was a turning point, much like the image in 2011, as my mobility and motivation returned.
For the past few months, I have made my recovery and return to fitness my priority with weekly visits to the physio at Hampden Sports Clinic, regular hydrotherapy sessions and with daily workouts and step count targets.
I have been working on blog projects with The Protein Works, Mirafit and Decathlon (will publish soon) and went on a most amazing family tour of the Swiss, French and Italian Alps where we hiked and ate our way around three countries.
However, the biggest change I made was to accept that I needed help.
For the past month, I have been working with The Slimming Clinic to address my eating behaviours and the combination of a doctor led service with a dietician and a movement coach has had a dramatic impact on my weight and my mental health (blogs on that to come too).
As the pounds have dropped and my activity levels have increased, I have felt more confident than I have in the past few years and I have started writing again about health and fitness, contributing to the Scottish Government’s Scottish Household Survey and to a few articles including this latest one for HF Holidays on foot care and walking.
While being an overweight and aging male sports blogger in Scotland will never see me working with many of the bigger campaigns, I still hope that there is a place for me and this should mark the return of more regular posts.
I hope that you’ll stick around and if you have had any problems with motivation, I do hope that my struggles and persistence resonate with you and give you hope (others are hoping that this is the last hope in this paragraph).
So to answer the question, it isn’t the end of the road for How Many Miles but it is a change of direction and focus. One which will see me continue writing open and honest reviews but also less rants and more positive accounts of my experiences and more active travel posts (to tie in with my copywriting role at Travala).
