The Gym in January

Or, to paraphrase Frank Sinatra, “How did all these people get in my gym?”

I’ve been going to the gym three or four times a week for the last six months or so. I expected that January would be bad, and so it is. At peak times there’s no room on the mat, no spaces on the cardio machines, and the free weights area is crowded. During the week I’m trying to go before noon or after two thirty, or after seven thirty in the evening. I’m off to the gym as soon as I’ve finished this post, since I figure the resolutioners won’t be out at the weekend.

I expect it will be back to normal in a month or less. I’ve never seen any figures – and I imagine that the people who have them don’t want to publish them – but I reckon that a lot of gyms make a killing from signing people up in January who stop coming after a few weeks. I don’t know what the marginal cost is to the gym of a single visit (although at my gym guest passes are a ridiculous £15) but I bet they’d have problems if all of their members started using the services they’d paid for.

Weight Control

My first resolution for this year was, “Get to a weight of, at most, 11 stone or 10% body fat, whichever is the sooner.”

A few months ago my weight was heading towards 14 stone (89kg). That was where I snapped and decided to get back into shape, even if I can’t run. I’d been at the gym several times a week, but I was still eating badly, so that was where I started. I calculated my basal metabolic rate as about 1800 kcal / day, and cut my diet back to that. Simultaneously, I increased the amount of aerobic exercise I was doing (mostly swimming), after which I started losing about 2lb / week.

I’ve lost about a stone and a half right now, and feel much better for it. I’m not sure what the right end point is for this diet, but if I can get to either of 11 stone weight or 10% body fat I’ll be happy. If I stay on track that should be in about three months’ time.

Resolutions

I made a handful of New Year’s resolutions last week. Apparently publicly committing yourself to them is helpful, because it’s then embarrassing to abandon them. So here they are:

• Get to a weight of, at most, 11 stone or 10% body fat, whichever is the sooner.
• Blog or otherwise write for one hour a week, no matter the subject.
• Get up at 6.30 am during the week.
• No more than six units of alcohol in an evening.
• Continue learning Spanish.
• Stick to a budget.

What’s not on the list, that might have been, is playing piano and going to the gym. These are just habits now; I enjoy doing them and they don’t take any extra effort to keep doing. As for the things that are on the list, I’ll explain why over the next few days, as part of fulfilling the second resolution!

No BritSalsaFest

It’s just disappointing. I enjoyed it in 2006, but it was amazing in 2007 – easily the best congress I went to in the UK that year.

Whoever ends up with the ball, please let’s do it again in 2009.

Popbitch to the Rescue

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Joss Whedon's long awaited UK based Buffy spin-off,
Ripper, starring Anthony Head, starts filming next
summer for BBC.
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If it’s in Popbitch, it must be true.

The Staggeringly Obvious, pt. 312

LA police admit riot ‘mistakes’. Check the last two paragraphs:

Meanwhile, the union which represents the LAPD’s more than 9,000 officers has called for members of the unit involved in the melee and their commanding officers to attend training in crowd control.

Such training had been abandoned in an attempt to save money.

Apparently, in stressful situations, most people can’t do what they haven’t been trained to do.

Cameron Steps Up Attacks on Own Party

Look! David Cameron uses “right-wing” as a slur on his own party. He’s trying to make the phrase dirty by association, or accepting that it already is.

Ethical Minefield

Here’s a tough little moral puzzler.

One Laptop Per Child

I love the whole project, and I really want one of these. Hopefully they’ll do something other than green, though

I love the Metro

Not the TWPTE light rail system, the free rag that’s all over the buses and tube carriages. This morning’s edition had a picture of two big interlocking circles cut from some desert foliage. The accompanying text was, Is this huge desert symbol a message to outer space? And will it prove Tom Cruise was right all along? Those are very thought-provoking questions.