Healthy Blogging, an Intro

This was me at 32 before I realised how important diet and exercise really are:

By 2011, my wife and I were lucky enough to have three children. I often joked about my baby weight. Made excuses about getting older. Not having enough time (I was working full time in a job I pretty much hated and trying to figure out how to write for a living as well as trying to be a decent husband and father). Genetics. Blah-de-blah. The main problem, if I'm honest (and the photo sort of encapsulates it), is that I was a little too fond of drinking and sitting down in my limited spare time.

I like to think I've changed since then, but in truth, my weight/size has been up and down over the last three years. My fitness levels have steadily increased thanks to a local boxing club and a local gym that I attended over the last three years. Also, taking an interest in what I put into my body has made a big difference too. But I'm still learning. New attitude, new thoughts on diet, new lifestyle... the list goes on, and I'll be blogging about these things as Health Scene NI continues to grow.

The blog will serve two purposes. It'll give me an outlet for my thoughts and experiments in diet and exercise and it'll keep this interest separate from my thoughts and experiments on reading and writing. If you happen along this and want to ask questions, feel free to leave a comment.

Just so we're clear, this is about what has worked and continues to work for me. I don't intend to preach about the ONLY way to get fit or bash anything I haven't tried out, but I will probably say some stupid stuff as I go along. Feel free to challenge or question ANYTHING I say, but please, try not to be a pain in the backside, okay? I don't have time for keyboard warriors.

For now, this is my latest fitness achievement following a 10 week programme at Elite Fitness in Newcastle:

I'll share more progress pics when I write about my memories of that intense/crazy/fun time (which finished 6th June 2014, just a month and three weeks from my 35th birthday). Right now, I'm concentrating on maintaining these results while the kids are off school for the summer, but I may do another Elite Fitness programme in the near future and write about it as it happens. We'll see how things go.