30 Day Trials - Day 1

I was in bed by 22:30 last night, which is quite early for me, but my 20 month old little girl had a restless night the previous night so I was quite tired. Getting up at 05:45 as planned was quite easy, I got straight up when the alarm went off, I felt tired still but otherwise ok. As its a weekday getting up at this time isn't that much different from normal, I usually get up between 06:00 and 06:30 anyway so I can get to work early. I chose 05:45 as my time to get up as it gives me enough time to go for a 25 minute jog, have breakfast and get ready for work without having to rush. The reason why I've chosen to get up early every day as one of my trials is that by getting up early allows me to get more done in the day, especially at the weekend, where I can get things done before the rest of the family get up. Click here for a Steve Pavlina article on how to become an early riser and its's benefits.

As soon as I got up I got dressed in my jogging clothes and left the house for my first jog for awhile. As I'm so unfit I used the method that I found on Steve Pavlina's site in his article Build Fitness With Mild Interval Training, in brief this method involves alternating between jogging and walking, allowing you to jog for longer. Last time I tried jogging I managed to jog for less than 10 minutes before almost collapsing in a heap, this morning I jogged for a minute, then walked for a minute, then jogged for a minute and so on. This extended my total time to 25 minutes, although that still means I only actually jogged for just over 10 minutes, my heart rate was still elevated throughout the whole time. Hopefully over the next 30 days I can gradually increase the amount of time spent jogging, so next week I will start jogging for 1 minute 30 seconds and walking for a minute etc.

After my jog I had breakfast, I had a bowl of porridge and a glass of grapefruit juice. As well as the 30 day trials I am also on a bit of a diet, not a particular kind of diet just eating a bit less than usual. I'm currently 13 stone 10 pounds, I would like to get down to 12 stone 7 pounds before my wedding in May.

After breakfast I got ready for work, normally I cycle to work, but today my Fiancee is away on a trip so I had to take my daughter to Nursery, I don't drive so I took her on the bus. Even though I didn't cycle I still got some additional exercise as my work is a 20 minute walk away from the Nursery. At work I was feeling quite tired, but I usually do anyway so no change there. I had a banana for a snack and 2 rolls with chicken, sweetcorn and low fat mayonaise for lunch.

This evening I had a shop bought pizza for dinner, as you can see I'm not eating diet food, I'm just trying to eat less than I normally would. After dinner I spent half an hour practising on my guitar.

So, that's all 3 of the things that I planned to do today done, as it's the first day it would be pretty bad if I couldn't manage to do them. All in all its been a good day, lets see what tomorrow brings.