And that was that...

January 28, 2013. I stood atop those pesky scales in Abbeycroft's gym.

Smiling Assassin took a look and gave me one of those knowing stares.

But here we are, 84 days later and TWO STONES LIGHTER!

Yes...high fives in the gym today for all of five seconds.

The Smiling Assassin turned to me and said: "Right, Monday, body statistics again and then we'll set you a new set of goals for the rest of the year. Peak flow; waist; body make-up."

I trudged off to the showers (minus the Smiling Assassin).

This next few months could be interesting. I've been coasting up to now and sweating just to make it look like I'm really trying hard. Now, I suspect, the training's going to start to hurt.

On the plus side, at £2 for every pound shed, that's a sweet £56 I'll pop into the Beat It! campaign and we're well on our way to £10k.

Preparations are well under way for our great May raffle to win a Vauxhall Corsa, so keep your eyes peeled for the car and raffle tickets across town.

I'm off for a big packet of crisps...

Getting active

Abbeycroft Leisure - those nice people who run the gym at Bury Leisure Centre - are supporting me on this fitness challenge and the Beat It! appeal.

It was back in June that Abbeycroft launched a borough-wide campaign to promote the benefits of physical activity on wellbeing and quality of life called Active St Eds. At the time, I could not have imagined I would be part of that...

Now that campaign has been extended to patients and visitors at West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds.

Posters and the new ‘Active St Eds Inspire Me’ magazine will now go on display in staff areas, the Time Out restaurant, occupational health and outpatients area.

Michelle Banfield-Curran, Abbeycroft’s Partnership Manager, said: “We want to thank West Suffolk Hospital for its support of this very important campaign to raise awareness of the benefits of physical activity, not only on fitness but on people’s general well being.

“It is our hope that a lasting legacy from last year’s Olympic and Paralympic Games will be that more people in St Edmundsbury take up some form of activity and that the poster campaign, featuring real life stories from our community will inspire people and show them how their friends, neighbours and colleagues did it.”

To help measure the success of the campaign, a new ‘Active Points’ scheme was introduced at Abbeycroft Leisure where people can collect points every time they take part in an activity at Abbeycroft’s Centres in Bury St Edmunds and Haverhill or at one of their many events and activities held in the community, which can be redeemed against 400 retailers online. 

The campaign ‘Active St Eds’ web portal www.acleisure.com/active-st-eds features real life stories of people from St Edmundsbury whose lives have been improved by physical activity, tips, articles written by local healthcare experts, and details of how to sign up for Active Points.

Claire Webb, Health and Wellbeing Coordinator at West Suffolk Hospital NHS Trust, said: “We are delighted to support the Active St Eds Campaign, we take the health and wellbeing of our staff very seriously at West Suffolk Hospital and we’re actively encouraging them to sign up. It is so important to maintain a healthy lifestyle and to keep fit and active; hopefully Active St Eds will encourage more local people to increase the amount of exercise they do each week.”

Abbeycroft manages both Haverhill and Bury St Edmunds Leisure Centres in partnership with St Edmundsbury Borough Council and delivers much of the Sports Development and outreach work in the Borough.

Did you know, too, that Abbeycroft Leisure opened its first budget gym in the heart of Ipswich in Suffolk in January 2011, offering state-of-the-art workout stations for just £12.99. Abbeycroft is one of a handful of leisure trusts in the UK to branch out and develop this affordable fitness model.   

0.6

Doesn't seem much, does it.

When I stand on the scales on Monday morning, I'm hoping they will read 0.6kg less than a couple of weeks ago - and that will be my initial target achieved of a couple of stones lost.

Sadly, Smiling Assassin Helen Bye has said I can't just top and go back to my usual healthy diet of crisps, crisps and more crisps (with a few crisps sprinkled on top). Oh no, she's got me signed up until the end of December...saying I'm just a third of the way to my real target.

But she has promised me some ridge crisps for Christmas. She's all heart.

My progress was noticed by Bury Free Press news editor Lesley Anslow this week in a backhanded way.

"Oi - you need  to get a smaller shirt," she said.

Progress indeed.

Heidi Hi (2)

I'm looking forward to welcoming three new faces to the gym in the coming weeks.

Today's Bury Free Press has the story on page 11 - here's the long and short of it:


A trio of Bury Free Press reading gym-dodgers are getting set to dust off their sweatbands and leotards as they take on a fitness challenge.
Mark Thompson, Nicola Buckle and Heather Bream have taken up the Active St Eds gauntlet after winning Abbeycroft Leisure’s competition to win a 12-month gym membership and help from a fitness instructor - worth nearly £500.
The trio will be joined in the gym by Bury Free Press  editor, Barry Peters, as he continues his challenge to lose as much weight as possible for our Beat It! Appeal.
The winners bagged their membership after convincing us  and Abbeycroft Leisure that they were looking to get active.
Ms Buckle, 26, from Brandon, said she had been fit while at school, but had put on weight after the death of her father.
“I have been trying to lose weight for about seven years and I’ve tried different things that haven’t worked - I felt like I needed some help,” she said.
Ms Bream, 36, from Bury, said she had last been a gym member 10 years ago, but family life had knocked her fitness regime.
“I have had three children and never managed to get my fitness back.
“The problem is that I’m rubbish at exercise and eat too much chocolate!” she said.
Mr Thompson, 50, from the Bury area, said he wanted to get back in shape after ‘letting myself go’.
“I had hip surgery around 10 years ago and I’ve put on a lot of weight since.
“I find it very daunting to go in the  gym because I’m not that way inclined but this was a good way to get fit again,” he said.
Helen Bye, fitness instructor - who has been dubbed ‘the Smiling Assassin’ by Mr Peters due to her gruelling workouts - will be taking the winners through their paces.
She said: “We’ll give them each a tailored programme to get the most out of their time here and it will be tough - there will definitely be some mild discomfort at first!
“Hopefully these guys can be an inspiration to people who don’t feel like they can get out there and get fit.”

Here's our pics:

                                        NO PAIN, NO GAIN: Mark Thompson, Heather Bream
                                        and Nicola Buckle with Abbeycroft Leisure fitness instructor
                                        Helen Bye



My earlier post about Heidi will hopefully now become obvious - just take a look at the Smiling Assassin's hair...well she can be cruel to me every week, so I thought I'd get a little bit of revenge in.

Notice, too, how she's smiling in every picture - she's looking forward to being just as mean to them as she is to me.

Good luck Mark, Heather and Nicola - please come and say Hi in the gym if you notice me coughing and spluttering on some piece of equipment - I'm usually too puffed out to notice anything other than my water bottle.

Crunch time

If I'm honest, the hardest thing about this Beat It! challenge is giving up crisps.

I love them in every shape and form.

Not so keen on Wotsits, but French Fries, pretzels, Quavers, Frazzles (especially), Monster Munch and then  those ridged ones just hit the button every time. I went to teh US last year, though, and had a proper pretzel - there's no comparison to those supermarket packets and something I year to try again (out of sight of the Smiling Assassin, of course and with no camera evidence).

Then there's Pringles, cheese and onion, those nice Sensations, prawn cocktail...the list goes on.

Alarming then this week when I heard that Britons polish off six billion packets of crisps each year...almost 100 packets per person.

Rather more alarming - and something which supports my zero tolerance approach, is the fact that snacking on just one packet a day can add up to the equivalent of drinking almost FIVE LITRES of cooking oil per year to someone's diet.
 Put like that, I might just have to continue with the abstinence...though one packet of ridged salted vinegar can't hurt that much, can it?

( . ) Another milestone this week - tipped the scales having lost a further 2kg, so that's now 12kg lost in total.

( . ) If you'd like to support my fund-raising via my gym sessions courtesy of the nice people at  Abbeycroft Leisure, pop on the web to www.justgiving.com/BfpEditor where you can donate to the Beat It appeal. We're trying to raise £55k to buy a cancer scanner to detect prostate problems early in young men - and save lives.

Please help - just helping one young man and his family will have made all the sweating (and shouting from the Smiling Assassin) worth it.

Thank you for your support so far!

Worrying fact #1

One doughnut has the same calorific content as four skinless chicken breasts.

So if there is a God, why did he/she allow Mankind to invent them?

The hills . . .

No not those hills (the TV brats), the hills of Bury St Edmunds.

Amazed? Flat Suffolk? Think again.

It was yesterday when I had the rather silly idea of biking to work again in preparation for the Bury Bike Ride on June 9. Smiling Assassin (and sometime gym instructor Helen Bye) and her family have signed on the dotted line so failure is not an option.

The organisers have invested in CCTV for 2013 to track my every move - Steve Laycock nearly choked on his cup of tea when I rolled home before everyone else in the 15-miler last year. He was convinced I'd hidden in some ditch on Moreton Hall, waited an hour and then freewheeled down Mount Road back to the Abbey Gardens to make sure I got a nice shiny medal.

So I thought I'd better get back in the saddle. They start us off on the  Mount Road mountain most years just to try to weed me out - thinking I'm going to (a) fall off while going up or (b) collapse. So far, I've managed to escape both outcomes.

So WD40, a bit of Muc-Off spray and a re-inflation of my tyres later and I was ready to roll.

Boy was yesterday cold though. Foolishly, I donned shorts for the 7am sortie into town and regretted it the moment the wind started blowing in places I'd forgotten existed (err, Eastgate Street...nothing rude passes my fingers on this work keyboard).

Some kind soul captured me on camera...there's work to do from the Smiling Assassin and her bosses at Abbeycroft Leisure in the next 2 months.

My aim is to get to the Sir Chris Hoy look. I'm guessing I need a few more weights sessions in the meantime?

But at least those nice Abbeycroft Leisure people - training me to support our Bury Free Press Beat It appeal - have got me a spanking new jersey to wear on the roads.

Thanks team - see you on the start line!

Heidi Hi

No words are needed...but you might want to check the Bury Free Press on Friday and see if you can spot any similarities.