So it begins again

This used to be a fitness blog. Now I want to do that again.

I've had a peculiar sort of summer. I've been jobhunting and also doing a professional-development course (in order to make myself more employable, I hope) and as a result have spent a lot of time sitting down. I think I've probably had less exercise than if I'd been at work.

Just now, my children are at the stage where the Peanut (aged three) wants to walk everywhere (or balance-bike) and the little one (nearly 18 months) is just starting to stagger around the place. So when we're out, we don't go very fast. I used to be able to fit in a fair amount of brisk walking with them both in the double buggy, which also added a degree of resistance - they added up to about 50 pounds of load at the time - but recently that's been a bit difficult to achieve. I don't like to see older children in buggies and I think it's important to keep kids moving as much as you can, so I wouldn't stop them from walking.

So there we are. Days spent slowly trailing around after toddlers, and evenings spent sitting down and studying, and (accountability here) eating too much chocolate and drinking too much coffee in an attempt to keep myself awake. I sort of gave myself a free pass until the course was over, but now it is. Next project: get a bit fitter and - hopefully - lose a stone and a half.

As of today (Monday), I am setting a couple of goals:

No eating between meals. I think setting a blanket rule is the easiest way to do this. We are fairly healthy at mealtimes in this house (the kids eat the same things as we do) so I'm going to see what effect just cutting out snacks has. I'm thinking about doing the 5:2 diet but I'd like to keep it simple to start with.

Try to exercise vigorously three times a week. Not sure how I'm going to schedule this, but we'll think of something. In the past I have not been very good at fitting this in at home - if I can go for a run or pick up my weights at any time, it tends not to occur to me to do it, whereas I've been better at gym-going. But in my current stay-at-home circumstances I would have to schedule a time to go, so... not quite decided what I'm going to do. My husband goes to the gym, and I can't go at the same time as he does (childcare), but he's happy to accommodate my going if I can work out how.

Today being day 1, I have successfully avoided snacks but not done any exercise apart from the usual running up and down the stairs (I do this so often in the course of an ordinary day that you'd think I would be wonderfully fit...) But then the poor Peanut has been home from nursery today with a bad cold and a temperature, so I've been ministering to him. Which is quite exhausting, but probably not terribly good exercise, alas.