A bit of a gap- but not around the waistline

Certainly a bit of a gap since my last post, basically a month. But my waistline. I'm afraid the gap there between my trousers and my stomach has disappeared. It now looks like a tsunami of fat is trying to cascade over my trousers and obliterate my thighs. Not good. The gap in writing my blog is very easy to explain. I have been away to Ireland and then after a few days back went off to Spain to see an old friend in his new villa. I think therefore I could be excused not writing my blog whilst I enjoyed a few weeks of  holidaying freedom.

The weight issue is also fairly easy to explain. I was on holiday and completely disregarded my own advice to watch what I eat, be moderate in what I drink and start to lose weight for health and aesthetic  reasons. I'm sure I'm not alone in abandoning all good intentions when I'm set upon enjoying myself. The problem comes at the end of the holiday you look at yourself you weigh yourself and you feel nothing but self disgust and you say to yourself ,"why did you do that John, where is your self-control?"

In my last blog I said that addressing the weight and health issues was a primary objective in my new found retirement. I am therefore going to write off the last month and say that that was my four-week bender upon reaching retirement and celebrating the fact. The trouble is in a few days time I'm going on holiday again and very concerned that the same disregard for my weight and health will again come into play. This may well be why so many people retire and in a very short amount of time end up keeling over and saying goodbye to their hard earned pension. This was apparent last night which was the night before what would have been the first day of term with the children. In the past I would certainly not have had a drink I would've eaten moderately and gone to bed early. But without the need to get up at 6:30 what I actually did was eat a big meal at a late time, drink two large glasses of wine, stay up to 1.30 and then went to bed with indigestion .

Thus we come to an unexpected consequence of retirement. Without the necessity to rein in the excesses of food and drink because one is about to go to work, it becomes very easy to overindulge and thus to die prematurely. This is not one of my objectives for retirement. So the change I talked about in the last blog is even more imperative. Maybe I need to list on here what I will do so that when I re-read the blog I can be reminded of what I set out as my intentions. So here goes: from this moment I will not drink alcohol for the next three days, I would also only eat at three-set times a day, I will severely restrict carbohydrates, cut out sugar and stick to proteins, whole foods and lots of fruit and vegetables. Next week when I go on holiday I know I will indulge a little after all that's why they call it a holiday, it's respite from how we normally live. But I will try and stick to the basic three meals a day, limit the drinking and do lots of walking. I will keep you posted on my progress.

As I said earlier this would have been the day that I started back to work proper and and so in some ways feels like my first day of retirement. So what I need to do is to start creating routines for myself as I don't want to end up lazing around watching TV, cooking big breakfasts and not having a focus. I had lots of plans in my head prior to retirement and I now need to formalise these and start to work towards realising these plans. In the few days that I have got this week before going on holiday I will dust off the guitar and ukelele and trying get back to the level that I obtained a few years ago in my playing and singing. The second thing that I can act upon this week is sorting out the finances as this is going to present a real challenge in the face of low interest rates and the uncertainty around Brexit. The first thing that I can achieve this week would be to keep this blog going which I suppose is as much for me as for anyone else.

I finish this blog then with some neat little objectives until my next entry:

• start and maintain my new Food & Drink regime
• start practising my singing and playing
• sort out some finances
• write another blog entry by the end of the week

Retirement is certainly a big change and it feels slightly disorientating. It also feels very liberating. The challenge seems to be changing direction and making it work.
Till next time.
John