The beginning

Hello. My name is Del, and for those of you who don't know me, I'm a 26-year-old lad living in Raynes Park south of London north of Kingston. I have just started the Maximuscle 60-day-challenge so I thought I'd blog about it.

There are several reasons for taking on this challenge. Partly for fitness, partly cosmetic, mostly because I'm tired of getting called fat, or being unable to run as quickly as I used to. I play hockey for Surbiton Men's 5th team, and I dread to think what sort of state I would be in if I hadn't played hockey twice a week for the last 15 years of my life.

Post-Christmas, lots of people make resolutions, take on fad diets and so on but I wanted to prove to myself (and to my girlfriend, I guess) that I could do the challenge. I've used Maximuscle products in the past to great effect and I have a great deal of willpower (when I can be bothered with the effort) so the 60-day-challenge seemed like something I could try and stick to, when routine is mostly what I need to get fitness back into my regime. In this blog I hope to chart my successes, my failures and ultimately - hopefully - the achievement of my goals: to lose weight, increase my fitness and stamina, and tone up a bit.

Day 1 - Saturday 21st January
Started the day well enough - up at 10am (which is unusual for a Saturday), so I decided a Fifa session and the first breakfast on my meal plan would be a good way to begin the day. First meal was 3 scrambled eggs on toast. No bread, and I burnt the saucepan. Skills.

Day got a lot better though. Surbiton 5s played Spencer Titans - whom we beat 5-0 in the away fixture earlier this season - and although I felt I had a bit of a shocker, we won 6-1 after a shaky start. My plans to go home and have a quiet night in with my girlfriend were scuppered slightly by sticking around in the hockey club for too long (with the inevitable couple of pints), so in conclusion - Day 1, hockey good, alcohol bad.

After a decent curry (an acceptable replacement for cottage pie on my meal plan, I felt - though the keema naan to myself was probably pushing it) I was a bit annoyed with myself for already lapsing, but I looked at the positives, I'd started the day well, and put 100% in the hockey even if I hadn't performed to the best of my ability. The beer blip could be put down to early days. Sortof my cold turkey, I guess.

Day 2 - Sunday 22nd January
Another early (for a weekend) morning, another quick Fifa sesh and some bran flakes. A phone call from my compadre Ben reminded me that I was to meet him in the pub to watch Man City vs Spurs so I hopped on a train to Victoria and we watched the first half - I had a pint of orange juice and lemonade, and a bacon and blue cheese salad, which was a) quite nice and b) the first salad I had ever ordered in any pub, ever.

I shot off at half time as I had to umpire Kingston University's mixed hockey match. A nice little runaround on a Sunday afternoon, considered it 'active' resting. Managed to fend off the desire for a pint of post-match Carlsberg and went for orange/lemon again instead. Dinner was at my parents' place, rice and chorizo. Definitely an acceptable replacement for whatever was on the meal plan. Managed to resist the temptation for chocolate Fingers when we got home and busied myself with a LOT of Fifa and COD. Good times.