An introduction to budget fitness

So I guess I shall introduce myself in case someone actually comes here and reads this blog.

My online moniker is Spax, I am 23 years old, I live in the South West of England and I am a student nurse (a male one). I am also over weight, I weigh:

101kg

or 222.7lb

or 15.9 stone

And I have always weighed more than I should. I have previously attempted calorie control to loose weight with little success. I am very shy when it comes to exercise, I've never truly exercised in any consistent way. I cannot swim, I'm unable to life much weight at all. And I suffer from occasional bouts of social anxiety which has always stopped me from stepping foot in a gym.

So what is my point with this blog? Well it's to document my experiment with diet and fitness, and to record the progress weekly. I'll be doing this so that a) I'll have a diary of the exercises and routines I've performed within the week and b) hopefully people will read this who are in a similar situation (both mentally and physically) to me.

The first attempt to loose weight will be using Tim Ferriss' diet outlined in 'The 4-Hour Body' which is an interesting book which I will do a full review on at a later date. Tim has named this diet the 'Slow carb diet' which I view as a variation on most low carb diets I have read up on (ie paleo/primal) which involves a complete void of sugars and fruit, only slow natural carbs (beans), and lots of protein and vegetables. I will be following a budget diet plan that is outlined in his book and consists of four meals per day, six days a week, with one 'blow out' day each week where I can eat all the crap I can fit in my face.

Coupled with this diet I will be working out, but bear in mind I'm new to this so I'm going to be taking it fairly slow. I have joined a CrossFit gym (http://www.crossfitavon.com/) which I will strive to attend once per week (a total cost of just under £40 a month), and along with that I aim to do various cardio workouts in my local park using nothing more than a pair of trainers and my handy smart phone with the High Intensity Interval Trainer (HIIT) app which is free to use on android (I'm sure there's an iPhone version as well). I'm going from a couch potato to an endurance runner (hopefully) so I have found and am following an excellent introductory workout plan provided by this book which I bought on eBay for 99p.

I will strive to update this blog once a week with my progress, and measurements.

You may have noticed that I seem a little fixated on price, and you would be right. I am a student and my total budget for living is £600 a month. After all of my living costs this leaves me with £90 a month which is my own to spend and I chose to spend £40 on CrossFit as I believe it's a very complete form of fitness training. So I'm doing this on a serious budget. Thankfully it's Christmas and (even though I hate it with a passion) I will be focusing on fitness for present requests from the family, I have my eyes on a new pair of trainers (or two, but more of that later), and a entry into the 2012 Bristol 10K as a motive to move more.

Hopefully you will be able to make your decisions more informed than I as I will be writing reviews on all of the aspects of my fitness 'regime'.

Thanks for reading, and I will soon post an overview of my first week, and a review of one of the afore mentioned books.