From the age of 25 to 35, I remained at a steady 12 and a half stone (79kg) no matter how much food or drink that I consumed, but after a few fantastic years that involved the lethal recipe of good times and contentment, somehow I find myself weighing 15.5 stone (98 kg) so its time to become the jolly fat fella or try and do something about this predicament that I have gotten myself into.

A direct debit to a gym membership usually means just that, who can motivate themselves to be plugged into rows of machines and find the time out of an already busy day anyway? Most people I know end up paying a large monthly sum of money to sit on the couch promising to make a start next week.

So the gym is out of the question because it’s not for me, but how can I find something that I can do each day to get in shape that doesn’t cost much but allows me to combine my passions of music, technology and photography?

Suddenly all my questions are answered when I discover the best selling Mobile Application “Get Running” and their Couch Potato to 5K plan in 9 weeks.  The blurb on the website says “Get Running builds your fitness up in manageable stages. At the beginning, you walk and run, never running for more than a couple of minutes in a row. In week five’s sessions you’re running for fifteen minutes — three five-minute runs, with walking in between. By the end of the Get Running fitness plan you’ll be running for thirty minutes solid!”

This is exactly what I had been looking for, I can do it on the way home from work which doesn’t eat into my leisure time, listen to music from my specially created running playlist, enjoy the great outdoors and maybe even get some cracking iPhoneography shots along the way.

In order to motivate myself and track my progress, I thought I would document the plan here on my blog to see if an out of shape, chubby chaser really can lose weight by following the simple concept of eating less and moving more, will I fail or succeed?  This is my journey…

Week 1

• Old pair of trainers
• Get Running C25K App
• Run Keeper App (to map where I am and save stats etc to view on website later)
• Spotify App with a running Playlist

At this moment in time, I am not concerned with buying expensive trainers and checking my gait at a local running shop, the intro is a combination of walking and running so will see how it goes for the first few weeks before I get kitted out properly.

Despite being very out of shape, the Get Running app started the pace perfectly and the friendly human voice in my ear was encouraging and felt like I had something to aim for. Just when you get out of breath through running you get 90 seconds to catch your breath and start again allowing you to build fitness gradually.

I simply get off the train home a stop earlier and head back which is around 2.3 mile journey so actually takes very little time out of my day and more a case of just replacing bad habits with good ones.

This week I have burned around 1750 calories ran/walked for 11.5 miles by simply changing the way I come home from work which has shown me that anything is possible but my biggest battle is going to be keeping motivated and making this new habit a regular occurrence.

My legs ache a little but certainly not enough to make me want to stop, and at this very early stage, it is much easier than I was expecting, and that’s coming from a fat boy like me.