Downsizing

by Tom Watson

  In order to monitor my sleep patterns (and to satisfy my geeky obsession with stats and gadgets) I invested in a brilliant little device called an Oura Ring. Worn on your middle finger, it digitally tracks your sleep activity (as well as your pulse, your body temperature and your heart rate) and it was a total revelation. I learned, for example, that if I drank just one glass of wine with my evening meal, my resting heart rate would increase by about ten beats per minute. Also, if I ate later than 6 p.m., my sleep would be much more disturbed and erratic than normal, particularly during the REM (rapid eye movement) phase, which stimulates the brain regions used in learning, memory and mood. If the Oura Ring showed an unusual rise in overnight body temperature, I surmised that I’d trained too hard in the gym that day, and would be inclined to tone things down the next. This powerful diagnostic tool soon became an indispensable part of my well-being plan, and I found myself extolling its virtues to countless friends and colleagues.

  ‘This thing’s amazing. Couldn’t do without it,’ I said to my friend Peter Mandelson, who’d shown a keen interest in my new gadget when we’d caught up for a coffee one afternoon.

  ‘How fascinating…’ drawled the man I often playfully refer to as The Dark Lord.

  With my enhanced night-time schedule, I finally learned to love mornings. No longer did I wake up with a jolt, my bones creaky, my skin clammy. Instead I opened my eyes and allowed myself to come slowly to my senses, feeling renewed and refreshed following an unbroken eight-hour kip. I would then put on my trainers and go for my customary walk in Kennington Park, or perhaps along the South Bank, in order to stretch my legs and to absorb some early-morning daylight. Having read a compelling book penned by another sleep expert – Satchin Panda’s The Circadian Code – I had learned that taking a thirty-minute walk after sunrise could have a huge impact on the synchronisation of your body clock. Allowing light onto your skin and into the backs of your eyes at that time of day could effectively help your brain to understand that, when the sun set and the skies darkened, it was time for your body to prepare for sleep.

  As someone whose sleep patterns have been transformed, I cannot emphasise enough the importance of a good night’s shut-eye. Sadly, research shows that too many people in the UK are suffering with sleep deprivation, which can have severe implications for their health and well-being, whether it’s increasing the risk of strokes, heart disease and hypertension or prompting conditions like anxiety and depression.

  A Royal Society for Public Health survey in 2016 found that the average sleep time was 6.8 hours, below the 7.7 hours that people thought they needed (the RSPH also called for the UK government to publish a national sleep strategy). The following year, the Sleep Council carried out a survey of 5,000 people in Great Britain and found that 74 per cent of Brits slept less than seven hours per night, that 30 per cent experienced poor sleep most nights and that the top three reasons for poor sleep were stress and worry, partner disturbance and noise.

  Organisations like the Sleep Council are doing sterling work to promote sleep awareness, but I still think there’s plenty more to be done by key policymakers. I believe we all have the right to eight hours’ uninterrupted rest per night, and I’d fully endorse a public health campaign designed to restore people’s sleep patterns and to enhance their well-being. Perhaps we could liaise more closely with urban house builders and property developers, requesting that they include soundproofed windows and blackout blinds in every bedroom as standard. Maybe we could look at amending employment law, so as to provide added protection for night staff and shift workers. We could also have conversations with senior educators regarding the possibility of implementing later school start times, in recognition of the fact that adolescents have different circadian rhythms (yes, there’s an evolutionary reason why they lie in). Every one of us deserves the freedom to sleep; it’s central to our well-being, and forms the bedrock for good health.

  In the latter part of 2018, as alluded to in my podcast chat with Dave Asprey, I began to ramp up my physical fitness. I had been continuing my boxercise and cardiovascular training with Clayton (either in Kennington Park or his Bermondsey gym, depending on the weather), but there came a point when I decided to mix things up a bit, and introduce some weight training into my regular routine. I had whittled myself down to 15 stone (95 kilos), which I was inordinately happy about, but I felt like I was plateauing, and that there was still more work to be done and more weight to be lost. I had read up on the benefits of slow-movement resistance training for middle-aged blokes like me, who, with the right advice and guidance, could increase their basic strength and look and feel better. Beyond that, I also learned that weight-bearing exercise could improve bone and muscle density, thus reducing the risk of osteoporosis (fragile bones) and sarcopenia (muscle loss) among older adults. While these conditions were fairly uncommon among men of my age, putting in the groundwork as a fifty-something could well pay dividends in the future.

  I amassed a mini-library of books on the subject. My favourite bedside read, believe it or not, was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s New Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding (so weighty was this tome, I needed Arnie-style brawn to lift it). A step-by-step manual of strength training, written in a clear, no-nonsense style, it was the perfect starter-guide for a curious beginner like me. Other books that I found particularly useful included Body by Science by Dr Doug McGuff and Designing Resistance Training Programs by Steven Fleck and William Kraemer, although these titles were marginally more scholarly.

  Furnished with information – and convinced that this was the right course of action – I began to cast around for a suitable gym. In order to fit in with my chock-a-block diary it needed to be as near to my flat as possible, and available to use 24/7, so I plumped for a £34-a-month membership with Snap Fitness in Elephant & Castle. It fitted the bill perfectly. Not only was I able to access an impressive array of lifting equipment (as well as a variety of running machines if rain ever stopped play outdoors), I was also buddied up with an extremely knowledgeable instructor, Nic Cornelis. I attended a few sessions with him in which he showed me the ropes and taught me the basics, explaining how to use each piece of equipment as safely and as efficiently as possible.

  ‘Have to say, I’m a bit nervous about this,’ I said, as I eyed a huge set of dumb-bells.

  ‘Don’t worry about anything,’ replied Nic. ‘I won’t push you to do anything you can’t do.’

  It was a daunting experience – I was well outside my comfort zone, and strength and conditioning was never going to come naturally to me – but within a couple of weeks I was pumping iron and lifting weights (and engaging in a few vanity biceps and triceps curls, as you do), although my squats and bench-presses were decidedly amateurish.

  By spring 2019 I felt significantly fitter and stronger. Indeed, I’d become so obsessional and evangelical about my new discipline that I’d begun to seriously contemplate getting myself qualified as a part-time Level Two gym instructor, through which I could gain more knowledge about physiology and gym equipment. With this in mind I decided to upgrade to a specialist health club, Ultimate Performance in Mayfair, signing up for one of their two-month programmes with a view to getting myself as toned up (and as genned up) as possible, as well as learning from some of the best trainers in the business. I chose this particular gym for two reasons; firstly, on the strength of its charismatic owner, Nick Mitchell, a highly respected figure in the fitness industry whose book, The Principles of Muscle Building Program Design, I’d devoured in one weekend. Ultimate Performance had also been recommended to me by a female colleague at Westminster who, after joining up, had shed a significant amount of weight. Having completely reconditioned her body, she’d successfully completed the London Marathon.

  ‘It’s a gym I really can’t afford, to get a body I really don’t deserve,’ I told her once I’d signed on the dotted line in mid-May.

  ‘It’ll be well worth it, Tom, I can assure you,’ she’d replied. ‘The staff there are
amazing.’

  I was assigned to a personal trainer called Jay, who quizzed me about my long-term goals.

  ‘To carry two bags of shopping up a flight of stairs when I’m an OAP, and to pick up my great-great-grandchildren without slipping a disc,’ I said. ‘Oh, and to live until I’m 102.’

  ‘Interesting,’ he said with a smile, ‘although I was kind of thinking about where you wanted to be in three months’ time.’

  I wanted resistance training to strengthen my body and accelerate my weight loss, I told Jay, and I wanted to be able to walk into any gym in the UK and use any piece of equipment competently and confidently. I also made known my ambition to teach skills to others of a certain age.

  ‘First and foremost, it’s all about technique and form, Tom,’ said Jay. Technique, he explained, was the manner in which you lifted weights; the positions you adopted, for example, and the movements that you incorporated. Form was the consistency of maintaining those techniques, regardless of speed or weight-load. According to Jay, heeding these fundamentals was far more important than counting repetitions and lifting the heaviest weights possible. All too often, however, both were overlooked by poorly informed gym-goers. They ended up virtually flinging the weights around, which not only trained the wrong muscles, but also increased the risk of potential injury.

  ‘When you’re lifting a squat bar, I’ll be looking closely at your whole muscle range, so that I can spot and remedy any weaknesses,’ said Jay. ‘What you do with your abdominals is just as important as what you do with your shoulders.’

  Under Jay’s expert tutelage, I focused on that all-important form and technique and learned how best to condition my body. Within weeks I began to see the fruits of my labour. At the beginning of July I weighed in at 13 stone 10lb (87 kilos) but, more thrillingly, I discovered that I’d lost 14 centimetres from the circumference of my waist. Jay also did several calliper measurements to ascertain my body fat, which had evidently decreased from 24 per cent to 17 per cent. It was an extremely dramatic turnaround in such a short space of time.

  Such was the intensity of my resistance training programme, I had to tweak my diet in order to give my body the right nutritional support. Keen to maintain energy, gain lean muscle and prevent post-workout hunger pangs, I significantly increased my calorific intake. I began to eat four protein-rich meals per day, starting most mornings with a breakfast of two scrambled eggs and a mound of steamed spinach. This would be followed by a lunch, dinner and supper that all contained at least 200 grams of protein. Typically, these three meals would comprise a large portion of fish and meat, of which two would be lean (a chicken breast, a fillet steak or a piece of cod, perhaps) and one would be oily or fatty (perhaps some smoked mackerel or a couple of pork chops). To maintain my carbohydrate intake, I ate as many leafy green vegetables and as much mixed salad as I could manage; I could easily munch my way through a full head of broccoli per day, and two or three bags of baby leaves. In essence I was following a meat and two veg diet, a bit like my mum used to serve up in the 1970s, minus the boiled potatoes and the Bisto gravy.

  For me, weight training was transformational – I’d never felt so physically robust – and I only wished I’d started it earlier in my journey. To any middle-aged men reading this who are struggling with their weight, and who are looking to improve their fitness from a standing start, my advice would be this: if you only have time to do two hours a week of training, lift weights. Before you even think about running around the park, or signing up for a spin class, lift weights. Join a good gym, follow the advice from an experienced instructor and approach things slowly and gradually. All I can say is that it worked for me; the increased strength I gained provided an excellent basis for other sports and activities – cycling, swimming, climbing – and I’ve never looked back.

  In addition to pumping iron, I also started pushing pedals. I had first introduced cycling into my fitness regime in 2018, alternating bike rides with my regular walking and jogging sessions. A blend of road bike, touring bike and mountain bike, my Trek hybrid had been bought on a well-intentioned whim a few years previously, but had been left to gather cobwebs in the shed (no surprise there, then). In those days I had neither the confidence nor the inclination to wheel it out in London – heaving my 22-stone frame into the saddle, in a city gridlocked with traffic, sounded like too much of an ordeal for me – and I’d dismissed it as yet another one of my failed fitness fads. When I started to shed weight and get healthy, however, I decided to bring the Trek out of retirement and take it out on the road. Once I’d pumped up the tyres and polished the frame (and pulled on my new padded Lycra shorts), we were both good to go.

  It took a few tentative circuits of Vauxhall’s cycle lanes to build up my confidence. I had not ridden a bicycle properly for 20 years (I used to pedal my beloved Raleigh Chopper from the Ferndale Estate to Habberley Valley) and I was a little wobbly, in both mind and body. I was determined to master life on two wheels, though. One drizzly afternoon I tackled the incline on Lambeth Bridge – not much of a climb, admittedly – and felt my lungs heaving and my calves burning.

  How the hell am I going to get over this? I remember thinking. C’mon, Tom, dig deep.

  I gripped my handlebars, moved through the gears, reached the mini-summit and headed down toward Black Prince Road. A small victory, but a great feeling.

  When I first took up cycling, I primarily saw my hour-long rides as a mode of exercise, and regarded my bike as a piece of outdoor gym equipment. But, as my confidence and competence increased, zipping along the designated cycleways became my favourite mode of transport around the capital. Cycling felt like a way of life, not just an extension of my fitness regime, and I soon found myself opting to travel to Westminster by Trek, not taxi.

  One morning Mary Creagh, MP for Wakefield and a very accomplished cyclist, spotted me tethering my bike to the rack outside the Palace of Westminster.

  ‘Can I just say how fantastic it is to see you cycling, Tom?’ she said. ‘Hope you get as much out of it as I’ve done over the years.’

  ‘Cheers, Mary,’ I replied. ‘I’m absolutely loving it.’

  Jeremy Corbyn, himself a keen cyclist, took the opportunity to give me some encouragement, too, as well as some sound advice.

  ‘Never scrimp on your waterproofs,’ he said one afternoon following a shadow cabinet meeting. ‘Cheap ones always let the rain in. It’s worth spending a little extra on something that’s really robust.’

  ‘Thanks, Jeremy, I’ll bear that in mind,’ I said, making a mental note to pay a visit to my local outdoor-fitness emporium.

  I also used the bike to motivate and reward myself by applying a kind of rudimentary nudge theory. Each time I hit a weight-loss goal, I’d treat myself to a brand new piece of kit for my bike. In most cases, nothing was of huge monetary value – one week it would be a bottle holder, the next a flashing backlight – but this positive reinforcement really helped me to focus on the task in hand. Perhaps it was the video gamer in me, who’d always loved setting goals, meeting them, and then being rewarded or upgraded for reaching the higher level. My favourite (and perhaps most useful) bike-related purchase was a wire shopping basket that clipped onto my handlebars. This allowed me to stop off at Borough Market or Tesco Vauxhall after work and load up with fresh provisions for that evening’s meal. I would always be extra-careful cycling home, however, avoiding any road ramps or potholes that might catapult my free-range eggs and Hass avocados down Kennington Road.

  I promised myself a special treat for a symbolic milestone, though.

  ‘If I lose a hundred pounds in weight, I’m buying myself a brand new bike,’ I told my brother Dan (a fellow enthusiast) over the phone one evening. While I’d grown very fond of my trusty old Trek, it was quite heavy and clunky, and I fancied something with a little more zip. Not only that, a few communal cycling challenges had caught my eye (there were always plenty of rides going on in London) and I felt that my wheels needed to be a bit more
fit for purpose.

  In November 2018 my Nokia scales hit that all-important target – 208lb (94 kilos) – but it wasn’t until the following spring, when the frost and ice began to clear, that I made my purchase. Prior to that I’d researched all sorts of bikes on the internet, watching countless YouTube videos, trawling through online stockists and wondering whether to opt for a road bike or another hybrid. I also sought advice from a good contact of mine, Andrew Denton, who spearheaded the Outdoor Industries Association, an organisation that encouraged UK citizens, regardless of age or ability, to get outside and get active. Andrew also happened to be a very experienced triathlete who knew a lot about bicycles, and he duly pointed me in the direction of a specialist cycling shop in London. I heeded the advice from an extremely enthusiastic member of staff, and ended up plumping for a sleek-looking, black-framed Focus Izalco road bike, which, as it was a display model, came with a hefty discount. I was ever so slightly worried by the fact that it had cleats – those metal clips that attach cycling shoes to pedals – but I was reassured that I’d get used to them in no time.