Tuesday 4th July 2017 - ups/down: cloudesley; videos

Posted 1:10pm

I have so much to put down that this is the first of two entries into the blog I am making this afternoon.  It is great being busy - and seeing progress.  I have had to learn to be patient, but also persistent!!!

Sadly, following my very upbeat message on Saturday prior to the group fitness session, Dean and I ended up doing over an hour by ourselves.  I have to say it is boosting my own personal fitness and stamina levels, and I have now lost 5kgs in the last 5 weeks - just another 13 to go (so three months could be magic for me!!).  But it is disappointing that we go to all this effort to provide free access to exercise and fitness - something we know people are constantly asking for - and yet the same people do not attend.  I am not judging too harshly I hope - having gone through a few depressions in my time for various reasons I can understand how negativity can overwhelm you - but even so it would be nice to have people attend.

Then on Monday, on what would have been the penultimate week of the course, for various reasons we had no one attend either. SHP said they were not concerned, it did not reflect badly on us, and in fact they are still very happy with what we are doing and want to talk seriously about further work.  It is something we need to review though.

On a brighter note, our friends at St Pancras Leisure Centre have very kindly agreed to let us use one of their exercise studios for free to film some bespoke fitness videos for our Youtube channel - we will be taking up their offer next Tuesday - and I will be speaking with Dean this week on how I am expecting the content to come over.  Seeing myself on video again is a great spur on my personal weight journey (as partly mentioned above) - but I am excited to be putting a slightly different slant on the many videos that are currently on the internet.

Finally, for this entry, tomorrow we are meeting up with Cloudesley charity - they only fund projects in Islington - and we will be looking now to expand and grow our Izzwalkz initiative in the borough. I would very much like to have 5 different walks going every week by the end of the year. We calculate that the cost of volunteers (we should recompense travel, washing etc), insurance, marketing, clothing, website, etc. could be £20 per walk - which is terrific value - so that would be approx £5000 a year for 260 walks.  Obviously no guarantees anywhere - but keeping everything crossed.