Saturday

It’s been quite a while since Lesley has done any resistance training and I haven’t done any for a year now. But we both know that to take the next step on our weight loss journey we’re going to have to do some proper focused exercise.

Our trainer was Harry Moore. He got me to a level where I could do a 140kg deadlift. He and I are both metabolism and biomechanics nerds. We’re both followers of the continuous improvement by small increments philosophy. We both observed the improvement in my mental health when I was training well and we spent large parts of many sessions undoing the physical effects of mental stress. We both also enjoy Bantz although it’ll do neither of us any favours if I repeat any of our conversations during the sessions. I’ll leave a link to his YouTube channel below.

So it was no surprise at all when the YouTube algorithm presented us with another appropriate video while we had breakfast.

Harry always reminded me that even if you weren’t losing weight overall, increasing muscle mass was always a good thing. The baseline metabolism of muscle was, weight for weight, higher than fat tissue so you’d be burning more calories even if you weren’t doing anything. Harry would also often say

“Nobody ever complained about being too strong.”

I could remember the programmes that Harry took me through. Will Harlow’s videos were plenty good enough for us to devise a programme for Lesley.

“But how are we going to do the exercises which need weights?”

“Erm… I’ve got some.”

Hasn’t everybody got a set of cheap weights that they bought online during the Lockdowns?

Later on in the day I found another of Mum’s treasures in one of the boxes of her stuff. Three lace handkerchiefs sent to Mum by Ye Honiton Lace Shoppe. The postmark on the envelope was October 1955 and the postage was tuppence ha’penny. The Shoppe is no longer in existence and now, neither is Mum. But Honiton Lace was all done by hand and every square centimetre was the result of hours of work. They must have cost her a small fortune. But she kept them pristine. They didn’t look like they’d been out of the envelope since she first got them 70 years ago.

Bloody hell.

Author’s Note

My Mum was in a nursing home in the Thames Valley for a year and a half until she passed away in December 2024. My Father-in-law went into the same home the following January. But Lesley’s sister didn’t approve and made the situation so awkward that he had to be moved. He passed away in March 2025. Names and locations have been changed or hidden to protect the identities of those involved.

Links

Harry Moore at Team Fornever Lean.

Image Credit

Original Image by Nick Gilmore. January 2023.