12 days to roll back the years

In harness: Felix tows Tom Marien
10 April 2012

No sugar — no problem. No cake or biscuits — ditto. One hour of exercise four times a week — that's pushing it. No alcohol for 12 days — yowsa! That's a deal-breaker...

But I found myself signing up to the Reset exercise regime anyway. The programme only lasts for 12 days but they were going to be long ones.
New Year recession panic meant I hadn't renewed my gym membership and months without regular exercise had left me feeling lardy. I badly needed to break the sloth cycle but like most working Londoners I'm time poor, and nothing will induce me to raise a sweat after work. And, perhaps most important, fitness is much harder work for the over-50s.

So when a personal trainer offered to put me through my paces for an hour twice-weekly for two weeks, at the time and place of my choosing,
I couldn't think of any get-out clause. Which is why I found myself by the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens in my lunch hour with Tom Marien.

Tom is the founder of One Element, a company which offers two health packages. The first is Training in the Park, 35 weekly outdoor group fitness sessions at 11 locations across London. I was doing the second package, Reset, which aims to overhaul your lifestyle as well as your fitness.

After a general warm-up, Tom and I got stuck into fast running between marker posts, interspersed with boxing (fun, though hard on arthritic fingers), big muscle group exercises such as lunges and squats, core exercises (planks, sit-ups) and, for the benefit of bored passers-by, me in a harness towing Tom behind me.

The only thing I found taxing was running at top speed from the first to the last post (30 metres) and back, five times, with only a few seconds' break in between. I did it, but running is outside my fiftysomething comfort zone these days. Fortunately Tom doesn't bully, which helps.
The real shock to my system, though, came at the end of the hour when Tom produced a 92-page booklet, full of healthy recipes, exercises, encouragement and 12 days' worth of food charts to fill in. He recorded my measurements in the booklet, then turned to page 21. There was a contract, awaiting my signature, of 10 things I would try to stick to over the next 12 days.

As well as no sugar, alcohol, refined carbs (pasta, rice, wheat) or dairy produce, I was to drink two litres of water a day, exercise for 10 minutes each day and do an hour of exercise four times a week on top of my training with him.
I signed knowing there was no way I could avoid alcohol for that long.

In the event, I did manage four alcohol-free nights before I hit on a cunning compromise — the white wine spritzer. And I have to have cow's milk in my tea, come what may.

So how did I do? By our fourth and final session, I had shed nearly two kilos and lost 2cm off my waist and one off my hips. More importantly,
I felt lighter and bouncier for my age and my body remembered why it used to do regular exercise in the first place. But trust me, my only running since has been for the bus.
One Element Ltd, 383 Garratt Lane, SW18 (020 8871 1295, info@one-element.co.uk)

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