My name is Ewen Lewis I'm 36 originally from Amble, Northumberland but now live in Swindon, Wiltshire. I have wonderful 3 children (Armani 9, William 6 and Harrison 5) who I love to bits and are a big part of my reason for wanting to continue to live a healthy lifestyle and be a good role model as they grow older. Sadly my kids don't live with me I have them every 2 weeks at the weekend Friday-Sunday which can be difficult but I'm slow learning to accept and cope with this situation.
These background pages in my blog describe as best I can my journey from 24st 9lbs in March 2010 to Ironman UK 2013 before I started this blog.
In March 2010 I hit rock bottom I wasn't just overweight I was struggling with stairs and couldn't muster the energy to get up each day and it was getting worse. I was on about 3 sets of tablets for blood pressure and that coupled with a stressful job made life extremely difficult.
I was eating rubbish mainly take-away pizza. Fish and chips sometimes I could even order day after day, the pizza shop even knew my order and sent me a "pizza eater voucher" that coupled with drinking regularly put my weight at 24st 8.8lbs!!!
I cannot pinpoint just one thing which made me decide to do something but a combination of being too big to get on theme park rides (my favourite the nemesis they had to force the big seat down), not keeping up with the kids, feeling stressed and the stark realisation at 34 and in an off/on relationship i wasn't a great catch for any lady and regardless of how nice a person I was I just didn't like myself.
I started tracking calories using a website. The basics maths where 500 calls less a day meant you would lose 1lb a week this seem ideal to my analytical mind and it also rewarded exercise and put no restrictions on how you used them. I started of with light swimming and I tracked almost as an addiction I was brutally honest but it became almost a challenge to keep the figure down under the target figure. I was swimming 4-5 times and week and lost weight quickly even with regular treats nights on a Wednesday and Saturday.
In Aug 2010 what was to become a big thing in my life happened, a work colleague and friend (Stephen) was back marking for a cancer research 5k run, he was worried about keeping up and was planning to do a 3km loop at lunch time so he could feel confident. Let me just say at this point running wasn't my thing and I'd usual have rather walked on hot coals but I though EXTRA CALS and I agreed to join him. So I added a 3km run/walk and I loved it being out in the fresh air and also using an app like RunKeeper was giving me feedback on progress, each time I ran further I felt better and better. After this a friend suggested I do a 5 mile multi terrain event this was to take place in Oct 2010 in Swindon and I was excited but also quite scared.
I've never looked back since then. I don't suppose I can tell anyone who has never done a race event but as I crossed that finish line even at 19st I knew I love it, the sense of personal achievement, the medal, everything made me feel good. This was me doing something positive for once not a friend of mine, just me!
After this my running increased I did a 10k and at this point swore i would never do anything more than that distance :-), anyone who runs a half marathon for fun is obviously quite mad I thought!
