Big Step Challenge

In January, my beloved partner and I (hereafter referred to as the Beloved) wondered whether to make any New Year’s Resolutions.  I planned to start driving lessons, as rural Somerset isn’t the ideal place to rely on public transport.  The Beloved needed to look for a job (he is an engineering consultant, but had been between contracts while completing a degree course, doing voluntary work, and supporting his elderly father).  He also still needed to empty and sell the house he used to live in, having been gradually moving house for several years, one car-load at a time.

However, the only specific Resolution we made was to go for at least a short walk every day, and at least one long walk per week.  It seemed a good way to get fit, and to make the most of the wonder of being in Somerset.  We agreed that most of the walks ought to be local ones, to avoid wasting petrol – and after all, with the wonderful patchwork of woods, fields and limestone hills right on our doorstep, it wasn’t as though we needed to drive somewhere else to see beautiful scenery.

The irresolutions haven’t gone too badly.  The Beloved put his house, a two-bedroom semi in Leicestershire, on the market a couple of weeks ago and had four offers within the day.  He is starting a new contract next week.  I had a couple of official driving lessons in February, following an unofficial one when I helped the Beloved reverse the car out of a patch of mud which we had shot into to avoid an oncoming tractor.  Then a couple of lessons in March were cancelled due to snow, and I haven’t seen my instructor since.

The Resolution, however, was too specific to last.  We’ve been for walks now and then, but certainly not every day.  Recently, when a friend of mine was visiting, he suggested going for a walk in the woods near our house, and I cheerfully agreed, realising that it was the first time I had been there in over a week.  My friend suffers from a chronic back injury, walks with a stick, and is desperately waiting for surgery which might either cure him or cripple him completely.  Yet he had more motivation than I did.

So, when I saw an advert in The Big Issue for volunteers to do a sponsored walk of 10,000 steps a day for a week, I thought, ‘Yes, let’s both sign up to that!  That might ensure that we get out every day, not just when we get round to it.  And 10,000 steps isn’t really that much – only about five miles – so let’s try and fit in some much longer all-day walks.’

Then I noticed that the advert asked us to walk 10,000 steps per day of a specific week, 10^th-16^th September.  The Beloved has an important work meeting on 12^th September, and we are heading off on holiday on the afternoon of the 16^th, which doesn’t really seem practical to combine with church in the morning and then a four-mile walk.

Still, we agreed, there is no reason why I couldn’t do the challenge, and the Beloved join me for walks as and when he’s got time.  So I’ve signed up to do it, and if you’d like to sponsor me, the link is here. 

Still, I want to do something to make it a bit more of a challenge.  Anyone can walk comfortably all day given enough money to eat out in pubs or restaurants (though, as I found on aprevious walk, this relies on reaching them at times when they are open and serving food).  I wondered what it would be like to walk all day and have very little money, and no cooker or refrigerator.

So I have decided that, for six of the seven days (or, to be precise, five whole days and two half days, for the first half of Monday 10^th and then from Tuesday 11^th to halfway through Sunday 16^th), I will live as though I was in that situation.  (I would have done it for the entire week, except that I have other commitments on Monday evening and Sunday afternoon.) 

For one thing, I want to test whether poverty makes you obese (as the media often claim) or thin (as famine appeals from poverty-stricken countries suggest).  My experience, a few years back, of living on a zero-hours contract and eating only stale bread while walking everywhere because I couldn’t afford the bus, was that I lost a LOT of weight, and also developed a nasty skin condition from vitamin deficiency.

However, I don’t think I’m too likely to succumb to malnutrition in a week, and want to see whether it is even possible to afford very fattening food on just £1 a day.  After shopping for the cheapest, most calorific food I could find, I worked out a menu of:

2 loaves of Morrisons wholemeal bread, price £1.06, calories 3456

700g jar Morrisons peanut butter, price £2.35, calories 4389

2 packets Morrisons digestive biscuits, price 80p, calories 3984

6-pack of Morrisons packets of crisps, price 77p, calories 819

500g Morrisons sultanas, price £1.00, calories 1610

Total cost £5.98, total calories 14,258

Calories per day: 2376

This would be rather too many calories if I were sitting at home, but may be only just enough energy to fuel a day of intensive walking.  I am also allowed to eat home-grown apples (after all, there are plenty of people putting out boxes of apples for people to help themselves), and any blackberries I pick off bushes, to help with the vitamin intake.

I am interested to see what happens, and whether I become hangry from the imbalance of exercise and food.  However, I suspect that the most immediate problem is going to be giving up umpteen cups of tea per day with fresh milk.