[Captain Ahab Jr]

I'm taking a bit of a time out from work which was a 12-13hr day, 5-6 days a week sat at a desk making shapes on a computer screen, poor diet and no exercise to...

12hr days, 7 days a week of hard manual labour rebuilding a stone garden boundary wall and eating healthily as my wife is back in charge of my food rations. Before I started on the wall I had to move 50 tons of stone by hand, that was a baptism of fire, I can tell you!

First week was torture but now 3 and half weeks in I'm not so dead at the end of each day and not so seized up each morning.

I now have fore arms like Popeye, trowelling cement all day and lifting stone in each hand will do that. Also lost 11lbs of weight (a dose of food poisoning while on holiday the week before helped too). I have a Concept 2 rower which I need to dust off and I will use this to build up my cardio fitness alongside my strength and core fitness.

I feel good knowing what I'm doing is healthy, just turned 47, could have taken the easy option and paid someone to build my wall for me but needed to something drastic to get my old self back, so far it seem's to be working