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The struggles are real, and Derek checks in to fill you in on how the journey is going. Although keeping up with even the simplest tasks can be frustrating and feel like a failure, Derek looks at the small steps forward on the path to understanding and working with our bodies and minds together. Derek introduces the youtube audience in ep 10. Take a look... THE GOOD PADDOCK VIDEOIf you have a story to tell, please contact Derek on castawaycollingwood@gmail.com 

In this episode Derek reveals that he has hit the wall. School holidays, Hay fever and general malaise have put a lot of pressure on most of the tasks.  To lighten things up Derek does the 10 minute HIIT workout for you live on the recording.  PROGRESSAS OF WEEK 9...... STARTING WEIGHT: 127KG CURRENT WEIGHT:124.7 Noticeable Differences: no weight change but two weeks of bad meals and a delay in the workouts definitely have a psychological effect. DEREKS TASKSweek1: 16/8 fasting - Still Going well. occasional snacks at night making it tricky.  week 2: Bob's Water Bottle - easy, but big gains in keystone habit forming. Definitely now a part of my everyday habits. 2 litres a day, usuallyweek 3: Josh's instagram food diary -On holdweek 4: Philip Beattie says go shopping - preparation. make sure you go shopping and have healthy choices in the fridge for when you are hungry - Derek will shop every Sunday and Thursday specifically for healthy snack options. On hold for school holidays. week 5: Derek has added 5000steps per day to the challenge. This will be easy to achieve BUT the point is to add the routing of checking to each day AND while doing so learn what type of day increases or decreases steps. Step count is ok but the regular checking (which is the point) has not worked yet.week 6: Mike Dunbar has tasked Derek with planning and shopping for dinner on Tuesdays and Thursday. These are the days that Derek cooks exclusively for the kids and himself with plenty of time for cooking and prep, so should be a good habit changing task without too much hassle. This has been a great task, with a long way to go to get it right. The benefits in parenting are also huge and should help break some multigenerational cycles. Also on hold for school holidays. Week 7: The Challenge this week will be to do some fine tuning on the existing tasks. As I spoke about with Mike, sense of failure is a big problem, especially when falling behind in a previously successful system. There is a danger of assuming something does not work and not revisiting it ever again because of a small lapse. I plan to allocate a lot of my resources into looking at whet makes each challenge easy or difficult. Short lived or sustainable.Week 8: Dan Gregg has given me the task of doing a 10 minute HIIT challenge on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. I tried one immediately he left the studio and accidentally chose an advanced one. I video'd it and posted it as an unlisted vid on youtube. SEE IT HERE He then does a beginners "mom's" one on Monday right on schedule. SEE IT HERE.  Here is a LINK to the Workout vid i used on youtube (mond into fitness) [A CASTAWAY STUDIOS PRODUCTION](http://castawaystudios.com.au/)

We welcome podcast producer Dan Gregg to the studio to talk about his journey so far. Dan opens up about being an overweight kid, having bulimia and the focus on body image in the gay community. We talk about the balance between being comfortable in your own skin and knowing you still need to change it eventually for health reasons. A few eye openers for Derek in this episode. The pressure to be fit and slim for an overweight boy about to enter into adult life as a gay man must have been enormous. Derek also wakes up to the need to investigate further into eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia. HERE is a link that helps explain the condition.PROGRESS AS OF WEEK 8...... STARTING WEIGHT: 127KG CURRENT WEIGHT: 124.2KG Noticeable Differences: a littel more sprightly. trying to not let the 'alleged' weight gain get me down. DEREKS TASKS week1: 16/8 fasting - Still Going well. week 2: Bob's Water Bottle - easy, but big gains in keystone habit forming. Definitely now a part of my everyday habits. 2 litres a day, usually week 3: Josh's instagram food diary - I am tasked with taking a picture of every thing that enters my mouth. This is meant to increase awareness (and I suspect it would) rather than shame. This task has all but stopped. It is not necessarily a direct health benefit but served a great purpose (of making us both very mindful of every thing we ate for a few weeks). The team work was interesting, having us share an instagram account helped keep it up longer. week 4: Philip Beattie says go shopping - preparation. make sure you go shopping and have healthy choices in the fridge for when you are hungry - Derek will shop every Sunday and Thursday specifically for healthy snack options. So far this has been difficult. Still not perfect. Have achieved it a bit and it was great to have healthy snacks handy at work. Will need to start with non-perishables and not over-think the health benefits. week 5: Derek has added 5000steps per day to the challenge. This will be easy to achieve BUT the point is to add the routing of checking to each day AND while doing so learn what type of day increases or decreases steps. Well not as easy as I thought. While I pass 5000 naturally on most days I need to check the app more and begin learning which days are sedentary. More likely now to take a quick walk with the kids week 6: Mike Dunbar has tasked Derek with planning and shopping for dinner on Tuesdays and Thursday. These are the days that Derek cooks exclusively for the kids and himself with plenty of time for cooking and prep, so should be a good habit changing task without too much hassle. This has been a great task, with a long way to go to get it right. The benefits in parenting are also huge and should help break some multigenerational cycles. So far the pre-planning has been left too late and needs work, but the cooking is going well and we all enjoy it and take pride in our creations. One example of 'habit first, details second' is the pizzas we made. First one was using frozen base. The second we made spelt dough from scratch. Small steps. Going strong. Shopping still not under control, but the meal planning and cooking working well. Week 7: The Challenge this week will be to do some fine tuning on the existing tasks. As I spoke about with Mike, sense of failure is a big problem, especially when falling behind in a previously successful system. There is a danger of assuming something does not work and not revisiting it ever again because of a small lapse. I plan to allocate a lot of my resources into looking at whet makes each challenge easy or difficult. Short lived or sustainable. Week 8: Dan Gregg has given me the task of doing a 10 minute HIIT challenge on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. I tried one immediately he left the studio and accidentally chose an advanced one. I video'd it and posted it as an unlisted vid on youtube. SEE IT HERE He then does a beginners "mom's" one on Monday right on schedule. SEE IT HERE.  Here is a LINK to the Workout vid i used on youtube (mond into fitness) [A CASTAWAY STUDIOS PRODUCTION](http://castawaystudios.com.au/) 

Six tasks in and every one is having some benefits. It is a long journey ahead for our hero. The Good Paddock has had suck awesome feedback from not only big men, but health professionals and partners of overweight people, we are are adding a mid week episode for derek to report on his tasks and personal journey without boring the crap out of his guests and audience. AS OF WEEK 7...... STARTING WEIGHT: 127 KG CURRENT WEIGHT: 123.1 KG Noticeable Differences: Possibly a little more energy and less breathlessness on very short stair climbs etc. DEREK'S TASKS week1: 16/8 fasting - Still Going well. Less than 5% blowout rate and that is with more awareness than in the past week 2: Bob's Water Bottle - easy, but big gains in keystone habit forming. Definitely now a part of my everyday habits. Must add to the weekend now. week 3: Josh's instagram food diary - I am tasked with taking a picture of every thing that enters my mouth. This is meant to increase awareness (and I suspect it would) rather than shame. This task has all but stopped. It is not necessarily a direct health benefit but served a great purpose (of making us both very moindful of every thing we ate for a few weeks). The team work was interesting, having us share an instagram account helped keep it up longer. week 4: Philip Beattie says go shopping - preparation. make sure you go shopping and have healthy choices in the fridge for when you are hungry - Derek will shop every Sunday and Thursday specifically for healthy snack options. So far this has been difficult. Still not perfect. Have achieved it a bit and it was great to have healthy snacks handy at work. Will need to start with non-perishables and not over-think the health benefits. Habits first. week 5: Derek has added 5000steps per day to the challenge. This will be easy to achieve BUT the point is to add the routing of checking to each day AND while doing so learn what type of day increases or decreases steps. Well not as easy as I thought. While I pass 5000 naturally on most days I need to check the app more and begin learning which days are sedentary. So far Thursday and Saturday. week 6: Mike Dunbar has tasked Derek with planning and shopping for dinner on Tuesdays and Thursday. These are the days that Derek cooks exclusively for the kids and himself with plenty of time for cooking and prep, so should be a good habit changing task without too much hassle. This has been a great task, with a long way to go to get it right. The benefits in parenting are also huge and should help break some multigenerational cycles. So far the pre-planning has been left too late and needs work, but the cooking is going well and we all enjoy it and take pride in our creations. One example of 'habit first, details second' is the pizzas we made. First one was using frozen base. The second we made spelt dough from scratch. Small steps. Week 7: The Challenge this week will be to do some fine tuning on the existing tasks. As I spoke about with Mike, sense of failure is a big problem, especially when falling behind in a previously successful system. There is a danger of assuming something does not work and not revisiting it ever again because of a small lapse. I plan to allocate a lot of my resources into looking at whet makes each challenge easy or difficult. Short lived or sustainable.[A CASTAWAY STUDIOS PRODUCTION](http://castawaystudios.com.au/)

Mike Dundar joins The Good Paddock with a great discussion of both our weight loss journeys. Mike has been to Weight Watchers, done Intermittent fasting and plenty of diets. He found that the purpose for being reasonably fit while he toured overseas as a professional dancer went away quite quickly when the production ended. They discuss NOOM health app, Derek's novelty diets and personal trainers. They discuss: Tiny habit changes that thin people jusy cannot comprehend as difficult. Intermittent fasting Being a chubby kid and how your parent deal with it Derek's resistance to repeat his mother's fad diet Journey may have delayed a serious change of lifestyle -"hey big fella" and how it hurts Is Big really beautiful? Anti-anxiety meds. and how they affect weight and weight loss Using Scales: the pros and cons Being employed as a 'normal bloke' professional dancer to tour the world for three years, and the purposeful health decisions that fade away after the project ended. Quitting smoking and how it means stalling the diet. Fighting the battle on many fronts. Dereks 2 months of being Vegan and how it levelled his energy spikes out. Derek's refugee meal challenge intrigues Mike as he sees some connection with his general habits and history. NOOM - Mike found some benefits of the Noom coaching app. It helped him recognise emotional eating (or hoovering). He never fully comitted Can a weight loss system have a second chance or is the shame and guilt associated with it forever? Boxing works for some. Looking for physical reasons not to do an activity. Derek's one match career as a soccer goalie. Retiring on top. Positive feedback loops. The huge step of seeing holding a steady weight as a positive. Derek's baking re-visited Derek's responsibility to teach his daughter good eating habits is forcing him to learn. Planning each meal on cards for the week and shopping for it (Derek's new task for this week) Personal trainers- responding to praise or shame. Derek's one day experience with a personal trainer. He and his friend Eliza were disappointed with a PT that asked us "what do you want to do now" and our answer was "go home and lie down" Derek's $2000 gym membership for ten minutes of working out. Closing in on your personal answer or set of answers. Is Derek's this project? Is Mike's collecting each learning form all the diet styles? DEREKS TASKS: week1: 16/8 fasting - so far so good. a bit tricky sometimes with time schedules. flexibility is a must to avoid starvation -so far so good week 2: Bob's Water Bottle - easy, but big gains in keystone habit forming. Now would usually refill the bottle half way through the day. - Going well - **** has definitely become a habit and held back hunger**** week 3: Josh's instagram food diary - I am tasked with taking a picture of every thing that enters my mouth. This is meant to increase awareness (and I suspect it would) rather than shame. So far it is going reasonably. Even if we miss some pics, the residual mindfulness is definitely increased.**** fell off a bit this week. Still taking some pics of some unusual eating choices but difficult to maintain**** week 4: Philip Beattie says go shopping - preparation. make sure you go shopping and have healthy choices in the fridge for when you are hungry - Derek will shop every Sunday and Thursday specifically for healthy snack options. So far this has been difficult. Will be the biggest challeng eso far to add this behavior to my routine. - successfully walked up to Coles (see wk 5 steps task) and bought some healthy snacks and fruit for the 11 am 'end of fast' will need a few weeks to bed it in as a habit week 5: Derek has added 5000 steps per day to the challenge. This will be easy to achieve BUT the point is to add the routing of checking to each day AND while doing so learn what type of day increases or decreases steps. Changed nothing for a week to see what my 'normal setting' was. ... heres what I did - 2957, 6161, 4466, 4209, 7008, 6026, 2414 Let's see what hte week holds with this in mind... week 6: Mike Dunbar has tasked Derek with planning and shopping for dinner on Tuesdays and Thursday. These are the days that Derek cooks exclusively for the kids and himself with plenty of time for cooking and prep, so should be a good habit changing task without too much hassle. ***Will attempt to get the kids in a meeting tonight to plan Tuesday and Thursday dinner. *** A CASTAWAY STUDIOS PRODUCTION

Derek reports on the first 4 weeks of the journey with a focus on increasing mindfulness, the benefits of cooking with kids and how the best learning is done while teaching. Baking wiht a nine year old had some surprising results, including a sickening insight into the amount of sugar and fat in normal cakes. This has proven to be a huge step for both derek and his role modelling for the kids, as the next task is to discover yummy recipies that are a bit healthier than commercially available snacks. They also discovered that food the kids cook is far more likely to be given the thumbs up regardless of the healthiness. TASK REPORT week1: 16/8 fasting - so far so good. a bit tricky sometimes with time schedules. flexibility is a must to avoid starvation week 2: Bob's Water Bottle - easy, but big gains in keystone habit forming. Now would usually refill the bottle half way through the day. week 3: Josh's instagram food diary - I am tasked with taking a picture of every thing that enters my mouth. This is meant to increase awareness (and I suspect it would) rather than shame. So far it is going reasonably. Even if we miss some pics, the residual mindfulness is definitely increased. week 4: Philip Beattie says go shopping - preparation. make sure you go shopping and have healthy choices in the fridge for when you are hungry - Derek will shop every Sunday and Thursday specifically for healthy snack options. So far this has been difficult. Will be the biggest challeng eso far to add this behavior to my routine. week 5: Derek has added 5000steps per day to the challenge. This will be easy to achieve BUT the point is to add the routing of chacking to each day AND while doing so learn what type of day increases or decrreases steps. A CASTAWAY STUDIOS PRODUCTION

Phil Beattie was 160kg six years ago at the age of 53. Now he is a steady 105KG is living life to the fullest and in control of a rare heart condition, type II diabetes and sleep apnea After a good mate suddenly passed away, Phil considered his two teenage kids and his need to survive and immediately arranged for stomach bypass surgery (Bariatric surgery). We chat about the excess skin after weight loss and all the different surgeries available. We also hear how his life was saved by a blister on his toe. Bariatric surgery Hollywood strawberry diet Trigger of Mate dropping dead old habits coming back sneaky eating Stretching wrinkles Tummy tuck. Toe amputation Defibrillator pacemaker DEREKS TASKS: week1: 16/8 fasting - so far so good. a bit tricky sometimes with time schedules. flexibility is a must to avoid starvation week 2: Bob's Water Bottle - easy, but big gains in keystone habit forming week 3: Josh's instagram food diary - I am tasked with taking a picture of every thing that enters my mouth. This is meant to increase awareness (and I suspect it would) rather than shame. week 4: Philip Beattie says go shopping - preparation. make sure you go shopping and have healthy choices in the fridge for when you are hungry - Derek will shop every Sunday and Thursday specifically for healthy snack options. A CASTAWAY STUDIOS PRODUCTION

Josh Janssen, co-host of the Daily Talk Show and founder of The Big Media Company shares some great insights into the life of a chubby kid as well as a level-headed approach to many of the diets available. some of our topics; Dexa Scans - we nearly got to find out about them (next time) Using scales and couting calories - out of fashion but the right approach for some Croissant for breakfast - What is your trigger? or wake up call? Being chubby kid Not Jolly, but genuinely and deliberaltely funny Salt Is Not Your Problem - when your health is in grave danger because of your weight, maybe it is not the time to worry about salt content and chemicals in Diet Pepsi? Weight Watchers as a kid Overweight PE teacher - A bad example OR a kindred spitit on a shared journey Prolapsed disc - Josh's wake up call Fasting may only work the one time DEREKS TASKS: week1: 16/8 fasting - so far so good. a bit tricky sometimes with time schedules. flexibility is a must to avoid starvation week 2: Bob's Water Bottle - easy, but big gains in keystone habit forming week 3: Josh's instagram food diary - I am tasked with taking a picture of every thing that enters my mouth. This is meant to increase awareness (and I suspect it would) rather than shame. OUR INSTAGRAM diary A CASTAWAY STUDIOS PRODUCTION

Bob flower joins Derek to discuss week one of the project. Derek talks about his mates boxing training and Bob reveals Derek's first task - an easy start with filling a litre bottle of water and finishing it in the day. They discuss the need to adapt gradually to change so as to stay within the realm for the possible. Some topics covered: intermittent fasting. Derek does a week of 16-8 and gets a migraine due to exuberance and mismanagement. Is 7 pints in a night more fattening that a pint a day? Boxing training - Bob's keen to give it a try The easy weight losses at the start of a diet compared to later on Derek's past weight loss attempts Step counting. Derek gets Bob onto the steps app. Tasks so far: wk1: 16-8 intermittent fasting. derek does alone for a week semi successfully. wk2: from BOB. Systematically drinking a litre bottle of water a day. (begins today)

The Journey begins at 127 Kg (280lb) as Derek introduces the epic adventure ahead, the origins of the expression "the good paddock" and intermittent fasting. Naturally, the start of a weight loss timeline technically will not have any data or stories to show for it, but, let's face it, the start of a new weight loss regime is rarely when the persons story begins. I will be joined by many interesting characters and professionals on this journey as we piece together what makes us big fellas tick as well as the differences between what works for some and not for others. The Good Paddock Podcast has been in the planning stages for some time, so recent health issues and rapid weight gain lead me to the decision to combine the idea of a Big Men's support podcast with my own journey. I guess the difference between this and The Biggest Loser is I am not targetting anyone except overweight men. My crew. So there is no shaming, just support and sharing tips and stories.