The Scottish Gaelic Medium School Diet

We had always planned on sending our kid to the Gaelic Nursery/Primary School that opened up in town a few years ago. Although I'm not sure what the benefits are of learning Scottish Gaelic, specifically, it is widely known that learning a 2nd language (even if it's a language that's only spoken by 60,000 people) is beneficial.

Our kid started going to the nursery school in August and getting her to and from school was 'Bus Hell'.

Getting a 3-year old to walk to a bus stop when you have to catch a specific bus, by a certain time in the morning, is just the start. Then there was the waiting. The waiting for the bus to take her to school. The waiting at the school when the bus got there far too early (the next bus would get us there late). The waiting for the bus to take me to work (which I seemed to always just miss, even though there are at least 3 buses that can get me from near her school to near my work). We would leave home at 8 and I would get to my office at about 9:45. Nearly 2 hours of bus-related activity, every morning.

Then there was picking her up.

I work from 10:00-1:30 and our kid gets out of school at 3:00. I had the option of walking home (30 minutes), being at home for about 15 minutes (not enough time to do anything), then heading out to catch a bus to her school. Alternatively, I could go straight from work to her school on the bus and then have to figure out what to do, in a part of town that has very little to do, for an hour.

After a month of this, I thought, let's get a bike and a child's bike seat. OMG, that's the best idea I've had in the past year (or two, or three).

Now, we leave home at 8:30, get her to school at 8:45, and I'm near my office by 9:20. Our kid has time to watch Sesame Street before heading off to school; I have time to go grocery shopping before work. At the end of the work day, I bike home and am home before 2 and don't need to leave to pick her up until 2:45; it's amazing how much housework can be done in 45 minutes (and it's work I don't have to do at 9 pm anymore).

All I can say is, the Bike Heaven has put Bus Hell to shame. I love the bike and all it does for my life.

I used the call the gym my church. I used to go every Sunday morning, being there right when it opened at 9, with the other (few) Sunday morning gym goers. I would also go a couple of times after work, during  the week. I love the gym.

I'm not someone who goes to the gym to get buff; it's where I go to clear my head and get some exercise while doing it. That being said, I weighed myself almost every time I went to the gym (we don't have a scale at home) and had a goal. I typically hovered at about 77-78 kg (about 170 lbs). I had this goal of getting down to 75 kg, but never seemed to.

Now, with our kid, I don't get to the gym anywhere near as often as I would like and have even considered cancelling my membership. If I’m lucky (and I rarely am), I can go two times in a one week. More often, it’s once a week, or once every two weeks.

I hadn’t weighed myself at the gym for months. The combination of me not going much for a while, the scale being moved from where it used to be (and me not bothering to find out it’s new location), and me feeling like I didn’t want to weigh myself because of my lack of gym-going.

Finally, at some point in January, I discovered the new scale location and weighed myself. I didn’t believe the electric scale. I got off of the scale twice to weigh myself again, and again. I left the gym assuming there was something wrong with the scale. It just can’t be.

A week or two later (the next time I made it to the gym) I weighed myself again. WTF. Either the scale was still broken or I had lost over 5 kg. Me, the guy who since the age of 14 had this idea that running would help me lose weight (running has never worked for me) had lost that much weight by not particularly trying; I lost the weight from riding a bike around town.

Until that point, I didn’t realise just how much bike riding I do in a given day. Here’s the breakdown:

I ride our kid to school (1.8 miles, mostly downhill):

I ride myself from our kid’s school to work (2.5 miles, mostly uphill):

I ride from my office to our flat when I leave work (1.4 miles, pretty much all downhill)

I ride to pick our kid up from school (1.8 miles, mostly downhill).

I ride our kid back home, on a slightly different route than going to school (1.9 miles, mostly uphill).

I ride 9.4 miles a day. You tack on taking our kid to weekend classes and I ride a bike well over 50 miles a week.

I’m not a ‘cyclist’. I don’t have much ‘gear’ or a cool bike. Although I’m amazed at how many people with ‘gear’ and cool bikes I blow by on my uphill ride to work everyday; me with my kid’s bike seat on the back and my work trousers (I do have dedicated bike shirts, but not really 'bike' shirts, just shirts I only wear when I bike). Either these people are really taking their time getting places, or they’re posers, but I digress.

I’m not someone who ever set out to log hundreds of miles on a bike; I just wanted a little more time to get stuff done and a little less time dealing with Bus Hell.

So, the moral of the story: if you want to lose a lot of weight, put your kid in a Gaelic Medium school. That’s the point of this whole thing......isn’t it?