Hello everyone!

Hello,

I've been lurking on the forums for a little while so thought I should introduce myself!

My name is Andy, I'm 30 years old and live in Nuneaton, England.

I had a serious knee injury (ACL) in September 2009 and had a reconstruction operation in June 2010. It's been a year since the operation and the knee currently feels good and I'm currently building up to play in the upcoming Football (soccer) season.

This is where MFP came in for me - I have two goals really

1) Get fit enough to play Football!

2) Lose around 14 pounds which I put on during pre and post operation. - This is a secondary goal as it's all about getting match fit but if I'm going to the effort of training I may as well tweak the diet slightly too.

I've been doing runs of 2-3 miles on most days and sometimes will do it twice a day and have noticed a difference already in my overall fitness - it's easier to do the mileage than when I first started!

This week I'm changing the run slightly to a mixture of sprints/jogs/walks over the same sort of distances to try to match what I would do in a normal game situation.

In terms of diet I haven't made any drastic changes yet but I've reduced the amount of food I was eating and other than a couple of bad days I've generally been under my calorie goal.

Longer term I'll start adding more healthy foods (more veg, etc) but I'm trying not to be too drastic all at once.

I've been on MFP for a couple of weeks now and I'm surprised how easily I've been able to stick at it. Tracking things means I'm always keeping in mind what I'm eating and how much exercise I'm doing and the lurking on the forums to see how other people are doing has been great for motivation.

So that's me!

any suggestions or words of encouragement welcome ;-)