Memories of being fat: 10 years on...

On May 8th 2006 I came out of a GP appointment for a chest infection with more than just anti-biotics. I came out shocked and with my bum well and truly kicked. The doctor also said "you're rather overweight aren't you?", plopped me on the scales and I was horrified to see it saying 94kg, then she took my blood pressure and said I needed to be monitored as it was quite high.

Packed off with a prescription for anti-biotics and an appointment for a follow-up blood pressure appointment in a month with the nurse, I left with a switch in my head flipped. I didn't know it at the time, but this was a huge turning point in my life and instrumental in completely changing my life.



Over the coming months, I took positive action by keeping a food diary and learning about the nutritional content of the food I was eating. I pretty much always had cooked everything from scratch, but portion sizes had crept upwards and with the proportion of carbs in the meals, I was "happily" eating more than I needed.  Though I ate little sugar, I ate a lot of pasta, rice, potatoes and tons of bread.



After 3 months of focused effort, which involved a dramatic cut in the amount of starchy foods (Restricting myself to 50g bread per week! One chunk of crusty baguette at the weekend.), I hit my first weight target of "healthy BMI" (for me that was 72kg). OK there were a few tantrums and tears along the way (mostly because I was missing bread), but compared with a lot of people I had a pretty easy ride with no real plateaus.  Much frustration came from "knowing" that fat was fattening yet not wanting to eat synthetic or highly processed foods instead and not having the knowledge to tackle that.  And just skimming a healthy BMI, especially being very inactive (OK I walked a lot, but that's it), didn't mean I felt (or in my opinion) looked great. So I set a new goal of 67kg which was right in the middle of the "healthy BMI" range and reached that a couple of months later.  Then down to about 64kg shortly after that, in late 2007.

Skip forward to 2009 and I was happy that I felt so slim and could buy clothes in pretty much any shop I fancied, but was "weak like kitten" and wasn't happy about that.  So took up weight training and did that for a while, loved it and, having taken up a bit of light cycling in 2007 and being a swimmer as a child, started to run a bit so I could do triathlons and did my first in 2010.  But still calorie counting to keep my weight in check.

        

This culminated in 2012 with a bunch of Ironman races and a great time of it.  But one of the important things I learned from Ironman was that I did not want to be stuffing bars and gels down me to get through a race and I put a few pounds back on too - up to 67kg.  Calorie counting seemed to be how it would have to be for the rest of my life and that didn't seem like a great prospect, nor like it should be right.

Cue an un-prompted intervention from Dr Tamsin Lewis, who recommended "Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It", by Gary Taubes and that changed my life even more.  I devoured many more books on the topic, grabbed some practical help on recipes from a couple of books (like Raising Superheroes, by Prof Tim Noakes) and changed my diet pretty much overnight.  No more calorie counting and messing about figuring out how much I needed for a ride or a run or how much I could have when I was starving, because I stopped getting the ridiculous hunger and the weight dropped off a bit again too.

I ended up being featured in a few "inspirational" articles...

Then I dropped triathlon at the end of 2013, despite having had a great year that year as part of a fantastic amateur triathlon team.  Everyone else on the team was an elite athlete, winners of all sorts of incredible races like Norseman and age group podium places at the Ironman World Championships.

Triathlon was making me put too much pressure on myself.  Seriously, I was better than average but no more than that and surrounded by so many high performing athletes a lot of the time. I was enjoying doing quite well (i.e. better than average), but the process was draining me mentally and needed more time than I was happy giving to get better.

So, I took up ultra marathons ('cause yeah, why not focus on the one discipline of triathlon you're worst at :o) ) and haven't looked back.  

Keeping mostly Low Carb, High Fat with excursions every now and then - some really good fresh bread with a special meal, a dessert a few times in the year etc. and whatever I feel like *during* ultras.  I had blood work done to validate that everything was in a good place on the insides - and it is.

Now it's 2016 and aside from a little more wine than I probably should have, I'm still Low Carb living, still running ultra marathons and still maintaining 30kg of weight loss since that day in 2006.

It *is* possible to be a healthy weight, have a healthy body in terms of fitness and wellness, and not be hungry or have cravings and it *is* possible to keep it like that. But it takes some education and a lifestyle change if you didn't start out that way.

Another one comes around quickly - Ironman UK 70.3

3 days to go and I'm well and truly tapering - from what it's hard to tell as apart from a week in Almeria earlier in the year, my training never really took off.  But still... I feel pretty OK, if a bit heavier than this time last year.  As I said before Blenheim last week, a lot has happened in the last 12 months...

Last year we drove to Exmoor on the Thursday and had all of Friday and Saturday to take things easy, this year we've cut it shorter and will be travelling over at silly o'clock on Friday morning to avoid the traffic and straight to registration.

I'm so glad I blogged about last year as it gives me some comfort and information to use for this year.  My goodness me, I was fierce in the run (probably due to being really very fit at the time and pacing the bike very conservatively), especially given the course profile.  This year, I'll have a few changes to the plan and I'll be taking it a lot harder in the swim and the run, and on the flat and uphills of the bike but still risk-managing in the descents on the bike.  I know I can hurt more than I did last year and I know I can handle mental difficulties, I've done it and I know how to make it work.  I also know that I made some corking mistakes, like the one where I didn't realise my quick release brakes were undone the whole way around...

So.  I went through the packing list and packed last night as I'm late home tonight; a last loosening sports massage at 6pm and then a visit from our builder before an early-as-possible bed so we can get going early on Friday morning.  The bike is still set up from last week's aborted race, so not much to do there other than take it to bits to pack it in the car.  The course doesn't work for a TT bike for me, I'd be up on the hoods too much at the moment, so the road bike with HED Jets it is.

There's going to be a massive line-up in the pro field and the age-group list doesn't look shabby either.  I've not had a chat with coach yet on what the race strategy will be, but I'm hoping I'll be "allowed" to actually race rather than be conservative.  I'd like to come in under 7 hours on this course, but I have no idea what I'm capable of at my current fitness and training point.  I find out on Sunday!

Expect a proper race report at some point, but if you want to follow on the athlete tracker on the day, I'll be race number 1048.  Not quite the good ol' 104 of last year, but no such special treatment this year.

Getting a grip - one day at a time

I'm getting a grip.  Slowly.  One day at a time.  And I did a good run because of it.

Thanks to Marvellous Mimi for the daily inspirations

Sunday, I ran a 15km race on a whim.  A friend mentioned it on Facebook a week ago, so I signed up so I could meet up for a bit of a social.  And for the first time in 7 days, I exercised on Sunday and I ran.  I ran pretty darned hard, for me.  Having had no idea whether I'd try for a decent time or just run steady and have a chat around the course, I decided on the start line when everyone else I was with disappeared.  And I decided to bang it out somewhat.

1st/2nd lap - lookin' good, feelin' good

05:45/km was the goal.  And for the first couple of km I glanced down at the km beep, at my watch and saw quicker than that despite having done my now usual prancing, high cadence start.  05:17 then 05:14, up a little rise and 05:26, then 05:05 down a little gradient, 05:19 and the first lap done.  I thought it felt a bit tough, but do-able and I kept the pressure on.

Second lap and started with 05:19 then 05:08 and decided I wanted a drink.  It wasn't that warm, but my mouth was dry so I slowed to a walk at the water station and took a swig or two before trotting off again.  That gave me an 05:34 km which was annoying, but still well under my 05:45 average target.  Long story short; I carried on at the same lick of a pace, pushed through the inevitable brain:body conversation that goes "oh you don't really need to be going this quickly. you could slow down and take it easy. what's the point of this, you're not going to get a quick time anyway, take it easy." etc. responded to by my over-ride of "oh shush, this doesn't hurt. it'll be fun. you'll be happy with a quicker time if you just keep the pace up. stop whining and keep up the effort." etc.  My will won out in the end :o)

And I averaged 05:16/km.  Almost 30s per km quicker than I'd hoped.  My long (anything over an hour) runs have been all at well over 06:40/km these last months and I was worried I couldn't actually hurt enough to run quickly now.  And the route is so twisty that it slows you down...

3 laps and windy as all hell

3 laps of this is a lot of hair-pins and a good few dead-turns.  Seeing the times staying well under my target was... more than spirit-raising.  Overtaking lots of people doing the 10km route on my second lap was spirit-raising - they started a few minutes before the 15km race wave.  Starting the third lap was interesting as the quite reasonable number of other runners pretty much disappeared.  And the rest of the third lap was a battle in my own head of "who am I racing?" "I don't see any women any more"  "I could ease off a bit as long as I don't lose a place, 'cause I'm not going to catch any women".  And then I saw a woman ahead of me.  Thing was, it could be a woman on her 2nd lap of the 10km race, rather than a woman on the 3rd lap of the 15km race.  And she was running only a little bit slower than me, so she could have been on the 15km race and not paced well, so ran out of steam, or on the 10km race and surging through the course slowly/quickly/slowly/quickly etc.  I decided that as I was gaining on her, that I may as well make the effort to overtake, just in case.  If I'd been able to see her race bib, I would have known the answer; navy blue bib = 10km, orange bib = 15km.  But you can't see that from behind and I was too far away, then behind trees whenever I might have seen due to a twist or turn in the course.  So I overtook her in the last 2km.  And spent that last 2km making sure she didn't take the place back.

2nd lap - starting to feel the pain a bit

Over the line in just over 01:20 and having passed the 10km mark in fastest race 10km time to date I got my goodie bag, medal and quick photo with the girls.  Then off to a coffee shop for coffee and cake.

And there we see some of the problem.

Since the beginning of the month, I've managed only two days where I haven't eaten cake, drunk wine or had both.  Life is pretty intense at the moment.  Lots of new job, lots of travel, lots of MrTOTKat away on business, worry about family, trying to slowly sort out house renovations and worry about training/not training.  And it means something has to crack.

Nutrition choices have been the victim.   Given that the world isn't set up for easy choices that work with my nutritional preferences, at least once a day it's just less stressful to make the choice that doesn't follow my preference or I just really feel the need to have things that are specifically "bad" - cake, wine, cake and wine... so instead of getting even more wound up, I've just been relaxing into it.  Having cake.  Having wine.  Quite a lot of both really.  But it's OK.  No, really, it's OK.  I know it's the opposite of what I've been trying to do the last 6 months, but I'm OK with it.

3rd lap, sucking it up and pushing through - full gurning in force

I'm taking things one day at a time.  I'm OK with the thought that maybe I'll need to re-think my nutrition strategy for UK 70.3, but the thing is that I'll get a steady state test done 2 weeks out and use the data from that to calculate what I need in-race.  It actually doesn't matter too much whether I've regressed a bit on the fat vs carbohydrate burning ratio as long as I know what the numbers are so I can be conservative about how much I take on during the race.  Obviously, I'd like for things to be optimised, but life happens and that's not where I am at the moment.

So I'm taking training day by day and I'm taking nutrition day by day and although I'm really quite soft and squashy (which I think is more related to the fact that my strength training tailed off a lot of months ago and I've not done any for quite a while, rather than the nutritional choices, so I've lost muscle mass) my weight is going down a little bit and I've lost 1/2kg of the 4 I gained in the last couple of months.
And I thought I'd busted my 10K PB.  During a 15km race.  52:57 for 10km, where previous were around 54 minutes, but I found a 52:27 back in 2011, so.  Bah!

But anyway.  Given where I am, how I feel, what's going on and all, I'm pretty pleased.  And I'm taking things one day at a time.

I've been *busy*

I got a new job.

I have a theory that there is a finite amount of "eff"; as-in a unit of mental capacity to cope with the various aspects of life.  And when one (or more) aspect gets a bit more attention-seeky, the others get a bit less.

With newjob taking up quite a bit of eff, there's a lot less left for looking after myself as well as I have done in the past.  So, I've been making poor nutrition choices, having difficulty with being away from home a minimum of two nights a week, and training is more difficult than usual due to travel and lack of eff left to plan around it.

So, 4kg heavier than I was 4 weeks ago, and a bit ill (sneezy sneezy sneezy), I've not been keeping up with training as much as I'd like either.  But I have been doing -some-; like getting out up onto the common after the overnight rain...

Pretty unavoidable mud

Camber precludes running on the more solid-looking bit

Running along the flowing water is the best idea - less muddy, better grip on the clean gravel

Trainers in the washing machine, socks in the bin (they were white...)

 I really enjoy running up on the common when it's like this :o)  My socks are ruined though.  Again.

Three days of getting a grip on nutrition, two on training.  It's going a bit better so far, but we'll see what a trip to the US next week brings.  Planning and preparation suggests it could work OK.

Some perspective

Sometimes I need a bit of perspective.  I need to remember where I've come from.  I learned to ride a bike pretty much 3 years ago and then didn't do much cycling until this year.  I learned to run 2 years ago - honestly! - and did very little running until this year.  OK, I swam a LOT from the age of 3 to 11, but then stopped until I was 23, did it for a year, then stopped again until 18 months ago.  And I had a bike crash that messed up some of this year's season...

Come September next year, I'll have gone from not being able to run to an Ironman in just over 3 years.  From being completely and utterly unfit to Ironman in 3 and a bit years.

No fair

I've been counting kcals and exercise and have been, on average, a few thousand kcals under maintenance for the last 2-3 weeks.  Thing is, I did see a dip in weight in the first week, but then a bloaty, post-takeaway (still within kcals!) day just hasn't really dropped away again since.  And I'm still bloaty, pretty badly.

I've never suffered from bloaty in the past and I've not changed diet consistency recently.  So I have no idea what's going on there.  And it's making me grumpy.  I really will look like a sofa for the next sprint tri.  Meh.

New recipe books - Weight Watchers Pro Points

I've been having loads of fun and success with the Abel and Cole recipe book and on Friday got a couple more recipe books to poke through.  This time they're new edition Weight Watchers ones, using the Pro Points system, so it means that the recipes are more focussed around higher protein, lower carb, higher fibre recipes to help give a nutritionally more even meal with consideration to lowering overall empty kcals than would normally be found in a "diet" recipe book.

The two books are "Seriously Satisfying"  and "Oriental Express" (so new you can't buy it just yet) and on first flick through I'm really very pleased to see that nearly every single recipe calls for nothing that's pre-made (no jars or pots of pastes or sauces bar one recipe which asks for Balti curry paste) and I've only seen one recipe out of all of them that calls specifically for a Weight Watchers product (low fat cream in one of the desserts).  "Oriental Express" is published in a nice, clever design of ring binding and a built in stand so you can prop it up easily in the kitchen when cooking, rather than leaning the thing against the toaster or kettle and having it slide down and get in the way during cooking.

I really love flipping through recipe books to get ideas so I'm probably going to spend some time this morning poring over these two and working out what I'm going to try for lunch tomorrow.  Maybe something fresh and salady that's not utterly boring.  We've got a hare (from Abel and Cole) to roast for dinner, so that's already sorted and I don't want to leave that until it's been hanging around in the fridge for ages and then has to be cooked in a hurry.

Still not logging

I've not logged my food since 17th September.  The first 2 weeks of that was because I was on holiday, but since I've been back I've stayed off it.

For a control freak like me, this was theoretically hard.  And for the first week or two after the holidays it definitely made me a bit twitchy.  What's kept me going and not freaking out so far has been the fact that my cycling has been very random - one week saw 4x return journeys to work, whereas last week and this week it's been zero for various reasons.  That alone means that the transit food weight is all over the place so I have no idea whether I'm slightly gaining weight or staying stable in the grand scheme of things.  Of course, my clothes fit fine (and given that most of my work clothes are very fitted shift dresses, I'd notice any even slight size change there) .  So.  The plan is to keep going with not logging for at least a total of 3 months to get some good data.  OK, yes, Christmas is in that 3 months, but... I've never really been one for over-doing it particularly around Christmas and seeing as Christmas is pretty much cancelled for me this year (work is a bit nuts) it shouldn't be a particularly difficult eating season at all.  I'm figuring that as long as I put in a minimum of 2x weights sessions per week, aim for 3 and cycle in to work for at least some of the Winter I'll be doing fine.

Now for the fun bit... I'm off to a product launch tomorrow with Weight Watchers.  Anyone else going?  I'll report back, of course, but it'd be great to hook up if any of you guys are also going to be there!

Spoke too soon

'cause something's sitting heavily in my system. That or the weekend excess after the swim has caught up with me. 2kg heavier than this time last week! Ignoring it for now as things are not settled down whatsoever. Got my skinny jeans on today so I can't actually be a baby whale just yet.

Doing well

Second weights session of the week and my groin strain appears totally gone - woo!  So I did my current routine in full and have a bit of DOMS in my legs today, which should be fine for tomorrow as I won't be using my legs all that much.

Weighed in slap bang on target weight today despite being pretty much on maintenance all week and only doing two weights sessions.  So, it hints at when I get back to cycling that I should make sure that I'm eating enough.  Anyhoo, carb loading day today and it's started with a bagel with Marmite *nom*  Feeling really strong and reasonably well rested so far today, though I have a bit of vacuuming to do in a bit and I always go at that really hard, so I'll see how I feel after that ;o)

B - toasted Food Doctor wholemeal seeded bagel, with butter and Marmite
B - banana and strawberries
L -2x Discovery wholemeal tortilla wraps; 1 with houmous and lettuce and one with Waitrose spinach falafel, Philadelphia extra light, tomato relish and lettuce
S - Hovis wholemeal granary bread with mashed banana and Nutella
D - wholemeal pasta with roasted red peppers and chicken breast

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	1836 1780]
Protein (g)	90.4 (49.8%)
Carbohydrate (g)	234.2 (20.5%)
Fat (g)	58.0 (29.6%)
Fibre (g)	36.0
Fruit & Veg	6.8

Hm. OK.

So I was going to be doing a final distance swim today, 3200m, then tapering off the rest of the week before the 5000m next Sunday.  Except, although my nose is far less productive today, the cold has headed down onto my chest and breathing is exactly as difficult as when my nose was completely stuffed and runny.  So I'm tired, breathless, fuzzy in the head and weak.  Oh, and despite stuffing my face for the last 3 days, my weight hasn't changed at all.

4 weeks now with pretty much no weight training (I've done two light sessions on two weekends), 3 weeks with pretty much no cardio exercise (one 1600m swim since I've been back from skiing), and I'm pretty sure that despite being slap-bang in the middle of my target weight range, I've gained fat and lost muscle.  I can't use my body-fat measurement machine because it works on electrical impedance and is keenly affected by hydration levels which are utterly out of whack with having a cold, so I can't really assess the situation in a quantitative way and it's all just subjective in how I feel.  And having a cold makes me feel squishy anyway, so it'll all just so hard to tell.  I am pretty sure there is some muscle loss, however.  It is disappointing, having spent 10 months working on improving my muscles, strength and fitness, to have quite a bit of that work set back.  I know it's not through lack of determination or enthusiasm on my part, I can't beat myself up about it because there's pretty much nothing I can do about it until I'm over both my injury and my cold.  Nevertheless, it is still disappointing.

As for the Swimathon next Sunday; I'll definitely finish the 5km, there's no doubt there at all.  It's just that I don't think I'll put in a representative time which is quite disappointing.  I wanted to do the 5km in 01:40 (or less), but I think that without a swim on Friday last week and no distance swim today, probably no sprint swim tomorrow... well, there's really not going to be much benefit to be had from the normal swim on Wednesday and the gentle swim on Friday at all.  Given that, I reckon I could put in a time anywhere between 01:50 and 02:00.  Again; disappointing.

And then there's the 2nd Thames Turbo Triathlon in 3 weeks time.  I've not run in months, cycled in very much longer and 3 weeks really isn't very long to get on with training never mind the fact it's actually going to be 2 weeks because I'm going to be still coldy for some of next week and tapering (hah, tapering down from no exercise; funny) for the rest of it for the Swimathon.  Again, I'm sure I'll finish the triathlon, but the time will be abysmal.  I suppose at least it means I'll be very likely to improve for the 3rd one.

Good gym

Apart from the skinny little diva who showed up in microscopic gym shorts (Abercrombie and Fitch dontchyaknow!), a teeny vest, trainers and no bra; and proceeded to spend 10 minutes in front of the mirrors, making sure her baseball cap was on perfectly before throwing gym equipment around because it was in her way (though she could barely lift much of it, so hah!) and then struggling to do some puny hanging bent-leg raises. It was veeeeery difficult resisting laughing at her. Yeah it's good that she's actually in the gym doing some resistance training, but the -attitude-!

Me, I burned off a very respectable 499kcals in 52 minutes whilst being careful with my leg. I kept the weight lower on the lunges and leg curls and made sure to warm up gently first. For the first time, I managed 10 pressups in a row with no rests in between and I've changed my planks to be straight arm planks - mmmm, much harder! :o) Shame I ran out of time, 'cause it'd be nice to have done 3 sets of 10 pressups rather than just the one. Ohwell. Rest day tomorrow (and using the foam roller for 15 minuts at home, following Rachel Cosgrove's foam rolling exercises/stretches to get the kinks out of my legs and shoulders, might squeeze in some pressups there too) and then new trainer on Friday!

Nice eggy salad for lunch today (shown here in unmixed state - I like my eggs to sit on top so they don't go mushy during the morning):-


This is becoming one of my favourite evening meals; lightly smoked salmon fillets are so incredibly flavoursome:-



B - greek yogurt with 1 scoop vanilla, fruit compote and flaked almonds
S - banana
*gym*
S - 1 scoop chocolate in skimmed milk
L - salad - spinach, tomato, capers, walnuts, 2 boiled eggs and lemon juice
S - a pear and a mini Babybel Light
S - beef jerky
D - salmon fillet with couscous, peas and sweetcorn
S - slice of banana and raisin malt loaf

Exercise - 52 minutes gym (HRmax 184 HRavg 158)

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	1800 2231]
Protein (g)	157.7 (36%)
Carbohydrate (g)	164.6 (35.2%)
Fat (g)	56.1 (28.8%)
Fruit & Veg	8.0

Exotic meats

Hopefully, by the time I get home there will be a delivery of "exotic meats" waiting there. I ordered 4x venison steaks, 2x buffalo steaks and a buffalo roasting joint. 'cause, dammit, venison is really really tasty, low in fat and high in protein and we both like it and I though it'd be nice to have some buffalo too, to try. So I've planned for venison steak and various veggies for dinner tonight along with a nice bottle of red (cheat #2 this week - in theory I'm allowing myself up to 7 out of 35 meals to be cheats, at 80% compliance, though something like fish&chips once would count for all 7 that week in all likelihood!).

Anyhoo, this morning I tried Grape Nuts on my greek yogurt and fruit and they were laaaaavly! They a lot harder than the ones that come in the EAT yogurty mixes, but nice nonetheless. Quite carb heavy compared with my usual (so far) flaked almonds, but I think that's OK.



Lunch had some of that amazing honeyed goats cheese in my salad. Man, that stuff is heavenly; creamy and sweet but definitely cheese-like in flavour at the same time. Goes exceptionally well with walnuts, capers and lemon juice over a spinach and sweet pepper base.


Aaaand here's the glorious steak; yes the order arrived :o) :-

[photo - er, except we ate it and I forgot to take a photo *ahem*]

Exercise - 47 minutes weights (HRmax 183, HRavg 162 - I've upped the weights on my leg curls and lunges with cable pulls and changed from pull-ups to chin-ups and 3x8 at 30kg assist on those. New routine next week!)

B - Greek yogurt with 1 scoop vanilla whey, frozen blueberries and a sprinkle of Grape Nuts
S - Nakd bar; Berry Cheeky
*gym*
S - 1 scoop chocolate whey in semi-skimmed milk (there wasn't any skimmed ;o))
L - salad - spinach, sweet pepers, capers, spring onions, walnuts, goats cheese and lemon juice
S - tangerines
S - carrot and houmous ("accidentally" ended up eating twice as much of this as intended as it'd been out of the fridge too long and needed eating up)
S - mini Babybel Light
D - venison steak with sweet potato, broccoli and 1/2 bottle of red wine

Calories (kcal) [kcals to maintain weight (inc. exercise)	2055 2278
Protein (g)	139.5 (27.3%)
Carbohydrate (g)	165.6 (30.4%)
Fat (g)	63.4 (28%)
Alcohol (g)	41.6 (14.3%)
Fruit & Veg	12.8

Good so far

The whey protein hasn't turned me into a groaning, gurgling pile of digestive ick. AND, I'm back to my (slightly inflated) pre-Christmas weight; looks like it was mostly bloat and "stuff in transit".

Eating crow now alright

Having been so pleased with my lack of weight/fat gain over Christmas, I've just managed to weigh in 2.5kg heavier than 3 weeks ago. Way to go! AND I've done 3 really hard weights sessions this week where I've increased the weights quite significantly (for me - e.g. bicep curls which are new in this routine, I've upped from 5kg dumbbells to 7kg dumbbells in 3 sessions - 40% increase!) on some exercises and increased a bit on most. I ache like a bugger and my belly is wobbling; nice contrast there! I don't fit into shirts I fitted into nicely 3 weeks ago. It's all down to bad eating and too much drinking. I know that. I had a huge pile of bread yesterday for the first time in a very very long time and my stomach was phenomenally uncomfortable afterwards - I'm just not used to eating bread much any more.

So. Never has it been a better time to get a grip on food and drink and get back to doing things properly, and in fact take things up a notch:-

• I will complete 3 weights sessions per week (not a feeble 2; but work commitments may torpedo this sometimes) of 40+ minutes.
• I will complete 1-3 cardio sessions a week of 30+ minutes hard effort.
• I will take part in at least 2 of the 4 Thames Turbo sprint triathlon series.
• I will increase my protein intake overall as a proportion of my daily nutrition - by using protein supplements where/if necessary.
  
• I will significantly decrease my intake of simple carbohydrates; bread (eat that maybe once a week anyway), potatoes, pasta (almost never eat that anyway)
• I will not cut out couscous (I like it a lot and it's a great complex carbohydrate)
• I will have no more than 1/2 bottle of wine per week (or 2x cans of lower alcohol beer) and it will count as a cheat/free meal in itself.
• I will post my food and exercise plan/results every day (90% of the time averaged over a month)
  

And the lesser ones:-

• I will try yogurt with fruit in/on and maybe some nuts for breakfast at least 4 times before giving up if I don't like it.
• I will make lunches up in bulk a couple of days in advance to make things easier.
• I will try to fear nuts less as a snack - yes they're very calorific for their weight/bulk but they -are- good for me in small amounts.
• I will eat bananas as a snack before exercise only (or within 2 hours either side of it, but at no other times)

Wish me luck; it's going to take a bit more discipline than I've been maintaining the last few months.

I've got a skiing holiday in March which may mess things up a bit due to "Sno Camp" being on a Thursday for six weeks which means no weights on Wednesday or Friday as it looks like there will be at least some strength training in those sessions. Not quite worked out how to work around that and keep up the cardio and have 2 rest days in the week, so we're thinking maybe that it'd be better not to do "Sno Camp" at all; it's bound to be targetted at people who have done bugger all exercise all year anyway - and... have you -seen- my thighs?

Oh and...

...hah! 0.2kg lighter when I got back from being away :)

Gym on Boxing Day

I still can't believe I went to the gym on Boxing Day (and I'm still aching in the arms, butt and chest now!) but I'm soooo glad I did. We went to a fabulous hotel for Christmas, which has an amazing spa attached to it with what looks like a very pretty but "form over function" type gym in it. But oh no it wasn't... it was a very very serious gym. No barbells less than 20kg and when I couldn't find anything with which to do assisted pull ups, the gym manager popped out to help (who just happens to be Chris Young - biiig power lifter!) with some resistance bands and some advice. It was great! He was so motivational and helpful I felt absolutely fabulous afterwards and did the biggest weights workout I've ever done - getting my heart rate right up to 98% of max! I even ended up doing double crunches and medicine ball throws on a Swiss Ball alongside one of the Team GB Ladies rowing team doing a long old erg session. Very serious gym!

Of course, I got absolutely trashed at the big dinner in the evening and spent the day after with both a ridiculously bad hangover -and- some pretty bad DOMS.

New routine (and numbers rollup)

Warm up - 1km rower

Prone leg curls - 20kg 3x10
Assisted pull ups - 35kg 3x10
Cable lunges - 20kg 3x10
Seated row -21kg 3x10
Overhead throw on Swiss Ball - 10kg 3x10
Cable bicep curls - 20kg 3x10
Twisting woodchop - 15kg - 3x10
Double crunch on Swiss Ball - 3x15
Bosu leg lowers - 3x15

Cool down - 10 minutes cross trainer

Numbers...

This week:-
Exercise Count: 5
Exercise Time: 02:52
Exercise kcals: 1,644

Since 15th June 2009:-
Exercise Count: 161
Exercise Time: 88:36
Exercise kcals: 48,604 (minus a few times I forgot my strap and/or transmitter)

Pleased for all of 5 minutes

I dragged myself to the gym today, unexpectedly as I hadn't planned on it. Did the nasty current routine that I'm not keen on (but have modified - changed the dumb bell flyes for pec flyes on a machine 'cause my arm doesn't work right/I can't get my form right) and added in some assisted pull-ups 'cause I like those. I started doing assisted pull-ups about 2 months ago, with a couple of weeks break in there somewhere, at an assisst of 45kg. Today I did 3 sets of 8 reps at 30kg assist. :)

Woooo! :D

And then I looked it up in the Internets. Apparently beginners are supposed to start at 50% assist (which would be 33.5kg for me) and work up from there. Meh. I only managed 44.8% assist today. So that's not as cool as I'd thought. Way to bust my bubble.

Still, I did do 3x5 full press ups, upped my lunge dumb bells to 9kg each and managed to burn 465kcals (normally I get 445kcals for this routine), so I must've been working it harder. Small victories.

Meh

I've been being good. Weights 3x a week last week and this week, staying under maintenance a tiny bit last week and lots this week and I'm slightly heavier than I was 2 weeks ago. I am officially sulking about this as It's Not Fair.

I can do pressups now too, almost proper ones - just not going down quite as far as a 90° bend in the elbow. I did 5/8/8 yesterday in my weights routine.