Aspire

It's a drink.


And the manufacturers claim that when you drink it, it could cause you to burn up to 200-odd calories without lifting a finger.

The idea is that there are ingredients in it that have a high metabolic cost to process. It's the same idea as Weight Watchers focused on in their new Pro Points scheme.  Everything you eat has a metabolic cost.  Some things are simpler/easier to convert into energy and building blocks than others; some things require more energy spent by your systems to perform that conversion than others.  And there's been a (fairly limited and not statistically significant) study carried out by Leeds Metropolitan University which seems to show that resting energy expenditure could well be appreciably elevated  for a period of time due to drinking Aspire. 

I'm not the biggest fan of cranberry, but the taste is actually quite pleasant.  This is mostly because it's not overly sweet.  There's a hint of the "seltzer" to it and I guess that's down to the added vitamins etc.  As a soft drink goes, I think it's one I'd think about buying to keep the variety up (especially while I'm Not Drinking).  And with talk of there being a new flavour launched in March, it's a real candidate to add into the variety rotation of drinkies to stave off the taste boredom.

If there really is an effect, it might be a nice little helping hand to general calorie expenditure, but even if not it's quite a nice drink.

I knew it'd be difficult

This "not drinking" thing.  I knew it'd be difficult (but at the same time, easy, when I'm doing it), but I didn't realise how hard it would be before it started.  13 days to go before the cessation of alcohol and I'm finding myself sabotaging normal days because of it now.  Because I'm not going to be doing it fairly soon, I make excuses do to it way more than normal now.  Normally I'd have a drink 1-2 days a week.  This week, so far, it's been 3 days and I find myself thinking about it quite a lot.

Partly, I'm thinking to go down the route of least stress, i.e. stop worrying about it, go with the flow.  Stress is worse (to me) than "bad" nutrition - mostly because we eat a hugely abnormal proportion of unprocessed food compared with most of the population (almost none, in practical terms) - I'm less worried about nutrition than I might be.  Partly, I'm getting wound up by what the scales say - which I need to get a grip on mentally as I've been ill and not exercising and eating odd amounts of food and being in varying states of hydration so it's not a useful measure at the moment.

13 days isn't all that long, so maybe the easiest thing is to take each day one at a time and accept what the scales say.  Then when the new year comes, be happy in the fact that life is easier, schedules are easier to follow, nutrition is easier to deal with...

Remember the Olympic Ball?

We went to the British Olympic Ball in October 2011 and there was a silent charity auction.

We bid on The Brownlees, given we're slightly fannish and... come on, it's the Brownlee brothers!  When the price went over a certain amount, cut our losses and stopped bidding.  Then in a fit of slight drunkenness on the way out to go home a final bid went in.  Given the guests at the ball that night, we thought we'd not win the lot in a million years...

 

Well, it turns out we did.

So, on 13th January 2012, we will be spending the day with Alastair and Jonathan Brownlee, the 2011 ITU World Champions (1st and 2nd place at Olympic distance and 3rd and 1st place at Sprint distance). We'll head up north and have lunch with the boys, then a bike ride and a run then dinner.

Excited?  Absolutely!  Scared witless I won't be able to get up the hills?  Ohgodyes!  Happy at least in some part to be supporting British athletes for the Olympics in 2012 in more ways than just sitting on the sofa and cheering, or even lining the cycle route, by donating a reasonable sum of money to the Olympic charity organisation?  Yeah.  Actually, I am.

22 days to 9 months of teetotalism

From 1st January 2012 to when Ironman Wales 2012 is over, I will not be drinking any alcohol.  (There may be 2 nominated exception days - the day after Ironman UK 70.3 and perhaps 13th January - I've not yet decided whether I will do that or not.)

It's just going to be easier that way.  Easier to keep to my planned nutrition - alcohol tends to lead to eating more than required/planned.  Easier to keep to my planned training schedule - alcohol leads to poor quality sleep, lack of enthusiasm the next day and is pretty poor nutritionally.  It'll just be easier all 'round if I don't drink at all.  Drinking a bit, setting a weekly/monthly limit isn't going to work.  It's all or nothing 'cause that's how I am.  I'll miss the wine, for sure, but some things are worth quite a bit of sacrifice.

Stopping right now isn't something I need to do, nor is it all that practical when there's wine in the house ready for Christmas, so the date is set for 1st January.

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.