Today's food diary

I'm mostly doing this for the benefit of the rest of my SW group so no fancy titles or blog post today. Today was a rest day from exercise, but I did do some housework so that probably counts ;).

Here's a picture of breakfast. Yes, that's diet food.

Food!

Healthy A: Milk
Healthy B: 4*Crispbread (with cottage cheese)

Breakfast

Cooked breakfast (bacon, sausages, baked beans, mushrooms, scrambled eggs, fresh tomato - 0 syns since I used Slimming World sausages and some of my milk allowance for the eggs)

Apple & Fat Free Yoghurt

Lunch

6 Chicken drumsticks (all skin removed)

Pickled Onions

Fruit

Dinner

Slimming World Singapore Noodles (ready meal from Iceland) with mushrooms

Snacks

Pickled onions (about 1.5 jars!)

Fruit

Yoghurt

Of fitness and fiddles

...in which I consider the old adage.

Well, not really, although it is an odd saying. Is a fiddle really fit? It might be fit to play, but it might equally be a wreck with broken strings. Maybe "as fit as  fiddle in good repair" might be a better simile, but it doesn't really roll off the tongue.

Anyway, on the subject of fitness, today I ran 3 miles. Which is what I've considered a short run about 2 months ago (when I did the Shrewsbury half marathon), but now it definitely does not feel like a short run; what's more, I ran the first mile in 7:38; this was my average pace over the half marathon, but after doing that today there is no way I could have done another mile at that speed, let alone another 12. 

So I guess that shows that fitness disappears really quickly if you don't maintain it (I'm making efforts to get it back now; running 3 times a week and gym 3 times, with 1 rest day).

So, today's food. No syns again today, for I am being super good at the moment...

Healthy A: 250ml Semi Skimmed Milk

Healthy B: 60g wholemeal roll

Breakfast

Nectarine, apple, grapes, fat free yoghurt

Lunch

Pasta with crustless quiche left over from yesterday

Dinner

Beef stew with pasta

Snacks/Drinks

Coffee/diet coke

Pickled Onions

Fruit

Chicken drumsticks (all fat removed)

Today's food diary...

Not much time today so I'm just going to list what I've eaten today. I'll try to get back to more regular blogging over the next few weeks.

Quite proud of myself as I went to Shrewsbury today and managed to resist staying out for lunch so I stayed in control.

Note: this is very low in Syns (none at all) because I'm making a serious effort to get back down to target, so I'm avoiding them - I will be having more next week as long as I have a decent loss this week!


Healthy A: 250ml Semi-skimmed milk

Healthy B: 60g Wholemeal roll

Breakfast

Fruit (apple/nectarine/plum) with fat-free yoghurt

Second Breakfast

Bacon (fat removed) on wholemeal roll with fresh tomato

Lunch

1/2 a roast chicken (yes, to myself), all skin removed with a salad pot (no dressing, just washed)
Noodles cooked in beef stock with mushrooms (cooked with the noodles)

Dinner

Crustless quiche with onions & peppers; pasta; beans; sweetcorn; mixed veg (runner beans, carrots, peas, broccoli)
(I had mine without cheese so It had no syns since I'd already used my HEA for milk).

Snacks/Drinks

Coffee * 4 (with milk from HEA allowance)

Pickled Onions

Fruit (free/speed)

Fat-free greek style yoghurt

Exercise: 1 hour in gym; 30 minutes resistance/core work, 30 minutes cardio (20 minutes HIIT on Elliptical, 10 minutes on bike).

Back to basics (and blogging)....

....in which not everything is going to plan.

It's now 4.5 months since I ran Greater Manchester Marathon, and I didn't realise I hadn't written a post since then; they've been quite a busy few months as I was working in Manchester on a contract for 3 of them. 

About 2 weeks into working there I ran Shrewsbury Half Marathon; as I had quite a lot of free time prior to that I was able to do 4 training runs a week. In combination with the GPS watch my wife got me for Christmas, that made a huge positive difference to my training and pace, so I ran it in 1:35:36 (my target was 1:40).

Unfortunately, it turned out that a marshal had sent runners the wrong way so the course was about half a mile short; this was really gutting as I think I'd have been around 1:38 and that would have been a really good time (especially for someone that could barely run a mile at the start of last year).

The Manchester contract has finished now, but it's left its legacy; it's a 1.5 hour commute from here to Manchester (45 minute drive followed by a 45 minute train journey). It turns out that being really tired (both from travelling and work) is not conducive to having willpower to resist snacking in the evenings or maintaining an exercise regime, so for the last 3 months I've been consistently gaining weight most weeks (or at best maintaining or losing a little, only to put more on the next week).

I'm now 1 stone over my target; I haven't really been in my target range since just after Christmas except for the odd week, but this is the heaviest I've been since last year. I'm still much better off than I was at the start of last year, but I don't want to gain any more weight as I want to get back to running, and hopefully get a good time in my next race (I haven't decided what that's going to be yet, but I need to sign up to something to keep me motivated).

So I've decided decided that this week to try to kick start I will go back to basics and stick to the SW plan 100%, and I thought I'd keep a record of what I'm eating here as part of that...so here's today's planned food:

Healthy A: 250ml Semi-skimmed milk

Healthy B: 60g wholemeal roll

Breakfast

Apple, satsuma, nectarine, fat free yoghurt (0 syns) (note: not all fat free yoghurts have no syns, but I checked the ones I had using the app and they are free).

Coffee with milk from HEA.

Second Breakfast (yes, that's a thing)

Bacon (all fat removed) on wholemeal roll (HEB) with fresh tomato (0 syns)

Lunch

Chicken drumsticks (skin removed) with salad (0 syns)

Dinner

Sticky Chicken (~2 syns) with Slimming World chips and salad

Snacks

Pickled Onions (free/speed)

Yoghurt (free)

Speed fruit (strawberries, apples, plums, nectarines)

Exercise ("Body Magic"):

3 Mile run

I did it!

...in which I am proud of myself.

Yesterday (April 19th 2015) was the Greater Manchester Marathon, which I signed up to run in last September. I've been training for 6.5 months, 3 runs a week without fail (except for one period where I had a dodgy knee), plus at least 1 (and usually 2 or 3) visits to the gym a week.

Here's me before the race:

And here I am after with my daughter:

(Nobody ever calls me Christopher except my mother, but that's what they'd printed on the bib).

I completed the marathon in 3 hours, 46 minutes and 13 seconds; I had to take 2 loo breaks, so without those I would probably have been close to my target time of 3:30. I'm still really happy with my time - to get under 4 hours in a first marathon is a huge achievement (in fact just to finish a marathon is a huge achievement), and for someone that took nearly 3 hours to run a half marathon 4 years ago it shows a massive improvement in fitness.

I'll almost certainly sign up for next year's event too, to see if I can improve my time - the event was well organised (although they could definitely have done with more loos at the start!) and the support around the course was tremendous.

Lots of people have told me I should be proud of myself, and I am - I worked really hard with my training, and I feel like it really paid off. 

But it wasn't all about me - the main point of this (apart from letting me show off a bit) was to raise money for the Isabelle Lottie foundation, which provides help and support for children and young people diagnosed with brain tumours. If you'd like to donate, please head over to my BT MyDonate page:

https://mydonate.bt.com/fundraisers/chrisnmanchestermarathon

Thank you!

Chris.

Carb load mode

...in which I (almost) bite off more than I can chew

I love food, as anybody that's ever had the misfortune to sit with me as I masticate my way through a meal can tell you. It's one of the reasons I chose Slimming World when I decided to lose weight; any diet that tries to severely restrict what I eat would be doomed to failure.

So the "carb loading" phase of marathon training, in which you load the body with carbs for 2 - 3 days in order to ensure you have the fuel reserves to run 26 miles, ought to be easy. I mean, it's just eating, right? How hard can it be?

In fact I'm finding it heavy going; 90 - 95% of the calories I need to eat for these 3 days apparently need to come from carbs, and I need to eat around 570g of carbs per day (based on 8g of carbs per kg bodyweight). That doesn't sound like a lot, until you start looking at how many carbs are actually in food; a tin of baked beans has about 52g, a baked potato has about 50, a banana has 30.

100g of cooked pasta has around 75g of carbs in, but even I would struggle to eat enough pasta (about 750g) in a day to get up to the required carbs, so a lot of stuff that I don't usually eat at all has been consumed in the last 2 days.

I actually sat down and worked out how many carbs I needed, and did a plan for 3 days. (I think I may have too much time on my hands). It basically consists of 3 carb-heavy meals and 3 snacks per day, and by the afternoon snack I am already feeling quite full; by the evening snack (2 bagels with jam) I'm generally so stuffed that it's a major effort to finish it. (That said, my previous life as a human eating machine has stood me in good stead).

Anyway, that's obviously a bit of a first world problem. I'm not really whining (or at least not trying to!) but it's interesting that a bit of the training that you'd expect to be pleasurable (or at least more fun than running 20+ miles) is actually a lot harder than it sounds.

Oh yes, here's the marathon countdown. Now that's a scary picture...

The Final Countdown...

...da-da daa-daa, da-da da-da daaaa etc.

(Sorry, I couldn't resist. Actually, not sorry at all).

The countdown that Runkeeper has for the time to the marathon currently looks like this at the time of writing:

This is somewhere between exciting and scary. In some ways, I'm really looking forward to it; the atmosphere at these events is usually really positive and exciting, and this time I know I've done pretty much everything I can to prepare properly so I'm hoping for a decent time (for a first-time marathon runner).

In other ways, I'm a bit apprehensive; however prepared you are, running 26.2 miles is hard. It's 4 miles further than I've ever run before, and after 22 I was utterly exhausted.  

With that said, I didn't eat enough beforehand for the 22 miles and the weather was hellish; the weather for Sunday is looking a lot better, which I'm very relieved about (10mph wind, overcast but not raining). 

I've already done my meal plan for the next 3 days; it has to be said it's not particularly Slimming World friendly, but then the goal is to store as much energy (as glycogen) in my body as possible, which means eating carbs and lots of them. Apparently I should expect to put 3 - 4lb on over the next 3 days and then burn it all off during the race.

I'm still (slightly) above my target range, but I will get back there sooner or later. At the moment I know I'm drinking too much wine and still having too many snacks; it would be great if I was back at target at Monday's weigh-in, but realistically that probably won't happen.

Back to basics

...in which I aim to behave (or at least not misbehave too much).

As I said in my last post I'm currently a couple of pounds over my target weight range. I have been for the last 2 months, and I'm not really that worried about it; a couple of lb over my target is no big deal, and it's not like I'm in an upward spiral or anything. I'm staying reasonably steady between 11st 8lb and 11st 11 - my target is 11st 4, so target range is 11st 1 - 11st 7.

I think this is partly because one of the things that exercising regularly does is build muscle, which is denser than fat, and I exercise 6 out of 7 days per week - 3 gym visits and 3 runs. However, the other reason is that there's temptation to eat based on the amount of exercise you're doing ("I'm running 22 miles tomorrow, another couple of glasses of wine won't matter").

I've fallen into this trap quite a lot recently; although all of our meals are still SW friendly, there's been a lot of "extras"....crispbread with cheese has become a regular evening snack, and I've been having crisps way too often again. I'm still not too worried since I'm not exactly a couch potato any more.

However, there is the small matter of having to run 26.2 miles in two weeks. To do that, my body needs to be properly fuelled, and that means eating cleanly and not putting too much junk into it. Fortunately that lines up pretty well with Slimming World's plan; lean meat for protein, plenty of carbs (pasta/rice/potatoes are all unlimited on SW's Extra Easy plan) and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables.

There's also the matter of money...I have to pay for Slimming World while out of target range, and although I have plenty of work at the moment our finances are still recovering from the months when I didn't have much (this is one of the things you have to live with when you're a freelancer).

It's a good job that carb-heavy food is unlimited as I need to "carb load" for a few days before the marathon to make sure my body has the fuel needed to make it around the whole 26 miles at the required pace. I've been up to 22 so far, although it was hellish weather and I was utterly knackered by the end of it (but I did it, and I'm really proud of that - although I could have done without the bloke telling me "you're going to kill yourself mate" at 18 miles in - apparently I didn't look all that great by that point)!

So for the next 2 weeks (after today...it's a bank holiday tomorrow after all ;)) I'll be aiming to follow the plan much more strictly than I have been. I'll attempt to go back to doing my online food diaries like when I first started blogging about Slimming World, although I'm a bit shorter on time now what with all the work....

Food Fight

....in which I ponder the immutable nature of teenagers.

I make a slimming world version of 5 spice pork. The Elder Teen loves it, the Younger Teen refuses to eat it.

I make a very nice (though I say it myself as shouldn't) slow cooked beef and tomato stew. The Younger Teen loves it...you can guess the next bit.

Princess Bubblegum is a law unto herself, and pretty much survives on a mixture of pasta, broccoli and chicken nuggets with the occasional pizza. She's getting more adventurous slowly though (she ate Piri Piri chicken and wedges with broccoli tonight).

I'm sure some people will read this and think "ha, when I was young I ate what I was given or I starved", but then if you were brought up like that would you really want to make your own children eat stuff that they don't like? (I was, and I don't; when I was young we couldn't afford to turn food down).

Also I'm willing to bet that most of the people that think that don't actually have kids. In which case, I suggest you read this link: So you want to have children? (especially the bit about "Knowledge").

Anyway, back to running and diet and fit person stuff. I'm outside my Slimming World target range at the moment, and have been for a while. Given that I ran 22 miles last Sunday and had pretty much recovered by Monday morning apart from a couple of small aches I'm not too worried by this.

I'm running 3 times a week (2 short runs, 1 fast, 1 slow and 1 long pace run, although those will get shorter now until the actual marathon) and still really enjoying it; I should probably be looking for new routes but I don't get bored easily. I'm also going to the gym 3 times a week.

For a former fat bloke this might seem a bit extreme, but I've found that doing core strengthening and resistance work has been really helpful with the running (even though I wouldn't have known what those things were 6 months ago).

Running has really taught me a lot about perseverance, preparation and motivation; after the half marathon I did in 2011 (when I was 4 stone heavier and hardly trained at all because of work circumstances) this time I'm really focused on making sure that I've prepared properly and done all the training I need to.

It's just over 2 weeks until the marathon now and after running 22 miles last week I'm pretty confident that I'll be able to do it in my target time of 3.5 - 4 hours...but we shall see.

Things I've learnt from running

I'm still in training for Greater Manchester Marathon. Next Sunday I have to run 22 miles as part of my training. And I will do it, even though just 6 months ago that would have seemed a stupidly long distance to even think about (now it's just another long training run). After that I start the "tapering", which basically means I run less to let my muscles recover from all the abuse I've been putting them through while still doing some much shorter runs at the pace I'm aiming for in the race (around 7:56 a mile).

I've signed up for Shrewsbury half marathon too, which I'll be doing to raise funds for Severn Hospice - they asked if anybody was up for it on twitter, and I have a friend who works there so it seemed like a cool thing to do. It's 6 weeks after Manchester, so I have time to recover and train for the shorter distance (since I quite often run 15+ miles plus on a Sunday these days it's not a big worry).

Anyway, here's some stuff I've learned in the process of becoming a runner:

The last mile is history. It's what you're doing right now that counts.

If you start it, you finish it.

You can nearly always go further than you think you can.

The rewards are worth the effort.

Even the longest run is just a series of steps. As long as you can take the next step, you'll get to the end eventually.

You're not competing with other people. You're competing with the voice in your head that says "you can't".

Pain isn't always bad.

Shoes matter.

Toenails and skin on heels are for sissies.

Foam rollers were invented by a sadist.

The standard of "can I wear this?" for clothes you run in is "does it still bend?", no matter how much sweat it's drenched in.

There's always somebody that can run further and faster. That doesn't stop you going as far and as fast as you can. It's only a competition with yourself.