The breakfast temptation of Chris

In which I attempt to convey the struggle that is breakfast time.

Come with me on a journey into your imagination.  Imagine, if you will, walking into a small but friendly dining room.  It's fairly early, around 7:30ish, and you've just had a shower and walked downstairs.

The smell of bacon and mushrooms frying wafts from the kitchen. Some other guests are already eating, invariably something cooked.

You've eaten here before, and you know that the breakfasts are spectacularly good; the bacon is always the way you like it, the egg is always done to perfection, the  mushrooms are wonderful. The sausage appears to be made of actual pork, not the bread-like stuffing you get in so many sausages.

Imagine your mouth watering as you savour the amazing nasal symphony floating from the kitchen.

Imagine having to say "no" when the nice lady that runs the guest house asks if you want any thing cooked for breakfast.

I settled for fruit and fibre and a zero fat yoghurt, if you were wondering. On the plus side I felt very virtuous, at least until I looked at the calorie and fat content on the pastie I had with my sandwiches and fruit at teatime. I suppose the run I went on just before probably used up most of the pastie calories.

An ordinary week

In which I get a bit of a nasty shock.  And don't moan about trains at all.

*tap tap*.  Hey, is this thing on?

Bear with me, I have been commanded to go and get the washing in.

Right, back...oh but now I need the loo.  Just hang on a minute there.

Okay, really back properly now.  Maybe I'll just have a quick go on Bejeweled Blitz while I'm composing my thoughts.

Now I really am back.  This week's been a bit ordinary really, not much to tell you about.  I can't moan about the journey, which was fine in both directions,  although the train home was just as crowded as usual - I was just lucky enough to get a seat for once.

So, the boring stuff that the blog is actually about first - I've run a couple of times this week, both fairly short runs as nobody from work was out running this week and I tend not to run very far when I'm by myself because I don't know my way around well enough so I'd just get lost, which I have done on a number of occasions.  According to MapMyRun.com the route I followed is 3.84KM, which isn't too bad I guess.  I did struggle a bit on Tuesday because I hadn't run at all over the weekend, so that's a lesson learnt - I was fine when I did it on Thursday though.


I went out for a chinese in one of the local restaurants with a friend from work on Wednesday.  We'd been to this particular restaurant before so we ordered 3 dishes each (the food is good, but a bit insubstantial).  Eating with chopsticks is something that it's going to take me a long, long time to get used to but at least it means I eat slowly (I'm usually sitting with an empty plate long before anybody else's is even half empty).


I had Tom Yum chicken, which I'm pretty sure is a made up name.  It's basically chicken and onions in what tastes like spicy tomato soup.  At least it comes with a china spoon thingy so you don't have to eat the soup with chopsticks.  I discovered during the course of the evening that I've been pronouncing the word "Szechuan" wrong for years, too.  I think we'll just skip lightly over that.

So, I'm sure you're waiting for me to stop prattling on and tell you what the bit of a shock referred to in the subtitle was.  Somebody brought in some extra-super-posh scales this week, which measure all kinds of stuff by sending electrical pulses through you then making educated guesses (I think).  We all took turns on them, and when it came to mine...well, there's no nice way to say it.  I was expecting the weight (which was bad but is getting better, slowly), but it also works out stuff like Visceral Index (how much fat you have around your organs - mine was 11 which is defnitely on the high side) and um...metabolic age.  Mine was 11 years older than it should be, which is a Very Bad Thing (the only other person whos metabolic age was as high as mine really is that age).


If it had just been me I might not have been too bothered, after all it's probably not that accurate...but everybody else went on them and they were all much much better than mine (except the manager, but at least he was a good 10 pounds lighter than me), and since they are all pretty fit it seems likely that the things are reasonably accurate.


So, something must be done.  I'm already eating healthily...well, most of the time, and running around 4k every other day, but there's one meal each day that is, at the moment, distinctly unhealthy.  So, really, there's only one thing to give.  This is not a decision I want to make, but it has to be done.  'tis better to have scoffed and lost than never to have scoffed at all, and all that...


The full English breakfasts have to go.  Bye bye, bacon.  Elveda, egg.  So long, sausage.   Bye beans.  Toodle-oo, tomato.  And finally, the greatest sacrifice of all, the thing that I will miss more than all the rest...I must say farewell, arrivederci and adieu to the mushrooms.  Oh, the mushrooms...won't somebody think of the mushrooms!


Well, there's no avoiding it.  If I'm going to run 13 miles in anything like a reasonable time (under 2 hours is my goal, at the moment) then my lifestyle has to change; that was part of the point of all this, after all.  Nobody said it would be easy.


Maybe I can get away with just one fried breakfast a week...