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.