Archive for Diet
April 28, 2007 at 3:26 pm · Filed under Diet, Event, Running
Cutting to the chase, I have to announce that my pb streak has come to an end.
I’m blaming the muesli.
I’ve just started keeping a food log on my trainingpeaks account which means I have to weigh everything before I put it on my plate. I tipped the recommended 50g of muesli into my bowl and decided the portion sizes must have been determined for kids (skinny ones at that) so I took it up to 75g. Then a stray raisin tipped over the edge taking it 78g so of course I had to continue to round the number off. Let me say, running on 100g of muesli is tough going!
5km in 34:30
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Tags: BPTT
March 1, 2007 at 7:43 pm · Filed under Diet, Running
My blog has recently been discovered by a health and fitness magazine who have approached me to appear in the next issue, sporting all my running glory. It seems they stumbled across my site through some search combination of “fat and couch potato” and would like me to take part in an article supporting the claim that you can be both fat and fit.
I somehow agreed, in part due to my inability to say no to almost anything (a fact which almost saw me married to a Jamaican bus driver who produced air tickets to his homeland, where he intended us to celebrate our nuptials, all after my second ride in his no 52 bus). I am kicking myself now (about the magazine not the bus driver), the interview went fine but I am due to attend a “photo shoot” tomorrow.
This is just not my cup of tea! I have had a phone call from the mag to discuss details for tomorrow. They want to know about my bras. They want to know if I have skin or white bras, what type they are and if they are frilly. I don’t possess anything in skin, its far too silence of the lambs for my liking, I have white or was once white but I really don’t want to go showing it to anyone, especially not readers of a magazine or worse, freaky internet weirdos pretending to be magazine photographers.
I have to have my hair done too and make up, and I have to wear clothes that they provide! I wonder if they know how difficult it is for the ample woman to buy sporting gear. Size 16 cycle clothes have got to be the equivalent of size 8 in M&S. I can just see them squeezing me into some horrendous hot pant and tank top combo with my off-white grey bra bulging out the side, and lipstick. Uggh! Then they are going to photograph me and I’m going to have my sulking face on and they are going to splatter me across some magazine page and my friends are gonna see and I’ll never live it down!
waaaaaaaah!
Where’s the wine? I need to drink and then go to bed and sleep right the way through tomorrow and then I can come back and delete this post like it was some terrible nightmare I managed to live through.
Popularity: 12% [?]
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January 30, 2007 at 12:43 am · Filed under Diet, Equipment, Software
I’m building up for another assault on my weight.
Over the last 15 months I lost 20lbs! Unfortunately no whooping and a hollering is deserved as the net position sees this 20lbs declining to a mere 7lbs loss. I went through 3 clear weightloss phases and as the chart shows, I don’t have too much of a problem in losing weight but a big problem when it comes to maintaining a constant weight.
(Note that all the graphs can be enlarged by clicking on them)
Fortunately, I have discovered some new tricks for my arsenal. The first is The Hackers Diet, which is a free ebook/webpage designed by John Walker of Autodesk/AutoCAD fame. He reverts back to his engineering roots to develop a nerdy yet satisfying approach to weightloss and weight maintenance. Particulalry appealing is his approach to trend monitoring, to avoid the boom and bust nature that most dieters will be familiar with.
This annotated chart makes me giggle and reminds me why the daily scale ritual tends to leave me so apprehensive. With the hackers diet you continue to monitor your weight daily but you enter the figures into an excel spreadsheet that plots the trend based on an exponential moving average to smooth the noise. Moving averages are explained very well in his section on Signal and Noise. If you haven’t already noticed, I ought to point out that this diet is only going to appeal the real data fiends out there, its not called the hackers diet for nothing. After application of the smoothing, the above chart now looks like this:
The point of this is that the red smoothed line, illustrates the very satisfactory weightloss situation, suggesting that the diet and required monitoring could proceed without need for prozac. I’m convinced that I keep stopping perfectly successful diets because of the misery I feel when the scales tell me the wrong number, regardless of how transient that may prove to be.
Each individual data point (daily weight) will either appear above or below the trend line, below is obviously great as it means that it is having the effect of pulling the trend even lower. The odd appearance above the trend isn’t too worrying either as individually their impact on the trend is insignificant. You can get even more deeply into the system and determine your bodys energy balance, going as far as planning your required intake etc. I’m not going to look at this just yet. It suits me to develop the system for monitoring purposes, possibly using it alongside the BodyForLife program that I’ve had success with previously.
All the excel spreadsheets designed for Hackers Diet are available free on the site mentioned above – they really are worth delving into if like me you go crazy for complex excel constructions and his manual is extensive, explaining the process far better than I have.
My second great discovery is the PhysicsDiet, which is an online fitness log/charting site developed to support the Hackers Diet. So many geeks have been successful with the hackers diet that complementary programs are popping up all over the place. The physics diet uses the same maths as the hackers diet spreadsheets but visually it is far more exciting. I’m going to maintain both the spreadsheet and online version for a while but I think I will use charts like these to post my progress:
This shows the January results and so long as I can keep the chart green, I’m smiling.
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Tags: Diet
September 17, 2006 at 9:19 pm · Filed under BodyForLife, Diet
I have officially completed my first Body for Life challenge although I’m ashamed to admit that it kind of just fizzled out towards the end.
I made the most progress in the first 6 weeks and the second half saw me fighting to maintain this. Anyway I can’t complain, I managed to lose another stone in total.
I’ll definately start another challenge after I’ve settled at work and found another gym where I can shift some weights. In the meantime I’ll keep up the running and keep an eye on my weight so that I don’t move backwards.
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August 15, 2006 at 4:38 pm · Filed under BodyForLife, Running, Technique
I went on the treadmill this lunchtime and tried the Balke test for determining my V02 max score. This involves running as far as you can in 15 mins, I actually ran for 20 mins so I obviously wasn’t pushing hard enough, but I still managed to get up a fair speed. I actually managed to run at 11 km/hr (not for long) without being propelled off the back of the treadmill. I wouldn’t even dream of running that speed a couple of months ago. Things really seem to be coming together with this running malarky.
Anyway, back to VO2. As with everything else I do, I have to get thoroughly obsessed with the science behind my hobby. Hence the purchase of all the sporting gadgets, training software, books and whizzy excel spreadsheets. I recently bought Daniels Running Formula which aims to tell you exactly what pace you should train at, based on your VO2 max. So there would be a set pace for the long slow runs and another for marathon, 10k and interval runs. Trouble is I am too slow to even get onto his tables, so that was another waste of money!
The runningforfitness website is a techies dream. It is awash with converters and running calculators to tell you everything from predicted race paces to speed improvements associated with weight loss. I love it. The link I have given above enables you to determine your VO2 max figure based on the 15 min run and then tells you what pace you should train at.
Apparently I should do my long slow runs at a pace of 08.03 and it reckons I should complete the 10k in 69 mins. Not sure if that figure is based on me running the race tomorrow or after a training schedule. I would hope to be running slightly faster than that by October but we shall see.
I am so impressed by the runningforfitness site that I have taken up PHP programming to recreate some of the conversion tables on my website. Not that I need another project at the moment – I’m supposed to be submitting my thesis in 2 weeks, instead I am spending every evening cursing about some line of code that refuses to do what I want.
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August 4, 2006 at 11:01 am · Filed under BodyForLife, Running
I have committed to cutting back on the alcohol, in order to get the diet back on track again. Therefore this view of the brewery is the closest I’ll get to a beer for a while.
It’s the sight I get on the last few hundred yards of my run, just after I’ve crossed Barnes Bridge. Beautiful stretch of the river.
It’s a bit overcast this morning and the photo looks a bit dull but it gave me an excuse to try out this new photoshop tutorial I found on Photojojo. The tutorial shows you how to select areas of the photo based on their colour and then alter the levels to either increase or decrease exposure. Quite good fun, but I suppose the skill is in subtlety and I’m not sure I possess much of that.
I struggled on my run today, I had intended trying out a new variation on my route which would have come in around 9k. Once I’d set off though, I felt like a furnace and ended up cutting it short and finishing after only 3.5k. I don’t know if I’m still feeling tired after last week – I went a bit giddy and increased my weekly distance from a typical 13k to 25k. I’m certainly sleeping well anyway.
Maybe I’ll try my new route out tomorrow.
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Tags: Diet
August 3, 2006 at 6:30 pm · Filed under BodyForLife, Diet
Oh I feel like it’s time for a major confession. I have been slacking big time. I’ve stopped recording my meals and I’ve ignored the last note to self which required me to stop having alcohol. Everything is slipping badly, I keep drinking beer and port and there have been more than a couple of chocolate muffins making their way into my gut this week!
The only positive is that my running has increased pretty dramatically but even then I am guaging my performance on how many muffins it entitles me to eat.
Not good!
I’ve just been skim reading the life history of a blogger who appears to have started the Body for Life scheme (or similar) about 6 months ago and seems to have made quite dramatic fitness gains in the process. It’s quite motivating.
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July 28, 2006 at 9:52 pm · Filed under BodyForLife, Running
I ran for a whole 10k this morning.
Nearly crippled myself but I had to do it – that damn gym buddy of mine keeps setting new challenges.
It took me 77 mins which is better than I expected.
More details on the MotionBased site.
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July 23, 2006 at 8:32 pm · Filed under BodyForLife, Diet
So I am about 5 weeks into the BFL – Body for Life challenge and thought it was perhaps time to drop in an update and outline my progress so far.
There have been a few changes, the weight has started to drop – 9lbs in total. I lost a bit in the first couple of weeks and then as usual I hit a plateau and then over the last few days its started to drop a bit again. Here’s the weight chart:
There also appears to have been some change to my body composition, with a small but definate (I think) increase in muscle mass and a decrease in the body fat mass – which is what I’m in it for.
I am probably not quite on target to achieve my high weight loss goals for this challenge, so I better start making more of an effort. I am spot on with the exercise, doing more cardio than prescribed and working hard with the weight training. I am mostly ok with the diet but I am allowing myself a drink once or twice a week, which I really ought to stop.
Generally I have found the diet ok. It took a while to fathom out what I needed to eat to get a portion of protein and carb at each meal but when that was sorted I find my six meals a day amounts to about 1800 cals a day. Thats not bad – all about portion control.
A typical days food intake will be:
Breakfast – Banana and protein smoothie
AM Break – Ham slices and 3 rice cakes
Lunch – Chicken fillets, couscous and carrots
PM Break – Myoplex Diet shake
Tea – Grilled Tuna, new potatoes, cabbage
Evening – Cottage cheese and 3 rice cakes
Initially I was sceptical of the protein supplements but they are a blessing. It’s hard work preparing so many meals with 1 portion of carbs and 1 portion of protein, particularly at breakfast. The protein powder means I can have a nutritious fruit shake and still get the protein I need. The myoplex diet is useful after my gym workout as its easy and actually feeds my sweet cravings as its basically the only pudding style food I allow myself.
I think the program has proved very positive so far. It has given me a boost on the fitness front again as I’ve joined the gym and go every day. Not only does this mean that I’m lifting weights but I also use the treadmill. My running has shifted up a gear as a result. Since I’ve started BFL, I ran my first 5k, this morning I increased this to 7k and I’m registered in a 10k event for October.
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June 22, 2006 at 2:02 pm · Filed under BodyForLife, Diet
Whenever I go on a new fitness buzz, I like to look around for inspiration that will keep me motivated for just a bit longer. This almost inevitably means spending money on either books or assorted gadgets, and this time round has been no exception.
So this time the book is called “Survival of the Fittest” by Mike Stroud who most famously ran with Sir Ranulph Fiennes on his 7 marathon runs, across 7 continents in 7 days. Flipping nuts!
I haven’t finished it yet but the most inspiring story so far is of a woman called Helen Klein. This woman is truly inspirational, she is a great grandmother, well into her 80’s and her motto is “I want to wear out, not rust out”. She started running when she was 55 having had a completely non sporting life. She is now a world record holding ultra distance runner.
I have taken the excerpt from a book called “Fitter after 50“, I don’t have a copy myself but I reckon its a must for anyone feeling a bit depressed about the advancing years. I provided the link if your interested.
“In 1982, at the age of 59, she entered the Hawaiian Ironman Triathlon (the epic swim, bike, and run-a-marathon competition). In 1989, now a 66-year-old grandmother of 9, she completed the Grand Slam of 100-mile mountain-trail runs (the Vermont 100, the Wasatch 100, Colorado’s Leadville 100, and the Western States 100); plus one more to grow on, the Angeles Crest 100, all in just a 16-week time period. In 1995, in her prime at 72, she ran the Marathon Des Sables, a grueling 145-mile stage race across the Sahara Desert in Morocco; then just 2 weeks later (with hardly time to catch her breath), she competed in AND finished the first annual Eco Challenge, in Utah, a 370-mile multi-sport, multi-day, race (including horseback riding, canoeing, and rock climbing — 1200-foot vertical cliffs) in which over half the competitors (most just half her age) could not complete this rugged event.”
I’d really like to know more about this woman, she seems like a marvel. I’ve seen pages on the web confirm she is still running multiple marathons back to back at the age of 82!
Wow!
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Tags: Triathlon
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