Sep 16

Of century targets, running, trading cards and ponies

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Fitness, Weigh in day

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All the above things are related. Probably in a more mundane way than you might expect but that’s not the point: it makes for a good title!

So up today is this week’s weigh-in. I lost a lot more than I expected it has to be said. 3¾lbs off takes me down to 14st 4¾lb now. In pounds, that’s 200¾lbs, meaning that I just need to lose one more pound to get down below 200, so it’s a pretty significant shift coming up.

Having evaluated my final target and where I want to finally end up, I have for now at least, set myself an ultimate goal of 100lbs lost overall and that means I need to lose just over 42 more pounds. It’s quite difficult to set final goals from this point, especially when I don’t recall being in a healthy weight at any time if I’m honest. At my current target weight I would have a BMI of 22.5 and be in the middle of the “healthy weight zone” so it seems like a sensible place to aim but at some point, muscle gain from all the training will likely overtake loss of weight from fat reduction so it might not be plausible. Until I get into my healthy weight zone I won’t have any idea of how low I can go without having a ribcage poking out like an ivory glockenspiel. If there is a risk of that I’ll be switching to maintainance mode. Anyway, the main point here is that I’ve set an endgame target now, so the weight loss part of my journey here is on the home straight.

 

What of my second big goal then? That, for those who need reminding, is being at a point where I can run organised races and I’ve been in training for a few weeks now. Sunday is my preferred day for my big street run, with much weekday training taking the form of treadmill running and good old fashioned lifting so today was my “big one” of the week.

I find that when I’m running, I like to have something to listen to that keeps my mind occupied, so I listen to podcasts rather than music. Today I went with the latest episodes of The Albion Roar (A Brighton and Hove Albion podcast) and Nerdivores which is a podcast about Magic the Gathering: A collectible card game made by the same people that make Dungeons and Dragons. I might be getting to be a bit of a fitness freak, but I am still a geek at heart and I still love to fling bits of cardboard at other bits of cardboard.

I’m not hugely enthusiastic about the time yet, I’m still pretty slow, but I’m defintely happy with the distance: I ran 4 miles today, which puts me at 6.4 KM and that’s the longest I’ve ever run in one session without stopping. Well, I say without stopping. I did manage to get a little lost on the way and had to stop to ask this fella for directions:

He wasn’t very helpful, but he was beautiful. He had some friends too:

They weren’t very helpful either. I asked all of them for directions and in response they ate some more grass. Still, they were also pretty. What I had done here, was I’d inadvertently stumbled across a pony sanctuary! It’s cool little things like this that make the running even better for me. I’m not just getting fitter now I’m doing this, I’m finding things I would probably have not otherwise found. If I wasn’t taking random turnings looking for places that seemed cool to run then I wouldn’t have gone down that road but I’m glad I did.

A little googling on my return home tells me that the site is called Ponderosa Pony Rescue and they take in ponies that have had a hard time of things to try and find them forever home. How anyone could abuse an animal is beyond me, but clearly they do or such charities wouldn’t need to exist. Anyway, they are, it turns out dearly in need of funds and volunteers so if you want to help them out, there’s no more blog and nothing more to see here today  so have a look at their website here: http://www.ponderosaponys.co.uk/

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Sep 06

Of targets, motivational techniques and novelty shaped running routes.

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Fitness, Weigh in day

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Good news everyone! I’m not dead!

So the training is so far going quite well. I have so far managed to run over 5k on the treadmill non stop and just over 2 miles on the street so with 2 months to go, I’ve got some work to do by far less than I actually expected. I’m certain that I CAN finish a 10k but I’m not expecting a great time for this one. My target is to finish within an hour which isn’t a tall order but will involve adding some pace to my running over the next few weeks. I’ve been experimenting with the last 250 metres on the treadmill at a sprit pace (about 12kph so sprint to me anyway) and that’s not killed me so I think I could sustain some gradual increases without too much trouble. Overall I’m quite happy with my progress and although I’m unlikely to be winning any Olympic medals it’s still a stark contrast to what I could do this time last year when I probably would have been overtaken by foliage and traffic lights.

 

One thing I have found recently is the fact that street running is way harder than treadmill running. I can run over 5k on the treadmill but I struggled to manage 2 miles at the same pace on Sunday on the street. There were minor hills involved and some off road running as well granted, but it does prove that I need to work hard to make sure I’m ready for this run. I intend to be though, even if it does kill me. As an additional motivational technique to keep me going, I have discovered that running in the shape of rude things is amusing:

If I can just find some roads in the shape of boobs somewhere in Plymouth…

As for the weight, that’s going pretty well too. Last 3 weigh-ins have been 14st 10.5, 14st 9.5 and 14st 8.5 respectively. So that’s a net total of 4½lbs off since we last spoke which is somewhere in the region of 15,000 calories worth of fat. That’s a lot of fat. Also, my personal favourite stat is that this morning’s weigh in showed me to be about 29.7% fat. That’s still a fair bit too high, but it’s the first time I’ve seen the number go below 30 so I’m pleased with that. In contrast, I started at well over 40% I shall shortly be wearing a little red sash that says “NEW! – Now with 10% less fat” like a chocolate bar. But with less cocoa and more dreadlocks. Mmmm, hair bar…

 

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Aug 21

What have I done?

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Fitness, Weigh in day

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I broke my plateau! Saturday’s weigh in tipped the scales at 14st13, which means that I’ve hit that magical half century marker (much like most English batsman thoughI’ll never hit a century – I don’t have enough weight to lose for that) I’m well over halfway to a healthy weight.

I’ve not changed that much but I have been getting back into a regular gym routine and resuming my plans to getting fitter. And that is starting to show results. I’m due a blood pressure test soon and hopefully that will go down but for now there are things I can measure:

  • I can lift heavier things than when I started now. I can leg press over my own body weight now for example and I can bicep curl 50% more than when I started
  • My warm up before weightlifting used to be 5 minutes brisk jog, now it’s 2.5km in about 17 minutes!
    I no longer get out of breath walking up the stairs to my second floor office.
  • Children no longer point me out to their parents on the bus and say “look mummy, that man is having a baby [elephant]“
  • I feel generally better; I have colds and illness less frequently than I used to and I have more energy than ever.
      • So now I have this extra fitness and energy, I decided it’s time I did something with it and I’ve entered myself in for the Plymouth 10k in November. I have to admit this is quite daunting: I’m going to run with people watching me. In public with my smaller but still noticeable moons flipping around for all to see.
      In the gym, I can stop running if I can’t be bothered any more, I can’t do that with a public run, people will mock me ( more so than they already do)
      Training starts today with my normal Tuesday lifting session but I’ll be spending a lot more time doing treadings of the mill variety in my cardio session tomorrow. If updates here suddenly stop, you’ll know what happened.

      No; you can’t have my stuff

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Aug 04

Fuck you metabolism

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Weigh in day

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Today is an interesting update then. Last week, I avoided a bullet by not gaining anything despite a week of horrendous food and no exercise. I went pedal to the metal this week to make up: I put in about 4 hours of weightlifting, 2 hours cardio and ate well within my points. So with all that extra work, what is the result? I gained half a bloody pound! I have come to the conclusion that my body is a malicious cunt with a dodgy sense of humour (much like me then). I will get my revenge by upping some weights/speeds at the gym next week. Yeah, deal with that circulatory system!

I’ve been doing pretty well overall with dieting, my losses have been coming in pretty consistently most weeks and gains have been rare, but much like the Italian job I’ve been teetering on the edge of 15 stone for weeks now. Obviously the van is my body and the gold is fat and the cliff is… Actually it ‘s not like the Italian Job at all, although that was a great film. Last film Noel Coward did before he died you know? I think I’ve got sidetracked here though now.

So, back to the topic at hand. I believe this is the infamous plateau that everyone speaks of. First time this has happened to me (If I had a pound and all that). There’s many theories on what to do in this situation; refeeding, upping water intake, increasing exercise, sticking fruit up your bum (I might have made up that last one just as an excuse to get rid of a pineapple I didn’t know what to do with) but I’m actually going to go with the “do nothing and hope it goes away” tactic. I figure if it works on velociraptors then it’ll work with fat deposits. I didn’t gain this weight in a short space of time, so expecting to lose it in a short space of time is optimistic. I’ve been doing this now for over a year and I’ve come a long way so that’s good. One poor month in the context of a good year isn’t too bad and there’s enough good to come from my overall journey to make a small trip on a paving slab a minor inconvenience rather than a full on ankle shattering, injury-lawyers4U-esque disaster.

It hasn’t all been bad either; I ran a 12 minute mile twice this week so my general fitness is coming on leaps and bounds. When I started all this, I was out of breath walking the 5 minutes to Co-Op. More on all that later in the week though.

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Jul 28

When Saturday Comes

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Weigh in day

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It’s Saturday, and Saturday is my weigh-in day, that that’s what today’s post is all about.

You’ll know from yesterday’s post that I had a bad week. I posted mainly about one day, but over the course of last week I think there was only one day when I was within my weekly Weight Watchers points.  I had fast food multiple times and I had cake on at least three days. I think, with screwing up quite early in the week, I couldn’t keep the motivation for the rest of it and went on an Uber-binge. The thinking was essentially that if I’m going to go back to healthy eating next week, what’s the point of bothering now when I’ve already failed. It’s kind of like being 3-0 down at half time: you already know your fate so your motivation goes down even further. I haven’t been to the gym either as Ms Dom hasn’t been well so I’ve not wanted to leave her  alone too much.

So how bad was it today then? Actually, I’m not sure how, but it’s not bad at all. I’m 15st ½lb. This time last week, I was 15st ½lb. I have somehow managed to not put on any weight at all. I can’t really explain how as really, I should have gained. Still, I’ll take it! This week being better, I should be in the 14s by next weigh in.

To put everything in context here, I started losing weight in May 2011 with a starting weight of 18st7. I started Weight Watchers in Feb 2012 and at that point I was 17st3. So this means that since starting, I’ve lost 48½lbs, which equates to 18.9% of my body weight! A few more pounds and I can brand myself with one of those shiny stickers that says “now with 20% less fat”. Considering how far I’ve come, I think I can allow myself a slip up week. I’ve gone from Class 2 Obese, through Class 1 Obese, to “Overweight” so things are looking up and apparently my metabolism is even more determined than I am to get me to “healthy weight” so that’s handy.

So overall, my first week recording publicly has gone well, albeit not exceptionally I’m drawing a line in the sand here and returning to how things were previously.  I’m back in the gym on Monday afternoon and I’m back to eating within my allotted points again from today. I’ll see you all shortly in the 14s.

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Jul 27

An emotive subject

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psychology

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It’s weigh in day tomorrow. So why then have I just washed down a perfectly healthy 6″ veggie sub with a Shake-away milkshake worth about 27 propoints? Actually, that’s a rhetorical question, don’t try to answer it, that would be a pointless exercise.

See, the above is the kind of question I’ve asked myself a lot over the years. Self sabotage is a great skill of mine and probably the skill I’m best at unless you count putting two Pringles in my mouth perpendicularly and making Pingu noises but the jury is still out on whether that constitutes a skill.

I was first diagnosed with depression aged 18. The symptoms had been there for a while but teenagers are always moody so who would have noticed the difference? I’d made 2 (really lacklustre and terribly unsuccessful) suicide attempts before I first voted (something which usually elicits a similar of emotions as the results come in funnily enough) and I was taking Diazepam and Cipramil before I took my A-levels. I’d been living in supported accommodation for about 6 months at this point, having already spent about 7 months in a homeless hostel for young people. I wish I could pin all my problems on that but I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t the way I am. Yeah, I had a few problems, but there was no history of abuse or dependency problems, no broken family unit or worse. Of all the kids in my hostel, my life was by far and away the most normal. Depression doesn’t work like that, it doesn’t need a reason any more than the common cold does.

I’m going to interject here and say that as this is the first post I’m making, you’d be forgiven for assuming this is going to be a blog about depression; it’s not though. The central theme to this blog, aside of course from the ramblings of a dreaded buffoon, is weight loss, health & fitness. The reason for starting here is to set some scenery and explain a moment in time. Every story has a scenic back drop and this is mine. If I explain a little about where I’ve come from, it might help to explain why I’m about to start a blog the day before what I’m expecting to be a fairly disappointing weigh in.

Fast forward to now, it been a decade and I’ve learnt to live with it since then, to the point where I’ve tended to forget about it and it’s not a major factor in my life. I’m certainly not a severe case by any means and I’m not talking about it here to make anyone feel sorry for me, it’s more because I can’t afford a therapist any more. I’ve not taken antidepressants in about 7 years and I haven’t had psychotherapy for about 3. Maybe that’s wise, maybe not, that’s still up for debate, but it’s not the point I’m trying to make, the point is that it’s not a debilitating thing, it’s just a thing. In the last week, for various reasons I don’t particularly understand, it’s become more difficult than usual to manage.

So this week then, it’s safe to say I haven’t eaten perfectly. It doesn’t help when there’s a charity cake sale at work. I can tell myself that I’m doing good things for St Luke’s so it’s all OK. So when I have a bad morning at work and wolf down 2 pieces of chocolate cake and a muffin, I can feel all warm and fuzzy inside because I’ve done something for charity. God knows it’s the only way I do feel better. You’d think, after years of doing it, that I’d have learnt that eating doesn’t actually make me any happier. I don’t even really believe it will. I remind myself “Dom, you do realise that you’ve eaten shit to make yourself feel better a thousand times and it’s never made you feel better” and then I tell myself “yeah, but… oh fuck you I want cake”. Then I shut the voices in my head up by drowning the little cunts in buttercream. It still doesn’t help. Somehow, this leads to me deciding that clearly the problem this time is I haven’t eaten enough crappy food so I then nip into Burger king of KFC at lunch time. Of course, by this point, I feel bad because I’ve now gone over my weeklies as well as my dailies. This leads to a point of “you know what? Sod it, I’ve already screwed up, I’m going to eat every piece of food I see!” and then I feel worse because I’ve overeaten again and, well, you get the idea. Essentially, there are points where eating becomes a massive vicious cycle from which there is no escape.

Emotional eating is normally a female thing I appreciate; as a male I’m supposed to be more pragmatic and logical. It has always been one of my weaknesses though. I’ve done it a reasonable amount over the years. I used to smoke, that gave me another outlet, but I’d rather contract Diabetes than Emphysema so I figure best not go back down that road again. It’s not something I’m going to try and explain from a point of view of science and logic because it’s not somethign that conforms to logic. It’s, as far as I can tell, entirely psychosomatic. It’s very much like picking up a hammer and nails, thinking “you know what? If I nail my genitals to this tree, it’s probably not going to make me feel better, it never really has before” and then nailing your old chap to a tree anyway. Well, less messy, but I like that simile so it will remain.

So that’s a little insight into my emotional struggle with food. I will aim to make future posts a bit more cheerful, but in the meantime, here is a YouTube video with a kitten in it to redress the balance for this one:

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