KungfuMonkeySlayer

OMG what a day, 26 miles of pure Brighton enjoyment (well kinda)

On Sunday 18th April 2010, I took part in the first Brighton Marathon.

Race Preparation

I ate a tonne of pasta the night before, then woke up at 6am to eat my pre-race breakfast (which due to the fact that I often comment about dieting etc I will list out here) – my breakfast was .. Red Pepper Omlette (made with 2 eggs) with Red Onion a sprinkle of cheese, two slices of toast (brown wholemeal bread) and a glass of juice.

I have to say given that I’ve never really prepared for any pre run (the night before), especially by eating maybe twice the amount of pasta I would usually eat the day before and waking up 3 hours before the event to eat (to give time to digest your food) really did give me a nice steady flow of energy.

Once at the event I ate a banana an hour before and drank 500ml of fluids and I have to say that at no point during the race did I ever think i was low on energy. (I took the opportunity to take water and sports drink at every occasion) and also took two gel packs, which I took at 19 Miles, and 23.

Enough about breakfast! The Brighton atmosphere was amazing, it felt great having the streets of Brighton for us to run on, traffic free. The route covered lots of ground and the weather couldn’t have been better. (no mega winds and cloud free sunny day). Special thanks to everyone at the start, the people who supported on St James’s street and kemp town, the supporters at Ovingdean, especially the supporters at New Church Road – it was like a party there! and the people who came to the finish – it made it a really amazing day. Oh and lets not forget the organisers and the volunteers – thank you for making it happen.

The route and the journey

Given that only 2 weeks ago I had a knee injury I was quite wary at how I would hold up. Originally I wanted a 3′30 – 4h time, but given some concerns I thought I’d start off with the 4h pacer, who I happened to know – I followed that for the first couple of miles, then concluded it was actually a bit slow and my regular pace was infact faster, so shortly after North street I decided I’d break free and keep going on the knowledge that if I started to fail I would be passed by the pacer and I’d know that I was slowing down. So off I ran, I thought the small hill of St James’s street might challenge me but it didn’t really – I think running at an incline of “7 out of 10″ for most of my indoor training probably helped there, the run down to the seafront was good too – the course narrowed a bit and it was a little bit annoying having people tire and not having sufficient space to overtake (leaving you waiting for a slot to overtake). But thats all part of a race!

Then we ran down to St Dunstens and left to the school which slightly surprised me as I hadn’t realised quite how far away from St Dunstens it was, but none the less I passed it ok. Then back up hill towards Rottingdean and then back along the coast toward Brighton again. The pace was good, back to my norm, and I clocked an okay 1′58 odd time at the half marathon point. (which considering I had a slower than normal start was pretty good). I felt pretty good probably until the 20-21 mile mark, where my knee then suddently started to give way a bit, so hoping I could ignore it I tried to run keeping my leg quite rigid, which probably made me suffer afterwards. That kept me going until the power station (which caught me by surprise as I expected to do a 180 turn, instead of going right into the power station grounds). Managed to more or less keep going out of shoreham, and then just around the lagoon felt a massive urge to stop (argh!).

Not to be dettered, you can’t do 24 miles and then give up – i did my fastest power walk I could do and walked to the end. Thanks to all the support who cheered my name, “keep running”, or “c’mon there’s only 2 miles left you can do it”, it was all positive, I tried so many times to run as its quicker than walking but it just hurt and made me feel like I was about to collapse, so I carried on walking until the finish, where I gave a tiny burst of hobble mixed with a jog for the final 20 metres or so!

It felt great to finish.

It wouldn’t be right without a few grumbles!

My only grumble is with the timing systems, according to the web site on the day and the iphone app, my time (chip) was 3h59′36, however now ( a day later ) the web site its 4′01′xx why is that?? bit annoying, I quite liked the sub 4h time and have screen shotted the iphone app. Its a little annoying when you’ve said what your time is, to then go back and say er, actually it wasn’t !

Anyway a great day, and I’m pretty stiff from it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kungfumonkeyslayer/sets/72157623883328566

If you read this and would like to donate to the NSPCC please visit my just giving page http://www.justgiving.com/James-Lever-Brighton-Marathon-18-Apr-2010

ok despite all the dieting, I have a weakness for cheesecake. So I’m planning to make this one. http://www.joyofbaking.com/Cheesecake.html

A thin portion is all you need, hopefully you’ll be inviting other people to finish it off !

Given my previous lunch post I thought I’d post up my revised lunch menu! I decided to revisit the muller products to complement the sushi and I think this is a winning combination, low fat, but perhaps a little high in sugar.

Tesco Salmon Snack (No Raw Fish) – £1

comprising of; 1 Smoked Salmon, cucumber, red peper and wasabi mayonnaise californian roll with a white sesame seed coating, 1 smoked salmon, cucumber and chilli sauce californian roll with a black sesame seed coating, 2 cucumber hosomakis, 1 smoked salmon hosomaki and 1 bottle of soy sauce.

Calories: 165 kcals
Sugar: 4.7g (5%)
Fat: 2.9g (4%)
Saturates: 0.4g (2%)
Salt 1.1g (18%)

Muller Light Yoghurt, Strawberry Flavour – 54p

Calories: 102 kcals
Fat: 0.2g
Saturates: 0.2g
Sugar: 14.0g

Exciting huh! Tomorrow I might have Cherry Flavour!

its been a while since I wrote anything, so I thought you might like to know what I had for lunch!

I mostly eat sushi as its really low in fat, so there’s no surprise to find that today I also ate sushi however I ate a slightly larger box;

Tesco Salmon & Vegetable Sushi (no raw fish), comprising of 1 Smoked Salmon with cucumber and red pepper californian roll with a white sesame seed coating, 1 smoked salmon cucumber and chilli sause californian roll with a black sesame seed coating, 2 cucumber hosomakis, 2 red pepper hosomakis, 2 yellow pepper hosomakis and 1 bottle of soy sauce.

Calories: 208
Sugar: 9.2g (10%) – I think mostly in the soy sauce.
Fat: 2.8g
Saturates: 0.4g
Salt: 1.3g (22%) – i’m assuming this is mostly the soy sauce too.

And followed by a Muller Rice (Strawberry flavour)

Calories: 218
Sugar: 26.4g
Fat: 4.4g
Saturates: 2.6g

Conclusion: I will probably stop eating Muller rice for lunch as upon reading this, I hadn’t noticed that Muller Rice list their nutritional values per 100g and the yoghurt is 200g so there I am  thinking its 109 calories and nicely within my small low-calorie, low fat lunch food group but in fact its 218, the calories isn’t really the issue its the sugar (30% of my rda) and fat (6-7% of my rda) and saturated fat (14% of rda) which is higher than I wanted (I am trying to restrict my fat and saturated fat specifically because I’m trying to loose the fat around my waist).

I guess the solution is to eat more salad, but I really find it really un-interesting and being lazy on the food front I need to be able to buy it rather than make it! And if you’ve ever looked at pre-packaged salads they’re usually laced in mayo and not the fat free snack you might expect.

I’ve realised that because I’m just writing things in this blog as I think about them, I haven’t really written about how my fight with weight came about.

Before

Taking Part in the Brighton Marathon

after

So starting from the beginning;

I was overweight as a child, not massively but I was slightly taunted by it – I used to make up excuses for not doing PE and somehow managed to pretty much avoid PE entirely for a good couple of years. Thinking about it I shouldn’t have let my parents write me notes but they must have felt I really didn’t want to do it. My mum walked everywhere so we walked with her so I wasn’t massively overweight but I definately had a roundness to me!

By the time I reached college I was slimmer, mostly due to the fact that I walked to college and I didn’t eat quite so much as I would otherwise have done.

But I was a fairly contented person who came in a 12.5 st or so, 34″ waist and 5ft11 in height – fairly normal.

During university I went through a gym phase where I lost weight and was 11st and had a 30″ waist. I mostly excercised through excess cardio work, not really being a gym and weights guy I avoided anything too muscular! anyway 6 months later I didn’t manage to keep it up and quickly returned to 12.5st.

Placement year and thereafter – I think my weight gain started when I started working, having more money meant I could eat out and consequently i did and it wasn’t long before eating out was my normal portion and I was looming into the 36″ waist area.

Year on Year I didn’t entirely realise but I was slowly gaining and it was only recently that I realised quite how large I’d got – I was more or less 18 stone although for some reason I didn’t think i was massively overweight. I’d sometimes get depressed at how I felt and wish I was thinner but I couldn’t entirely change my life style to loose any more.

Last year, I was looking at pictures and realised that I really was overweight so I decided that I was going to try to do something about it – so I restricted take aways to no more than 1 per week and attempted to curb on my eating. I didn’t eat really bad things, I just ate too much. So slowly and gradually I started to excercise more often and curbed by eating. I used wii fit to record my activities and it was quite motivating to watch the graph slowly get lower – or to be more specific if it went up.

I went from 18st to 14st in 6-9 months, and was feeling good, but wanting to look better for my wedding so tried hypoxi and other methods. But with the support of a personal trainer and an increase in excercise I’m now 12st5, a 31″ waist and aiming for a flatter belly (who wouldn’t!).

So, if anyone is reading this who is overweight I’d definately recommend looking at your diet, considering your portion size (including breakfast – i often managed to eat 300g of museli which was way more than the 50-75g portion i should have), and considering how much treats your consuming (including achohol). Plan out what your eating and plan when your eating it, and try to get active once, twice, or three times a week. For me running worked well, but cycling, swimming or just a walk is all steps to loosing weight. Its surprising what you can achieve, just try to aim for small steps – it worked for me and I’m sure it can work for you.

ok, more waffling about fitness tips;

Acai, right i’ve been taking acai tablets and i have to say other than making me a little more regular this hasn’t made me lose any weight – so for everyone who’s thinking this is going to be a wonder drug i think your mistaken.

Water, i personally think Water is the most effective source of weight loss (assuming your overweight due to over eating) – our bodies are made up of water, we need water for our own chemical reactions and its a catalyst, when we’re dehydrated our bodies dont work properly.  If we’re dehydrated we think we’re hungry, and we eat. But we dont need it – so the next time your hungry drink a glass of water, wait 5 minutes and then really think if you actually are hungry, for me quite often I’m not.

Chew your food, right an obvious fact, but i often eat too quickly and as a result I dont chew my food properly and I over eat because I dont realise I’ve already eaten enough. So I try to eat slower to be more concious, and I couldn’t recommend any more highly to anyone wanting to loose weight.

Dont starve yourself, if you starve yourself your metabolism slows down, and as such when you next eat your body will store its food rather than use it.

Eat the right amount of the right types of food, you should be eating 5 portions of fruit & veg a day, and pretty much equal amounts of carbohydrate (potatoe/pasta/rice/etc), protein (fish/meat), and fat (good fats i.e. not saturated fats), but you can easily make the wrong choices!

Dont consume too much sugar, Sugar is a simple carbohydrate its quickly absorbed but also quickly is consumed, you can easily become dependant on the sugar so you get high and low sugar levels – the easiest way to control this is to avoid simple carbohydrates (sugar) and stick to complex ones (pasta/cereals), this way you get a slower release of energy which keeps you stable and you dont have cravings when you hit the lows. So stick to diet drinks, or water, and try to cut out sugar as much as possible.

I’m currently trying to continue motivating myself to try to exercise more, especially as I’m running for stroke.org.uk in the Great South Run in a month.  So (with Anne’s help) I’m trying to run more and trying to run longer distances.

I used to always run along the sea front because it was flat and a long straight, so once you’ve gone 2.5k you have to turn around and go back to get back home.  But since running in hove park, I have to say I think its more challenging having a round route.

Hove park is approximately 1.8 – 1.9km, so my typical 5k run is two and a half circuits (it just happens to be fortunate that hove park has paths which cross it so a half circuit is simple).

I always thought running by the sea was one of the things which attracted me to sea side living, but running around Hove park is more of a challenge. I can’t decide whether its the slight gradient and the windy course or if its just somewhere different.

Anyway I ran 10k in 51 minutes which I think is pretty good, but i definately feel dead after 5k, but given that my norm on 5k is 24 minutes, 51 for 10k isn’t bad.

During my Hypoxi Sessions I met up with Johnny a personal trainer, he was involved in rigging me up to the machine and talking me through the diets etc. After the Hypoxi I agreed to have two sessions a week for a month with Johnny and since then I’ve never looked back.

I became more energetic, had more motion and generally felt a lot fitter – I’ve paid for gym memberships before and subsequently not gone through lack of progress or motivation but this is personal – if you dont go your letting yourself down and your trainer down and that for me was enough to stick at it.

I would definately recommend that a professional personal relationship to training has to be the most effective way of weight loss i have ever encountered

As someone who has paid quite a lot of money to basically wear a wetsuit for 40 minutes every other day for a month whilst walking on a treadmill at your optimal weight loss zone, I should know whether its worth the money.

I have to say “I think so”, I think i was actually too overweight to properly do it, so it didn’t exactly tone me up but it did re-shape me and it gave me the push to change my diet, and where I can’t say for sure that the wetsuit targed the fat loss at my tummy I think it did contribute to my weight loss programme.

During the hypoxi sessions you must only eat carbs before, and protein afterwards, so it was basically museli first, and chicken salad afterwards for a month, but it paid off and I am considering doing it again to see if I can get the (catalogue model) tummy i’d like to have.

My top tips;

a) drink plenty of liquid (preferably water), for every coffee drink at least the same quantity again in water. You might pee at lot, but you will feel less hungry.

note; too much coffee messes up your bodies ability to know when your hungry, it delays it then it makes you more hungry than you should have been, which is likely to cause you to have a massive urge to eat something huge – consider drinking tea or better still green tea or red bush tea

b) consider what your eating and whether you really want/need to be eating it. I decided that bread contained way too much processed stuff and so I made a concious effort to avoid it, one slice of bread contains 90kcals, which when you consider a sandwich involves at least two, makes it quite high. Also butter and mayo, okay they make it taste nicer but do they really? they mask flavours. You dont need to add butter or margarine choose what you put in your sandwich – tomatoe, cucumber or salad makes bread less dry and all of these vegetables are low-calorie and definately low fat.

A typical sandwich contains 30g of fat, thats 1/3 of your fat allowance for the day, considering your dinner might contain much more than a sandwich especially if it contains red meats then you’re already going to be storing the fat before you’ve done any excercise.

I’ve changed my diet from eating meal deals (which persuade you to buy things for the added value) and bread based products to choosing what I eat. I’m now happily eating Sushi for lunch which works for me and I have a portion of fruit or sometimes two – the sushi is low in fat and calories (typically about 225kcals, 2g fat) and the pinapple chunks (80kcals, 2g fat) gives me sufficient sugar boost to keep me going through the day.

Check the labels, crisps, and sausage rolls, scotch eggs, baked products are poor choices if you really want to lose weight.

c) eat when you feel hungry – dont starve yourself

d) avoid any type of high sugar drinks, these are just going to mess with your metabolism and give you sugar highs and lows – it takes a while to switch off sugar based drinks but when your off it you’ll realise what affect the sugar does to you.

e) natural sugars are better than processed ones, so eat your 5 a day and dont worry about the sugars in fruit, the sugar doesn’t typically damage your teeth either as its broken down differently.

f) try to do 1 hour of excercise 3 times a week, a walk, a run, a cycle, lift some weights, get out enjoy the outdoors.

g) Oh, almost forgot – eat breakfast, but not the sugary kind (no sugarpuffs), cereals such as muesli or bran flakes are good choices as they are complex carbs (i.e. those which break down slowly keeping you from feeling hungry).

My routine has evolved into the following;

7.30 wake up, have 100-150g of muesli, with skimmed milk
by 12 I’m hungry, sometimes 11.30, so i pop to my local tesco, and buy a £2 box of sushi, and a £1.40 box of pinapple, and sometimes an apple or banana. I then eat the sushi and the pinapple and am often full until 3-4pm, then i eat the apple or banana which tides me over until 5.30. At 5.30-6pm I head home and then cook something, and then if I’m hungry I’ll eat an apple, or occasionally a nutty bar. By 8pm however I try to stop eating as otherwise its likely to just store up and prevent me from sleeping properly.

If you feel hungry you have to try to work out whether you really are – it surprised me that most of the time I thought i was hungry I was actually thursty, so now when I think i’m hungry I’ll often drink a glass of water then wait 5 minutes, if at the end of it i’m still hungry I’m either really bored (which makes me hungry) or I’m actually hungry!

Given that i’ve been trying and succeeding on my goal to loose weight I thought i’d start to talk about what i’ve done whether or not it was successful and whats going through my mind right now.

I have good days and bad days and i definately dont fit in to the normal routine of day to day life – i work too much, never make time to plan meals properly and as a rule I probably dont manage to cut back as much as I could do, but at the end of the day I like food and I dont particularily like eating leaves!