Archive for the 'Excercise' Category

Needing to Move More!

Published
by
thetoad
on 14 April 2008
in Dieting, Excercise and Losing Weight
. 0 Comments

I haven’t been posting for the last couple of days. The weekend days are always tough for me to sit and write, but last week I was feeling really down and despondent about life. My motivation to do things and fill my day productively just went out of the window.

I haven’t got a proper routine established at the moment, so I have been doing very little exercise. Earlier posts will reveal that I was actively training for the 5km Race for Life that I have entered. This has fizzled out and I haven’t been out for a run in nearly two weeks. The time when my 5km training began to dwindle was finding out about the effects of the Depo Provera injection on my weight. I was running most days, believing that I would firm up and get skinny and light. After six weeks or so, giving it a proper chance to start showing some positive effects on the scales, I actually ended up slightly heavier, although my fitness had improved. There’s no way I was running enough to build up any sort of muscle weight in that time and the whole experience of consistently running and not getting any results has really put me off.

I am not a natural runner, I never have been. But when I am lighter and fitter, going for a run is enjoyable and brilliant way to keep the pounds off and get some fresh air and exercise.

I now know that my lack of results on the scales despite my running is due to the injection playing havoc with my weight. TuT and I have basically worked out that it fools the body into thinking it is pregnant and hence predisposed to put the weight on. There’s people out there that say it just increases your appetite and that’s why you put on weight, well, that may be true for some people, but not for me. Through tracking my weight watchers points, I am probably eating more now, than I was previously. That’s how little I was eating – that Weight Watchers points allowance of food is more food than I am used to eating. So the increase in appetite theory of the weight gain is not something I agree with in my case.

The injection would have been due this Wednesday 16th April, you can have the injection a week either side of it, so as of a week on Wednesday I am into the detox zone I feel. I am not going to change what I am doing now with regards to the eating plan I am following I am just going to keep going as I am – I am within my points allowance easily most days and eating pretty healthily (hence the recipes for the soups I made last week). I just hope that once the effects start to wear off and my body adjusts and detoxes off the injection that the pounds will disappear at a better and more consistent speed.

In the meantime, I do realise that I need to move my butt more than what I have been doing in the last couple of weeks. I got an email from a friend I haven’t heard from in a while and she said

“are you still doing loads of exercise….I bet you’re really fit now”

This made me remember that when I first moved to the coast I was doing a lot of exercise, and on the whole enjoying it, and just because it didn’t show on the scales doesn’t mean that it won’t show on my body.

I have been reading sara’s blog www.sanafit.blogspot.com and she has just completed a 12 week training programme and lost 3lbs. You may think, as I was, that 3lbs is not much, but the “before and after” pictures speak for themselves and the 3lbs difference is really noticeable on her body and she looks very good – I would love to have the fit, toned and slim body that she is modelling on her blog pages today.

So this week I plan to get myself booked into some classes at the gym; I bought a new swimming costume on Saturday so I have no excuse not to get some lengths done in the pool, and I am just going to focus on the inch loss and toning my body up whilst getting super fit, as opposed to what the scales say.

Non-Scale Victories

Published
by
thetoad
on 4 April 2008
in Dieting, Excercise, Food and Losing Weight
. 1 Comment

In the business of losing weight I think that sometimes you don’t feel like you’re winning unless the scales show a reduction in number. All the effort you put in can feel, frustratingly, a waste of time and in finding out at your weigh in you have stayed the same or put on some weight everything good that you did that week disappears out of your mind and we only focus on the negative and bad things we did previous to the weigh in. I am guilty of this, but this week my BFF Gemma, pointed out to me something called “a non scale victory” and I just thought that was the most fantastic concept.

Basically a non scale victory could be resisting a pudding when you’re out for a meal and feeling good about it rather than deprived because it’s a non scale victory! Or going for run or walk when the weather conditions are adverse.

I have found that whilst I am still under the effects of the depo injection and every pound I manage to lose takes a large amount of effort, that it is important to focus on all the small changes that I am making each day rather than what the scales say. Then when the effects of the injection finally wear off, I won’t have to particularly change my dieting behaviour to lose weight as I will already have all my good habits and exercise routine established.

This week I am focusing on drinking lots of water. Even though there was an article in the newspaper and it was on the radio that a new study has found that drinking lots of water has no more benefits than just drinking lots of any liquid, surely water is better than drinking litres of caffeine containing coffee! They’ll probably change their minds next week and there will be another study out saying it is of benefit.

The stand in leader at Weight Watchers on Tuesday was very very slim – the difference in seeing her and her before picture was astounding, one of the most dramatic leader “before and after” pictures I have seen. Looking at her, you would have thought maybe she’d lost a stone or something to get to goal. So if someone so slim that has achieved such a good loss and maintained it for 18 years, as she had, tells me to drink more water I am going to listen! So a daily non scale victory is drinking all of my 2 litres of water that I filter and pour into a bottle each morning. I have already had a pint of water and have yet to have a coffee!

My non-scale victory last night was making THE DELIA CURRY! Yesterday morning my special spices arrived to much excitement and glee. I got the tandoori masala blend from www.seasonedpioneers.co.uk and was so very impressed with the speed at which my spices arrived – I only ordered them Tuesday morning! I needed a few other ingredients which I picked up at lunch time, but the curry is very simple in that you don’t need lots of things to create it. The magic lies in the special seasoned pioneers spices!
So basically you brown your chicken – I used fry light, not the specified groundnut oil, I don’t think you can tell the difference and it does have an impact on your points! Take the browned chicken out of the pan. Using a mini-chopper, or my case, the chopper attachment to my stick blender, chop up an onion, 2 cloves garlic and some ‘Very Lazy Ginger’ from EPC. Blitz the mixture then adding more spray oil, fry the onion mixture gently for five minutes. Then stir in 4 teaspoons of the tandoori masala spice into the onion mixture for a minute or so, return the chicken to the pan, stir around to combine, then add a 200ml tub of half fat crème fraiche. Simmer gently with the lid on – I kept stirring as I was slightly concerned it might stick as it made a very thick sauce – for 15 minutes and that is it! It works out at 7.5 points a portion and makes enough for two!

Think Delia and her hubby like hot curries as the resulting gorgeous curry was very warm – ok for me as I like hotter curries, but TuT doesn’t like things too hot, so next time I make it, I will use 3 teaspoons of the spiced masala instead of four. A great success and makes you feel quite proud when you produce an authentic tasting curry without having used a jar!

So I ended the day well within my points even though I’d had a curry for tea and that made me happy. Another non scale victory scored!

Diet Starts On Monday!

Published
by
thetoad
on 31 March 2008
in Dieting, Excercise, Losing Weight and Mental Health
. 0 Comments

So here we are on a Monday and I always think to myself, right! – the diet starts today, we are going to change all the bad habits, eat healthily and lose some weight. This will be the week that changes my dieting lifestyle and will crack the weight loss once and for all. This mentality usually means that on a Sunday I eat a bit more than I should – “diet starts tomorrow” – so it is ok to eat a bit more than I should as I’ll be reining it all in on Monday and being super healthy and super disciplined.

I wouldn’t say since last week’s weigh in I have done anything that deserves a weight loss. For starters, last Monday was Easter Monday and TuT was off work and we did bank holiday stuff like having a homemade chicken and mushroom pie for lunch (small piece of pastry – 5 points – argh!) and going to the cinema, and me not doing any exercise. Tuesday’s weigh in revealed the pound loss – quite disappointing, but it had been the Easter weekend; although mine was entirely chocolate egg free! After Tuesday’s weigh in I decided to be good, but relaxed a bit in myself Tuesday night, knowing weigh in was not for another week and enjoyed a high pointed curry for tea and a couple of wineages in the evening, and did no formal exercise during the day.

Wednesday and we had TuT’s brother and his girlfriend come to stay for the night. The girlfriend arrived with chocolate covered treats and we all went out for a meal which included drinking pints of Stella and lime (!!) and I went over my points for that day. Thursday I was still recovering from my borderline day of illness and our evening meal turned out to be a mixture of convenience foods – savoury rice, pasta and sauce, chicken sticks etc. I was not well enough to cook, we just needed something to go in our tummies for tea that wouldn’t cause a lot of effort or time in the kitchen. It fitted into the points plan – just, but wasn’t the best.

Then Friday comes and we always have a take away, and I treated myself to a gorgeous sandwich from the special sandwich deli shop over the road from us for my lunch. I think the ciabatta bread alone worked out to five points without the filling (coronation chicken – yummy!) and then we had take away pizza for tea.

The borderline mentally unwell days meant I did no exercise all week except for a bit of walking about. I have been sticking to my points over the weekend, just about. But at the higher end of the scale. So I am drawing a line in the sand, I can’t change the fact I was mentally unwell last week and so did not eat so well or do any exercise, it is in the past and I am focusing on the present and what I can do to change things NOW.

So I am closing here for now – it is Monday – Diet Starts TODAY – so I am going out on my bike for a 10km cycle workout, with my Garmin GPS watch so I know how far I have cycled and what work I have done when I upload my cycle ride stats to the computer.

“Good Luck Darling!” – Upon My Running

Published
by
thetoad
on 19 March 2008
in Excercise
. 0 Comments

I am just not long in from my run. I can’t say that I was totally in the mood to go this morning, I haven’t been out since Sunday. I know that’s only two days off pounding the coastal path, but I am only in my third week of training and at this tentative stage, mornings spent watching television in my pyjamas and reading library books and magazines are not a so distant memory. This morning the temptation was there to do just that; but after a bit of persuading from The Toad undergoing Training (fiancé TuT) via msn messenger, I was out the door.

I only intended to do 4km. I am training for the 5km Race For Life. My race takes place on 20th July, so at this stage I still have a good couple of months to train, the main thing at this point is that I am running four times a week, no matter what the distance or time. I am lucky that last year TuT treated me to a Garmin GPS training watch, so I know exactly how many kilometres I have run. Today when I hit 2km, the point where I was going to turn around and come back, I thought I’d carry on for the other 0.5km, that on completion of the run would mean I’d done 5km instead of 4km. I did 5km on Sunday and I was feeling ok at 2km, so I carried on to 2.5km and then turned around and ran back.

There I was approaching the 5km mark, Kasabian’s ‘Club Foot’ was beating through my veins via my ipod – “…you’re messin’ with the enemy” I sneered along as I summoned my body to a sprint finish. At which point a crazy red coated old lady with matching pillar box red lip stick moved out of my way, but as I ran past she touched my arm in the way that only the older generation ladies can and said:

“Good luck darling!”

I’d hit my 5km, but after the words of encouragement and kindness I felt I owed it to her to keep going. So I ran the last bit to the road crossing and then stopped my watch having done a little over the 5km I intended to.

I felt brilliant walking back home and wasn’t even disappointed when I plugged the Garmin training watch into the computer to see that I was slightly slower on average than my run on Sunday and didn’t hit my top speed. I was just glad I’d got back in the saddle after yesterday and was back on track with my running training.

I am quite proud of how quickly my running fitness is improving. I started out in February just running a mile – 1.6km, which I was able to jog all of, but I didn’t enjoy it and it was hard to keep a jogging pace up for the duration. Then a little over two weeks ago, just into March, I picked up a health and fitness magazine that came with a free water bottle (in pink as well!) and featured a beginners running programme. This programme means you run further in the beginning stages than just a mile, but you have walk breaks. This seems to be improving my running as it gives me the confidence to run further as you have the security of having walk breaks.

After a week and a half of following the run/walk programme I decided to tackle the distance of 5km to see how I managed it and I did it in just over 40minutes. I didn’t die of exhaustion and was pleased. Until the next day when I got out of bed and was stiff as a board! Walking hurt!

By the following Friday I tackled the 5km distance again, improved on my time and better than that, on the Saturday I didn’t suffer any stiffness in my legs, so on the Sunday, taking Saturday as a rest day, I went out and did 5km again.

So as the lady in red said – “Good Luck Darling!” – I just need to keep my training up and enjoy seeing myself improve.

Watch this space…..