Day 58

Was conscious of the ankle last night so after 3 very gentle sets of jump rope I subbed the 4th set out for 4 mins of steady 20 metre shuttle runs. I then did day 58 exercises as there were no legs in it, so will do day 57 tonight instead.

Lunch below. I'm becoming accustomed to pre-cooked cold veg, most of which I would probably have turned my nose up at pre-FIYL. Reheating them in a microwave invariably ends in disaster. Quite the nasal mustard burn I got from this monstrosity!

P.S. I had two!

Day 56

Messed up a bit on Saturday night. Was out for a birthday dinner with a group of Debs' friends, most of whom I hadn't met before so didn't want to come across as the awkward guy who ate nothing and didn't drink. I did explain the program to a few interested sets of ears during the night though. People (not just those on Saturday night) are generally pretty intrigued by all elements of what we're doing but often their verdict is, "sounds really good, but I couldn't do the diet" or "I couldn't do it for that long". It's amazing how little faith people have in their own resolve!
Relatively guilt free about Saturday anyway. Everything else went to plan at the weekend, got some good road k's in too, and when a dinner like that has been in the diary for a while it’s about fitting it in. All part of the learning curve.

Upcoming events that may lead me to stray from the path are :-
1) Good Friday (Day 66) - golf followed by a night out in St Andrews
2) A friends wedding (Day 74) - I only cracked the nod for the evening reception so it should just be a glass of wine or three.
Maybe I'll be able to dovetail Indulgence #3 with one of them, if there is such a thing on the horizon!

Played 5-a-side last night, great fun in the unseasonal early evening sun. Took a knock on the ankle that I iced before bed but have woken up pretty sore this morning. It's hopefully nothing more than a strain but I need to watch it.

And finally…
On Friday evening I was skipping in an empty studio at the gym. In the adjoining studio there was a spin class going on and as the door was open I was happy to skip along to the music and listen to the relatively inane ramblings of the instructor. As the session came to a close next door, the instructor screamed out for his class to give him one last ounce of effort - "Come on, keep working, you're building your calorie deficit, you can have another glass of wine and more to eat tonight".
Did I miss something, are we supposed to exercise just so we can instantly gratify our urge to gorge on crap?
Probably not a line Kevin uses to motivate his spin class.

Cheerio.

A back shot? Why not.

I thought i'd bash up a day 0 v day 50 back shot. Just cause.

Forgot to mention i did another 5k on Monday, 22 mins 15 seconds was a considerable improvement. Back to the rope on Tuesday and Wednesday then another run tonight, just the 3k as I was short on time but 12 mins 18 seconds left me suitably knackered. I remember when we were learning about why we skipped it was explained that it got us to just the right level of puffed out-ness required to burn fat and that doing runs that exhaust you causes us to burn fat and emergency muscle too. I hope i'm not burning too much hard-fought-for muscle but needs must, this half marathon wont run itself! (Wish i was running the full thing but i think it would be a bit irresponsible on a whim - know your limits, James!)

Just watching the John Bishop Sport Relief program about his cycle/row/triple marathon from Paris to London in 5 days. Quite remarkable.

Raise the bat (albeit sheepishly!)

That's the 50 up with a firm push down the ground for a comfy 2. Placed just wide of mid-off's outstretched arm i'm happy to acknowledge the milestone. It's a steadying stroke after a streaky boundary that dissected the slip cordon got me through the mid 40s but that's in the back of my mind now and the innings is getting rebuilt with aplomb. Only 40 left to win it, think I'm just going to grind it out, no more big shots!

Rose nice and early to prepare the days food. Well stocked fridge following a steam session last evening. I've got a new egg white to squeeze in after my workout from today too. Proteinalicious.

Day 49

Well, Friday night was great fun.
Saturday, naturally, was a write-off. Did my cardio via a very long walk, no exercises though.
Sunday was compliant until I attacked the peanut jar with my pinkie at about 9pm after I had a couple of bits of biltong what were brought back from South Africa as a present. WTF? I'm not even that mad about peanut butter.

Feel like I'm finally over it all today. It hasn't been a 4day hangover, the hangover was normal-ish. It's been getting back to somewhere that feels like I did when I was smashing out my exercises after work on Friday night that's taken 4 days.
Ah well, could blog on about it but like I said, Friday was great fun and what did I expect?
Haven't done my yoga assignment yet. Hmmmm.

Swee you later.

Went to buy jumpers today...

Size = small.
WHAT?

Sky rockets in flight, 5k delight.

Left the rope in cold storage last night and hit the treadmill for the first time since day 0 (first time in a lot longer than that actually!). I wasn't sure what to expect performance wise as I didn't know how effective skipping is as a preparation method. Turns out it's pretty good. I cruised through the first 4k before cranking up the speed for the last one and finishing with a 22:47. Really pleasing and fills me full of confidence for the impending Edinburgh half marathon at the end of May. Left me energised for the rest of my workout too so all in it was a really successful session and allowed me to put the previous evening's poor performance to bed.

On a less good note I dropped my iPhone on the tiled gym floor and smashed the face. Stang.

Day 44

New picture up. 12st 8lbs! Was aiming for 12 and a half by the end of the program so mixed thoughts about nearly being there already, don't want to be too skinny, hoping I can start rebuilding some muscle weight before too long. Once the sticky stuff's off anyway.
Was in London on Tuesday, difficult to comply when you rise at 05:00 and get home at 22:00, I did pretty well though as brought plenty of fruit with me. Turned away my aeroplane breakfast even, first time for everything, I'd normally have three of them given half a chance!
Struggled in the gym last night, didn't feel very strong. Maybe just tired.
Well done to my Chelsea though, great win, great entertainment.
Carefree!

Knees

Knees are still struggling with the pistol squats, frog hops and hockey steps. I'm going to revert to full sets of normal squats and lunges for the next few days.
Left knee is worse, think I jarred it when skipping, trying to do a triple or something stupid!
Golf tomorrow so going to skip the skipping. Looking forward to a day off the rope to be honest, will freshen me up for Monday and give a bit more rest to the knees.
Bicycle followed by the plank smarts a bit, doesn't it! :-)

He who bloggeth last, bloggeth the longest.

Been a bit slack on the blogging of late. This week it's felt a bridge too far to unfurl the laptop when the days activities have come to a close.

Last Friday (a week ago already!) I had a morale boosting moment at work. A colleague asked if the program had helped me lose any weight yet, so I showed him my back shots from day 0 and day 29 and the response was mild amazement. I don't actually have the back shots up anywhere, maybe later. To be honest they say more about the awful nick I was in on day 0 than anything else.

I went out for a steak at lunchtime on Saturday. I'd teed this up during the week and cleared it with my conscience in advance - i'd heard good things about the place too (The Sheep's Heid, Duddingston), so was thoroughly looking forward to it. It was to be only my second bit of cow since we started! Anyway, I'll excuse the reader from a wordy review and just say it was shit. Disappointment abound.

The rest of last weekend was very pleasant. On Sunday I went to Debbie's gym rather than my usual haunt and really enjoyed the change of scenery. These little changes to routine are going to be crucial as we delve further into our resolves over the coming weeks.

Food is going well, Steak aside. Breakfast vegetable intake is still a challenge, we're probably all experiencing that to an extent though and a bit bored of hearing about it now. One of the recent emails challenged us to try breakfast whole grains, this is a goal for next week, toast is too easy. For the first time since the glory days of the half portions in week 1 I've found myself actually feeling hungry in the evenings. This has been noticeable since we switched to the evening egg white diet. Part of that's psychological I think as I know I'm only going to get my egg whites and fruit, which actually always suffice, but it's been noticeable so I thought worth mentioning.

Other confessions apart from the steak. Debbie made sweet potato soup at the weekend - I had two espresso cups of it, eaten with a teaspoon! It has salt and butter in it (probably quite a lot of both), other than that it's just veg but it's ever so good so I caved.
I had a tremendously enjoyable glass of red wine on Saturday night as went out to see some of Debs family.
I don't think there were any more. Oh, what probably amounted to a handful of salty popcorn at the cinema last Friday (Safe House with Denzel, 6 out of 10).

Exercises are good.
Managed 4 sets of 5 pull ups this week, although not with straight arms.
Skipping has been mixed - I'm waiting to take delivery of a replacement rope I ordered so still hating on my current weapon. Skipping outside in the wind really gets my goat too!
I've had some back pain which I need to manage carefully in light of previous injuries. Also had some knee pain which has affected frog hops, have subbed in lunges/squats where necessary. Can feel the knees when skipping too but not as noticeable.
V-sits are still a battle although have had a mini breakthrough. They're as much about balance as anything for me, core strength is improving though so I managed one full set for the first time last night.
Chest dips are difficult.
I'm noticing more tenderness in the arms/chest/shoulder area in general, a sure sign we're working muscles harder than before which is good.

Right team, let's take a turn to negative town.
All told, I feel i'm in a bit of a lull at the moment. Photos from this week didn't change much from the previous week and I'm kind of waiting for action to start happening on the sticky visceral around the middle. This may or may not come around day 40, it certainly wont happen by itself though, so the only course of action is to keep working but an analogy keeps coming back to me from the days when I was training for a "beach body" pre-Barbados trip in early 2011.

I used to run a lot of 5ks then, which if I remember rightly would take about 23-25mins. The first kilometre would always fly by, i'd bounce along thinking how easy this was, I did it every other day and it was making me fitter. Ace. As I approached 1.5ks, I'd get out of puff a bit though, my eyes would train on the timer on the treadmill as I tried to work out how my pace was and whether I was going to be in with a shout of beating my PB. I'd nudge up the speed in a panic that I was leaving myself too much to do even though I was still only 1.3 ks into the whole ordeal. Then I'd hit 1.5 ks and realise that I was blowing hard and still way short of halfway. This kilometre up to the halfway mark was inevitably the hardest section of any run as the mental boredom would also set in and mix with the building exhaustion, manifesting itself as this evil desire to hit the big red emergency stop button on the treadmill and go sit in the steam room!
Then I'd hit halfway and hallelujah, simple maths would tell me I had less running left to do than I'd already done and I'd find some new legs. As if by magic, it all became easier and enjoyable again. PB smashed, happy Swee, let's all go to Barbados.

In case you haven't realised by now, I feel like we're in that nasty kilometre right now and I'm battling to get to day 45 so I can kick on again. But until then - concentration and discipline. Discipline and concentration.

Here's to the freaking weekend.
x

PS. I LOVE 8 MINUTE ABS.

Mild gym rage

Last night I counted 4 personal training sessions going on simultaneously at 6pm. In a gym where floor space is already at a premium, why would these sessions be scheduled at a peak time?
I have asked the question of them, maybe there's a good reason.

Weighed in sub 13st this morning. I know it's not necessarily about weight loss and it was a morning weigh in so a bit of a cheat, but - BOOM. Loved seeing that 12 in the left hand column.

SHOW. ME. THE EGGS!