On the comeback trail

After yesterday's fairly downbeat entry, I'm pleased to report I'm closer to my usual self today. I didn't get a brilliant sleep last night, with the little man making himself known at 4am, but I managed to chalk off a few solid hours before hand and that made a world of difference. I won't say that I was completely chipper throughout the day, but nonetheless a very different personality to the moody beast that filled my shoes on Monday.

The cameo run last night helped restore some resemblance of sanity. It was a defiant slap in the face to the doom clouds I'd allowed myself to be swallowed up by in recent days. The turnaround will have come too late to see any benefit on the scales tomorrow (expecting another gain) but whereas I've been eating without a care for the consequences, the last 36 hours has seen restraint.

I've not run tonight. I could have done in some desperate attempt to get back to even on last week's weigh-in but to be honest that seemed futile and a waste of a training run. Instead I plan to go for what will be my longest circuit to date tomorrow evening, subject to the weather.

Fundraising has been going well, with the total inching towards £300. I struck on the idea to sell Cadbury's Creme Eggs after seeing they were on offer at Tesco (12 for £2, bargain). I bought two boxes for the office and invited my colleagues to have them at 50p a pop with all proceeds going to the run. The idea caught on and I subsequently sent three boxes to my friends at RateMyPlacement - whether I go home with the award at their bash next month or not, they are an incredibly good bunch, and I'm grateful for their support.

I don't fear the scales tomorrow. What will be will be. When they show me as heavier than last week, it will be fully merited. However, I now feel in a better place, ready to embrace the tried and tested diet rituals, train hard for the half marathon and get on with every day business that has seemed such a struggle of late.

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Wednesday Weigh-In - 12 February

Last week I was positively laissez-faire about gaining 1 pound. This week I'm incredibly relieved that I replicated the feat rather than multiplied the damage. It appears that my idea of maintaining a healthy weight consists of stuffing my face like a lunatic for several days and then putting myself through 48 hours of detox ahead of a weigh-in. Not exactly a healthy way of doing things and certainly not a methodology I'm keen to repeat in future.

My Achilles Heel over the past week has been biscuits at work. Buy a pack with the intention to have an occasional treat, and before you know it the packet is empty. Repeat the next day. And the next. Over the weekend I didn't do myself any favours either, drinking more on Saturday night than I really needed to, and for no reason. Sunday I went to my mother's house and predictably ate to excess (Love your mother loathe her cooking) and while I did follow this up with an 8 mile run later that evening, it didn't take a genius to work out that I would be up against it for the weigh-in this morning.

So another pound gained. Alarm bells are not ringing yet as I've been fully aware of what I've been doing. I also know what needs to be done to reverse the trend. Cut out the extras and remain disciplined. Sounds so easy and yet the temptation is always there.

No great surprise

If I needed motivation to get back to it, the fact that I have just over three weeks until I attend an industry awards event should help restore food sanity. While I've always maintained this dieting lark is about being healthy, I'm allowed one day a year when vanity takes hold! I'm up for an award titled 'Outstanding Contribution to Work Experience' and having been a finalist in the same category the last two years without taking home the gong, I'd like to think that it will be a case of third time lucky. I've bought a new suit to reflect my smaller physique, and know I'll be in front of photographers and camera crews. You don't get many opportunities to feel like a rock star working in Higher Education, so when the chance comes along you want to make the most of it.

Two years ago I was 'Highly Commended', receiving a bottle of champers from Olympian Steve Backley which was nice. Last year I had much more important things on my mind than winning, as the Awards fell just a few days after my son was born and was still in special care following his surgery. This year, well we'll just have to see. Win or not, I want to look my best, just for one day.

Highly Commended - Close but no cigar!

So hopefully I've got my recent gorging out of the system now. A few weeks of being relatively good will mean I can head to the NUE Awards on 7 March looking good, feeling great and hopefully will have something to celebrate by the end of it.

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Wednesday Weigh-In - 29 January

After a two week hiatus, the weigh-in is back. Technical difficulties with the bathroom scales have been fixed so it is back to business as usual. It turns out the battery was fine, though I did buy some spares just in case. My best guess is some moisture got into the scales causing them to have a paddy. Now they're working again and so on with the show.

Two weeks ago the scales put me at 14st 3lbs. Today we're a little bit lighter.

On the money

Two weeks of Christmas took me up to 14st 11lbs. Four weeks of relative sensibility got me back down to where I was immediately prior to the festive season. 14st dead is the lightest I've been in my adult life and I vowed when I was here before not to actively diet to achieve further weightloss. I stand by that and now 2014 is all about maintenance.

Had the scales been functioning properly last week I think it would have been a very different reading. I'd been under the weather, not exercising and eating noticeably more. While this week I've not been a saint on the food front, I've had easily the most productive week of exercise in months. I've notched up more than 27km in training for the half marathon (17 miles in old change) which more than takes care of the take out last Thursday night and typical weekend snacking. Judging by the scales this morning, it did more than just that too.

As I ramp up my training to the next level, there is pretty realistic expectation of dipping under 14st. That won't be unwelcome, and will be the first time I've hit that territory since I was a child, but I won't get carried away with it. 14st is a healthy weight for my height. My physique is already starting to look a little silly, with skinny bits surrounded by excess skin from my 24st era. I'm never going to have a well chiselled bod, so no point putting myself through the wringer to try to achieve one. Running may help firm up some areas, but in my case it can't revert nature.

So with my Christmas gut dealt with before January is out, now is time to focus more narrowly on the half marathon. Keep on running and my weight will tick along with minimal intervention. That is the theory, let's see if I can put that into practice.

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I am Karl Pilkington

Tonight I learned a valuable lesson to take forwards with my half marathon training. Essentially I know nothing about running and I am an idiot.

Yes I am

Why do I think this? Well, to date I've been making things up as I go along. A bit of running here, a bit of running there. I've not followed any particular plan or schedule, and have just been getting by on my own instincts. When I wasn't feeling 100 per cent a couple of weeks back, I listened to my body and held off on the training front. So far so good.

On Sunday I ran 10 kilometres. I've never run further, and so by default that was my long run for the week. If you look through simple training plans, such as this one following a long run should come a rest day and then an easy/recovery run. Yesterday I rested. Today I should have been a recovery run. Only I knew better and had greater ambitions. I wanted to raise the bar a bit higher and get up to the 8 mile mark tonight.

I felt pretty fresh and had no ill effects from Sunday's exertions. But it soon became apparent that my body wasn't up to anything challenging this evening. Unfortunately having set out for a long run, this epiphany occurred only after I had run 4 and a half kilometres away from the house. Clearly a ploddy run around the block would have served me better tonight, rather than find myself a long way from home. The journey back was a patchy mix of walking and running. My apps tells me in total I ran just over 7.5km which is still a good workout, but well below what I was aiming for.

So today I've learned that I don't know best. I'm going to formalise my training schedule and listen to the advice of people who know a lot more about this running lark than I do. I've still got 7 and a half weeks to get this right, and I will.

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Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

My blogs on a Sunday night tend to be quite negative affairs. I've usually eaten too much and am feeling a little sorry for myself when I come to write them, and could quite easily have penned an article that maintained form had I got around to writing this earlier. However, unlike previous Sundays, today had a happier ending to report.

Yes I've consumed a hell of a lot more than I would during the week. There has been cheese. There have been bags of crisps. Toast came back into my life and then there was the smaller matter of the roast dinner I cooked for the family this afternoon. I should have felt bloated. I should have beached of the couch tonight. Instead I checked on the weather, felt that my evening meal was far enough down the digestive tract for exercising without nausea, and then pulled on the running gear.

The net result? Well, whereas yesterday I really struggled with the 5k, tonight I ran 10k in 52 and a half minutes. http://www.mapmyrun.com/workout/471158571

This will either set me up well for a couple of well disciplined days ahead of the weigh in on Wednesday, or make me feel like hell. The jury is out on which way it will go but I'm expecting to be a little sore in the morning.

Despite my relative struggle on Saturday morning, it has been good to get running again after the self-imposed break for illness. Since Thursday I've clocked up just under 21km, effectively a half marathon. Sometime between now and 22 March, I've got to pull the three workouts into one and not spread it across different days.

A good way to end the week. Hopefully the next one will be more productive still.

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Wednesday Weigh-In - 15 January

It appears that I didn't need to leap back in time to make amends for my weekend consumption. I just needed to get off my backside and go for a lengthy run. Last week the scales had me at 14st 4lb. This morning I'm weighing slightly less. Maybe it is time for me to become less hysterical after some bad days and focus instead on the majority of the week when I am a lot more disciplined.

Apparently I should feast on chocolate more often

Of course it could be considered cheating to go for a near 10k run the night before a weigh-in, but then my focus at the moment is more about fitness to ensure I'm ready for the half marathon in March. There will be a lot more midweek runs like this in the next couple of months so it stands to reason that I’ll need to upscale my fuel to ensure I've got the energy to do so. I guess I just need to find that balance of enjoying a little often, rather gorging a lot on occasion.

I expected to feel pretty dreadful today but my body has reacted well to last night’s exertions. A few simple stretches and a good night’s sleep seem to have done wonders. I’ll probably pay for it later on today but it is reassuring to know that not only can I go for longer runs, but that it isn't physically to my detriment.

This morning when I was getting ready for work, I could help but raise a smile when Spotify gave me ‘The Distance’ as the first song on a playlist. Either there is some very clever analytics work going on, or this was a complete coincidence.

With a colleague retiring today, I'm expecting to see quite a lot of cake in front of me. I'll enjoy some of that and will do so guilt free.

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Wednesday Weigh-In 8 January

Welcome to the first Wednesday Weigh-In of 2014! It feels like it has been ages since the last one, though in reality it has just been three weeks. On that day I proudly mounted the scales at the lightest I have been in my adult life as 14st dead. In the intervening weeks, Christmas happened and I well and truly let my hair down, with my 2nd January baseline putting me at 14st 11lbs.

In regaining some sense of diet control, I always expected to claw back some of the Christmas excess. I went back to work on 2 January giving the perfect opportunity to restore myself to a simple three meal a day routine, rather than dipping into food and snacks at any waking moment. I've been out running three times since Saturday morning clocking up just over 15 kilometres, which my app reliably informs me means I burnt an additional 1600 calories.

The result of which is pretty pleasing. In the last six days I've got back into 'Normal' territory according to BMI and moved in the right direction towards where I want to be with my weight.

6 days later, a much better morning view

Still a bit of work to do to get back to 14st, but I'm pleased to have dusted off the cobwebs and got the diet operational again. While it was good to relax for a couple of weeks, I feel so much better when I'm not indulging to excess. Let's hope I can stick with it.

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Wednesday Weigh-In - 11 December

The blog has gone quiet over the past week, somewhat reflecting how in the last 7 days the diet has not really been top priority. During the second half of last week, my little one was poorly, full of seasonal bugs which made for a gruelling few days on limited patchy sleep. In such circumstances, I like anybody else struggle to maintain discipline when my body tells me it is aching for rest. As such, the shackles were removed and I fuelled up on chocolate, crisps and whatever else took my fancy. Sometimes a bit of badness is justified and this was definitely such an occasion.

Of course, when the clouds started to lift, I could have reined things in a bit, but didn't. On Saturday I effectively had two main meals after enjoying a hot lunch with friends before being treated to a roast dinner by my wife later in the evening. On Sunday the buffet available at my mother's house during a family gathering was far too tempting not to indulge in, going back for extra helpings. Yesterday I had my work Christmas lunch, a three course affair topped off with a frankly ridiculous but rather yummy Mince Pie Sundae. 

And so with all that combined, it came as no surprise that for the first time in months, the scales on a Wednesday morning displayed a weight gain. Just a solitary lb mind.

Upwards Motion

Does this mark the turning of weightloss fortunes and suggest a malaise setting in? I'd like to think not. I expected worse if truth be told so consider a marginal increase to be a bit of a result. But just in case a small part of me mentally believes everything is done and dusted, well I have news to the contrary. 

Just signed up to run the Maxifuel Dorney Lake Half Marathon, running to raise sponsorship for @SHINEUKCharity http://t.co/opygXDeChz
— Graham Kaye-Taylor (@bigfatrebel) December 11, 2013

Yep, another running challenge beckons. The Saturday morning 5k is a jog in the park nowadays. The 10k in September was so 2013. Next year I'm raising the bar and will run my first half marathon. You can read about the inevitable charity fundraising over on my Just Giving page or by clicking the button that I've added to the right hand side of the blog.

2013 has been Year Of The Diet. 2014 will begin by getting myself ready for 22 March. Wish me luck.

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