I appear to have embarked upon a fitness kick. These things are generally best left secret so that when they fail there is nobody to laugh and point fingers. Somehow I feel that blushingly admitting to this phase is more likely to make me stick at it. The thought of those fingers…. oh, my.
I fell off the treadmill very soon after we got it and have been feeling the ill effects ever since – I just have not felt physically able to go walking and managed to top that off by being just a little bit scared to try again. Luckily everything seems to be mending now and thus it was that I found myself yesterday braving my fears and getting to grips with the treadmill again. Unfortunately the wifi module failed to update my iFit records and the image I grabbed shows only what I have done today.
I’m taking it slowly and keeping my sore achilles in mind, so we shan’t be seeing any marathon efforts for a while. It is necessary to build strength first.
May I now admit to some calorie-counting too? Again, the theory is that If I tell, I am more likely to adhere to the new regime. Mr L is joining in and we plan to give the 5:2 fasting diet a go. We had our first “fast” day yesterday, despite not really knowing what we are doing, and it seemed to go well.
I’m not a big believer in diets, and certainly not in extreme diets – you’d never catch me on the Atkins, for instance. In the past I have relied on “sensible” eating and exercise. The problem is that, even 20 years ago, it took the most enormous amounts of exercise to see any effects. I had NO LIFE at all, just a constant round of exercise-work-exercise-work-exercise-sleep. Yes, I looked great at the end of a year of that but there was no way I could keep it up and once I began part time study again and needed to sit down for an extra 3 hours a day… well… look at me now! All that hard work, wasted.
Older, slower and wiser, I know that I need a different approach.
When I saw Mosely’s Horizon programme on fasting and weight loss it grabbed my attention. There was much that made sense to me and his final version of the diet seems to me to be suitably moderate and should be stickable. Most importantly I am looking to the potential improvement in blood glucose levels as my GP has commented that they are high and close to the stage where action needs to be taken. I’d rather the intervention be mine, not his.
It has to be worth trying and with a running mate, it should be relatively easy.
But will it work?
Now, I don’t want to overload the blog with stupid diet stuff – that would be boring indeed – but I may want to note some progress now and again. On the kitchen side of things I may want to explore recipes for the 500 calorie days. Would that be OK?
Books are on their way as we speak and with a little luck I should be better informed in a week or so.
No targets, not yet at least, I don’t want to set myself up to fail. For now it’s simply a question of any improvement in weight and/or fitness is a good thing.
BTW – if you are doing, or have done the 5:2, I’d love your input and advice, especially on the fast day recipes. Because we don’t know what we are doing yet, yesterday centred on a pan of Vegetable and Lentil soup.
The 5:2 looks interesting. I must look into it further.
Whatever for. You have absolutely no need to lose any weight whatsoever – you’re like a rake!
I’ve been doing the 5:2 diet for about 18 months, but with breaks of a month here and there. I love the surge of energy I get the day after a fast day and I’m about a stone down on when I started. If I exercised and kept off cake and biscuits on other days, I’m sure I’d be much further on. However, cake is an occupational hazard.
It’s much easier now it’s just me doing it. The hardest bit was the moaning about being hungry from P.
We’ve got a core of six fast day meals that rotate, mostly from the book, but a couple from The Hairy Dieters Cookbook.
I didn’t care much for my post-fast surge of energy – it arrived at 4am this morning! Mr L is really going for it, both the fasting and the exercising. So far he’s not finding hunger to be a problem. Both days this week he had lunch only – it was me who caved in and had a bite at tea-time on Monday. Just come back from the shops, where he was perusing the calorie content of everything he picked up. I was wondering about trying the HB book myself, I saw some of the progs and I liked their approach. It’s proper man food.