Food remains pretty much the same with fruit, nuts a large cap and green tea at work. A mug of bone broth and yesterday's dinner was lamb saag followed by yoghurt and muesli, tonight was omelette followed by the yoghurt and muesli again.
Yesterday's exercise was the ride to and from work and an 8km run up to North Head and back. Both tougher and quicker than I expected. Lovely day for it though.
I'm putting that down as my one and possibly only official training hit out before the Pub2Pub at the end of the month. The ride home was a bit more of a slog than usual as I had a new toy - a set of Garmin Index scales. Not strictly necessary, but at least I now know I have the body fat percentage of an athlete (go me!) or for my age I am "underfat" (so should probably get back on the sauce?) Anyway, Sal is happy, Garmin Connect has a bit more data from us.
Today's exercise was the bike to and from work (probably don't need to mention that every day) a gentle trot along the beach - 1.4km - to do my usual HIIT session - and then a gently trot back again. The best bit - there was a whale breaching for around 15minutes or my exercise session. The worst bit - my legs really fucking ache. Given them a decent workout this week though.
Toying wiht the idea of a day of rest tomorrow..but a gym weights session then a swim on Saturday would kinda complete the set for the week. See how I feel in the morning.
Unusually for me I woke up to the sound of my alarm. I'm normally asleep well before 5am, so 5.15 is a fucking result.
Exercise - the ride to and fro work and a sweaty 45in in the gym at lunchtime. Free weights and cable pulls wiht 10minutes on the rower in between. Not a lot of rest in between sets.
Food - 2 carrots, grapefruit, apple and a banana, walnuts/almonds/salted peanuts and a green tea. Dinner was a little bit of the special fried rice I made the kids (was quite nice, wish I could have more), a chicken sausage and some broccoli then a bowl of yoghurt and muesli.
Before dinner I weighted 68.5kg, a little down. Might have a run tomorrow.
Cycled to work and from work to Chatswood - 6km and 20km respectively.
Large cappuccino, apple, 2 carrots, small banana, medium tub of walnuts/salted peanuts and almonds. A green tea,
Two cheese slices, some pork, a bowl of yoghurt and muesli and two sang choy bow.
Right, I'm going to bed.
Oh, how could I have forgotten. I also had a mug of lovely bone broth!
Quick run through of the day before I go to bed. Early nigtt because I'm on a week of early starts.
Up at 7am, a bit later than usual because I stayed up last night to watch the opening game of the English Premier League, this despite Garmin having told me earlier in the day that I slept less than 86% of people like me and I should really try and get some more sleep. They're probably right. Anyway, hull won 2-1 - surprising just about everyone. Alas AFC Wimbledon had lot by a similar score by the time I woke up.
Anyway, 5km dog walk to the Harbour wiht a large cappuccino. Back for some breakfast (big brekky and another large cap) and then I took the girls to Rockhouse for some rock climbing, AJ at a friend's birthday partner and me wiht the H bomb. Both of them were up to the top in no time - loved it. We will be going back.
After that I dropped the girls back home and then drove to Chatswood to drop the car off for its annual service. I always use Chatswood Auto Repairs because they were recommended to me by JCJ and have never let me down. The walk back was another 13km and another large cappuccino. Nnot a quick walk - blame the camera I had taken along for company.
Quick aside - I walked past our old house, the one we sold along wiht the plans to extend it to a lovely 4-bedder. Looks like the new owners are getting near to completing our vision for the place. Glad the old cottage wasn't bulldozed, but kinda sad that it isn't us that got it done. Lovely house, super-quiet street too...ah well, not exactly slumming it over on the beaches.
Got home and had a cheeky couple of cheese slices - basically pre-sliced cheese, not that plastic shite - to get me through to dinner. Dinner was a bit of a roast; some pork (lovely) and broccoli. The spuds and pumpkin had been kinda cremated so I passed on them. I did finish off the greek yoghurt wiht a bit of muesli.
And that is a quick run through of the moving and eating for the day - probably a zero-sum game. Seriously considering the Garmin Index smart scales because well why not. Geeky fun.
Quick aside #2. It was the City2Surf today. Didn't run it. Sad face. Bloody achilles. But surely if I can spend 6.5 of my first 10 wakeful hours on my feet, walking almost 20km in there, then I should be able to run again. Surely...
Up at a little after 06:30 to walk the dog - 5km easy stroll, large cappuccino and a small biscuit (because fuck the diet!)
Back home and load the girls into the car; drop H at gymnastics and head to a new cafe - Fuel Espresso in Brookvale - for breakfast with AJ. Mum does the weekly chores in peace and quiet. Fuel is a recommendation from a guy at work. It is run by a friend of his and he mentioned it when I said I fancied trying shakshuka. As it happens I still fancy trying it because I had a second large cap and a tub of yoghurt, muesli and rhubarb. I do like my rhubarb. The coffee was good, the place comfortably crowded and busy with takeout trade. Refuelled AJ and I caught up on some olympic action, including heat 2 of the women's 1500m. Sifan Hassan ran a bonkers race, hanging at the back until the last lap and then overtaking the pack to win it - looked awesome. Then back to collect H and head to the pool for the kids' swimming lesson.
Had to take a picture of this up near the gymnastics place
The girls' lessons are at the same time (it was water safety week this week, so clothed and learning not to die and what to do if someone else looks like they might) and I jump in and do a few laps. I swim like a brick. Haven't done a lot of work on my swimming since leaving school. I had a few technique lessons when I was back in the London over a decade ago, but apart from that I'm mainly run for exercise and sunk wiht or without a tank when in the water. Swimming - it's not as easy as some people make it look.
It occured to me today that I could let my Garmin Vivoactive know I was swimming. I did 100m and then switched to 50m their-and-backs with a rest between each for 500m in 11min 29sec. You'll have to take my work for it or hope this link works because when I tried to embed the code form Strava it said it was 19minutes on a stationary bike. Dur?
Back home and did some stuff, then had a cheese and pickle sarnie (because fuck the diet!) on wholemeal with butter.
Right, off to make dinner for the girls. Will update later with whatever I have for dinner. At the moment I have NFI.
Back again....I may have snuck two cheese slices and a slim slice of hame before dinner. Dinner was broccoli, baramundi and some sweet potato, then had a bowl of yoghurt and muesli.
Well it seems that if you drop the carbs too quickly you're eyesight can go tonto and various other bad things can happen as well because you've dropped your glucose too quickly. So I'll be having some carbs then. My eyesight has been a bit off the last couple of days, and I'm going to attribute that to the silliness of my carb drop (too lazy to plan properly) and refusal to cut out the exercise. Internet reading - self diagnosis - bowl of muesli and yoghurt.
So basically, on the diet front, I'm out. I'll tidy my diet up, but I need to play to my weaknesses. So - shock, horror - I think I'll just eat sensibly and lay off the grog for a bit.
Exercise is likely to be just the ride to and from work and not the HIIT session I'd hoped to do. I might still get a set in, but I had an iffy stomach this morning and then needed to head home early from work to collect AJ from school. She'd fallen off a sofa at before-school-care and bonked her head and was staying upset. It sounded like she came close to knocking herself out, but I got her to follow a raised finger wiht her eye, tell me her birthday, balance on one leg and identify which hand I was touching while she closed her eyes. She seems good. iPad, Olympics on the tele and no school the best medicine.
Food...Large cappuccino, an apple, two carrots and a banana. Small cup of mixed salted peanuts and almonds. Lunch was probably about 3-4eggs of the 5 egg ham and cheese omelette AJ and I shared, followed by greek yoghurt and strawberries. The cheese, yoghurt and strawberries are proper off-piste items.
Right, back to my working from home...
Afternoon update, and of course I did some exercise. Work pretty well done for the day - certainly the motivation to work - and the kids plonked in front of Madagascar 3 I decided to have a crack at my version of a HIIT session.
So it was the usual, performed out in the sunroom.
25 star jumps
25 squats
25 pushups
15 burpees
25 pushups
25 squats
25 starjumps
45second rest
The exercises take a bit under 3min. I do 4 sets. At the end of the 4th set I rest for 1min and then do a 5th with the burpees upped to 25. Then another 1 minute rest and a set of 15/10burpees done fast.
And that's it. Sweat like a racehorse, over in about 20minutes.
Any other week I'd have a beer to reward my virtuousness.
Me again. A bit more food. Hummus with chili sauce and half a capsicum. Now I'm defrosting some rhubarb I found in the freezer. Probably have that with some Greek yoghurt and maybe some honey as a naughty treat (as if honey isn't just sugar, sheesh.) That'll be me done for the day.
So I had a bit of the rhubarb. On its own. It was a bit depressing, I'll not lie. It hinted at a crumble I can't have. So I decided I would rather be hungry than miserable but I'll probably end up both.
The morning food was 2 carrots, an apple and a banana, some capsicum and celery sticks dipped in hummus with chilli. And a large cappuccino. At lunchtime I bought a bag of salted peanuts, one of almonds and one of walnuts and had some of the peanuts and walnuts. That and a green tea was my lot until I got home from work via picking the kids up.
At home I had some bacon - some being the 5 rashers that made up the whole packet - and the one remaining egg that Sal hasn't boiled ready to eat at precisely whatever-the-fuck-o-clock she MUST eat at. Then I broke and finished off the left-over lasagne. It was surplus to the kids' requirements and would have been thrown away. I'm so weak. But fuck this calorie deficit, I want to do either a HIIT or gym session tomorrow without passing out. And I hate seeing food wasted.
Rather than fully bail on the diet I think I'll allow myself to sweep up whatever leftovers would otherwise be throw away, the obvious exceptions to the rule being deserts and sugary shit. Mind you, the kids rarely leave any of that on the plate.
Yep, I think I can live with myself.
Might have some of the yoghurt that is in the fridge already opened from pre diet days.
Bike to and from work
Some upper body work on the exercise machine with higher weights
Some free weight/cable work to finish off
2min plank
Apple, carror, grapefruit, banana, nuts and seeds, large cappuccino
Mixed sashimi box and a green tea
Some ham, 2 sausages, broccoli and sweet potato for dinner. Still hungry, so hit the hummus and celery/capsicum. Hot chilli sauce added to the sweet potato mash (no dairy added) and the hummus.
In other news, before the main news, I bought a pretty little camera that seems to be in rather good condition. Apart from the shutter not firing as the aperture blades are likely to be stuck. Might have to get it fixed, shame to let it go. It is a Kodak Retinette 1a and was probably built between 1959 and 1961.
Sal has decided to do a 12 week diet and exercise thing. So I'm going to do my own version of the same thing; think of me as support crew, sharing the pain. She is doing it online - it is directed online, Facebook group thing - and that sounds tough, so I'll suffer a bit too. For me it boils down to eating far better - but extremely carb light, no booze, one milky coffee a day - and regular exercise. The exercise should not be a problem, the diet could be a challenge. I suspect I'll be heading a little off-piste on both with more and different exercise and bending the rules a bit on the diet. I mean no fruit or dairy (apart from that coffee) is a bit harsh.
So, ground zero. I've let myself go a bit and I weigh around 70kg. I could attribute some of the extra 3-4kg to non-running workouts adding some muscle, but I think it is mostly that my diet is a bit crap and I'm not running every day.
Not sure I'll be as diligent or detailed with the logging every day, but here goes.
Finished off a heap of chocolate and a large bag of chips yesterday evening. Had a few farewell beers too, so getting underway dusty and fuelled with self-loathing - go me!
Exercise.
Bike (commute)
To work via the gym. Not a great deal of exercise as it is only 4km and mostly downhill. The ride home is a 6km steady but not steep climb. Takes about 20minutes.
Gym.
Warmup: 10min rowing machine at level 6. Nine min at sub-2min/500m then the last min at sub 1:50
Free weights/cable machines: 35min. Middling-weights from 6-10kg. Mostly three sets of 15/12/8 reps of things with each set using the next weight up (15 with the 8kg dumbbell / 12 with the 9kg / 8 with the 10kg.) Then probably not enough stretching. Not going to go through my exercises in detail - I'm tired and want to go to bed - but I do stuff that has wide ranging movements; cable pulls wiht a lot of rotation through the shoulder, lifting weight form my left foot to extended above my right shoulder and so on.
Food
Breakfast/Morning
1 x large full fat cappuccino
1 x apple
1 x carrot
1 x grapefruit
Lunch/Afternoon
Small cup almonds
Small cup walnuts
Small cup of trail mix with the fruit taken out; so more nuts and seeds
1 x green tea
Dinner
Medium sized piece of fish, broccoli and brown rice. A surplus-to-requirements-for-Sal fishcake.
Need to sort this diet thing out quick-smart and discover what treat foods I can have.
On the plus side, I weighted myself this evening and I'm 69kg.
I doubt I'll keep this logging thing up for very long.
Two things I believe to be true. If I eat cheese just before going to bed I will have odd dreams, and the memory of a dream fades quickly so if I want to remember the details I should write them down as soon as I wake up. Saturday night I had a chunk of Edam before bed and sure enough had an odd dream. There are two things I recall from this dream; one is that part of it was set in some old-London seedy area, very dim, possibly a gambling den. And the second thing I remember is writing down the details. But I wrote down the details in the tail end of the dream, so alas the rest of the detail is gone. It was a good dream though, I remember that.
no cheese
I had the cheese because I was hungry and I was hungry because I had not eaten between 13:00 Friday and 13:00 Saturday. This was a fasting day of my 5:2 "diet." I put diet in quotes because I'm not dietting per-se, just following it because it may do me some good health-wise, and hey, why not? I like the idea of fasting for 2 days and eat what you like on the other 5. I've been having two periods of 24 hours without food each week for a little over 3months (excluding the week prior to the Glow Worm Marathon. I figured it wise to feed-up prior to a 5hour run.) The Friday-Saturday fast was my first with zero calories. I am allowed 600 calories on fast days and these normally come in warm, milky, caffienated form. Last Friday-Saturday I had only water. And really, I wasn't that hungry by Saturday afternoon. One thing I have learnt from the diet (and "dry July", also in quotes) is that I have no trouble with abstinance. As long as I have a hard and fast rule I can stick to it. I think I would be shit at any other diet, and if there is beer and chocolate in the house I will drink and eat it all.
reno
The renovation moves on and last week Stuart ripped the 4.8m wide sliding doors out from our rumpus room and replaced them with boards. Our new slab was poured and we narrowly avoided disaster as Rowlf bolted down the side of the house to investigate. The scaffold has gone and the new bits look all lovely and new while the old bits stand in start contrast and leave the viewer in no doubt as to why we are giving the facade of the bunker a bit of a polish.
pics
I took over 400 pictures this weekend with 4 different cameras, 313 of which were with my old nikon D70s SLR. It is a brick of a thing compared to the point-and-shoots I've become accustomed to and also to the Micro 4/3 Olympus Pen Mini I recently bought. But the brick just encourages you to take more pictures. I think it is because it feels like a real camera, and I know it is because it has a viewfinder. Two things that give me far more pleasure than you would expect them to; framing a picture in a viewfinder and not on a screen, and changing camera lenses. Neither of these things make my pictures any better, but they make me feel better when taking them. The downside; carying an SLR does nothing for my time management.
