Barefoot Running

I thought it would be good to do a running post as I have focused on fasting so far. Today I am going to have a look at Barefoot running, mainly because an article came up on it and I advocate it anyway. 

As someone who tried to follow an evolutionary fitness model barefoot running makes sense, I actually do it because without it I am a hobbling wreck with constant knee pain. My problems started around April 2017 with the Brighton Marathon. The training for this involved lots of pain in lots of way but the biggest obvious issue was knee pain, consistent and bad knee pain that got to the point I had physio and basically didn't run for 18 months. 

Physio and everything helped but the biggest difference for me came when, upon reading several books and starting my coaching journey, I decided to try barefoot running. Instantly my knee pain was gone, I tried cushion shoes again and the knee pain came straight back. I was sold and I have since introduced others to these shoes and they have also noticed improvements 

Then yesterday I came across an article about barefoot running and it was mostly positive. In my experience one of the biggest issues with most of the health fitness issue is money. Drugs make money, sugar laden foods make money but telling people to eat non-processed food and to fast decreases money (and gets them healthy without drugs). There is also more money in performance based shoes rather than health based shoes. 

I have read a few really good books that mention barefoot style walking / running, they are all basically linked to natural movements. 

A video by one of the authors can be found below, check out his book and it has some great tips and stories on the health and fitness side of thing and some low-carb stuff. 

Feel a little off

We have had a stomach bug go through the house this weekend which knocked me back a bit. I was planning on sticking to alternate day fasting but on Saturday afternoon I had what I thought was awful IBS. Well today by wife went down with it as well today and she never gets that sort of things. 

On Sunday I was feeling really weak and exhausted and decided to have a couple of small meals to hopefully help my gut. First I had chicken breast and the later I had a couple of sausages. Come the afternoon and cup of bone broth and I was feeling much better. I have heard before that one of the reported health benefits of fasting is recovering from illness quickly and for me this was a very quick recovery from a stomach bug.

I didn't really go out for a run but I went for a little walk just to move my legs. This morning I still felt quite week and couldn't manage my daily squats but hopefully I will be back on them tomorrow along with a little run. 

I weighed myself this morning and I had put back on a pound from where I was on Saturdays weigh in but I am not worried about that. 

Today I have managed to fast again, currently going to go for walk after 30 hours or so of fasting. So far so good. Overall, given how I have reacted before when not feeling well I am really pleased to have stuck to a 2 hour feeding window yesterday and still being fasted at the moment. 

I now plan on changing to fasting on Monday, Wednesday and Fridays and seeing how things go, worst case I can switch back to ADF or I can do the odd more extended fast. 

Week 3 Fasting - Going well

Happy to say that the fasting side of things is still going well though with the lock-down my running mojo is not so good. I am still going out and trying to use the treadmill but I am using this time of lock-down to work on my core and strength using weights and squats etc. to try and get myself in a good basic state. 

Weight loss this week has been really good, I am down another 3.8lbs which makes it 1 stone in 3 weeks. I am very happy with this but doubt I will see this weight loss continue. Out of curiosity I looked into my weight loss journey from 2015. In that year I lost 7 stone of so of weight, most of it at the start. Turns out that at this point in 2015 I was basically the same weight on the same day, guess I can have a race to see whether I can beat my weight loss trends from that year. Being 5 years older and having already done it once I am not sure it is going to be as easy. 

I am going to have to do some experimentation as about an hour or so after completing a fast my IBS is playing up in a nasty way. I have always had a tendency for this, to be honest for as long as I can remember since I was a child. Once I got a bug and was so dehydrated from the above process that I had a seizure so it isn't something I like to take lightly. 

Really looking forward to seeing where my journey goes from here. I want to bring some new content to the blog and might add some running footage or just a chat with myself about how the fasting is going. I will have to see if I can find a way to cheaply record running and audio at the same time even if I feel daft doing it. 

Week 2 of fasting

So this week was week 2 of IF / fasting / OMAD or whatever the heck it is that I am actually doing. 

I really wanted to continue the good work from the first week and also to make the most of not having to work this week so... I took the chance to stretch myself and completed a 70 hour fast, it mostly felt pretty good. I think my electrolytes will be key if I want to do another long fast. 

I am now settling into the routine of doing alternate day fasting with a feeding window on the non-fasting day. My first real experience of this finished today, Sunday. I started with eating a good meal and with some berries and cream afterwards on Friday at around 1pm, I then fasted until midday on Sunday, in total I was at around 46 hours when I stopped the fast. 

I am optimistic that this will work. Overall it felt really easy, I had a couple of times when I felt like it was impacting me but these didn't last for more than 10 minutes or so. I think I have been making the mistake of not drinking to thirst and thinking I need to drink more, this dilutes my electrolytes and makes me feel a bit rubbish. 

Last Sunday morning I was at the same point of a fast when I weighed in at 190lbs, this week I was down to 186.8lbs, so a like for like loss of 3.2lbs. If I stick to true ALD (alternate day fasting) then I may have to make my weigh ins every 6 or 8 days but that doesn't matter. 

Running wise I have been out for quite a few shorter runs this week. With Corona-virus and where I live it is hard to get out without loads of people being about so I have gone early and have generally found it good. To maximise fat burning I am trying to go as near to the end of the fast as possible. With being back to work next week that is going to be tougher but I am hoping to go out for 30 minutes every day with my daughter and then on the evenings of the days I am fasting. 

When everything opens up again I may have to change my process a bit. To be honest I am hoping to be in good enough shape to run most days by then and am really hoping that fasting helps to fix my metabolism and allow me to reach the weigh I easily reached with Keto alone in 2015, sub 170 in the short term, sub 160 in the longer term with more running and if it goes amazingly then I think sub 150 is my optimum running weight. 

For now I am hoping that a race I have in December (originally April) is a sensible target. It gives plenty of time for the weight loss to happen, I mean 30+ weeks for 30lbs (is the dream!) and once I have seen how the treadmill and the virus goes hopefully I can get some decent training in. 

I will be sure to post a little more of the training a am doing soon. I might even be brave and post some videos of me doing the exercises wrong. Mostly I am complementing the running with weights, squats, skipping and the usual planks etc. 

I am also hoping to start using an old running watch to track my runs, once my last running watch broke I figured I didn't really need it anymore but it would be good to post my running plan along with my fasting plan. 

Why does Intermittent Fasting work?

My wife asked me this question the other day and I was not 100% sure. I mean lets fact it, if it is something in the body then it is probably going to be hormonal in some way. Here we are talking about weight loss my mind would instantly go to insulin regulation, after all that is why low carb worked so well for us. 

Basically when you eat 3 meals and snack then you are likely eating from very early until very late, even eating 3 low carb meals a day you could start eating at 7am and finish at 7-8pm (as I have done when out running late etc.) in this instance you are only fasting over night for 11-12 hours. By eating your 3 meals over the span of 8 hours rather than the 12 mentioned above you are now fasting for 16 hours. As mentioned in the video below if you then go further and eat 2 meals over 4 hours a few times a week you are then going to have some 20 hours fast. 

This graph is copied from this paper (Mattson 2016 et al). Only thing that the above paper is missing is B, 1 day fast, supplemented with the time restricted feeding. 

So basically as expected it comes down to insulin regulation, by restricting your feeding window you are stabilising your insulin (at a low level for longer periods of the day and as insulin is the key between fat storage and usage we are going to see an advantage when it comes to burning fat. I guess this is why IF even works for some people when on a high carb diet. Sure it will take longer to get to the fat burning window but it is reached unlike when said person is in a normal snacking extended eating period.

The paper referred to above shows lots of useful information. It states that there are lots of positive benefits found, at least in mice, when a form of fasting is used. less inflammation, better resistance to stress and more. 

Longest Fast

I just broke my longest fast, I finished on just over 70 hours. Honestly at the end I didn't feel hungry and could have continued. Will admit that my head was feeling a little foggy but that is something for me to look into. I am back at (home) work next week so will probably go for a more regular schedule. Currently my plan is to eat today and tomorrow and then go into alternate day fasting with a 4 hour window. 

I finished the fast by eating half an avocado and about 30 minutes later tucked into a nice meaty BBQ after having spent that time cooking the food. Must say the home-made lamb burgers were lovely. 

The picture below show screenshots of my fasting time and my fasting progress this week. 

Over the course of the 3 day fast I lost 3lbs, be interesting to see how much of that comes back with me consuming 2 meals over the next 2 days. I do plan on upping my exercise a little bit.

Fasting Types - Alternate Day Fasting

I am kind of winging it with my fasting at the moment, I am listening to my body (and books by Jason Fung) however there are lots of different ways that people fast, you can try the different methods to see what works for you. Today I want to take a look at alternate day fasting. This type of fasting gained enough hype that the NHS even did an article on it. Think is was mainly to stop people from jumping in but interesting nonetheless.  

The concept it pretty simple, you eat every other day. You could do this literally or fast on Tuesday, Thursdays and Saturdays. In some ways I like this over the idea of the daily 16:8 or 20:4 fasts because (as I am sure I will cover) there are advantages for the more extended fasts. In this example if you maintained some sort of eating window on the eating days, finishing at say 6pm then fast a day and start eating at 10am the next day you have managed a fast of  6 hours + 24 hours + 10 hours 40 hours. 

Another advantage for this style of fasting is, if you like socialising, you can still go out with your friends on a Friday night or if like me you like running but don't fancy running at the end of a day with no eating then you can pick the days you are running / going out to match the days you are eating. 

I found one good story on YouTube which I have embedded below, she explains her 2 year development and weight loss using this style of fasting. Clearly this is a popular topic the the video having had over 1 million views and 50,000 likes. 

Annoyingly the article linked to in the NHS report mentioned above is not, as suggested, freely accessible but cost a shed load of money. As a result I can't actually look into it but the analysis done by the NHS is pretty good. 

There are some freely available papers that you can access such as this one and this one. I think it is interesting that the one on healthy individuals suggests hunger on fasting days does not decrease but I didn't see any mention of this on the obesity paper. I think the diet used on the non-fasting days could be key as a keto diet is much less likely to lead to lots of hunger. 

I will certainly be able to report back on how I feel in the following sates after running: 

1) After the slightly bigger feed on the feeding days. 

2) After running on the end of the fasting day

3) Running in the morning of the feeding day but before breaking the fast. 

Be interesting to compare how I feel on these runs. 

I think that is all. Enjoy. 

Run after 44 hours fasting

So I am on Wednesday of week 2 of fasting. This morning I woke up and felt like going for a run. As a running coach and as someone with an interest in science etc. I have adopted what I feel is the best training method for health and fitness, although sometimes performance may suffer. All this means is that I generally train at a slow pace, this is meant to encourage fat burning and not trigger too much stress in the body. This type of training is supposed to reduce the risk or injury or burnout, improve the aerobic energy systems and basically allow for consistency which in the long run produces better results. 

I am current at around 44 or so hours or fasting and this is the first time I have been out for a run with this level of fasting. Honestly I felt pretty good and no different to how I normally feel when I am out for a run. I lasted around 50 minutes and stopped when I was feeling good rather than pushing too far. 

The second screenshot fro my phone shows that I lost around 1.6lbs yesterday, slightly disappointed with this as most will be water weight but at the same time I feel good. Given I am fasting and using feeding windows at the moment I think the top graphic basically shows fasting all the time. 

At the moment I am hoping to get to around a 72 hour fast and then have a 4 hour feeding window on the next 2 days to ensure that I get sufficient nutrition and don't get too addicted to fasting. As someone who likely has Aspergers I have a tendency to get addicted and obsessed over things. Given I have started this blog it is clear that Keto Fasting is clearly one of those things at the moment.  

Overall the best thing is that I am feeling good and don't feel the need to eat. 

Keto running

As I have mentioned in my first post my wife and I have been on a Keto / low carb diet since the end of 2014. This life-style just twigged for us, it worked so well and we felt so good on it that there was no going back. When doing research you could not help but come across the name of Tim Noakes. As such it only seems fitting that the first paper I review is one of his, to be honest the only other choice was an IF paper I found by Jason Fung).

So the paper I picked to have a look through is:

High Rates of Fat Oxidation Induced by a Low-Carbohydrate, High-Fat Diet, Do Not Impair 5-km Running Performance in Competitive Recreational Athletes

Or in other words, you can still run just as fast over 5k if you are on a high far, low carb diet as if you are on a typical high carb diet. A point I want to get in early is that this only looks at athletes that are already in decent shape (<21 minutes 5k), I bet if you were to look at slower (or at least over-weight) runners you would see an improvement in performance on a HFLC diet due to the weight loss.

It should be noted that, as stated in the paper, an adjustment period was needed and tests after 4 days did not show favourable results for the low carb runners.

If you want to hear more from Tim Noakes, check out the following podcast: 

My Experience: 

As this is an early post I feel it is valid to add my experience. As I have probably stated elsewhere before adopting low carb my 5k PB was 29:29, this was a really hard effort. After going low carb and losing loads of weight I ran many sub 20 5ks (would have been more without buggy running) including 1 with a running buggy containing my 4 year old daughter. 

I have certainly not suffered any issues over the shorter distances and found the weight loss on a low carb diet to be significant enough to allow me to run much faster. 

A report on week 1

Ok so I have completed my 1st week of fasting. Well sort of:

Overall I am very please with the weight loss of 7lbs. I know some of this will be water weight as my glycogen reserves are diminished but that's all good. What I am even happier about is the ease with which I managed the fasting, including the 48 hour fats as I broke them as I wanted to and not because I had to and could have gone for longer. 

I don't really have much else to report on at the moment.

I will add that I have done another run whilst fasting (day 1 of the next week) and that went fine in terms of energy levels. I have felt a but low on energy at some time but have tried to supplement my meals with electrolytes and bone broth.

My history - weight and running

I thought that a great place to start would be to go with my background, firstly I will admit that I am, part at least, starting this due to boredom from corona-virus lock down.

Weight Gain: 

So from the age of around 14 until 28 I basically just put on weight, mostly it was a gradual process but it was exacerbated by having a bad foot in the form of Ledderhose disease. Much more information on that can be found on my successful Ledderhose blog. 

By December 2014 I was weighing at 19 to 20 stone and feeling rotten with myself. I was a fairly new parent and not able to do as much as I wanted with my daughter I was almost certainly pre-diabetic and had tried so many weight loss plans that I was at my wits end.

After (December 2015) and before (December 2014).

Keto Weight Loss: 

My wife and I did some research (both previously scientists) and came across the Keto / low carb diet and gave it a go. Fair to say it went amazingly well and we both lost significant amounts of weight in this time. A spreadsheet of our weight loss can be found here.

The graph above shows my weight loss over the course of the first 10 months or so of weight loss.

Running

During 2015 we started running and things continued to go well into 2016, I set a parkrun PB of just over 19 minutes (having previously had a best of 29:29) and also set my half marathon PB of 90:10, so close! In 2017 I started marathon training and this is where things went wrong. Something in my body does not like long runs, it doesn't matter what I do, from carbs, water, electrolytes, outside conditions. I also suffered a knee injury that kept me out of running until the end of 2018. 

Weight gain, loss, gain, loss

After my first taste of injury / illness at the start of 2017 my weight gradually came back on, this was exacerbated by not being able to run and I got up to around 15 stone. During this time I has remained strict Keto and so was disappointed to have seen the scales rise so high. I then went strict on high fat protein shakes and got my weight to within 10lbs of my lowest, then I cycled a little but mostly remained at this frustratingly higher weight that kept me from getting anywhere near personal bests on the running side of things. 

In 2020 I was ill with a bad cough from mid-January to early March and was just getting back into it when corona-virus hit. These things combined, despite basically being zero carb, saw me hit the scales at around 14 stone again. Now I knew I needed to supplement this with something. 

During these few years I noticed I was very sensitive to something that eludes me right now but it is high in some vegetables and nuts etc. this excluded the protein shakes I had used before and others all had sucralose, which for me is a laxative. 

In this time I adapted more evolutionary aspects to fitness, I have use barefoot shoes and train at a very slow pace. Will probably see more on this in some of my posts.

Enter fasting

After some more research and listening to the likes of Jason Fung I decided to give fasting a go. Not sure if it will work, especially with running. Honestly I have not done much running since the lock-down. Saying that I have not been fasting for long. 

Running Coach:

Given my background in science and having become a fully qualified running coach and head coach for a club with 80 or so members I feel well placed to talk about running and fasting. 

The goals:

• Use fasting for weight loss and ideally get down to my lowest ever (adult) weight.
• Hopefully get close to and set personal bests, at least at 10km. 
• Be happy and healthy, the most important rule in any coaching plan. 

My posts will be on all of the above, assuming I remember to post. I hope to at least post a weekly update on weight loss and hopefully one or two posts on some scientific articles I come across on any of these topics. Maybe reviews of audiobooks etc. that are related and who knows what else.