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.
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| 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.
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