Update on targets for fitness and health

An Easy parkrun and ongoing issues

So there have been some positives over the last few weeks, I am back running and strength training consistently but I am also far away from where I want to be. With a week long holiday coming and then hopefully my operation my return to fitness might be a longer journey that I had hoped for. 

On the plus side I am back off dairy but I really haven't fancies burgers since my infection, and burgers were my staple meal. Whilst I still seem to have fitness I was only able to do a very badly paced 20 minutes at parkrun and not sure I could go much quicker. At least a minute of that is the weight I have put on from the dairy but hey ho. 

My goals now are to stay as fit as I can and get to the bottom of my health issues. I am still fatigued and still having regular bowel issues. I am going to push for a follow up calprotectin test as the last one was through the roof and from speaking to a doctor earlier in the week a lot of my other symptoms like the low folate I had, the electrolyte issues, fatigue and obviously the bowel issues could be explained by IBD of some description. 

I don't want it to be IBD but at the same time a diagnosis and explanation would be great. So for now I am accepting the place I am in, attempting to work on various weaknesses and preparing for my holiday and op. Hopefully I can get lots of videos recorded on the holiday and in the post op recovery, videos that people will find interesting. I also plan on documenting any appointments etc. I have on my pathway to get back to full health. Whilst I still have belief in the Carnivore way of life modern medicine has its place and hopefully it can help me get to my full health and potential. 

Running Comeback Week 1 Day 1

 

running, carnivore, diet, return, Campylobacter, fitness, parkrun, PB, 

Diary Entry - Monday 25th

This is just going to be a short log of my training for today. It's to hold me accountable but mostly for me to review and gain confidence from. I focused a lot on recovery today after a 10k race yesterday, used massage gun, compression tights, active recovery at a slow pace and as the days are drawing in I used bright light exposure. 

I started the day off running about 2k with the dog stopping to sniff, my wife normally does this but is poorly at the moment. 

I then had the morning and afternoon school runs with my daughter on the scooter. Both were a relaxed pace and felt surprisingly good. I took the dog for a walk at lunchtime and enjoyed the midday sun. 

I did a small strength workout, focusing on my arms first thing and another during a meeting I listen into in the afternoon that included core work. I also have an airofit so work that into my day as well. 

I focused on listening to a few mindset podcasts and audiobooks to focus on my mental health. Weight wise I had a new lowest weight in 9 months at 146 but I'm still recovering from the race so that might dip back up. IF wise, of course sticking to Carnivore, I ate 2 meals, breakfast at 9 and lunch about 11 and felt pretty good and full all day. 

In the evening I had my running club but it was just a social plod. It worked out to about 11km. Monday does tend to be a bigger day for me, normally the biggest in my week and mostly felt good despite the 10k. 

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. 

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. 

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.