Another week of fasting, running and weight loss

Another week of alternate day fasting and running and I am starting to get my mojo back. Things have not been great over the past 2 weeks, my weight has not really moved much and my 5k time trial did not go as hoped. At the same time I have made some good progress with my running motivation and am back into the swing of it. My goals have changed from doing the 5k training plan to building my base.

I mean really building my base should always have been my aim but I really wanted to speed up, then again building you base can speed you up. I am back to 2lbs away from being a healthy BMI as well and longer slower running should help with this. 

Wow this post is all over the place. Anyway my primary reason for shifting back to longer slower running is the heat but also that fast running doesn't work great with fasting (at this point). If you run hard before you eat you are feeling quite depleted and the act of running fast makes you deplete glycogen stores and then it is harder to stay fasted as this increased your hunger. 

Overall I am further ahead of where I was in 2015 in terms of weight loss and on a par with my fast running pace. I am currently on a run steak of 6 days running at least 20 minutes, though with 2 10 mile runs in there as well I feel it was a productive week. 

Now my plan to to keep my run streak of at least 20 minutes a day going for as long as I am healthy to do so but with the aim of increase my miles. Next week I will aim for 3 10 mile runs, which will be helped by England Athletics advising that running clubs can start again. So hopefully next week I can do 3 x 10 miles runs on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (always helps with the Saturday morning weight in) and then do at least 20 minutes on the other days. Will aim to build this up to more and more days a week, with lots of recovery chucked in of course and hopefully by the time I am back in the office I will have done my highest ever mileage week. 

Thursday Update

Not really had much to post about this week, I am tapering for a solo time trial against myself at the weekend. Weight continues to vary massively as I fast, this week I have varied by as much as 3lbs, I know I shouldn't weigh myself so much but the temptation is too great. This week I have seen my lowest weight but I had a similar experience last week and then put on lbs between my mid-week and Saturday. 

My wife has also taken up some fasting (she is already a runner). She took up the fasting to support me and then found herself losing weight that she didn't think she could lose. Both really looking forward to see how the next few months go and if we can exceed where we got to in 2015, both with weight and running. 

Sunday long run

Just got back from my Sunday long run, the freedom of not worrying about distance and just running for time is amazing. I ran for the best part of 2 hours, would guess I "only" did around 10 miles or so but I don't care. I was out there and enjoying my run. Given the fasting I am doing at the moment it is not surprise that I am finding the easy runs better than the hard runs. I can go and run for 2 hours, enjoy it and feel great but 5 x 3minute hills reps as part of a shorter run is a real killer. 

I honestly have no clue what to expect next week when I do my first 2020 vs 2015 challenge. In 2015 I ran around the 23 minute mark. In my head this is a time I should easily beat now, just 6 months ago I ran a full 2 minute quicker and wasn't much lighter than I am now. At the same time the faster stuff is a struggle, I am hoping that the sort of taper week I have next week will give me a good shot, the last 2 weeks have probably be the hardest, in terms of speed-work, in a long time. 

I am now looking into some interesting topics that resonated with me from a book I am listening to at the moment. A thing called anatomy in motion / Neurokinetic Therapy was mentioned and I feel this can help me to strengthen the area's that make me weaker than I would like. 

I think that my history of Ledderhose Disease / Plantar Fibromatosis is something my body has never fully recovered from and so in the past it is my right side (above was on the left) that I have had the niggles on and honestly when I am running now I don't feel like I am running the same with both sides. 

I will do some more research and check back in, also work on some home python projects and whatever else takes my fancy whilst on lock-down. 

Ahead of 2015 me

Another week and another great result for weight loss, 2.4lbs down this week which takes me ahead of 2015 me by a whooping 0.2lbs. Given the challenges at the moment I am really happy that the weight is still coming off nicely. 

Fasting this week was tough, I tried to go for my longest ever fast and did just about manage it. Having hoped to go from Monday to Saturday fasting I ended up having a 2 hours eating window on Thursday because I was feeling very lightheaded. 

This week I have also had a look at some photos of myself, not ready to post them yet, but I am happy with the change I have been able to see since the photo I took at the end of week 1. At the moment my typical week looks something like. 

At the moment I feel like this is a sustainable effort to achieve my weight loss target at which point I can introduce some more running and some more eating! 

Weight not moving

So I am sticking really closely to my keto fasting plan and in the last week (Thursday to Wednesday) I am net up 1lb. This is slightly annoying as I have been running and fasting. I have had some issues with finding myself eating more than I should on my feeding days, mainly because I have been eating nuts and having lost 20lbs in 5 week feel I deserve the odd semi-treat. 

The other reason I am not too bothered is because of what I just said above, I have lost 20lbs in 5 weeks, I am also not finding fasting hard. This week I had to change my plan as it was my daughters birthday and we all wanted to eat together. 

So to now, I am currently over 50 hours into what will be my longest fast. Honestly I am feeling really good at the moment so who knows how long I will last, the dream is to feel good running and last until the weekend. If I last until the weekend it will take me past the 100 hours mark for the first time, I would probably have to be careful when I start eating again as I don't want to eat too much too fast and may even eat Saturday and Sunday. 

Breakthrough and boredom

I have had a bit of a mixed bag this week, I started at 178.6, went down to 176 but ended the week on 177lbs, this means I have fallen further behind where I was in 2015 but have continued to lose a steady amount of weight. 

This week my running has gone really well, it started with my longest run since my marathon attempt in December and continued through the week with me starting the plan (still a work in progress) below. I think the extra running effort has contributed to increased hunger and therefore on my non-fasting days I have eaten more and although still low carb and non-processed they were a bit more inflated in carbs. 

The Training Plan:

Running Goals to stay motivated during COVID lockdown

With the success that I have had with fasting the weight loss motivation is doing great, 5 weeks in and almost 20lbs down. Fasting itself is getting easier and the introduction of the psyillium (I can't spell it) husk has massively improved the IBS issues I was having after coming out of any sort of fast. It is all well and good saying that I would like to set a 10km PB in December but that is a long way off and I need some shorter terms targets to make sure I am on the right track. 

For a bit of context my 10km PB is, for me a rather poor, 42:50. In one race I was on for sub 40 minutes until 6k when the heat got to me and I staggered home in just under 43. That remains my official PB but if I remember correctly I also took part in a 10k the year and ran 42:45 but this was a low key event and it is not on any of the usual sites. So basically I set my 10k PB in 2015 when I had only been running properly for 10 months but was at the peak of my weight loss. I matched that, as said above in 2016, but 2017 was when it all started to go wrong and I have not yet gotten back into that sort of shape. The closest I have come was February this year, I was at a decent weight and was less than a minute away from my PB and I had a cold. Said cold became a chest infection, 2 months off running and then lock-down started, During that time my body did not react well to reduced running and probably stress eating and put on 30lbs. 

Anyways. I thought I good way to motivate myself was to track some of my progress this year compared to 2015, much like I am with my weight. So below is a table of some of the times as a comparison. 

The top half of the table should be completely irrelevant as I am in much better than 26 minute shape, well I hope so anyway. The bottom half, given where I am with weight, could be interesting. Sure I ran much quicker than 23:04 earlier this year but the rest of the times have been out of each for me since some time in 2016! So I guess, depending on me getting some GPS going, the aim is to try and break the times by the dates listed below. Whether I do this as one effort and see how I go or give myself several changes I am not yet sure. If I make this I will be back running sub 20 by the end of the year.  

Another table showing my parkrun results from that year, some with buggy, pacing or with my wife, if I stick to that I could be on 19:40 by the end of the year! Results above are slightly different as it took into account time to get over the line. Also shows me that the above was showing a time set in the week start the date shown. 

One difference to note between 2015 and 2020 is that I now run in barefoot shoes. This is for injury prevention and works great for me in that respect I am just not 100% convinced they are quite as fast, by then I have not been at my race weight since I started using them! Fingers crossed I can do this. Perhaps my goals now should be to relive past glories, wonder if I can rectify the time I just missed the sub 90 half. 

If nothing else I am hoping that this helps me with motivation of running during whatever is left of the COVID19 lockdown. The above running was mostly done with my wife (minus the racing) as my daughter was small enough t go in a buggy. 

I also want to go through some of my coaching material and see what else I should be doing, I am already doing some mobility work, squats and planks etc. but given my previous with injuries it is better to be safe than sorry.

Week 5

So I have not really been motivated to post on here much, I mean I didn't really expect any views and this is mostly just for me to document my progress so going forwards when I am bound to gain weight again (or maybe not if this works as I hope) I know how to get back to where I want to be. 

This week was another good week, I lost about 2.5lbs and am back on course with where I was in 2015. As I have said before and as the graph below shows (at least at the time of publishing as it should live update), it was around this point in 2015 that the weight loss began to stall. Up to this point I had lost 85lbs, in the next 7 weeks I would lose another 10lbs (under 1.5lbs a week compared to 85lbs in 20 weeks). In the weeks that followed I had a net change of nothing in 9 weeks. Although it is not a race against 2015 I would like to get ahead of it because I am a competitive person. Now the thing is that I am not looking just to be lighter, mostly I am looking to be healthier. 

I am not 100% sure how to judge the healthier, having been keto and sometimes carnivore for 6 years and now with fasting I probably am healthier so I might try and take a look at fitness. In 2015 I ran a 5k (probably 3 miles but not sure) on the 31st May in 23:04. Now to me that seems slow, bearing in mind I have run low 19 minutes (though not sub 20 since 2016). I did run sub 21 last year but at the time was marathon training and running consistently and 10lbs lighter than I am now. Think I will do another post on some running goals for me. 

Still a bit more weight lost this week and runnong on my fasted days has felt good. 

Week 4 - Fasting and running

This week the fasting was really easy, even with work and running the most miles I have in months I didn't really feel hungry and I feel like my bowel is getting used to it as my problems have been better although not solved. I have seen a post by Jason Fung to try psyllium husk so I am going to try a spoonful of that a day and see how I get on. 

My weight loss this week was "only" 2 lbs, so I am down to 181lbs. I mean this is still be back down under 13 stone but at the same time I was hoping for a bit more given I completely fasted through Monday, Wednesday and Friday but then I ate more last Saturday and Sunday. This week I might try fasting from Saturday until Tuesday as these 2 day fasts have been very easy. 

This does mean I have fallen a bit further behind where I was in 2015 but there are a few tough week for 2015 coming up where I could catch up with myself. 

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.