2009 round up

How's that for procrastination? I originally wrote this on 1st Jan 2010, but am only now editing it to publish... From some of the emails I've received, I know you've been on the edge of your seats to hear how I'm getting on!

Well, 2009 has been quite a year for many reasons!

The biggest thing to happen this year, however, has nothing to do with running nor weight loss - the two principle subjects of this blog.

No, the biggest success of 2009 is that, after many years of trying, my wife is now pregnant. In fact, she's now 23 weeks pregnant with twins (the best "buy one get one free" deal there is!)

But you don't want to hear about that, you want to hear about weight loss and running. So how did I do over 2009 and what are my plans for 2010?

2009 new year resolutions

At the start of 2009 I set three simple new year resolutions around running, cycling and going to the gym, and hopefully weight loss would be the result...

Unfortunately I failed them all for no good reason. There were a few things which made them more difficult, but even taking those factors into account I would still have failed...

I planned to run 300 miles but only ran 140. Ok, so I've been injured for the whole of November and December with an achilles strain but that doesn't account for the difference between the resolution and what I did.

I planned to cycle 1000 miles but I only managed just over 300 (pitiful). On that front, my bike was off the road for 2 months while I had to fabricate a part which is no longer available off the shelf. And I also had 2 months during which my doctor said I couldn't ride - this was to maximise the chances of making my wife pregnant. As it has worked, I can hardly be bitter...

I also planned to go to the gym 100 times but only went 40 times instead. Perhaps just a bit too much given the amount of travelling I do?

Weight loss

Much better news on the weight loss front. Using intermittent fasting I lost around 10kg (or 12kg if you take peak to trough results). Here are afew posts about this...

Losing weight through intermittent fasting
Rapid weight loss success

Running performance

As you may know, I was quite consistent at doing the Wimbledon Common 5k each Saturday (at least until the start of November when I got injured). Weight loss and some specific speed work in the autumn helped bring my time down from around 30 mins to 26:51. So that was definitely a success.

New resolutions for 2010

Although we're already over 10% into 2010, let me share with you my resolutions...

Running - 500 miles (vs 300 target/140 achieved in 2009)
Cycling - 1000 miles (vs 1000 target/304 achieved in 2009)
Gym - 50 times (vs 100 target/38 achieved in 2009)

So far, things have been going quite well against these goals.

I'm particularly pleased on the running front where I've managed to incorporate a true "long run" into my training. In fact on Sunday I ran 15k (which for me is a very long run!! But as you may remember, I need to get up to 21k to complete the Adidas Silverstone Half Marathon. By the way, sponsorship for this endeavour is still appreciated!!!

Running in January was a bit of a nervous affair. The streets in London were covered in wet slippery ice, and it was the first time I had run in 2 months, having taken that much time off in order to try to let my achilles heal.

After the first couple of runs, my achilles felt a little sore, and I worried that I'd come back too soon. However, if I hadn't come back in January, then I'd never have been in shape to do the half marathon in March. Definitely a case of being caught between the rock and a hard place / devil and the deep blue sea...

Anyway, this soreness appears to have now gone, even after the 15k run after which I just suffered the normal aches and pains of going further and longer than I'd gone before.

That's if for this post (it's been a long one hasn't it?!?!)

Just one final reminder - please sponsor me for the half marathon - everything is very much appreciated and it's for a very good cause!!

Ups and downs...

In this post, read:

1. How I got on at last weekend's Wimbledon Common Time Trial


2. Current success at asking people to sponsor me for the Silverstone Half Marathon


3. Recent weight loss progress

Wimbledon Common Time Trial
Another personal best! Admittedly, this time by only 8 seconds, but it's still a PB! And not bad given I'd had far too many glasses of wine the night before and I was very close to decided to have a lie-in on Saturday morning. So that's five personal bests in five weeks!

Sponsorship for Silverstone Half Marathon
So far, two fellow bloggers have been kind enough to sponsor me. Very kind, in fact, as they've never met me. And in fact, the first email I have ever received from the Virtual Runner was to say that he had sponsored me - what a star!
I'm still hoping for a lot more sponsorship, however. And any amount is helpful. Remember it's going to help children around the world. Give up your Starbucks for a day and sponsor me instead! The world's children and your waistline will thank you!

Recent weight loss progress
Not such a good story here unfortunately... I think I might have hit a weight loss plateau and I'm losing minimal amounts of weight per week at the moment.
I think, however, I know the reasons:

1. Looking back at my exercise diary, I have not been working out as regularly as I was when I started this weight loss push a few months ago - time to get back to 5 sessions a week!


2. I've also let myself start drinking again - not a lot, but I think it's still having an effect. And not just with the calories in the drink - I think it also has had an effect on the amount I've been working out, as well as the amount/type of food I've been eating


3. Finally, I'm not eating as well as I used to. I'm still following Intermittent Fasting, but when I do eat, I'm not eating anywhere near as healthily as I was. Not helped by the fact that my wife had two birthday parties in the last week, both with three different cakes...

So, I'm going to have a good week this week - working out Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, not drinking and getting back to the good way of eating I used to. I even made a large ratatouille last night which will be my vegetables for the next week or so.
Let's see if I can break this plateau!!

5K personal best for The Fat Runner

Another week, another 5k personal best!! This time, down to 28:16 at the Wimbledon Common Time Trial.

While I know that I'm not troubling the front-runners, this is quite major for me.

I've been running for a few years now, and up until a few weeks ago, I only succeeded in maintaining my (slow) pace - I wasn't getting any quicker at all. Very annoying!

So what is different this time?

Well I'm gradually getting lighter through intermittent fasting (based on the Eat Stop Eat book) than I used to be - which must help.

I'm doing more strength training to improve my core strength (using Turbulence Training) which again must help.

I'm also doing a few more mid week runs (well one is more than zero, right?) than I used to.

Finally, my training runs are now made up predominantly of intervals (between 1 and 4 minutes long) to get my body used to running at faster speeds.

All of these things have, I think, contributed to bringing my 5k time down, and therefore I'll continue to do them. Seeing the results of my fitness push, both on the scales as well as on the time clock, is doing wonders for my motivation to keep on going!

Talking of motivation, there's someone I want to mention who also runs at the Wimbledon Common Time Trial (let's call her "X"). She's a little older than I am (according to the website, she sits in the 40-44 year old category) and she's probably a little overweight.

However, since I started running this event, she has always been faster than me (other than last week).

I could never understand it - she's older than I am, she's of the statistically slower sex, she's quite short, and she doesn't "look" fit. So how was it that she was, at times, substantially faster than me?

Well the answer came when I was running alongside her for the first time last week. She sounded like a steam-train she was breathing so hard! So basically I think a big reason for her being as fast as she is, is that she puts a hell of a lot of effort into every 5k she does - really inspirational considering she's nearer the back than the front.

Now, whenever I feel like slowing down or stopping to walk for a bit, I ask myself "Would X slow down or would she keep on going?".

She's a real inspiration (and doesn't know it).

Death by diet

Tragically, a British bride-to-be died this week, with many pointing the finger at her low calorie diet as being the reason for her death.

Samantha Clowe was 34 years of age and had been following the "Lighter Life" diet for eleven weeks, losing over 3 stone (42 pounds, 19kg) in the process.

Unfortunately, Samantha is not the only one on the "Lighter Life" diet who has suffered.

In 2006, Matilda Callaghan died after losing 10 stone (140 pounds, 64kg) on the diet.

Last year, Jacqueline Henson (a mother of five), died three weeks after starting the Lighter Life diet. The diet apparently suggests drinking 4 to 6 litres of water per day (140 to 210 oz). She drank four litres in two hours, causing her brain to swell, leading to her death.

Sarah Barker was also on the Lighter Life diet - shedding 11 stone (154 pounds, 70kg) in eight months in 2006. However, Sarah now blames the diet for continuing muscle pains, poor vision, memory loss and tiredness, three years after having given up the diet.

In 2007, Christina Massingham began the Lighter Life diet to reduce her weight from 22 stone. Within less than a year, she had lost over 11 stone and tried to start eating normally again. Unfortunately this didn't work and she ended up losing a total of 13 stone, and was diagnosed with anorexia.

Before I get sued, I need to stress that no inquest was able to prove a direct causal link between the diet that these women were on and the tragic consequences.

It's also worth pointing out that, on the newspaper websites on which these stories are reported, that there are a substantial number of comments from people who have followed the Lighter Life diet, lost substantial amounts of weight, and have kept it off. There are also comments from people who have lost a lot of weight and then regained most or all of it, or sometimes regained even more than they lost in the firt place.

So why am I writing about these tragic stories? Because I was worried that I too may be losing weight too quickly and risk having similar effects. My weight loss is currently averaging around 1.5kg per week - equating to around a stone per month. This is a similar rate of weight loss which these women were also experiencing.

On a bit of closer examination, however, I'm comfortable that the approach I'm taking is a long way away from the Lighter Life.

Firstly, the Lighter Life allows around 500 calories per day every day. I may get down towards that on my fasting days, but am substantially above that on other days, so overall I'm getting a lot more nutrition than anyone on the Lighter Life programme.

Secondly, much of the calorie deficit I'm creating is coming from exercise. The stories I read about these women suggested that exercise was not a large part of their programme.

Thirdly, I'm not intending to be cutting calories to the extent I am for any longer than three months - by that point I should be at (or close to) my goal weight of 85kg.

However, the question still remains around what is a 'healthy' rate of weight loss. Almost everything you read suggests that it is between 1 to 2 pounds per week. However, the I've yet to see the science behind why this is the right number, and not the 3 to 4 pounds per week which I'm currently losing.

Let's take the NBC show "The Biggest Loser".

The last winner of that competition, Helen Phillips, lost 140 pounds over the course of the show. Just taking the regular part of the show into account, when they had weekly weighings, she lost 91 pounds between week 1 and week 17 - over five and a half pounds per week.

Mike, however, lost 142 pounds over the same period - almost 9 pounds per week! To be honest, I don't understand how that is possible, as it equates to a caloric deficit of well over 3,500 calories per day and that's allowing for the fact that some of that weight loss will come from water and lean tissue and not just from fat. Creating that kind of caloric deficit (assuming that he's still eating at least something - 500 calories per day?) means that he is burning up over 4,000 calories per day, every day. Lots of lots of exercise - very impressive.

But these cases lead me to the conclusion that my, relatively modest, three to four pounds per week weight loss, is well within the range of being healthy.

You can keep up with my daily weight loss progress in the top right corner of my blog, or click on my "Losing Weight" page to see my daily weighings since I started trying to lose weight properly.

Lose weight, run faster

Intermittent fasting and substantially increasing the amount I do physical exercise has kept allowing me to lose weight - I am now down just over 7kg (around 16 pounds) in just over 4 weeks.

And last week at the Wimbledon Common 5k, I managed to get my time down to 29 mins 20 seconds. That is the second fastest time I've ever run it. The only time I beat that was in March 2008 when I ran 29:14. Unfortunately I don't have a record of what I weighed then, but going back over my training log in Garmin Training Center, it seems that I had been running more than usual for back then, including adding in some long slow runs...

As well as losing weight through intermittent fasting, the other thing I've been looking at recently is improving my running technique to run faster.

Unfortunately running technique is a little like losing weight - no one seems to agree on the best approach!

However, I've found in weight loss that many people will argue about the exact details, rather than just getting on with it and cutting calories. Almost every diet which works relies on calorie reduction in one way or another.

And as far as I can see, much is the same for running. Whether you use the Pose method, or Chi running, or something else, most people seem to agree that good running technique has:

• a fast leg turnover - something in the range of 180 foot strikes per minute


• feet landing under the hips


• landing on the midfoot rather than the heel


• picking the heel up at the end (rather than swinging a straight leg forward

There are plenty of other things I can look at for when I get better/faster, but just focusing on these will be enough for now I think.

The other thing I read was that the way to run faster is to run faster. In other words, practice running faster during your training so that your legs are used to the pace when you want to use it in a race. So that's what I did on Monday night.

Tuesday night was going to be a long slow run, but I think I pushed myself so much on Monday that my legs were absolutely not up to anything more than 5k...

I'll report back next week on how my Saturday 5k race went and whether I've managed to achieve an all-time personal best (rather than just a seasons best)...

I've also put a graph onto my "Losing Weight" page which shows how my weight has come down day by day. It's part motivation for me, but hopefully it's useful to you if you're trying to lose weight so that you can see that intermittent fasting appears to work.

Until next time.

Losing Weight through Intermittent Fasting

In my last post which looked at my recent (and continuing) weight loss success, I promised to talk about how I had changed my diet to achieve this level of weight loss.

What I have been doing is a form of 'intermittent fasting' based on the book "Eat Stop Eat" by Brad Pilon.

Without going into the whole whys, wherefores, reasons and whatever around intermittent fasting, what it basically means is not eating for around 24 hours at time - and Brad recommends doing this 1 or 2 times per week.

Before I got the book, I had a handful of major questions, some of which were answered by the book, and others through my experience of sticking to the plan (which I have done now for just over 3 weeks).

Question 1) Would I lose weight - what about starvation mode?

Well I think that my weight loss results , so far, speak for themselves. I'm still continuing to lose weight although at a slightly slower pace than at the start. Initially, I was losing around 2kg per week, but this week it's more like 1.5kg. Not sure if this is a blip or not - we'll see over the next few weeks I guess.

I don't have body fat scales at home, so I can't tell you anything statistically about body composition, other than I look much flatter in the mirror.

In terms of 'starvation mode' then I looked up a few of the studies which Brad researched. There is a key study which looks at the impact of intermittent fasting on metabolic rate, lean body weight, body fat etc. The study (and Brad) point to the fact that the base metabolic rate of the subjects is roughly the same on fasting and non-fasting days to say that there is no drop in metabolic rate from intermittent fasting.

However, when you compare the metabolic rate 21 days after starting intermittent fasting, to the day before starting intermittent fasting, there is roughly a 10% drop. Before everyone screams "starvation mode!" let's compare that to the fact that these subjects are now ingesting almost 50% fewer calories. Therefore, the calorie reduction massively outweighs (no pun intended) the slight reduction in metabolic rate.

Furthermore, between 80% and 90% of the weight loss was in the form of pure fat, with the rest being made up of muscle. Again that gives ammunition to the 'starvation mode' camp - the fact that they lost muscle mass - but the vast majority of weight loss was in fat. Additionally, it is apparently normal for 'fatter' people to have more muscle mass than lean people anyway - we need it to haul our fat butts around! So when we lose weight, it only makes sense that we need less muscle...

Question 2) Would I feel sluggish the way I sometimes do if I get hungry?

From my experience so far, absolutely not. In fact, there is some research to suggest that metabolic rate actually increases slightly in the first 24 hours of a fast. Some have postulated that this is a sensible evolutionary trait - when our ancestors got hungry, they would need to be more alert and energetic so they could go out and hunt food. This makes sense to me (although I'm no dietician...).

Question 3) Would I feel hungry when fasting?

The biggest surprise to me is that I don't feel hungry when fasting. Well perhaps just a little bit but no more than usual. I used to hit 12 o'clock and immediately race out to get some food. Sometimes earlier. Now that I'm fasting, I realise that that urge to eat was not a need to eat - it was purely a learned pattern of behaviour that I'd need to unlearn. Just as someone may feel that they need a drink when they get home from work. They don't need that drink (unless they have alcohol dependency issues) - it's just a learned pattern of behaviour.

So when 12 o'clock comes around, rather than going to get food, I instead go to the coffee machine and get myself some green and peppermint tea which seems to satisfy my urge to put something in my mouth.

(By the way, I hate the taste of green tea but I hear that it's very good for you. So what I do is to put a green tea bag and a peppermint tea bag into the same cup so I get the benefits of the green tea but the taste of the peppermint tea. I've now noticed a number of my colleagues do the same now that they've seen my trick!)

Question 4) Is intermittent fasting healthy?

Well, as far as I'm aware no-one has proven that intermittent fasting is unhealthy. People have been able to prove that prolonged fasting or severe calorie restriction have depressed metabolic rate (although never enough to cancel out the impact of reduced energy intake on fat stores) and have reduced muscle mass (albeit with between 5 to 10 times as much fat being lost). I'm happy to take these two impacts along with the benefits of fat loss.

In addition, however, Brad'd book puts forward a bunch of different health benefits from intermittent fasting, including increased insulin sensitivity. In fact, it was this alone which made me look at the book in the first place. As an overweight (previously obese) person, I was at high risk of contracting diabetes and I wanted to make sure I didn't get there - hence trying to reduce insulin resistance.

Two of the other key benefits I have seen however as as follows:

Firstly, I just have much more time in the day. I no longer spend 10 minutes in the morning eating breakfast and tidying away. I no longer spend 20-30 minutes getting and eating lunch - instead I can work straight through and stay massively focused on what I'm doing.

Secondly, I have a completely different relationship with food. When I look at food now, I'm no longer eating because I feel massively hungry and just have to get food into my stomach. I'm far more balanced, and can make much more sensible food choices. I now ask myself what the food can give me, rather than just grabbing whatever is available. I actively choose salads and vegetables in restaurants now - not because I want to 'be good', but because I know that I want to get a bunch of vitamins and minerals into me.

Question 5) Would I be able to work out while fasting?

Apparently, adrenaline levels are slightly increased in the first 24 hour of a fast - for the same reason that metabolic rate increases. Which should mean that workouts should be just as effective (if not more so) when fasting.

However, I'm not quite sure how this works. Presumably in a fast, all of the muscle glycogen gets used up (that's why fat is being burned). But that means that when you work out, there is no muscle glycogen left meaning you need to burn fat instead, which is (as far as I understand) much slower to release energy. I'm going to ask Brad about this and see what he says.

My workouts have felt just as intense as before I started intermittent fasting - however I was not working out consistently before I started, so I don't have a quantified benchmark with which to compare my strength. What I am able to say, however, is that my strength has definitely increased WHILE I've been doing intermittent fasting. Not massively (I was always quite strong anyway) but it's definitely noticeable.

The thing which I find most puzzling at the moment is my 5k time, which has stuck at between 29:30 and 30:00 despite losing 6kg.

There are, potentially, a couple of explanations I can think of.

Firstly, perhaps the reduction in muscle mass is greater than I thought and I'm too weak to take advantage of the weight loss to run faster.

Secondly, perhaps the intermittent fasting means that I don't have enough glycogen in my muscles at the time I do my run to ensure a good performance.

Thirdly, perhaps it's just the impact of a substantial increase in training volume (mentioned in my last post) which means that my muscles are more fatigued than they used to be, masking any underlying fitness gains.

Fourthly, perhaps it's my running technique and that, whatever weight/strength/fitness I am, I won't be able to run more quickly with poor technique.

Right now, I'm thinking it's probably a combination of the second and third reasons. If I'm right, that should mean that I will start seeing gains in my 5k time soon, as the weight continues to drop off (as I won't be MORE glycogen depleted, or MORE fatigued than I am now). If I'm wrong, I'll look at getting my technique looked at.

Wrap up on intermittent fasting

So, there you have it - my experiences of intermittent fasting with Eat Stop Eat. If you're interested in more of the science behind the approach, as well as how to apply it, I'd recommend picking up a copy of the Eat Stop Eat book by clicking on the link.