The Mindless Walker

Monday to Friday this week I managed to go out every lunchtime and go for a brisk half hour walk, and this certainly helped me get a minimum of 10k steps done for each day.
There is a element of mindless walking but this is a good thing as it allows you to switch for a short while before heading back to work - I also find that you are more productive than had you stayed at your desk.

I plan on taking "my" (but seems to be used permanently by my daughter) Ipad with me for one of the lunchtimes next week, maybe go for a slightly longer walk to use it as an opportunity to showcase some of the nooks and crannies of the Norwich city centre away from the identikit main high streets that are full of the usual national and international commercial shops.

My recording of my food consumption does highlight how calorific some foods are - the biggest shocker was the Sainsburys Taste The Difference Salted Caramel Cookie that I was given by a colleague which I though was probably about 250 calories - it was 50% higher at 386 calories!
I still managed to come in under my MyFitnessPal allowance for that day by 100 calories.

Winter time I like to make soups, like the apple and kale soup I mentioned previously, and another is Minestrone Soup (http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4807/chunky-minestrone-soup) that my wife made today - please note makes for 8 servings not 4 as it states and so the calories per serving are about 220.
A couple of slices of wholemeal bread and some grated parmesan cheese takes it up to about 500 calories but you've had something very hearty and healthy that will keep you going for a good while.

Saving the best week for last in the January 10k steps Challenge

Three days into the final week and my average steps is 12k - I have been going for a walk each lunchtime, deliberately picking routes that take a long-way to reach a destination and involve some elements of elevation as well.
Unless I do 16k a day for the next four days I will not hit 10k per day for January but that is less important as the key thing is instilling a habit of using my lunchtime for some form of physical activity, and not waste it working at my desk.

Now normally for a Thursday lunchtime I would have been meeting some friends for my a weekly coffee and catchup so the steps would have been lower tomorrow but its going to be coffee for one due to them having other one-off commitments, so the plan is go for another walk.
The last two days potentially have the biggest challenge as so far the two-day weekend totals have been barely more than a mid-week single day - I will need to get out and do some walking and/or running on both days to break that habit.

Recording my food intake is going well and whilst it is early days, this was a key factor when I trained last year for the Race To The Stones 100km run.

I have been reading a book I got from the Library on one of my walks this week called Fat Dad, Fat Kid  (with Fit written in green over the two Fat words) - It is a very light but decent read, especially as I am about 160 pages done already with 20 or so to go.
The authors are from the Shaytards YouTube - I've heard of them but my daughter actively watches all their YouTube videos, and wants to read it after me.
The main premise of the book is their determination to jointly go 30 days without Sodas/Fizzy Pop, Ice Cream, sweet deserts etc, drink the recommended amount of water a day, eat healthy and get out and enjoy an active life.
At the weekend I will review it in more detail.

Home Truths

This post will not be an easy one but its part of what I need to do to re-install the right habits in my life.

I do not do this often these days but I weighed myself last night - 14st 1lb (197lbs or 89kgs depending your weight currency).
Not only is this a stone and a half more than my 100km race weight from just six months ago but more shockingly, its half a stone more than my weight from this time a year ago.

Whilst the lack of exercise is a big factor, if I am honest the bigger factor was the excess snacking, and even more so in December and early January.
This was a reason I did not want to start recording food consumption until now, as there was a surplus of snacks from the Xmas period.

Whilst my January 10k a day plan has not been anywhere perfect, it is still on the best post 100km month to date, so if nothing else I am more active this month - it will have helped to stem the damage a little but without some control on what I eat, it is too small of a difference to turn the weight tide.

In terms of Garmin, my calories burned are 1900+ 265 per 10k steps.
Today I have done to date 14,500 steps so is worth about 400 calories but interestingly MyFitnessPal has reduced that 400 to 300.
Food today has been 2 slices of medium white toast with jam on one and peanut butter on the other,
Kale and Apple soup with 2 slices of medium white toast, Chicken Mangalore Herb Curry with white rice, and for snacks during the day, one large apple, one tangerine, one blood orange  and a costa cappuccino - I am 250 calories under what I am allowed by MyFitnessPal, so if I feel the urge for a snack then I've scope for some extra fruit (banana) and/or veg (carrots).

Dreadful night's sleep last night - was too warm in the house and during the night, the neighboring pond was invaded by ducks who were very noisy, plus I was playing minecraft before I went to bed and all my mind kept drifting into was minecraft -  looking at the sleep data on my Garmin, I had three instances of deep sleep, all lasting no more than about 40 minutes each with the rest being very light sleep.

One week early - Tomorrow, I go to phase two

Whilst it has not been a perfect three weeks in January with this week being a lowest step count week of January so far, it is time to move things on.
Originally I planned on this to be from the beginning of February, I am going to restart recording my food and drink consumption on MyFitnessPal from tomorrow.

It is clear that broadly speaking, on a non-running day I burn approximately 1900 calories a day, so that is my February target to keep my calorie consumption to 1850, with an allowable increase on a running day in proportion to the level of activity.

So as it stands with one week to go until the end of January I am at an average of 8700 steps a day, which is 1300 lower than I wanted but will still be clock in the best post-100km month over the last six months (currently 7800 steps a day in December 2015).

Run-less, Step-less but not inactive weekend

Having done an average of 10,800 steps last week, this week I have only done 8,500, primarily because I did not have the time (too many school-runs) to do any lunch-time runs during the week and this weekend, I didn't do any because I spent most of the weekend sorting the house out - too many rooms are currently more storage rooms than their intended uses.

So whilst I was only clocking up about 6-7k steps a day over the weekend, I have spent very little time in a sedentary fashion.

I have sorted my running clothes out ready for the next run but as I type this, that pile now has a long-haired cat fast asleep on it - at least going to some use today.......

I am aiming for 2-3 mid-week runs for the week ahead, and at least one run next weekend.

Saturday wash-out, Sunday Bluster

As feared, the number of steps done on Saturday was a measly 3k, possibly one of the lowest on record - I had great plans to be actively doing stuff in the house and spent most of it on the PC - the mental fortitude to do something was not there.

Today, whilst I woke up later than planned, I was braved the blustery cold weather and did 4 miles jog, and whilst it couldn't recover the 7k steps deficit from yesterday, I still did 75k steps in one week, an average of 10.7k steps per day.

If you like to make your own soups, I made a cracking soup this weekend and the recipe came from last week's weekly Lidl magazine - also on its website http://www.lidl.co.uk/en/10103.htm - it says it serves two but we got three very generous portions out of it, so more likely to serve four comfortably with some bread.
My only suggestion is if like me you use vegetable stock cubes to make the stock, make half of it as veg stock and the other half as hot water, as the stock cubes could overpower the soup.
I ran it through myfitnesspal and it comes out as about 250 calories per portion.  A bit high in sodium but if you cut back the stock cube as I suggest then that will come down.  It has over half your vitamin C, a fifth of your dietary fibre, and 10% of your protein but thats the goodness of kale for you.

Don't Run Before You Can Walk

Three running sessions done during the working week, two of them were Hill sessions, and on the lap hill of yesterday's second hill session, I felt a slight twinge in the hamstring.  I instantly dropped to a walking pace and jogged back to work.

I suspect doing even one hill session on your first week is not overly sensible, so doing two was pushing it - I think I got away with it but I will know when I aim to run/walk for an hour on Sunday morning.

The aim going forward is to take advantage of any workdays where I am not doing the school run, to get into work like I did on Monday ultra-early, and go for a run around the city.

In terms of my January 10k steps challenge, Thursday I was a couple of hundred steps shy of the target but yesterday I comfortably beat it with 12.2k, so the deficit (caused by the first three days of the month) has reduced from 13.4k to just 2.5k.
With me not planning to run on a Saturday this month, today is the day where the greatest risk of a big daily failure could happen and it might be big enough not be recovered by tomorrow's long run.

One Step At A Time - The Data Geek Strikes Back

	Steps	Av Steps
Month	('000s)	Per Day
Apr-15	326	10.9
May-15	488	15.7
Jun-15	392	13.1
Jul-15	411	13.3
Aug-15	203	6.5
Sep-15	192	6.4
Oct-15	229	7.4
Nov-15	195	6.5
Dec-15	241	7.8
2015	2677	9.7

Above is the number of steps done since the purchase of my Garmin at the end of March 2015 through to the end of 2015 - 2.67million steps and approximately 9,700 steps per day - assuming the same rate for the missing first three months, we could annualise to about 3.55 million steps for 2015.

Not surprisingly, my biggest day by far was the day of the 100k where the first 16 hours (8am to midnight) amounted to 109,000 steps.

You can also blatantly see that since then my physical activity plummeted to basically sedentary levels, and will equally be no surprise that my fitness levels have dropped and my weight has ballooned as a result.

The Big January Goal for me is to achieve 310,000 steps i.e. 10k per day.

I am little on the back-foot because the reboot started on 4th January, so as you will see below numbers for the three days are well below 10k per day.

The shortfall from those days will be recovered bit by bit.

The plan is to then next month roll that target forward but also add some measure of healthy eating for February as well.

                Steps

1st Jan 2016 4297

2nd Jan 2016 8279

3rd Jan 2016 4023

4th Jan 2016 11912

5th Jan 2016 12538

6th Jan 2016 13605

                        54654

A Not The 1st Jan Reboot And Being Classed As One Of Those Short-Lived January Runners

Yesterday on the first working day of the year, I managed to get up at 6am, drive to work, change into my running gear and hit the Norwich streets for a light 20 minute jog around the city - there was also a brisk 10 minute walk before it as my Garmin was taking a while to get a GPS fix.
This was my first run in about a month and to be honest it was good running that early in the morning.

Got back to work and was getting change when the chap next to me in the changing rooms remarked there were more people this morning than usual but it will be back to normal in a few weeks - it was clearly a dig at me but joked back, "by the end of the week more like".
It amused me because he was then talking to his friend about planning to do a long 20 mile cycle into work soon - the temptation to mention I had run 63 miles in one go was ultimately resisted but it does go to show how we can be guilty of judging a book by its cover.

Today, yes two days in a row, I did a lunchtime run as a group of us were planning to do a short hill session but it has been moved to Friday, so in the end it was just me trying to run up Carrow Hill in Norwich, only to be vastly out-paced by a female runner who seem to glide up the hill.
I did achieve two runs up it, then did some light running before tackling the infamous Thorn Lane, a short but steep hill.