I Run

After the success of my scooter endeavours, if you overlook the hypoglycaemic episode, I finally decided that it was time to dig out the track suit bottoms, oversized top and trainers. 

Running was one of my favourite activities when I was in my twenties cough years ago so it seems logical to me to start this up again. 

So I made the decision yesterday that in the evening I'd start running and then I'd have one of those new Pizza Express home cook pizzas that only have 450 calories as a reward. 

Once I'd decided on this plan of action I couldn't wait to get started and spent most of the afternoon looking forward to my new adventure...flash forward to 1900hrs. 

I had made plans on what route to take quite a while ago as my trainer from my boxing days had given me the best advice about starting off running which was: never over do it to start off with or you'll not want to carry on and choose a route that is easy to expand upon in increments as you get fitter; I therefore chose Woolwich Common as my venue as it's riddled with paths and I had seen a nice little route on Google maps. 

After a warm up I walked to my starting point, started my new app MapMyRun and set off at a slow pace that I hoped would let me run the route without stopping or walking. 

The first thing I noticed was that my head seemed to be bouncing around quite a bit and my legs didn't feel very coordinated; luckily I soon forgot about that, unluckily this was because I'm not very fit and it felt like my nose was collapsing each time I breathed in! 

I was about half way round, I was coping, just, I was coaching myself in my head with "just keep going", "nearly there" and the like. I could now see how far I had left and used that as a marker and started almost saying to myself through the out breaths "keep going nearly there, nearly there". 

I'd done it, I stopped my app and looked at the results - 0.80 miles in 7 minutes and 47 seconds, it felt like I'd just finished a half marathon, sweating profusely, gasping for breath but happy that I'd achived my aims and had an app full of stats to look at; I think I will enjoy this rebirth into running once my fitness levels are a bit higher!

Diet Coke Strikes Back

After I broke the habit of Diet Coke I started to have a coffee in the morning and a coffee or tea in the afternoon and my main soft drink was sparkling mineral water. 

After a while this started to become a tad boring so I decided to look for a non cola caffeine free soda to have....the slippery slope had begun!!

Fruit "Zero" sodas have a fairly high calorie count of around 10 calories per 500ml so I didn't feel very happy about having those as a 500ml Diet Coke has just 2 calories; so began my new reading of labels in supermarkets quest. 

After some consideration I opted for Tesco Firey No Added Sugar Gingerbeer which weighed in at 1 calories per 330ml can and off I went. 

After drinking this for a few weeks my mind said to me "hey what's the problem, just have a can of Diet Coke a day", I duly complied and after only a few days this can became, two, became three, became four 500ml bottles....you get the picture, it was a Diet Coke relapse!

Lucky I've realised this in time and stopped again and as soon as the Gingerbeer is finished at home that will be cut out too, I'm considering adding fruit juice to my sparkling mineral water like you would with squash for a bit of variation. 

This little experience got me thinking firstly about Diet Coke and then Diet sodas in general and what exactly is so addictive about them, it can't be just caffeine as I found caffeine free Diet Coke just as addictive and also had problems with the Gingerbeer. 

So I did a bit of digging and found that it's an interesting combination of the caffeine, fake sugar and psychological addiction caused by the rituals and habits around drinking diet sodas. 

I can highly recommend reading this interesting CNN article on the subject:

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/03/01/diet.soda.health/

Progress Report - Heath Update

Today I made my way with trepidation to the GP's surgery for an appointment with the practice's diabetes nurse, this was going to be when I learned the outcome of my blood tests. 

The first pleasing thing was that the nurse didn't recognise me as I saw a different one last time so I'd not seen her since February. The second pleasing thing was when she said that my non-fasting blood test results were those of a healthy person. 

I explained that I'd been having severe hypoglycaemic episodes, one recently where I nearly passed out and she told me that while it's unusual for the drug Metformin to cause hypo's it does do this with a small percentage of patients and I was obviously one of those patients so I was to stop taking Metformin with immediate effect. 

Next up my blood pressure was too low so in consultation with my GP she halved my Lisinopril tablets and told me to come back in two weeks for a re-test when the decision would be made as to whether I need to take them at all. 

I was then told that I don't need to test my bloods daily anymore, to just do it when or if I feel unwell, but I think that I will continue to do the regular tests for a while as quite frankly this has come as a shock to me after all these years of medication and testing, I thought that I'd be eased off of the regime gently if at all!

Of all the things that have happened to me over this journey since January 2014 this has had the most profound effect on me as it's quite literally life changing, I still can't quite believe that I'm in this situation now as I thought that my type 2 diabetes was with me for life...I've got another blood test in November to confirm that coming off of the diabetes medication was the right thing to do and I almost can't wait to find out what happens and at the same time I'm worried that something may go wrong.  

Exercise Day 01

I've been toying with the idea of starting to exercise for a fair while now and today after a bit too much pondering and consideration I opted for one of those urban scooters. 

After work I hopped onto the Jubilee line and went to Decathlon at Surrey Quays and acquired an Oxelo 7XL with duel suspension and oh boy am I glad I did as it's such a fun thing to ride and the suspension really does make a difference. 

After a quick text to my brother, who has the same scooter, I set off to meet him from work in Greenwich with the plan to scoot home to Woolwich Common from there along the Thames path. 

About half way between Greenwich and the O2 I hit my first glitch - I'd only eaten a 204 calorie lunch and that was six hours beforehand, thus I proceed to have the worst hypoglycaemic episode I've had since being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, my vision almost completely shut down in what I can best describe as a sparkling whiteout fashion. 

Since my weight loss I've got out of the habit of carrying sugary emergency food as my diabetes has been so much better, this turned out to be a major error today as I was in the middle of nowhere and on the brink of "falling over", I needed a sugary drink and food urgently!

I managed to stumble my way almost to some shops and despatched my brother on ahead with a crisp twenty pound note to purchase full fat coke and dairy milk chocolate, upon the coke and chocolate touching my tongue I was instatainiously back to normal; slightly annoyingly my first half a bar of chocolate in 200 days wasn't a thing to savour rather than my saviour, along with the quarter bottle of coke. 

So the moral of this story is: urban scooters are an amazingly fun form of exercise, but if you're planning a five mile plus stint on one make sure you've eaten enough calories, especially if you're on medication that's designed to drive you're blood sugar down when you don't really need to be taking it anymore!

At Last An Update!

Sorry for the silence on this blog of late, this has been due to work commitments being fairly high on my list of priorities: Imperial War Museum London to reopen

I've still been keeping to my weight loss regime (in the most part, see below) with some interesting things cropping up this weekend.

My current statistics are:

• Weight - 14 stone.
• Neck - 16.5".
• Waist - 34"

Starting statistics:

• Weight - 23 stone 4 pounds.
• Neck - 19.5".
• Waist - 52"

Difference:

• Weight - minus 9 stone 4 pounds.
• Neck - minus 3".
• Waist - minus 18".

Now as originally I had only planned to go down to 14 stone 7 pounds, I've obviously gone a way past this (before this weekend I was actually under 14 stone), but after doing some research I have decided that what flab I've got left isn't loose skin but is in fact subcutaneous fat:

Subcutaneous fat is the layer of subcutaneous tissue that is most widely distributed. It is composed of adipocytes, which are grouped together in lobules separated by connective tissue. The number of adipocytes varies among different areas of the body, while their size varies according to the body's nutritional state. It acts as padding and as an energy reserve, as well as providing some minor thermoregulation via insulation. Subcutaneous fat is found just beneath the skin, as opposed to visceral fat, which is found in the peritoneal cavity, and can be measured using body fat calipers to give a rough estimate of total body adiposity. It is thickest in the buttocks, palms, and soles. 

(source Wikipedia).

I came to this conclusion by the way this fat behaves around my mid rift and as it doesn't have the loose skin appearance. Because of this I've decided to try and get rid of the remaining fat by continuing to diet and taking more exercise.

One thing however was that my partner and I had decided to go for a slap up steak meal when I reached my target weight and as I was well under that target off we went to a rather nice brasserie at London Bridge on Friday night and I got in the supplies for a full fat English Breakfast for the Saturday morning.

This was going to be an interesting test as I'd not eaten such volumes or high amounts of calories since my birthday in April and it would be only the second time I'd eaten chips since January this year! So my main worries were:

1. Would this just trigger me off into old habits?
2. Would I put on a substantial amount of weight?
3. Sweet food, my greatest fear as I have a love of sweet food!

Currently I'm eating less than 1,380 calories a day to ensure that I continue to lose weight (thanks to MyFitnessPal for working all this out) but the amounts for my two super naughty but nice meals were:

• Calamari Rings - 328 calories.
• Tartar Sauce - 70 calories
• 15oz Ribeye Steak - 816 calories (I over estimated this a bit).
• French Fries 100g - 274 calories.
• Ketchup - 21 calories.
• 3 slices of sour dough bread - 263 calories.
• Butter - 72 calories.
• Diet Coke (yes the old fiend) 1 calorie.

So this works out at a whopping great 1,845 calories! So I basically slaughtered my goal for that day with a daily calorie total of 2,148 which is 760 calories over (but interestingly below the maintain weight goal for my current weight).

Move forward a day and it's brunch time which consisted of:

• 2 Richmond thick sausages - 250 calories.
• 2 rashers of Co-Op unsmoked rindless back bacon - 140 calories.
• 1 medium free range egg - 60 calories.
• 1 spray of 1cal oil to fry the egg in - 1 calorie.
• Half a tin of baked beans - 164 calories.
• 1 slice of malted Danish bread - 51 calories.
• Filter coffee - 6 calories.

So even though I used some of my portion cutting tricks and didn't have butter or margarine due to the baked beans this still worked out at 672 calories for this meal, and then add to this a Tapas based lunch of cooked meats, dips, pita bread etc. and you've got a daily total of 1,906 calories which was over my goal by 526 calories.

So I was interested to see what difference this would make to my weight this morning (Sunday) and as it turns out I'd put on 2 pounds, which wasn't as much as I thought; I'll carry on with the experiment by weighing myself tomorrow morning as well to see if there's an up or down movement in my weight as I've been back to my normal eating regime today which meant that I've eaten 1,122 calories in total.

So based on this experience I can conclude:

1. I managed to go back to the healthy options with no real issues after the treat days, I'm very happy with this.
2. I appear to put on and take off weight fairly easily, we'll see where I'm at tomorrow but I'm not overly stressed by the changed that occurred.
3. Sweet food wasn't an issue but this was because I was too frightened to touch it, just in case!!
4. The diet coke tasted not very nice at all, it was overly sweet and bitter, I take this as a good sign that I've broken that habit.

So all in all this was an interesting and pleasurable experience and has prepared me more for the ever nearing time when I have to eat more in order to sustain a healthy weight, because as regular readers will know this has caused me some worry in the past. 

Update Update

I've had a bit of a busy week work wise, sorry for the lack of blog updates. Normal service will resume shortly. 

Interesting State Of Mind

As you know from an earlier post I've now reached my target weight and my Body Mass Index is just, just, in the healthy range, while this has given me a good deal to be happy about it has also caused some interesting things to happen in my head.

I've decided to carry on losing weight and reassess my situation when I'm 14 stone as I still have a spare tyre that isn't just, well, stretched skin, it has some self supporting properties and I know that the BMI is not an exact science but I'd be happier if I was well into the healthy area.

This has got me thinking and analysing the situation as it would appear that my biggest concern is actually stopping the weight loss, I kind of get a buzz from it now and I look forward to the weigh ins and mapping my progress. As well as this I think that a major problem is worrying about the road ahead as I've lost weight before, although in an unsustainable crash diet way, and just put it all back on when I stopped the diet. Even though I feel that I really have changed the way I deal with food for the better and broken the bad habits with junk food I really do have a fear that I'm going to just lapse into my old ways and pile it all back on again at the drop of a hat.

Now this isn't a problem just yet as I'm still fairly chunky and I don't think I look overly thin, but it's something I need to keep a watchful eye on just in case I lose focus and actually end up unhealthily underweight. The actual act of eating isn't a problem at all as I still think about food and anticipate what I'm going to have and plan ahead,  I just really need to keep an eye on myself.

I think that one way to manage this is to take up some sort of physical exercise as this will tone up any unsightly lumps and bumps and also give me something else to get addicted to but the two problems I have here are getting myself motivated to start the exercise and what exercise I will do.

I have a history of playing competitive sports and have done: rugby, cricket, weight training, handball, basketball, netball, hockey, boxing, running and circuit training when I was younger. I had the idea of doing martial arts but looking at the local clubs it would appear that they are run by people who take themselves and their chosen form of martial arts a bit too seriously for my liking, so the other options are running, which I used to do and really enjoyed in my 20s or boxing which I also did in my 20s and really enjoyed so I'll have to do some research and see if there are any local clubs that do boxing for fitness as I'm well past the age of wanting to spar and the good thing is that I know from past experience that boxing training is one of the hardest forms of physical exercise I have ever undertaken.