Andrew is getting fit

Sick

2010-03-10T23:13:41Z

Got the flu so I’m quiet but on the positive side I’m not yet dead.

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Weigh-in post #10 2010: Weekend warrior update

2010-03-08T00:20:39Z

I had 3 goals for this last weekend.

Take my family out for a walk or a bike ride.
Weigh no more on Monday morning than I did on Saturday morning.
Run more than a half marathon distance.

I’m pleased to report that I achieved all 3.

On Sunday morning the family went for a great walk along a bike track. My little monkey was on her bike and she did a great 2km. Not bad for a 2.5 year old. Of course we had to carry her and her bike most of the way back.

The second one was a bit of a cheat in that I had a large meal late on Friday evening. This meant beating that was relatively easy. It was date night with my wife and we had a great meal so no regrets. I’m actually a full kg down on scale weight from last Monday so I think that is a win.

The third one I reported on here.

Overall a successful week in that I lost .59 kg which is 1.3 pounds. I’ll take it.

It’s still a green year although the slope seems to be flattening out somewhat. I’ll have to work on that.

I had a great run in to work this morning. I took the long way and did 16.2 km. I’m quite surprised how well my body has held up to the increased mileage. I feel stronger than ever and don’t have any of the normal little niggles. I think the slow long runs are paying off.

I hope the other participants had as great a Weekend warriors challenge!

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A long run with heavy legs

2010-03-05T22:53:34Z

My long run this morning was rather tiring. I found that I had very heavy legs. I think it is because it way my third day of running in a row. Normally I have Thursdays as a rest day but on Wednesday life got in the way and I didn’t manage to squeeze my run in so I ran it on Thursday instead. I then ran my normal Friday run and my long run this morning. I think the cumulative miles added up and the second half of my run got loooong today.

I also went on a new route that is a bit hillier than normal. I don’t think I would have noticed normally but on tired legs I noticed!

Here’s my route map:

I ran past a cafe where some very delicious bacon and egg smells were coming out and my vegetarian principles were sorely tested!

I also saw some weightwatchers graffiti which I found quite funny:

I’ve seen this all over town on our sidewalks. Damn kids today!

77.5 km for the week which is my longest yet I think. 48.1 miles for my metrically challenged friends.

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Weekend warriors to the fore!

2010-03-04T22:23:06Z

This weekend I’m taking on the Weekend Warrior Challenge. Here are my three measurable goals for this upcoming weekend:

Take my family out for a walk or a bike ride.
Weigh no more on Monday morning than I did on Saturday morning.
Run more than a half marathon distance.

All relatively easy to do but stuff I’ve been slacking on the last few weeks.

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A run with the Queen

2010-03-03T20:22:39Z

I ran into work with the Queen this morning. The Queen Mary 2 that is! Apparently it is the world’s biggest and most luxurious ocean liner and it’s in Auckland today.

The only photos that I could get of it were actually from quite far away:

You can see it on the right. It is huge when you compare it to the size of the city!

I ran out on this little (200 metre long) jetty to get that shot above:

I’d hoped to get a better photo once I got closer to the city but unfortunately the container terminal blocked the view! The QM2 is so big that it had to go berth at the container terminal rather than the passenger terminal.

Overall, it was quite nice to see glimpses of it but it was even nicer to be out for a run this morning. 14.3km and conditions were absolutely perfect for running.

I was listening to Burning 2010 this morning and one of the points Adam was making is that no matter where you live there are beautiful places to run. Well in my city that is the rule rather than the exception I think!

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Weigh-in post #9 2010: By the skin of my teeth

2010-02-28T19:30:00Z

I managed to stay in the green by the skin of my teeth this week. I really need to work on my weekend eating. Having said that, it has still been a successful week despite the overindulgence on the food front.

Week 09 of the year and it’s still an all green year:

I definitely need that Weekend warriors challenge!

This coming week should be much better. I’ll be back into my normal routine and that always helps me. If I stay focused I should be able to get to goal by the end of this month. Now that will be a milestone to look forward to!

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A slack week and a bit of link love

2010-02-26T21:21:53Z

It’s been a bit of a slack week with regard to my running. Monday and Tuesday were great. 14km and 13km respectively. Wednesday I was away all day at our local Microsoft headoffice as I had some student groups presenting in the Imagine Cup finals. Thursday we had a staff retreat and on Friday I had to go in very early to catch up on the work that I hadn’t done while being out of the office. I probably could have done a bit better with my planning and gotten some runs in but I think the rest will do me good so I’m not too fussed.

This morning (it’s Saturday here in NZ) I got up early (5AM) and headed out for a run. I love the early runs as I love running along and watching the sun come up:

Conditions were great and it was really nice to get out and stretch the legs. Once the sun was up it got a bit warmer:

But it was still great!

I’ve done 252 km in February and 516 km (321 miles) for the year so far. That’s not bad if I say so myself.

In other news, Brandon over at So long, fatass has issued a Weekend warriors challenge which I think I’ll enter. He’s noticed that he’s great at healthy living during the week but not so great on weekends. That’s one of my biggest weaknesses as well. So the idea is that next weekend we live healthy as well and see what results we can get.

Kepa, from The Lazy Fat Guy (and a fellow New Zealander), met and fell in love with Mary over at A Merry Life. She’s recently been here in NZ to visit him and now that she’s back in the States he’s pining away for her. He wants to visit her but he’s a poor student so he’s asking for donations. The blogosphere has been very kind to him so far and he’s almost raised enough money for his trip. If you’ve got a minute head over to his blog and read his story. He’s quite an impressive fellow who started off at over 500 pounds and has recently hit his first goal of getting under 220 pounds. He got on the TV news for that!

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One Hundred Push-ups in a Row

2010-02-23T02:52:03Z

It’s been a long time coming but I’m pleased to announce that I have completed the hundred push-up challenge. I’ve started this challenge at least 7 times and it just goes to show that if you stick with it you can actually do it. The last ten push-ups were not pretty but I don’t care. I’m done! I think I’ll stick to doing 50 push-ups every few days as a maintenance program but I never want to go through all those levels again!

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Weigh-in post #8 2010: Onderland!

2010-02-23T07:09:37Z

A bit of a slower week this week with only .8 kg (1.8 pounds) lost. I sort of expected that as I ate rather poorly while away and it took me a few days to get totally back into my routine.

So far it’s been an all green year:

A small milestone this week in that I dropped below the 200 pound mark. I also crossed the 50 kg lost mark for us metric folk.

I’m down to single figures in terms of pounds to go to my initial goal of getting into the normal BMI.

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A wee run around Wellington

2010-02-19T00:51:57Z

I mentioned in my previous post that I would be away travelling this week. I went to Christchurch on Tuesday and Wellington on Wednesday to present at an academic roadshow organised by Microsoft NZ.

It was most enjoyable but to be honest the highlight of my trip was that I got to go running in Wellington!

I got up at 5am and had a quick breakfast of some instant oats and a coffee and then headed out the door.

Wellington is famous for it’s wind but conditions were perfect on Wednesday. My hotel is one of the buildings on the right of this image.

I really liked this sign:

I actually ran so far that I ran right out of the city. All of a sudden the buildings all disappeared and it was just winding coast road!

On my way back to the hotel I ran around our parliament building which is known as the beehive because it’s got a beehive shape.

Here’s my route map:

It was really great to go for a run somewhere new and I really enjoyed it. It was especially enjoyable knowing that my fellow roadshow attendees thought I was nuts!

I did 20.2km which was just as well as I had to offset the extra eating I did. These events are always catered and I was eating out a lot so I was a bit worried. Fortunately it turns out that I actually lost weight while I was away. Not much but I came back lighter than when I left. I must admit I was somewhat surprised by that as I thought I’d eaten one cookie too many! But I’ll take it!

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Weigh in post #7 2010: Hear the Tiger roar!

2010-02-14T16:51:10Z

Another all green week with 1.37 kg (3 pounds) lost off my trend line. As you can see by the upward slope on the green it was a close run thing. The reason for this is simple: I ate too much! In my defence, it was Chinese New Year (it’s now the year of the Tiger) and we had a big family gathering and you are supposed to eat well so I did! And it was good. Having said that I did not go nuts and still managed to post a loss so I’m quite happy.

Looking at the chart for the year below I think you can definitely tell where the weekends are! But I’m happy with it.

I’ve got a consistent weekly loss with mainly healthy eating and a bit of variety on the weekends. I’m still avoiding bread at home and I still think that that is one of the keys to my success. Bread is really my kryptonite.

One other thing I’ve noticed is that when I have sugar (like I did Saturday evening for Chinese New Year’s Eve) then it is a real struggle the next day to avoid it. I definitely believe I’m addicted to sugar and avoidance is the best policy overall. I think I’ll try and stick to savoury snacks instead of sweet. I’ve also found that after not eating sugar for a while that sugary snacks are just not as nice as I remember although after having them I still long for more. :p

I’m travelling to Christchurch and Wellington for two days this week and it’s going to be interesting to see how I manage my eating while having mainly restaurant food. I’m going to pack my running gear too so expect to see at least one post about running in a different city!

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Running up One Tree Hill

2010-02-12T21:32:14Z

About ten years ago some nutter attempted to chop down the tree on One Tree Hill here in Auckland. It was quite an iconic symbol of Auckland and unfortunately it eventually died because of the attack and had to be pulled down.

The photo on the left shows the supports that the council placed on the tree to try and support it but to no avail.

Last night on the news they showed some new trees that they were going to plant. There’s been a lot of political wrangling about what type of trees etc. to plant and it seems like they’ve decided to plant 9 trees. No word on if they are changing the name to Nine Tree Hill yet!

As such, I decided I would take a run up One Tree Hill to go and have a look at these new trees.

Unfortunately it seems like they’d only been put up there for a photo opportunity as when I got to the top there was only a bare patch of ground where they had shown trees on the news!

It was a rather beautiful dawn moment as I got close to the top:

There were a lot of walkers going up – I guess with the same idea as me – and I felt really hardcore as I was the only I saw running up even though some of the walkers came perilously close to overtaking me!

Overall I did 22.5 km this morning. Which brings my total weekly mileage to 74.2 km (46.1 miles) which is the most I’ve run in a week ever! A great little milestone.

And here is a little music for you:

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Mad dogs and Englishmen

2010-02-10T01:18:27Z

I had a really early meeting yesterday morning so I decided it was better to go for my run at lunchtime. There’s an expression: Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun. Well, technically I’m an Englishman as I travel on a British passport but I was born in South Africa and now am a citizen of New Zealand so I guess that makes me more of a mad dog!

Conditions were HOT!

I didn’t carry any water either as there were water fountains along the way but they seemed few and the distance between them seemed to stretch off into infinity.

That red sail you can see in the distance is one of our former America’s cup winning boats.

Here it is again:

And a a contrast here are the conditions at about 7AM on Monday morning:

I much prefer running in the early morning. It is just such a nice way to start the day. I found that I was sitting in my meetings thinking so many more hours till I can go run!

I enjoyed my hot run even though I drank a solid two litres of water afterwards! Weight loss through extreme dehydration is not really part of my plan though! So far 40 km this week and it’s only Wednesday.

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Changing habits with Habit Changer

2010-02-10T00:59:29Z

I was offered the chance to try a habit changing program by the folks at Habit Changer. They asked if I’d take one of their 42-day programs and then blog about it–whether my “experience was positive or not.” I decided I could live with that so accepted. This is my review:
Habit Changer is a web-based application that uses cognitive behavior therapy and neuroplasticity to help participants recognize current beliefs and behaviours and replace them with a different perspective.

Habit Changer uses a system of positive messages and activities to help users jump-start a reversal of that negative pattern.

The four most popular programs offered are Losing Weight, Stop Stressing, Money & You, and Feeding Your Kids, but there are several other programs offered as well. Most cost $19.95 but the Feeding Your Kids program is free.

I chose Losing Weight 2 as my option. You are supposed to be at goal or close to it for this program so I figured why not. :p

Every day I’ve been getting two emails from Habit Changer on a topic, along with a daily challenge. Later in the day I get another email that reinforces the lesson of the day. You can also set it up so that it sends messages to your cellphone and what not but I don’t like being bothered that much so I didn’t use that functionality.

In the beginning I found the experience quite good and I was keen to see the daily email.

One that I found quite relevant to my journey was an email about mindfulness. I’ll reproduce it here so you can get an idea what it was like:

Day 15: Mindful Eating – 1

Mindful eating is one of the simplest, easiest, and yet most powerful tools you have to stay in control of what you eat. Mindful eating simply means being conscious of what you’re doing and why while you’re doing it.

How do we know this works? Well, it turns out that higher mindfulness is correlated with lower body mass index. Meaning that if you’re mindful about eating, you’re likely to be thinner. Permanently.

By definition, being mindful requires slowing down slightly. It takes a little attention to think about what you’re doing, and the food you’re eating. Cultures that have long slow meals tend to be far more mindful — they spend time enjoying the food, not just putting it in — but you don’t have to take all day to eat a meal in order to be mindful. If you can consciously focus even for a moment on what you’re doing, you’re on the way.

Today

Try the mindfulness questionnaire below.

How did you do? What do you need to work on?

Tomorrow we’ll do an actual experiment.

Questionnaire:

What would be your answer to each of the following questions?

I eat so fast that I don’t taste what I’m eating.

I notice when having delicious food around me makes me want to eat more food than I ought to.

When someone serves me a portion that’s too large, I’m able to stop when I’m full.

I tend to think about other things while I’m eating.

I don’t recognize when I’ve had enough.

I notice the flavors in the foods I eat.

I eat without noticing that I am eating.

I think about the taste of every bit of food that I eat.

I stop eating when I’m full, even if it’s something really delicious.

While I’m eating I think about things I need to get done.

I take time to stop and enjoy the colors and smells of my food.

I realize it when I’m eating even though I’m not hungry.

If you are thinking: I don’t have time to think about anything else! I need to eat on the run! I barely have time to eat at all!

Try this instead: It’s easy. Just spend a moment thinking about each bite. It doesn’t take long at all. I’ll enjoy it more, and I’ll stay at my goal weight far more easily.

However, after a while I started to find the daily emails a bit annoying and to be honest the last week or so I barely read them. That’s probably a failing of mine rather than of the program.

I think there is a lot of value in the system if you are serious about changing your habits and haven’t learnt these lessons yourself already. I think I’ve picked up most of them by reading your blogs so they were maybe not as helpful to me as they might be to others.

Having said that I’ve had nothing but success in my weightloss efforts since I’ve started the program so who knows!

If you would be interested in trying any of their other programs, please feel free to Try any Habit Changer Program at a discounted rate

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Weigh in post #6 2010: Now with push-ups!

2010-02-07T17:07:13Z

It’s been another great week for my health and fitness goals. The weight side of the equation is going well. Another all green week with 1.28 kg (2.8 pounds) lost off my trend line.

For those who don’t know, I record my weight at PhysicsDiet.com every morning and it computes a trend line which smooths out the daily fluctuations. If my actual weight is lower than the trend my graph stays green. If it goes higher the graph switches to red. I use my trend line weight as my actual weight as that is what I’m maintaining even though my scale weight is about a kg (2 pounds) lighter. Once I move closer to my goal the line between trend and actual should merge.

And so far it has been an all green year!

If you look at the chart for the year I think it is reasonably easy to see where the weekends where I overindulged are! This last weekend’s eating was reasonably good overall although I did have some cake at a friends birthday party and the sugar did make me long for junkfood in the evening. However I resisted and so had a reasonably good weigh-in this morning.

In other news I did the end of week 04 push-up test yesterday morning and did a whopping 75 push-ups in a row! That is a new personal best for me. The hundred push-up challenge rocks!

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A great Saturday

2010-02-06T07:19:27Z

It’s been a wonderful Saturday here in sunny New Zealand.

My wife and I started the day right by going out for a run together. She’s ramping up her long runs again and I was having a cutback week so we did 13 km. A long run for her and a nice easy run for me. It was really nice running with her and the conditions were just perfect.

We got home, showered and then went to the Parnell markets and did a bit of shopping. At the first market we bought some lemon kurd and at the second one, some feta cheese and some stuffed peppers. Unfortunately we forgot to take them out of the car and we had to throw the cheese out later in the day but such is life sometimes.

We then went and picked up my wife’s cousin and his wife and went down to Okahu Bay where there was a big Waitangi Day festival on. Waitangi day celebrates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi which is sort of New Zealand’s founding document. So we have a public holiday on a Saturday. :p

My monkey and I went on the spinning tea cups and had great fun:

Afterwards we went to a cafe for Ice Coffees and cake. I did say I eat healthy Monday to Friday in my last post!

I’ve been planning a vegetable garden so afterwards we went out to Bunnings (a large hardware/building/garden supplies store) where I bought all the supplies to make a small raised vege garden. I built the box. It’s about 4ft by 4ft. I filled it with a mixture of organic compost, pumice stone, peatmoss and organic fertilisers and then planted some vegetables I’d bought. I also sowed a few seeds.

It came out pretty good if I say so myself:

As I said, it’s been a great Saturday.

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This is what I eat

2010-02-04T21:03:10Z

I was asked by a few people to do another “what do you eat” post so I thought I would do a short photo essay of my daily food.

This is what I normally eat Monday to Friday and weekends I reserve for a bit of variety. Some might find it a bit boring but it works for me as I enjoy every single meal. Lots of photos so I’ve put them beyond the jump.1st off breakfast:

I have some oats (in water as I hate milk) with a handful of strawberries and a handful of blueberries.

My post run protein:

One scoop of protein power in a cup of water.

And I normally have one piece of fruit as well. The other one is my mid-afternoon snack.

My midmorning snack is normally 2 boiled eggs. I love eggs and having them boiled is the easiest for me to do as I can prepare them in advance.

Lunch:

I normally make my lunches for the week in bulk. I have a bed of brown rice and quinoa and on top I have a mixture of soy mince, black beans, green beans, green & red peppers, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, onions, spring onions and tomatoes. Nothing unhealthy in there. And it tastes pretty good too.

Dinner is a salad on top of a bed of chickpeas and nuts.

It’s a pretty healthy set of dishes I think. Best of all I’m not hungry and I have plenty of energy for my running.

It’s definitely a lot healthier than the way I was eating before I wised up.

In other news I did a great 12.6 km run into work today and I also managed to complete week 04 of the hundred pushups program for the first time.

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Running for the joy of it

2010-02-02T21:53:41Z

I’ve been really enjoying my early morning runs.

This week I’ve upped them slightly and have done 13 km on Monday (very wet!), 12.5 km on Tuesday and 12 km today.

It was rather windy this morning but still very enjoyable. I’ve just been finding running so enjoyable lately. It’s hard to not go for a run on my rest days but I must!

I did my normal route down to Tamaki Drive and then ran to Bastion Point and back. At one point I had to pass over the railway tracks and thought I would snap a quick photo.

It’s a bit different from my normal photos but I enjoyed it.

Overall I’ve run an average of just over an hour a day for 2010 so far. If I can keep this up I’ll have a huge base!

I’ve been sorely tempted to upgrade my half marathon in June to the full marathon. Must resist but I’m very tempted.

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Weigh-in post #5 2010: A good January

2010-01-31T18:35:14Z

I managed to stay in the green this week although that wedding came close to putting me in the red as you can see by the little uptick at the end. However, it did not so overall another successful week:

This is the chart for the year so far:

I attribute my success this month to eating clean most of the time and to doing lots of running. I also have tried to build in the occasional treat as man ~~cannot~~ should not live on only healthy food at all times. I’m down to 102 pounds (46.25 kg) lost now which is a relatively large amount of weight.

I’m feeling pretty good about my progress and I feel I’m in a pretty sustainable place right now. The only niggle I have is that I hurt my knee doing the 200 squats challenge and it’s a bit stiff so I’m going to take my running even easier than normal for a bit. I’m up into week 4 of the 100 pushups challenge and it’s getting tough but I’m sticking with it.

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A long run for cake

2010-01-30T19:40:24Z

My long run yesterday morning was most enjoyable. I got up at 5am as I suspected it would get rather hot rather quickly as that has been the pattern the last few days. It turns out that was a good move!

I headed out towards Cornwall Park. The picture to the left is from the path that runs alongside the road through the park. It’s a beautiful area to run through and was suprisingly quiet. I guess they don’t unlock the gates for cars till 7 but I thought there would be more runners and walkers about.

I then headed down to the coast via Newmarket and Parnell and did my normal run along Tamaki Drive.

I finished off in the Orakei Basin which is a couple of hundred meters away from my home:

Overall just over 20km. A most enjoyable loop.

I went to a wedding later in the day and this was most enjoyable:

A hazelnut and bitter chocolate torte with truffle. Rather nice!

In other news I was recently contacted by an organisation working along side the running music producer AudioFuel and the Virgin London Marathon. They are looking for people to vote for their favourite running tracks. These votes will help build this years soundtrack for the London Marathon which will later be available on iTunes. If you are interested in helping Music and Motivation create this soundtrack you can stop by and vote. If you are interested in what this soundtrack is like you can listen to a free fuel sampler which can be downloaded here.

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