So after a few successful weeks on Slimming World – where my weight was falling in a predictably tame way – I hit my first set-back.  A week where I had run 26 K, bounced happily on a gym-ball, cycled furiously and eaten cleanly but yet I did not lose any weight.

Obviously common sense says this is no big deal.  Bodies are biological systems and just because a formula calculates one value it doesn’t mean there isn’t room for variability or outliers (data points which don’t fit with the rest).  Any sensible person would chalk it up to ‘one of those things’ and move on.  But I like to dally in the mind-set of ‘Catastrophic Thinking’.  That is – F%#k the Diet.

In a self-sabotaging, self-destructive pattern of what can only be known as a self-pity chicken fest – I went out to dinner on Saturday night at an American Themed BBQ Grill place and consumed no less than half a chicken.  Ironically, I actually picked off most of the skin – a Slimming World rule – and measured the amount of BBQ sauce I applied and stuck to baked beans as my side dish (rather than the more alluring paprika fries).  However I followed this up with 3 scoops of the world’s creamiest and lushest ice cream which would just about break any diet but on Slimming World this amounted to 48 syns just for dessert (you are supposed to have 5-15 per day).  I then went to a music gig and jumped around heartily for 2 hours before my body utterly revolted at its abuse.  Suffice to say the rest of the evening was not pleasant.  Wind in both directions, nausea, bloated feeling, sweating profusely… I am an idiot.

All of this suffering could have been prevented if I had just listened to my body.  I was full after eating a quarter of the chicken.  I was stuffed after finishing off my plate but I still picked at my brothers unfinished spicy pork sausage.  By the time dessert came around I was beyond caring.  Diets don’t work anyway I told myself – even though I had conducted my own thorough analysis and lost weight on all the previous weeks.  I have made this mistake before (many times) and will no doubt make it again.  I am sure I am not alone.  I am sure this is why diets generally fail.  You are too restricted and then you binge and then you guilt eat and repeat.

But here today, I am going to forgive myself.  I am only a mammal trying to put fat on for the winter, even if that winter never comes.  And in the search for silver linings – 18 months ago I am sure I would have been able to eat that meal with no stomach rebellion – which is a sign that perhaps physically I am adapting more than I thought.

Additionally I am never eating meat again.

…

…

With the exception of bacon.

Another way to run faster, cut your risk of injury, increase your stamina and generally improve your running form is strength training.  Earlier on I lumped this in with “cross-training” as to be honest I just did not fancy it.  Doing squats and push ups and lunges and hefting weights about – no thank you I thought.  However there is one undeniable thread that pops up in every volume of Runners’ World, all training plans, running guide books etc. and that is doing some form of resistance/weight/strength training 2-3 times a week.  Mostly I skipped over this thinking well, I swim and that is sort of resistance-y.  Of course real strength training/resistance exercises are not swimming *sad face* and since I am on a quest to run a half marathon in less than 2 hours I suppose I ought to address this fundamental gap in my training regime.

So if resistance training is not swimming then what is it? More importantly, is it expensive? Good news! Actually most strength training for runners does not involve much specialist equipment beyond a step – or park bench in a pinch.  You don’t need any dumbbells or kettle-bells or resistance bands or anything really – just your own body weight.  Additionally they don’t look that hard on paper.  I picked a regime to follow from Runner’s World which involved stepping up and down, lunges, calf-drops, abdominal-crunches, push-ups, sit-drops and thought I would give it a go…  And yet… that was months ago.  Until December of this year I still hadn’t even tried it.  Was it the simplicity of it?  Because I could do it in my living room, at any time, that it just never occurred to me?  Or was something else playing on my mind?

I have a long history of failed sporting endeavours.  From school PE lessons, sports days, army recruitment retreats, Girl Guide camps, survival weekends, personal trainer sessions… Of trailing miles behind everyone else, of being mocked for being unable to do a single push up, of aching for days after doing only a few squats, of needing an adult sized harness when I was just 11, of breaking our survival shelters’ improvised bed and of only being able to hold a plank position for 2 seconds.  And whilst it may seem counter-intuitive, after all I got over my aversion to running, perhaps I think it is fair to say I still have a reluctance to participate in some other sporting activities.  Give me a mountain to hike for pleasure and I will do it, or to kayak along a river, or hell even to run a marathon but ask me to do 50 star-jumps on the spot or hold myself in an uncomfortable pose for 30 seconds… Yes, I know it is ridiculous but I just don’t want to.  It could be as simple as stepping up and down 15 times on each leg but somehow I just never got around to including it into my schedule.

Until now! Yes, so as of now I am about 6 weeks into strength training.  I haven’t – probably to my detriment – been following a plan, just picking and trying different activities to see if there are any I like.  In the rush of January sales I also went a little OTT on small gym equipment, buying a foam roller (still unused), resistance bands (used once) and a 65 cm diameter gym-ball complete with work-out DVD (used twice properly but bounced and sat on and played with more regularly).

The verdict: My memory served me correctly.  The first time I attempted the Runner’s World Basic Strength training session I struggled to complete anything involving upper body or core strength and ached enormously in the following days.  The second time (a few weeks later) was still not great.  The third time… I can sort of manage to do 10 half push-ups and I don’t ache as much anymore so there is some improvement.  I don’t think I will be competing in World’s Strongest Woman anytime soon but hopefully with persistence I may get some payback and improvement in my running.  I can’t say I enjoy it (except bouncing on the gym-ball is fun – space-hopper flash backs anyone?) but truthfully it doesn’t take that much time and with it being winter and dark and freezing when I get home from work I don’t mind the excuse to stay indoors with an attractive woman demonstrating on my TV how to do sit ups on a giant inflatable ball.

I am now 5 weeks into the Slimming World plan and actually despite my initial unwillingness and flirtation with mutiny I am starting to respect the process a bit more.  This is in part due to me losing 8.5 lb (3.86 kg) and 2% body fat in this time and also because I conducted an experiment of sorts to put the Slimming World ethos to the test.  Briefly, I took the Slimming World rules seriously for a week and then counter-intuitively added up all the calories I consumed.  Counter-intuitive because I wanted to avoid having to calorie count since it is laborious and time consuming and a little bit soul destroying.  (HOW MANY CALORIES FOR THAT TINY THING?!).  But annoyingly maths and science and numbers is just how my mind works. I like to know why something is working.  Saying JUST BECAUSE has never been a valid reason to me.  And before I could trust Slimming World I needed my own proof that it would work.  After all there is ultimately only one way to lose weight and all the fancy-pants named diets, fat-fighter clubs, dietry supplements and exercise tricks in the world won’t change that fact.  In order to lose weight you must take in less calories than you use up.  So I decided to test whether the Slimming World plan would actually do that for me.

Results: It turns out – if you actually follow the plan and eat to appetite it is extremely difficult to consume a lot of calories.  On my worst day, when in a ravenous rage because how is anyone meant to feel full from eating low-fat cottage cheese (?) I stormed around the kitchen and ate an entire can of baked beans. Cold.  From the tin.  And then proceeded to eat an entire bag of mixed baby leaves salad, 3 apples, an entire tray of cherry tomatoes and a few dry bits of wholemeal penne pasta (because I wasn’t waiting for 10 minutes for it to cook).  These are free foods (ones you are allowed to eat an unlimited amount of) so ha! I thought.  Let’s see how this turns out.

Ahem, well, actually quite well – just 1400 kcal for the whole day (including omelette with toast for breakfast, baked sweet potato for lunch and a generous serving of chicken pasta with cheese for dinner).  Hmmm, I mused, maybe the Slimming World plan is on to something after all?  Most days during my experimental week I consumed between 1100-1400 kcal and since for a woman my size I might generally be expected to burn between 1500-1600 calories a day WITHOUT EXERCISE this is already creating an energy deficit of maybe 200-300 calories per day.  With my running, swimming and cycling on top this could potentially reach the magical number of 500 kcal per day and hence 3500 kcal per week and further hence about a pound of weight-loss per week (since 3500 kcal = 1 pound).  I am still not entirely sure what a pound is having never lived in the middle ages and preferring to use the international scientific standard unit measure of weight (the kilogram) BUT it seems like a reasonable amount of weight to be losing.

Of course there is still the whole syn business to contend with – and this part does grate on me – but in terms of free foods I think the Slimming World plan makes a lot of sense.  Additionally Slimming World is about the only health/diet plan I have read which doesn’t automatically rule out diet coke – which I drink far too much of and no I don’t have any plans for the foreseeable future to it give up thank you very much.  Additionally pasta is on the menu, as is rice, cous cous, potatoes and bananas – which means I can still carb load before a long run if I want to.

Bad news is energy gels, electrolyte drinks etc. must all be counted as syns.  Of course I generally don’t use these products for anything less than 2 hours running – heck for anything less than an hour I don’t even bother with water – so I guess I shouldn’t worry about it too much.  It may even be beneficial to train without the sports energy products as I guess you will have to use up internal energy stores (i.e. FAT!) rather than the readily accessible liquid glucose in the energy gels.  Additionally I suppose it is not a bad thing to train through fatigue as your muscles should hopefully get used to it and adapt.  My only reservation is being able to replace the electrolytes such as salt, potassium and calcium which you will lose through sweat – water alone will not replace those – and without them you run a real risk of muscle cramps at best and dizziness, irregular heartbeat, mental confusion, muscle paralysis, collapse and coma at worse – so maybe I won’t give up my Pocari Sweat on long runs just yet!