nanako

Well done you, sound like you deserve that cake ! "Out of my way, whelps!" I chuckled, pompously, as I showed them my heels. "I'm 44 you know!" Love your positive attitude and sportsmanship ! I had a similar experience yesterday which was only slightly blemished by the fact that my competitors at that time were either rather old, in fancy dress, or very visibly doing their first 10K (for charity) (and ALL my clubmates had passed me on their way home already).

I think you're doing great - you have so many goals ! Plus coming off the Metformin I figure the food challenge is much harder for you right now, will get easier next week !

Good job on your 11K, congrats ! I couldn't have done another K yesterday - was fed up by 8 already. ;-) I can hardly walk up the stairs today... ;-)

Happy birthday 18ck ! Good luck for your 10k !

Quick update - smashed the 10k :-) - I managed a 10.55 min/mile pace - which is ok for me - so I finished at 1:08. At least now I know how fast I can run a 10K without getting one mile of training in. I haven't run AT ALL since the Moorland Multi beginning of February - that's three months. Some people did worse with lots of training ... just saying .. So, just finishing is fine with me. :-) Spent the rest of the day in the sunny park drinking beer and munching away on olives and crackers - "flex day" I think you call it. :-D Speak to you tomorrow !!

I'm fairly new to weight training and I was wondering if you could help me out here ... Right now, I do the Beginner Bodyweight workout on some days and a little triceps workout the next. I do reps "until failure",rotate exercises, and do about three to four sets of reps for the whole workout. It feels ok to do this and I have noticed some results but no real soreness. Also, I feel good about 10 mins after the workout. I am used to feeling really knackered for about half a day e.g. after a 15k run ... knackered for a whole day after 20k and really really sore the next day for both. Of course it takes me more than 2hrs to run 20k :-) whereas the bodyweight w/o takes only 25 minutes. So am I doing something wrong ? Should I be doing more sets ? Is it ok to not feel sore ? I am aiming to do about 10/15 reps and increase weights when I can do these easily. Should I go for more weight and less reps ? Thanks a lot, any help is appreciated.

Today's workout: Running I tried out 18ck's intriguing "2K fast" today. I ran to ALDI's. Managed 1.3k - .8 of a mile - at 9.25 before I arrived at the shop - had set the watch to pace me at 9mins/mile but that didn't happen somehow - so that pretty much resolves the pacing issue for tomo, muahahahaha. I'll try for 10.30 then. 11 maybe ? But then, not my fault that ALDI's so close. I probably could have run ALOT further. ;-) Lifting heavy things and carriying them around Bought a pack of compost for the garden and carried it home (we don't have a car). That's 20kg for .5 of a mile at 22.30mins/mile pace. Took the shortcut home. Bank holiday weekend and I'm going to get some planting done ! Ordered 5 kinds of heirloom tomato seeds and some peas and mangetout (legumes not paleo, I know but then the whole agriculture thing kind of isn't, right ?). Still, I love it. Never grew (raised?) tomatoes from seed before. England might seem an unlikely place to try, but then again, we have an extended vegetation period hereabouts because of the gulf stream. Mild winters with palm trees in front gardens.

Gut, dass es Dir besser geht ! Keep it up. :-)

Wow, sculling and planks back for your back ? I had no idea. I would have thought opposite ... Yoga seems nice though, I love yoga ... think it should be your cup of tea really with all the balancing and crow posing you have going on. ;-) Good on you re the slacklining ! It is kind of addictive apparently ? I think I'm getting one after all ... are there any regulations re tree protection in the UK ? I know that in my home town (Munich) slacklining is forbidden in parks. When's the pull-up test coming on ?

Anger recap (you don't have to read this, it's really long and boring !) This is really weird. When I started out here a week ago, I thought I had two major problems. One was my aggression, and the other was the weight loss that wasn't happening. Now that I've been eating VLC for the last 6 days, my aggressive bouts are GONE. They're just not there anymore. I used to have really, really bad aggressive bouts, mostly totally out of the blue. The slightest irritation would set me off. I had proper rages, to the point where I would punch the walls, hit a wooden spoon on the counter hard enough to break the spoon, etc. Worst thing, they were almost uncontrollable. I knew I was completely out of line but couldn't stop. I would have to leave the room so as not to hurt anyone (!) and still I would be cursing between my teeth. These rages have been getting worse over the last 4 years or so. They did correlate strongly with stress, and the past years have been quite stressful. But it got to the point where I thought there was something wrong with my hormones, or my thyroid ... had everything checked, but no, nothing ... I felt really self concious about this because I felt I was out of control and this was affecting my ability to be a good parent. I din't know what to do. At home (in my own country) I would have sought therapy, but here I am not sure of how to go about this. Now, it's completely different. It's only been six days, but I feel like a different person. I have a spring in my step and I feel relaxed and calm. My husband has noticed the difference because it's massive. I haven't changed anything else. I still get angry when things get stressful, but this kind of anger is really easy to control. I just breathe out, focus, then it's gone. If I say something that's not nice, I realize it straight away and say sorry. I don't feel the urge to keep on hurting the other person verbally. I'm usually very wary of all the wonder cures they advertise on the internet and I'm a pretty rational person. But this is odd. I read up some stuff about people who are very sensitive to blood sugar level fluctuations - apparently it's fairly rare but can lead to aggression and even deliquency. (My favorite paper is the one about the Quolla Indians in Peru who are "perhaps the meanest and most unlikeable people on earth." http://www.jstor.org/stable/3773116?seq=1) I've leafed through the anger management book and these things really do make sense, but I feel like it doesn't really apply to me any more. The rages are just gone. Just like that. Summing up, I'm really, really surprised at this development. I am PRAYING this will not change back again. Right now, I'll just keep doing what I'm doing. I did want to lose weight anyway, so that shouldn't be a problem for the next half year or so (I hope I can keep it up but I have a STRONG motivation not to go back). From then, I don't know. I might try and reintroduce some carbs, see where it goes, see where my 'limit' is. Maybe I'll just have to up the calories and stay vlc. I don't really care. I feel like I have a new lease on life. *ahem*

Great picture ! Re blisters, I haven't had one since I started to rub my feet with vaseline before any runs > 5km. Feels a bit yucky at first when you put your socks on, but then again, blisters hurt !

I really like this video: I never really understood before that it's a two-step movement: 1, you step forward, 2, you "sink" straight down.That helped me a lot,

Update: In case you guys were wondering, it's really, really hard to overeat on VLC paleo -- but we did our best yesterday ! Sitting in the garden chatting with my husband, kids inside watching a movie, and evey now and then one of us would go: "Oh, I can't possibly eat another one of these koftas" and then do it anyway ... :-) Just your regular 1000 cal/ 17g carb Friday night feast. Totally worth it ! You have to be careful with your baba ganoush though, those eggplants are really high in carbs, and it seems tahini isn't even paleo. But hell. :-)

@big: Incredible ! @18ck: The one in your video does look a bit slack ... looser than the ones I have seen in Berlin ... but I have no clue, can't manage more than 2 steps myself.

@german: Yeah, I was thinking of throwing away the scale but haven't gotten around to it yet. It's kinda hard to let go. ;-) @sifter: For me the worst part was getting down to 100g/day, the weeks before this challenge. I had really bad "carb flu" ... with monster headaches ! But since, it's been really easy. @PB: Totally. *nods*

I'm wondering if you feed your children paleo ? My husband and I have always been 'good' eaters and we both love cooking, so the junk food ratio has always been low here. No fizzy drinks, no fast food, no ready meals ... but we used to eat a lot of pasta and the kids loved it. Now we adults have both started paleo 'dieting' (we both want to lose a bit of weight). I don't want to scare off my kids but I'm feeling so much better that I feel kind of bad giving them their same old sandwiches and sweets. I've notice before that the more fruit I have in the house, the less sweets they eat. So I'm definitely throwing out the sweet box tomorrow (they'll never know, they'll think their dad has eaten everything :-)). But other than that, I'm not sure. DD eats at preschool four times a week, so I don't have to worry about that. They serve clean, healthy food with lots of veg but standard recipes with grains. DS takes lunch boxes to school - right now he still gets sandwiches every day. Am thinking of switching to 'real' bread aka bread from the 'artisan' bakery instead of packaged slices. I still want them to be able to eat cake at parties, or when they are at friends' houses. So i'm not thinking of banning any foods. Just some tweaking. Any thoughts ? :-) Any experiences ?

Thanks a lot guys, thanks for the support ! :-) It's really helpful. Goal 1 Right now (I know it's been only one working week now) I get the feeling it's getting easier by the day. As long as I don't eat any carbs, I don't get any cravings ... that makes it really easy to stay on the wagon. Yesterday I came across my food nemesis (freshly baked 'artisan' white bread - yummie !!! Bread is my favorite food ... I could eat it all day and never stop) but I was very good and only ate the crusts from the kids' sandwiches and stuffed the rest in the freezer.Thought about that bread sitting in the freezer a LONG time after that though. ;-) I get an extra .3 point today because I didn't eat the cake we had at the seminar (carrot AND chocolate). I lost .3 of a point yesterday when I had two fish fingers and a handful of oven chips after dinner. My husband's still with me on the paleo wagon, he's way more accurate than I am, I guess that makes it easy too ... right know he's in the garden preparing a middle-eastern paleo feast with kofta and baba ganoush and yogurt garlic dip ! :-) What's not to like ..:-) BTW my colleague said his gf has the same mood improvement when she cuts carbs - seems it's not too uncommon then ? I wish I'd known that before. I have less asthma and MUCH better mood, not hungry, no cravings ... Tried out the GPS watch I got for my birthday today - just a 2 min jog around the park. Seems to be working and I'm still undecided which pace to aim for on Sunday. Chris from my running club set my goal time at 58 mins which is just hilarious, that's a 9.28 min mile which is completely ridiculous and there is no way I can make that pace. especially since I haven't run since March. I'm just wondering whether I should do the stupid thing (start at 9.25 mins/mile and then drop dead by km 8) or the clever thing (start at 10.15 mins/mile and speed up a tiny little bit at km 8 if I still can). Not that I ever do the clever thing, usually. Hm. Still have two days to think about that one. Goal 2 This one's really so much easier too seeing I'm happier and less stressed. And if I ever forget the cause of it PLEASE make me read this, I don't want to go back ... Goal 3 <silently ignoring this>

That was exactly the image I had in my head when I first read about the 180bpm jazz ! :-)

Hey, I do that too ! Not crow pose on a tree stump, obviously - that would be insane - is this like, making sure you really bump your nose when you fall over ? Is this working up to crow pose on a pole ? :-D No, but I try and impress the red deer at the local park. :-) Glad you're doing well, you'll totally rock that pull-up trial !

Me too ! Bis morgen, sprichst Du Deutsch ? :-)

@Rookie: Same for me, it seems ... I worry less ... never thought that would make such a difference ?! @PB: Thanks, yes, he's better. Still has the rash though so he looks like a cute little raspberry ! So, today .... erm ... Goal 1 I'm seeing massive progress. Really really good. Lost another half inch at the waist and about 7 lbs (6 of these were water but still feels good) since the challenge started. BUT, I mis-planned my work meals today and ended up super hungry around 4, so I hopped over to Sainsburys and stuffed my face with edamame-and-tuna salad and hummus and carrots. Which is kind of healthy but neither paleo nor low-carb. So I'll end up at around 57, 58g today. Good thing I put back the chocolatey chocolate cake though. :-) No sports today, concentrating on getting well for the 10K on Sunday. I need to be in super health in order to finish, time is not important for this one, didn't get a single mile in for it. Goal 2 All good (which is good !!!) Goal 3 I can see myself stepping away from this goal over the course of this challenge. *makes diplomatic face* I mean, what did I expect ? Join a new forum and limit screen time doesn't go together too well. I'm not beating myself up, maybe over the next few days I'll see some improvement.

Don't despair ninelives ! I've had the same problems over the last few months ... Eating super clean, counting calories, scale not moving an inch even though I had a 500 cal deficit per day. Don't know why - it didn't used to be that way, maybe an age thing, approaching 40 ? For me, it turned out I had to radically cut the carbs (< 50g /day - this is my goal for this challenge) and even though I've been on it for only 3 days it's really, really working out now. I've lost 7.5 lbs (I guess most of this is water) and look much leaner, and lost a clothes size. In three days. I'm definitely continuing this. So if you keep cutting carbs I'm sure you'll be fine and you'lll be super motivated once you start losing.

Second that. I'm sure a lot of people out there do more - say, Davina McCall, or Boris Johnson. But still. *runsandhides*

Sorry about the cat - had this recently, our cat died from congenital heart disease only 9 months old. :-( Very very sad. Even sadder if you've known the animal for a long time. Other than that, total awe of your workouts. Hope to get to that point some time. Inspirational.

Wednesdays are always the worst ! Keep it up.