Turns out

Prêt. Don't have bar codes.... Wtf!

Feeding day

Awh today I eat! Just realised my fitness pal is available for windows phones and have downloaded the app and discovered its built in scanning function. Will test it out at Prêt

What a difference carbs make!

Those of you who are regular readers of my blog will know that I have been trying out this relatively new approach to dieting called fast diet. I am not going to talk about the diet itself but thought it would be useful to show one of the things I have learnt... Last night I had chicken, quinoa, tomatoes, mange tout, onion and mushrooms. It came to just over 450 calories. This morning I had 2 slices of toast. One with jam and one with peanut butter. It also came in at the same number of calories! I wonder which one will have left me feeling fuller longest!

Dinner:

Dinner
Onions - Raw, 0.5 medium (2-1/2" dia)	23	6g	0g	1g	0mg	2mg	2g	1g
Oxo - Chicken Stock Cube, 0.5 Cube (5.9g)	10	2g	0g	1g	0mg	390mg	0g	0g
Generic - Mange Tout 100 g, 100 g	32	4g	0g	4g	0mg	0mg	0g	1g
Tomatoes - 5 Cherry Tomatoes, 10 tomatoes	20	5g	0g	1g	0mg	10mg	3g	2g
Anchor Foods - Lighter Spreadable Butter, 7.5 g	41	0g	5g	0g	0mg	38mg	0g	0g
Sainsbury's - Closed Cup Mushrooms, 2 Serving (100g)	32	1g	1g	4g	0mg	0mg	0g	2g
Waitrose Love Life - Quinoa (Raw), 30 g	110	19g	2g	4g	0mg	2mg	1g	2g
Waitrose Essential - Chicken Breast Fillet, 180 g	185	0g	2g	43g	0mg	126mg	0g	0g

Total:

453

37

10

58

568

6

Breakfast:

Breakfast
Waitrose Organic - Bread - Wholemeal and Seeds, 2 slice	220	29g	7g	11g	0mg	0mg	3g	9g
Tesco - Strawberry Jam, 1 tablespoon	40	10g	0g	0g	0mg	0mg	9g	0g
Essential Waitrose - Semi Skimmed Milk, 50 ml	25	3g	1g	2g	0mg	3mg	3g	0g
Anchor Foods - Lighter Spreadable Butter, 15 g	81	0g	9g	0g	0mg	75mg	0g	0g
Whole Earth - Smooth Original Peanut Butter With No Added Sugar, 15 g	97	1g	8g	4g	0mg	60mg	1g	1g
TOTAL:	463	43g	25g	17g	0mg	138mg	16g	10g

  

Epic fail!

Hello again. just thought I'd update you about what's been happening in the land of Paolo and the 5:2 plan. Everything has been going fine and the scales had been moving in the right direction... until this weekend. I went for a run on Saturday morning, felt fine, but had run with a slight ache on the ball of my right foot. I have chronic gout and am on long term medication. Since starting the Allopurinol, I have  had a few attacks but nothing serious and they've not stopped me from walking and even running, so I didn't think much of it. had a great run with my friend Christine and we even ran the last k with the Dulwich Park runners beginners group... got home, showered and chilled out. I noticed that the pain was slowly increasing and my big toe was getting more and more stiff. Woke up Sunday, and realised it was a full attack and spent all day hobbling about the house. Woke up this morning and it was even worse.... turns out my reliance on salmon during my fast days is a big no-no for gout sufferers... it brought on the worst attack I've had since starting the long term medication 18 months ago.

I need to re-evaluate the food plan on fast days, so thinking about all the things I like I started searching various websites as to what I should avoid... turns out... basically everything! Here's an example:

• High purine content: Anchovies, codfish, haddock, herring, mackerel, mussels, sardines, scallops, trout
• Medium purine content: Crab, lobster, oysters, shrimp.
• Meat: Though no longer part of a common diet in the United States, organ meats, such as liver, sweetbreads, and brains, are most dangerous for those with gout.
• High purine content: Bacon, turkey, veal, venison
• Medium purine content: Beef, chicken, duck, ham, pork
• Vegetables: Studies do not show an association between high-purine vegetables and gout to the same degree as with animal-based purines, suggesting other factors than purine content also play a role. However, there are some beans that are particularly high in purines, so people with severe gout may want to avoid them.
• Purine-rich vegetables: Asparagus, dried beans (especially fava and garbanzo), mushrooms, peas, spinach

So what next.. no white fish, no oily fish and no meat except chicken, no mushrooms, spinach, beans, peas (apparently lentils are a no-no too). Some say tomatoes are no good either because they are too acidic. It would seem that in order to control gout by diet that really all I can eat is white meat and white vegetables. Nice!

Hello, beautiful people. Just thought I would check in let you know how everything is going with my weird and wonderful fasting diet... So today is coming to the close of my 7th fast day since I started on the 15 April. The plan is to weigh myself tomorrow morning at the end of the fast, so no tantalising info just yet.  There has definitely been a steady loss and, as I said to Pepe tonight, this is the third weeks of the diet and I still feel motivated to carry on... not something I could say for the others diets.

I was pleasantly surprised today when my friend Juliet commented on how my clothes look looser! it made my day. Clearly I am easily pleased! Anyway, thank you Juliet for making me smile!

Keeping up with my commitment to exercise on fast days has proved a little bit more challenging this week. I have but both sessions were harder than expected. On Monday night I had a session with the running school and did about 40 minutes of HIIT training and then 20 minutes of Swiss ball exercises and stretches. I'm not sure if it was  the fasting or the fact that I've been injured and not been able to train properly, but my recoveries were taking a lot longer than usual, probably about 10-15% longer  to get my heart rate down to the 140's before starting the high intensity intervals again. In the end, I still managed a full session and did not faint for lack of sustenance. Tonight, I ran 3kms on empty and then did another 30 minutes of weight training... again, hard and there were points were I thought I could not lift the damn dumbbells, but did  a full set of chest, arms, triceps and back exercises. I figured given that I had run 3kms I could skip the leg exercises :P

Right I'm going to post this and wish you all a good night and pleasant dreams.

One week on

Wow... one week and a day. Almost 4 fasts later (today is my fourth, but it technically doesn't end until tomorrow morning's breakfast) and I'm thinking this is do-able. Manageable even.

Last week, to kick start the diet, I fasted Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This week the plan is to fast today and Thursday. By Saturday morning I had lost 4kg but I expected that some of it would return. And it did. I weighed myself last night and I was still down from a week ago but obviously not as low as on Saturday morning. By last night I was down 2.5kg from last week, which is still impressive. I was working on the assumption that dieting this way would drop about a kilo a week. In fairness, I did run and do weights on Monday and Wednesday and I have to say, it's not that bad exercising on an empty stomach, not easy but not insurmountable.

Plan for this week..... Well as I mentioned, today and Thursday are the fast days, and I plan on running 5km on Thursday along with a spin class on Friday. There may also be a run on Saturday depending on the weather. Will update the exercise regime later in the week. In the meantime, here's today's menu plan was as follows:

April 23, 2013
Foods	Calories	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Cholest	Sodium	Sugars	Fiber
Breakfast
Ryvita - Crackerbread, 1 Cracker	19	4g	0g	1g	0mg	60mg	0g	1g
Kraft Philadelphia - Light Cream Cheese Mini Tub, 40 g	52	3g	2g	4g	0mg	109mg	0g	0g
Boiled Egg, 2 egg	160	1g	11g	13g	424mg	124mg	1g	0g
Fish - Smoked Salmon Slices, 65 g	120	3g	6g	13g	468mg	468mg	0g	0g
Dinner
Organic Chicken Breast - Chicken Breast Skinless Boneless , 3.5 oz	105	0g	1g	14g	41mg	0mg	0g	0g
Onions - Raw, 1 medium (2-1/2" dia)	46	11g	0g	1g	0mg	3mg	5g	2g
Cauliflower - Cooked, boiled, drained, without salt, 100 g	23	4g	0g	2g	0mg	15mg	1g	3g
Fresh - Broccoli, Fresh, 100 g	38	2g	1g	3g	0mg	33mg	2g	3g
Oxo - Chicken Stock Cube, 0.5 Cube (5.9g)	10	2g	0g	1g	0mg	390mg	0g	0g
Clover - Butter, 7.5 g	48	0g	5g	0g	0mg	53mg	0g	0g
TOTAL:	621	30g	26g	52g	933mg	1,255mg	9g	9g
	Calories	Carbs	Fat	Protein	Sodium	Sugar
Totals	621	30	26	52	1,255	9
Your Daily Goal	1,870	257	62	70	2,500	37
Remaining	1,249	227	36	18	1,245	28

sheepish hello

hello!

Ok so I have neglected this blog for a couple of months now... initially from a sense of euphoria that I didn't have to lose quite as much as I thought- cue my 360 health assessment at Nuffield health who said I only need to lose about 22kgs-  but then subsequently because I have been injured as a result of over training, I have had to take over a month's rest. I developed tendonitis over the top of my foot and it's been a very long and slow recovery...so, inevitably between the lack of exercise and the lack of focus and motivation my weight has steadily been creeping up. Back to where I started. Again.

But as many of you tell me, this is a journey, not just a means to an end and in the spirit of that philosophy I have decided to pick my self up and get back on that pony now that my foot has started to mend.

Quite by chance I stumbled upon the fast diet or 5:2 diet.... 5 days feast 2 days famine. I'm going to give it a try. I've not been bought by the science but there seems to be quite a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that there may be more to the theory that we aren't designed for grazing 16 hours a day, every day of our lives. A few people I know have mentioned that they have lost significant amounts of weight on this diet, and you certainly can tell that they are a lot smaller. The thing is I didn't think that they needed to lose weight to begin with so clearly the diet works by finding that "hidden fat" and eviscerating it!

The basic concept of the diet is that you fast by limiting your calorie intake to no more than 600 calories for men, 500 for women on your fast days and you can chose to either eat them all in one go or divide them over 2 meals. I've opted for the latter. Today is my first day of fasting and all things considered it's been alright so far. I had 145g smoked salmon for breakfast and have only drunk herbal teas, water and a coke zero all day. Later this evening I had a small supper and will now fast until breakfast tomorrow. And that's it, until day two - Wednesday- and then no more until next week. Let's see how this goes.

My intake today:
145 g smoked salmon: 170 calories
150g pork tenderloin: 204 calories
1 medium onion: 45 calories
80g broccoli : 30 calories
100g Cauliflower: 25calories
7 g butter: 50 calories
200ml stock: 20 calories

Total calories: 544