February Challenge: Do The Impossible

In January I decided to come up with a new resolution for every month of the year. Setting challenges and goals for myself regularly keeps me feeling positive and happy as I love having something to aim for and work towards.

It's almost a YOLO attitude I guess. The young whipper snappers these days are claiming YOLO as their excuse to go out and party every night. Well they've got a point. When I'm old and reflecting on my life am I going to remember all those nights I stayed in and watched tele? Mmm...probably not (though some of those Eastenders story lines are sure to stay with me). 

I'm going to look back at my achievements and smile at all the cool stuff I experienced by pushing myself out of my comfort zone and trying things the average person is capable of doing but may never try. I've already got temporary vegan, a few 5ks, 2 1/2 marathons and the charity trek in Thailand under my belt, but I love to experiment with myself. I think reading and learning new stuff where diets and nutrition are concerned is super interesting & fun - but experimenting and trialing is where it's at! 

So that's why my February all year resolution is to complete the impossible.

I wanted something that would scare me, something that would make me think 'not me, I am not capable of that' and it came to me through the form of this gym program.

My boyfriend suggested it to me as something I might enjoy now I'm no longer Crossfitting. At first glance I thought there is absolutely no way that I can complete this 12 week challenge. And well obviously as soon as that thought passed through my head I knew I had to give it ago.

This program will see me eating 6 times a day and by the final phase, going to the gym 6 times a week. I have read through this again and again, got organised, worked out my meals to make it minimal cost (approx £30 a week) and I've even done a practice eating week.

 

My lunch for the next few months...

Eating the same thing Monday to Friday is pretty repetitive but it is so cheap and actually, when you're on the go so much you don't tend to care. I get home at 7, eat and I'm at the gym by 8. I don't get home until around 9:30 and after a protein shake I'm not craving anything so I tend to not have time to think about what else I could be eating.

This also requires a military style preparation. This week I've roasted 2 chickens (which is enough to last me the whole week - lunch AND dinner) and I spend Sunday afternoon chopping veg, cooking my grains and sticking these all into lunchboxes so they're ready to grab and go in the mornings.

This lifestyle isn't dissimilar to what I was doing last year but after months of buying lunch at work, eating more junk and not really exercising, the thought of getting organised enough to pull this off seemed like it would be too much. Laziness fuels laziness remember.

I've already adjusted to the food - now I just need to get my arse into gear and start the gym programme. Day 1 will commence on Monday the 3rd of February (we're moving house this weekend!) and I cannot wait to take on this challenge and smash it!

Now  one thing that I have struggled with in the past is not paying attention to my body, I could leave it weeks before I realise I'm not making progress and and need to reasses what I'm eating or doing for exercise. 

I will not let that happen this time round. No way. It's so disheartening and unnecessary.

I've seen from the website linked above the possible results I could get from sticking to this and I want to do it right. In order to monitor my success I got weighed at the gym last week and will repeat this process 6 weeks through and again at 12 weeks (the end of the programme).

So here is my starting point:

Height: 4ft 9.5"

Weight: 7 stone 13 / 111.4 lbs / 50.5 kg

Body fat: 21.4

Muscle: ???

Metabolic rate: 1222

Visceral fat: 1

Waist: 25"

Hips: 34"

So I'm 1/4 inch smaller than I originally thought 😒...

Weight seems pretty standard, body fat means I'm 1/5 fat, my muscle figure makes no sense to me whatsoever but seeing as the machine turned off half way through my reading there could have been an issue with this. I will have to wait and see what happens in 6 weeks to try and make sense of that! Metabolic rate of 1222 means that's how many calories I burn just sitting on my arse all day. Visceral fat is on a scale of 1-12 (1 being low) so I'm over the moon about that! 

So the main goal here is to see the body fat come down.

I'm ready for it!

Wish me luck 👊💪

x Minnie x

Sugar Ah Honey Honey

Some time last year I heard a lot about people 'quitting sugar' I never paid too much attention to it because, well, one thing at a time. I'd taken up crossfit and clean eating which were HUGE changes for me and I was busy embracing them. Had I cut out sugar at that point I'm not sure my eating habits would have been sustainable. But a seed was planted.

This year I've been hearing and reading more and more about the obesity pandemic (lets be honest it's not an epidemic anymore, this shits gone Global). Did you know there are now 30% more obese people on the planet then there are undernourished people?
I decided to do some further reading to try and educate myself on the supposed dangers of sugar (and to take a break from my insane Game of Thrones marathon).

I didn't think the findings of this book would have such an effect on me and thought it would mostly be stuff I already knew. I thought  didn't eat very much sugar - I have a bit of honey and maple syrup here and there but thought they were OK as they are a 'natural source'.

I purchased a copy of Dr Lustig's book (available on amazon) 'fat chance, the hidden truth about sugar' and it's been a total game changer for me.

I can't recommend this book enough - though it's not the easiest book to read. Dr Lustig has decades of experience in endocrinology (medicine concerned with hormones) and has argued his case well. Though you might not understand the sciency jargon at first, the author simplifies his point in a way that everyone can understand. Some of the stuff I already knew, and other stuff has completely changed my attitude towards food, and particularly sugar.

You might be thinking now, everything in moderation is fine (which it is but ever wondered about how your moderation differs to so someone else perception of moderation?). Why would anyone choose to give up sugar?

Well here's a couple of bits to chew on... And I'm trying to use scare tactics here, I'm just trying to be informative. At the end of the day you body is yours to do with as you please and see fit and I'm ok with that.

So where does it all begin? We haven't always had an obesity problem, so where did it start? One theory is that in the 80's the media taught us to be afraid of fat (much like it is doing with sugar right now). Fat was removed from food and new foods were invented providing low fat options for those desperately trying to lose weight. Removing fat, removes the flavour and in comes sugar to sweeten the taste and make your low fat diet easy to stick to.

The problem with sugar (and this means ALL kinds of sugar by all names available for it, honey and all) is the effect it has on your insulin production, subsequently making it difficult for you to stop eating when your full (because your brain can't register that your stomach has had enough). It makes us feel good whilst we're eating it so we don't feel the need to stop and this leads to a series of knock on effects in our bodies. Including making it very hard to shift fat and burn energy efficiently.

Also at this point I'd like to point out that if you're not overweight, this doesn't mean you're in 'good health'. You might be familiar with the term TOFI? Thin outside, fat inside? Well sugar has a lovely way of making that energy we don't burn turn into visceral fat. The dangerous kind which is unseen and clings to our organs. Basically, unless you have a high percentage of body muscle, you may not exempt.

The author of this book goes on the premise that 'a calorie is not just a calorie'. 200 calories from a slice of cake might make you gain fat whereas 200 calories of fruit might not. I'm a firm believer of this theory after seeing such positive effects from clean eating - essentially I had already experienced and believed this was the care without knowing the science behind it.

A lot of the contents of this book hit home with me. Now I have a real sweet tooth. As I child I would pop sugar cubes endlessly into my mouth until I was told off. When trying to eat healthy I ate endless amounts of fruit, nutri-grain bars, muller light yoghurts and juice - all the while thinking I was doing myself a favour. I never lost weight, and if I did it was short lived. Weight has also been a concern for me as I've always worried about being predisposed to gaining weight as I age. From what I've read I'm pretty sure I am, but from what I've learnt, I know I can manage it.

Unfortunately it's not easy to tell whether you have visceral fat or not

The problem with foods which are low in fat, or high in sugar (pretty much all processed food) is that they hold little to no nutritional value and therefore our bodies don't process them well. Hmm... This sounds a lot like the theory behind clean eating doesn't it?

Let us look at orange juice. How often do you have a glass of OJ in the morning? You might want to rethink that...

So here is a 250ml bottle of OJ, vs a 330ml can of coke. Note that the side of the can says 'no added sugar' well that's lucky because there's a whopping 35g of sugar in this can. But there are 25g of sugar in the orange juice. If we do the math - 35g / 330 = 0.106 * 100 = 10.6g * 2.5 (to make it equal to 250ml) = 26.5g.

Yup. There is approximately 1.5g more sugar in a can of coke than in a glass of orange juice. And how much orange juice are you drinking? From what I see people are pouring glasses much much bugger than 250ml.

But wait. These are naturally occurring sugars from fruit aren't they? Well yes,you're right, they are. And lucky for you the manufactures have taken away any fibre that was in that delicious orange they juiced so the sugar in the drink will be absorbed just as quickly as the can of coke and promote a rise in insulin.

Let's explain that further so you can all save your money (and your liver) from the extensive juice and smoothie industry which is continuously growing whilst or waistlines continuously expand.

Fibre is key. We should all aim to eat more fibre. Fibre can reduce the pace at which food is absorbed, thus slowing the rate at which sugar is absorbed by the body and letting us use our energy slowly over time. Fruit contains fibre. Juices contain a lot less fibre. Fruit good, juice bad. And a calorie isn't just a calorie.

The book mentioned above has made a convincing argument about the detriments of sugar and the effect it's having globally in more ways than you could ever imagine. My mind is made up and I will continue to avoid this supposed 'toxin' where possible. Unfortunately, it might be harder to avoid than you think. After months of clean eating my progress began to stagnate, even with the introduction of crossfit and today I put it down to the inability to avoid honey on my Greek Yoghurt and Maple Syrup on my banana pancakes.

As you can probably tell, I could talk about this subject endlessly so I will leave it for you to decide whether to ignore the above, take note or even maybe do you're own research into this.

If you're interested, take a look through the below at some of the huge amounts of sugar you might not be expecting to consume in everyday products.

Until next time,

Peace

x Minnie x

Here's your average stir fry sauce for that healthy stir fry your making. This packet is 120g so that's more than 17.5g in this packet for 2 people

Muller Light Greek style yoghurt with sugar AND sweetener (yay) more than 10g of sugar in here and our old friend 'aspartame' has shown up too! Not just in diet coke then...

This is Dorset Cereal and with milk contains 16g per serving. Setting you up for a day full of sugary cravings.

I chose the above 3 because they struck me as items people would typically buy when trying to eat healthy - but we need to remember that skinny doesn't = healthy and skinny can also be TOFI.

Check your labels!