Going Vegan: The Veganuary Experiment!

I know it wouldn't be first on most people's list of things to try but I explored being vegan in January as part of Veganuary and at the prompting of my daughter Ally. Being principally vegetarian, it wasn't a huge leap to trying vegan, although the thought of giving up a really nice mature cheddar cheese was a bit of a trial!

It would be really easy to approach "going vegan" as being all about what you are giving up rather than what you might be gaining. I know a lot of people for whom moving vegetables from a side dish to a main course is cause for heart palpitations and cries of impending doom as starvation looms. So you need to look at the positives, the things you can explore, remembering of course that it's always a choice. Trying a plant based diet is not a lifetime commitment unless you choose to make it so.

Perhaps I'm fortunate that the reason I don't eat meat is because I don't actually like it. I'm not fond of either the taste or the texture. Having said that, there are plenty of vegetables and fruits that I don't particularly like either. For example, during veganuary I chose a vegan wrap at a chain restaurant. It was okay, but it had avocado in it and I dislike avocado with a passion. Something confirmed by trying the aforementioned wrap.

So how did I/we get on with our vegan experiment? I discovered that I could live quite happily without dairy products. I use almond milk in my smoothies, and because I don't drink tea of coffee there wasn't a problem finding a substitute for dairy milk in hot drinks. A soy based yoghurt was fine with the oat bran I often have for breakfast and Alpro's soy based custard was good too. I did try some vegan cheese. It was okay grated on risottos etc but I don't think I'd have wanted to try it on toast!

We only ate out once and I managed to find a vegan menu at Ask, the restaurant we visited. I had a vegan spaghetti bolognese. Assuming the pasta was vegan, it tasted exactly the same as every other form of pasta I've eaten and the bolognese was made with veg and lentils. All very nice. I can imagine that other places might be as accommodating, but that is changing.

Do I feel different? Honestly, no. I feel just the same. No ups or downs in energy levels. Will I choose to be vegan? I think we'll be rather flexible. The thing about being vegan is not to fret about things too much. Rather like the pasta. If it was egg based, then okay. There's little value in being overly militant about these things. Make a choice, but don't make a song and dance about it.

Since reading The China Study, it would certainly seem that the traditional western diet needs to change. Too much meat is not good for you, especially if the meat outweighs the vegetable content of your plate. Although there are disputes about the conclusions drawn in the book, we all know the important of complex carbohydrates and fibre to good digestion and therefore good health.

You can visit the veganuary website for more information. It's not too late to give it a try!

September 2017 Step Stats

I managed to hit the target every day for the whole month. Not too surprising given the coaching, training and playing that goes into a typical week. There some days when I wouldn't have made 10k had I not gone for a walk, and under other circumstances I probably wouldn't have done so had it not been for setting myself the challenge. I even walked from Kings Cross to Fenchurch Street one day to make sure I made my 10k steps when otherwise I would have taken the tube to Bank at the very least and walked from there.

This, for me, is what makes the challenge interesting. Not so much the target, but the commitment to doing to do it. Anyway, just for the record (and with some comparisons to come) here are my September stats.

Steps: 395643
 Aver: 13188
 Max: 24537
 Min: 10064
Miles: 198

Given that I started in August, I've managed 44 consecutive days of 10k or more. I've also passed 500k steps already.

My A360 has been recording too, and the data is as I'd expect with the exception of the "pushchair day" I blogged about recently! Heavy coaching days and days when I either play or train show up really clearly in any comparison. What was interesting was the day I pushed Tobias in his buggy. Because my arm wasn't moving very little data was recorded as activity. I wonder what would happen if you went running on a treadmill but held onto the bars. Would it record any data then?

Overall I'm pleased I've completed a whole month and especially pleased that on those days when I might have chosen to sit on the sofa and do nothing, I actually got out and did something. Let's see what October brings.

Pedometer update!

So, I had a quick look at new pedometers and discovered that many now have a reset button on the front. Why? Why would you want to reset it? I have a feeling that mine would continually be resetting itself as it bumped around in my pocket.

Anyway, I got out my screwdrivers and dismantled my old pedometer and cleaned up the contacts and now, with a bit of fiddling, I've been able to set the time and other parameters and I'm all set to get recording.

As a matter of interest, I did a quick check. It was 2014/15 that I last did the challenge. I managed 183 consecutive before a calf injury ended the run. That was in March 2015 and for some reason I stopped recording the data too afterwards. I think it might be because I got my new Polar A360. That and the battery might have run out!

I think my plan will be the record the data over the next couple of weeks to see what's currently normal/typical and then plan to get out walking in September. I haven't yet decided whether I'll use tennis as part of the 10k or not. It would be interesting but possibly impractical to try and do 10k walking steps in addition to all the stuff I do on court. I will have to think about that carefully.

One solution would be to set a minimum walking target, say 6.5k steps. At a guess that's around 3 miles or 5Km and might be achievable even on heavy tennis days. I could work out a simple route that would hit that goal.

If I start on September 1st, 100 days takes me to December 9th, but I might be a bit later starting this year because of other commitments. Still, it would be nice to hit the target by Christmas. In 2014 I even did my 10k on Christmas Day.

For the love of vegetables!

When I was about 4 years old I announced that I wasn't going to eat certain meats ever again. My memory of that day is that I'd had something very chewy, possibly a bit gristly, and that put me off. I don't ever remember liking the taste or texture of a lot of meat, so I made my announcement and became known as the picky eater in the family!

50+ years on I still don't eat a lot of meat, in fact I eat even less now than I did then. But I'm not  an out and out vegetarian, at least not yet. I say not yet because I keep thinking about it, not on moral grounds, but on health grounds. The book I've been reading (The China Study) presents a lot of data that points to a vegetarian diet as being the healthiest option for addressing many of the issues that arise from a modern Western diet. The data seems to be strongly in favour of a move to a more heavily plant based diet, but then the interpretation of the data may need to be questioned. That is a job for the scientific community to do, which I'm sure they have done but I have not.

Anyway, I like vegetables (with the exception of a few including the worst of them all-the brussel sprout!), so eating mainly veg is not an issue for either Anne or myself. Working out how to make it different and tasty is a bit more of a challenge, but there are lots of options, it just take a bit of time and effort. On the hand, the same could be said of anything you cook from scratch.

The other issue with a vegetarian diet is that there are very few plant based protein sources that are complete proteins (i.e. containing all the essential amino acids). That means you have to combine plant proteins in a meal in order to get the amino acids you need. It's fairly easy to do, you just combine foods from different groups that contain the missing proteins. Or, if all you re trying to do is to cut down the amount of animal protein in your diet, then you might choose to have chicken of fish just once a week and eat vegetarian the rest of the time. That would probably ensure you get what you need in your diet although it would be wise to give that a bit more thought and research.

And cooking vegetarian need not be hard or uninteresting. We made a really nice vegetable risotto using butternut squash, sweet potato, leek and yellow pepper. Add a bit of white wine, vegetable stock and sage, sprinkle with parmesan cheese and it was very tasty!

If The China Study is right, making a shift away from animal protein could help reduce the risk of many serious conditions. The current recommendation for a balanced diet is that you eat around 15% protein, most of which comes from meat in our western diet. But if you reduced that to around 5% from animal products (which would include diary as well as meat) and the rest from plant protein, then from my reading of the book you could see some positive benefits.

If you belong to that small group of people who profess not to like vegetables the perhaps you just haven't found the right combination or maybe you haven't discovered how best to cook them for your palette. Mind you, you might say the same thing to me about meat and even sprouts!

Healthy eating anyone?

In today’s food culture, many people seem to have acquired uncannily homogenous tastes. In 2010, two consumer scientists argued that the taste preferences of childhood provided a new way of thinking about the causes of obesity. They noted a “self-perpetuating cycle”: food companies push foods high in sugar, fat and salt, which means that children learn to like them, and so the companies invent ever more of these foods “that contribute to unhealthy eating habits”. The main influence on a child’s palate may no longer be a parent but a series of food manufacturers whose products – despite their illusion of infinite choice – deliver a monotonous flavour hit, quite unlike the more varied flavours of traditional cuisine.

So suggests an interesting article in the Guardian that appeared in my Facebook feed this morning. The article argues that our tastes are learnt. We are taught what to eat and so all the foods we consume are ones we have learnt to eat. There's no doubt that certain food types taste good to most people. There was an interesting TV programme last year that explored the relationship between fat and sugar in suppressing the feeling of being full amongst other things and how that affected the way we choose to eat. So it seems quite clear that even at a surface level our relationship with food is both simple-we eat what we like and avoid what we don't, but also more complex in the way "what we like" becomes normalised for us.

As a result, as the article points out, we may decide that we ought to be eating more fruit and vegetables, but we haven't actually learnt to enjoy eating them. It therefore becomes a chore. Maybe the same is true about freshly prepared food that takes time and effort to cook compared with the easy option of a ready meal or a visit to a fast food outlet.

Maybe the first decision we need to make then, when we decide it's time for a dietary change, is that rather than restricting what we can and can't eat, we are making a positive choice to explore new flavours, textures and foods. I bought a copy of a vegetarian food magazine before Christmas and finally got around to reading it yesterday while I sat having my lunch. I'm not a big fan of meat anyway, so vegetarian cooking has always been part of our diet, so it's not as if I was reading this out of curiosity or some sudden resolution to go vegetarian. The recipes certainly looked and sounded interesting, and we will definitely try some of them. The point is, rather than a chore or some desperate dive into a "healthy diet", exploring these recipes will be a bit of an adventure. Eating a meal without meat doesn't have to be torture and neither does eating a meal without a pudding or a glass of wine.

If the article is correct, then what you eat is your choice. As long as you understand the principles of nutrition, you're free to explore, to learn to enjoy new tastes and to experience healthy food rather than endure it. Perhaps we need to see losing weight as a by-product of choosing new eating and drinking habits rather than the sole purpose of shifting our diet away from large portions of high calorie food.

Setting a new goal

So, yesterday I missed my 10k step goal ending a run of 188 consecutive days. The reasons were simple enough: we travelled to Nottingham for a celebration lunch and I also managed to pop my calf muscle again while coaching in the morning. Taking these two together, I decided to rest my leg and forgo my target for the day.

Now, once the calf strain is better, I need to work out whether to return to focussing on 10k or setting a different daily goal. As you know, I received an activity monitor for Christmas, the Polar Loop, and I could focus my attention on hitting my activity goal every day rather than the step challenge. The interesting this is the difference between the two.

Generally speaking, if I play tennis for an hour or so or do some interval training for an hour, I usually hit my activity goal but not my steps goal. On the other hand, I can go out and walk and hit my step goal but miss my activity goal. I think it will be interesting for a while to focus on the daily activity goal as measured by the Loop, and thereby build a picture of what the impact of doing is likely to be. As you've probably already guessed if you read some of my ramblings about health and exercise, the data fascinates me and can be part of the motivation for getting up and moving in the first place. 

So I think I'll go for activity for a while, and se how the data stacks up!

In support of exercise

I like these kinds of visualised talks, and although this doesn't tell you anything radically new it is still worth watching (unless you don't like illustrated talks!).

We all know that exercise is good for us but sometimes the message is confusing. Hopefully this talk will encourage you to make moving a part of your day. With all the recent talk about how much exercise is good for you and whether running long distances is ultimately damaging, this talk gives a research perspective on the value of exercise for positive health outcomes. The debate will still rage about over-exercise but the value of moderate exercise cannot be understated.

What is fascinating is some of the research cited. Another interesting thought is the "Whole Body" impact idea that comes up when he talks about stents. Think about the implications for a while. If a stent only fixes one part of the problem, but exercise addresses a wide range of factors, ho might that be true for other diseases/ risk factors?

 

Inaccurate fitness monitors

Lara Lewington at the BBC's Click has an article on the website about fitness/activity monitors that's quite interesting for those inclined towards gadgets. How long it will be available I'm not sure, but currently you'll find it here. Thanks to Adam for pointing to the article.

In simple terms, the article points out that if you take four of the most prominent players in the market, you will get significant discrepancies in the data they present to you about your activity levels and related data. I have to say that I don't find that particularly unexpected, and it certainly fits with my experience of my Polar Loop (which wasn't among the four tested). I guess the object lesson in all of this goes back to something I learned doing physics at school. We were taught the difference between precision and accuracy. As I recall, and it is a rather long time ago, the difference is that you can have very precise measurements that are inaccurate and conversely you can have accurate results that are imprecise. Sounds crazy I know, but we are talking about the mysteries of physics here. In common usage we might use accurate and precise to describe the same thing, but in science they mean different things.

So what does this mean for the activity tracker you're planning on strapping to your wrist? The most important implication is that the data you get has to be understood against the way the technology works, the kind of sensor it has and the maths it uses to convert what it measures into the data you get to read off the device. I've already blogged about the differences between a simple pedometer and my Loop and how the Loop converts body movements into steps. Even my pedometer doesn't necessarily measures steps exactly.

So why would you spend your hard earned cash on an activity monitor that can't tell you either accurately or precisely why you've been up to? I'm not sure the technology exists to do that, but that doesn't mean a monitor is a bad thing. The reason to buy one of these gadgets lies in a quote from one of the companies making the devices has to say.

Managing director of Fitbit Europe Gareth Jones advises people to simply be aware of the trend.
"Rather than get down to the half step or the next calorie is to look at the trend in their step pattern," he says,
"Are they increasing the number of steps in their day all week? Are they increasing the calorie burn day to day, week to week? Because it's that trend that's going to make you healthier."

It's pretty obvious that a device worn on your wrist is unlikely to give you a proper measure of steps taken, but it will indicate how active you've been. It's these trends that help you make choices about what you need to do to improve your health. So buy a gadget if you want, or get someone to buy one for you (mine was a Christmas present) and use it to motivate yourself to move. It's fun to see what yo've been doing, how far you've walked or run, how long you've spent sitting down. But don't get hung up on the raw data, look at the trends. Look at the bigger picture.

150 and still going!

Yesterday marked two milestones. Firstly, it was my 150th consecutive day of 10k steps or more. I worked out that I'm roughly 3 weeks away from hitting 6 months at this daily target. The other milestone was that yesterday was my first bout of the winter with the cold virus! Certainly having the flu jab in the autumn seems to have helped me avoid getting a cold so far, but it's finally nabbed me while I wasn't paying attention. Oh well, it should clear up pretty quickly, and in fact I already feel better today than I did yesterday. Let's hope that's not just a lull!

I also noticed that yesterday was the first day since I started wearing my Polar Loop that I didn't hit my target. I could have gone out in the evening and done enough, I only needed to jog for 5 minutes or so, but I decided enough was enough and I didn't need to push myself out the door for the sake a 2%. 98% of my daily target is quite possibly significantly more than many people without colds manage!

I remember years ago a friend saying that a target was like the bullseye you might aim at in darts or archery. Hitting the bullseye is great, but if you aim at it and miss, then you haven't missed the bigger target. If you run, you'll know all about personal bests. You might even be geeky enough to keep a notebook or spreadsheet about it. It's okay, if I were serious about running I'd have running journal of some kind I'm sure. PB's are subject to all sorts of things: fitness, terrain, weather, how you feel on the day, how many other people are around you and so on. Not making your PB every time you run is not a failure. The same is true of your health and fitness goals.

In the back of my mind I wonder if I can keep achieving my 10k goal every day for a year. I'm a very long way from doing that at the moment, so I don't think about much. It won't become even a remote possibility until I get to somewhere in June, and then not a real possibility until I hit August. Thinking about it now is just not realistic. In fact the only reason to think about it now is to encourage me to go out each day and finish, because if I don't then I can't achieve that particular goal. Okay, so that probably makes it realistic in some way, but the point is I'm not focussed on the 365 target, I'm just focussed on the 1 day target. The big target will take care of itself if I keep hitting the smaller one.

Maybe you set out at the beginning of the year with the intention of getting fitter or being healthier and you said to yourself that you were going to go for a walk everyday. Maybe you've managed it, maybe you haven't. It doesn't matter if you've missed a day or even a week as long as you get back out. Make each day a challenge, and when you can conquer that challenge, make each week a challenge. Do whatever it takes to keep yourself motivated and don't let the things that demotivate you take control.

Today is an interesting day. Now I've missed my activity target do I say to myself it's not worth the effort and give up on it. At least I hit my 10k target. Or do I simply say that yesterday was a good result given how I felt most of the day. Today I feel better, so there are no excuses not to achieve both goals. That's the choice I need to make.

Has anybody seen my tennis shoes!

Activity Tracking Update

I've been using my Polar Loop to track my activity data for 3 weeks now, and apart from the questions I have about the overall accuracy of the data, it's been interesting to say the least. Interesting of course for someone who likes these sorts of things, overwhelming tedious and boring if you don't! I get that.

Since I last posted anything about the Loop I've added using a heart rate monitor. This can be paired (it's Bluetooth) with either the Loop or with an app on my phone. I've only done the latter so far, but will have a go with the Loop at some point.

The app in question is Polar Beat. I can use both Runkeeper and Beat at the same time, and I could, as far as I know, link my heart rate monitor to Runkeeper. The dilemma is that Beat is obviously integrated with Flow, the web based service from Polar, whereas Runkeeper isn't. On the other hand, if I want to set challenges in Runkeeper, I have to use it's tracking facility because it doesn't record manually entered activity against any challenge. It's also a case that as yet I don't seem to be able to get Beat to post activities to either Facebook or Twitter so that impressed and admiring friends can feel guilty about the exercise they're not getting!!

So, apart from the issue of where I store all the boring stats about how far I've walked, run, jogged or moved on a tennis court, I've discovered the fairly obvious fact that when I play tennis it's easy to reach my daily goal and when I don't I have to do something else instead. What is helpful, and interesting to me at least, is to see what kind of exercise I'm doing. I know about heart rate zones and progressive overloading etc from my PT studies, but having a simple graphic showing me that data is nice. I haven't had to sit down and create a spreadsheet to do it for me, it's just all done on the website.

So far I've managed to exceed my daily activity goal everyday. Some days by small margins, others by quite some distance. Last Friday, for example, I managed 300% of my daily goal. Now, because the Polar Loop is a simple device, I'm not exactly sure what constitutes my daily goal, although I can hazard a guess from the "to go" information and what I personally have to do to reach it. According to Polar the level 3 goal (that's the highest one) is about 1.5 hours of high intensity exercise.

Beyond all this information and data, the big question has to be, "Does it keep me motivated?" I think the answer is yes. By monitoring my activity I do tend to check it and make sure I reach my goal rather than assuming I've done enough on the basis of how I feel. But then again, as I've said before, a simple pedometer can do that for you. In the end it comes down to one simple thing: Whatever it takes for you to get out and get moving, it has to be worth it. I have my gadgets, you'll find your motivators if you really want to.


Just in case you're interested, here's the summary from 29th December to today. Distance and steps are from actual steps and body movements made, which is why it overestimates steps.

A week with Polar Flow

I've had my Loop for a whole week and it's been interesting looking at the data. The is very simple to set up. It has only 3 options when it comes to your activity level and goal setting as far as I can see. I chose "Mostly Moving" from the list and the software set a few parameters automatically from the information I supplied (max. heart rate, aerobic and anaerobic heart rates, VO2 max). There is a fitness test you can do to get a better VO2 max by the looks of things, but I haven't explored that yet.

You can also pair a heart rate monitor with the Loop. I have a monitor, but I've only used it once and I paired it with Polar Beat on my iPhone. I might try pairing it with the Loop while playing tennis one day just to see what happens with my heart rate over the course of a single match.

I charge the Loop each evening at the end of the day and put it back on just before I go to sleep so that I get the data for sleep. There isn't much information about how the Loop collects the data and what algorithms are used to analyse it and how accurate you can expect it to be. After a week, I'd suggest that it provides a reasonable reflection of how active you've been but some of the numbers are less accurate than you might want them to be. The only evidence I have for that comes from comparing the steps taken as recorded by a simple pedometer and by the Loop. My pedometer is an Omron Walking Style II. I've been using one of these for years to record my daily steps. Comparing the two devices the difference is quite significant.

	Pedometer	Loop	Difference
Friday	11933	14918	2985
Saturday	12978	18469	5491
Sunday	12974	17050	4076
Monday	14779	22373	7594
Tuesday	16168	26273	10105
Wednesday	13345	18875	5530
Thursday	11946	16217	4271
Total	94123	134175	40052

The Loop consistently records more steps than the pedometer. Now that is probably due to the fact that you wear it on your wrist and it must therefore be influenced by the movement of the wrist. The magnitude of the difference might well be a reflection of the amount of tennis I play!

Once you've synchronised the Loop with either the desktop app or the mobile app you get an analysis of your data in numbers and pictures.

The graphical image gives you an overview of the day and shows you when you've had an inactivity alert. The two in the image here are when I was in the car. The heart symbol indicates a time when a heart rate monitor was in use.
As you can see, activity is broken down into 5 categories from lying down to running. The hatched area is when the Loop was charging and therefore not being worn. The small hatched area at around 1:00am is a mystery!

There's also a summary in the form of a table.


Knowing how much sleep you get is good, but I have no idea whether the restful sleep figure is meaningful or not. And the inactivity stamps are okay, but it would be nice to get some sort of alert via the Loop or maybe even via the 'phone app.

Polar have two web based applications that you can access for free. Polar Flow is where you get to see all your data and the personal training website, polarpersonaltrainer, is also available for doing more detailed training management.

I quite like my Polar Loop, but if I were wanting to get significantly more serious about monitoring my training and progress I'd probably be wearing something with more functions. But, if you're interested in getting a broad picture of your activity level and need something to give you a little motivation to get out and do some exercise, then the Loop is a great gadget if you like gadgets. 

December 2014 walking stats

I'm not planning on going far in the next couple of hours, in fact staying awake will be enough of a challenge! I'm not big on seeing in the new year.

Anyway, as December ends, it's time to look at the numbers once again. The bear facts are as follows:

Steps taken: 398898
Approx. mileage: 199.45

With no missed days that makes it 122 consecutive days over 10k and a grand total since 1st September of 1592575 steps. My biggest day was 18971, and there were several days over 15k.

So I quite pleased with the effort but now I need to up the intensity of I going to get any fitness benefit. 10k walking will always help keep my heart healthy, but I'm interested in improving my fitness too. Interestingly I set out today to run/walk to the gym for a swim. I actually ran almost all the way. That's about 3 miles, 4.5Km. Knee problems have stopped me running for a long time, but today it just felt okay to run. I'm not planning any long distances, but if I can begin to run 5k on a regular basis that would be great.

The only problem is that the more running I do the fewer steps I take over a given distance. At the moment I estimate I take 20% fewer steps per Km when I run compared to walking. Consequently I'd have to run about 10Km a day to do the 10k steps I do walking 8Km. Given that I ran 4.5Km is 30 minutes, 10Km would take about 66 minutes, which is still faster than I reckon it takes to walk 8Km, but that's all academic given that I can't yet run 10Km!!

What I'll probably do is continue to do my favoured interval training and then do some additional walking.

Just playing with a couple of apps

It's not easy to run two activity apps at the same time, you have to start one and then the other, but I thought it might be quite interesting to run Runkeeper and Polar Beat side-by-side this morning.

There's not a lot to say really about the two programmes. The possible value of PB is that it links to my new Polar Loop, at least I think it does. It's all a bit confusing to be honest.

Anyway, with so many ways to capture all your activity data the only thing that is probably missing is the motivation to get up and do something!!

I've had my Loop for a few days now and it is quite insightful to see how the day pans out. Long periods of sitting, punctuated by little bits of movement with the occasional bursts of frantic activity as I hurl myself around a tennis court.



The one thing Runkeeper can't do is recognise interval training. I have to set it to running or walking. But that's not really a problem. Most of these apps will work with a range of bits of kit like heart rate monitors and stride measuring devices. I think you are either the kind of person who sets them up really accurately and keeps a detailed training dairy, or like me, you just use them to keep a rough track of what you're doing and to help with motivating you to get out and get moving.

A simple pedometer works just as well, but I do love a good gadget, and my Loop is a nice gadget!

Anyway I need to get ready to go and do a job before setting off for a drive to a tennis tournament. No problems reaching my daily activity goal today! I might blog a bit more about these apps later if I'm not busy trying to run round the block to earn some stars on Everymove!!

Obstacle runs, boot camps and other madness!

I've just caught the end of a programme about the London "Survival of the fittest" obstacle run. It's a 10K run with a difference. Running through drains, streams, over hay bales, under wires and nets. Name an obstacle and it's probably in the race.

The best part about the whole things was the obvious fun everyone was having. Even the elite competitors had big smiles of their faces. Oh to be younger, more agile and considerably fitter! I suspect I might not even make it over the first hurdle in such a race. Interestingly, this sort of outdoor exercise is probably far better than working out in the confines of a gym. Every muscle group is put through its paces and worked hard. you are constantly climbing, crawling, pushing, lifting and moving in ways that are typical human movement patterns. No isolated exercises, just all-round movement requiring to shift your own body weight, nothing more, nothing less. It reminds me of the principle espoused by Mark Sissons in his Primal blueprint stuff about walking more, running sometimes, lifting heavy things from time to time or however he describes it. The idea is simple, exercise in a way that mimics what you do normally.

Of course, if normal is sitting on the sofa watching endless drivel on the TV, then things will need to change. But let's assume we all know that being a couch potato is not what we were designed to be.

I've just finished my 100-day challenge to move the equivalent of 5 miles a day every day. I'm currently on day 104 by the way! This is a good start if your goal is simply to be healthy, to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system. So now I'm beginning to think about what to do next. What to add to my routine. I'm thinking of planning my own variation of a boot camp. I've done some interval training before and I like being outside and doing primary body weight based exercise. I'm hoping I might be able to find a training partner. I think it will make some things easier, and it certainly helps with the motivation.

Watching the obstacle run made me wish I was able to do that sort of thing, but it also made me think about what I can do, or what I might be able to do. It's easy to wish away your fitness goals on the basis of what you can't do today. It's much harder to put a plan into place and get out there and do it.

So, over the next couple of weeks I'l work on a plan. I was going to say "perhaps I'll work on a plan", but that's a get out clause and is really just another way of saying I'd like to, but I know I won't.

100 days done!

Day 100 went smoothly with no injuries and no late night walks to make sure I passed my 10k daily target. A couple of hours tennis, a walk to the bank and back and an hour coaching took me over 13k steps for the day and over 1.3 million for the 100-day period.

Statistically, comparing this time round with the first time I did the challenge, I've taken more steps and covered more miles. The difference is only about 20 miles, which is about 350 yards a day, but there are other differences. The second time around hasn't had as big an impact on my health and fitness. I'm fitter now than I was 4 years ago, but I'm also 4 years older. That probably wouldn't be significant if I was 25, but at 57 I think it's been a factor. The older you get the harder it gets to maintain and improve fitness. The first time I did the challenge, it was part of a programme to get fitter and healthier. Naturally, because I was starting from a lower point, the improvements and changes were much more obvious.

Motivation is something else that has been different. This time around it was all about proving to myself that I could do this again and that I could motivate myself to keep going with only the simple target of hitting 100 days to aim at. Although I do feel better for it, I'm not sure I feel noticeably better or that if I'd measured my baseline fitness it would have improved over the 100 days.

Anyway, here are the comparative figures for the record.

2010: Steps-1,260,290, distance-630 miles

2014: Steps-1,301,291, distance-650 miles

So, what next? 10k steps a day is all about maintaing a healthy heart. It is not a fitness routine. If I want to improve my fitness I need to change one or more of the so-called FITT principles (Frequency, Intensity, Time, Type). I was thinking of looking to maintain my 10k a day habit until the New Year, but I do need to consider doing something else too because I want to be as fit as I can be. I'd like to do some circuit training, and I'd like a training partner with whom I could do that. Mainly to keep me motivated and accountable. Walking is fine, but somehow I find the more intense training harder to keep up on my own. Maybe I could start a fitness group, train with them and make a bit of money at the same time!

The cost of getting lean

Earlier this year I was invited to do a couple of seminars with some dance students at a local college. It was a busy day, but very interesting. One of the questions I asked the students was about their ideas of being fit and being healthy. The point I wanted to make was that the two are not synonymous. Some very fit people are actually quite unhealthy and some healthy people are very unfit.

When you start a fitness programme you need to know what your goals really are going to be. Is it about fitness or is it about health? Are you confusing getting fit with getting healthy? In the world of Personal Training you will sometimes hear a reference to the "mirror muscles". Big guns, six-pack abs, all the things you might see on the front cover of the latest men's fitness magazine.

Inside the magazine there's usually an article detailing an exercise and eating regimen that will transform your body from the flabby dough-like consistency it currently has into the chiselled and sculpted adonis that adorns the cover page. No doubt it will work for some readers, but many more will be left exhausted in a pool of sweat and seeing a rather less than finely tuned athlete staring back at them from the bathroom mirror.

The truth is that some people have a naturally lean and well-defined, muscular appearance. There's a technical term for this type of natural physique but most people just call them something Anglo-Saxon and uncomplimentary! For the rest of us we have to work with what we've got and settle for something less than perfect. You may be able to get leaner, but you won't have all those impressive muscles.

So what are the costs, the pros and cons of getting leaner or fitter or healthier? To reveal that six-pack (oh yes, you have one it's just that it might be hidden by a party-7) might actually require you to measure all your food, every meal of every day and to work out longer than you are able to sustain. In other words, it might just be too costly, both in terms of your ability to commit to the process and possibly even your overall health.

In an interesting article about the costs of different lifestyles, expressed in terms of body fat percentage, Ryan Andrews & Brian St. Pierre set out some interesting information. Personally I believe that body fat percentage is a far better measure that BMI, particularly if you are in any way athletic or playing sports regularly. If you're a 6'3" rugby forward weighing it at around 18.5 stone, then your BMI would say your obese even if your BF% is only 12.

So, as the weeks tick down to the New Year and you're getting ready to set yourself yet another lose weight/get fitter resolution, think about what you are truthfully trying to achieve, whether it's possible and what you will have to do in order to reach and maintain your goal. Me personally, I'd love to be leaner, fitter and faster, but I am also hopefully realistic about what I can commit to achieving. That doesn't mean I won't try and reach some goals that are tough, but I'm enough of a realist to settle for the possible rather than reach for the impossible.

The article mentioned above has a really interesting series of graphics that set out the benefits and trade-offs for a range of BF%'s. It's worth a read.

Taking up the walking challenge again!

I can't believe that it's 4 years since I set myself the challenge to walk a million steps in one hundred days. It all started with a challenge to walk 200,000 steps in August 2010. From there I started walking every day and kept a record of steps for the next year. I remember purposely choosing not to walk my daily target of 10k steps around day 105 to try and avoid becoming overly obsessive about it all, but continuing to record and challenge myself over the course of the following year. In August 2011 I set myself the target of walking 500,000 steps in a single month.

Well I think it's high time I took up the challenge again, so I've started to load up my pocket with my trusty pedometer and hit the streets. When it comes to being achievable, targets have to realistic. I'd like to do the 100 days again, and I think I can do it but it's more challenging this time than it was 4 years ago. Back in 2010 I could easily hit my target by walking up to the station and back twice a day. I'd get up and walk with Anne, call in at the office or just walk home again and then later in the day walk back into town or wait until the evening and walk up to the station to accompany Anne home. Now the station is only 8 minutes away, about half a mile, and so I have to make a plan to go and walk each day rather than simply incorporating into my schedule.

We're back to the discipline thing again, something I discovered last time and often talked about when asked how I managed to keep to the plan. So discipline it is. Actually, the last couple of days have been interesting because I've had a cold and not really felt like exercising. So instead of seeing my walk as exercise, I've simply gone out to get some fresh air. I've wandered more than walked purposefully and the steps have accumulated. I find getting a good 30-40 minutes done in one hit is great. It makes a good dent in the numbers game and rather than looking at the pedometer in the afternoon to discover I've only done 1,000 steps I might look and see that I only have another 2,500 to go to hit the 10k marker.

So how about joining me in this challenge? Let's make the first target to achieve 10k steps on 10 consecutive days over the next 2 weeks. That give you 14 days to do it and the chance for a couple of restarts if something should get in the way. I might even offer prizes to those who are nearby enough to not need me to post them!! Or maybe you can offer yourself your own prize. It doesn't have to be extravagant, a water bottle for example might be all you need, or if I'm giving out prizes, all you will get!

The rules will be simple enough: I'll trust you to be honest about what you actually do and the only criteria is that you manage 10 consecutive days. If you don't have a pedometer then I'd recommend the one I use. It's an Omron Walking Style II. It's been replaced I think by the mark III version, but I've seen the MkII still available in a few places. I like it because it seems to work quite well and you can stick it in a pocket rather than having to strap it to your hip like you have to with some devices. You can of course get an app for it with some devices I'm sure.

If you don't have a pedometer or can't wait for delivery to get started, then why not use a mapping app to measure the distance of your walk to the station or the office. For the purposes of this challenge we'll assume that 5 miles (8Km) is equivalent to 10K steps. Or you could use something like Runkeeper or Map my Run on the iPhone to measure a walk.

So that's it. 10 days is the first marker. If you don't quite make it first time around, keep going. when I first started in August 2010 I spent the first month working out was normal for me. That's not a bad idea, there will be plenty of time for you to pick up the challenge, it's never too late to have a go. It might be that hitting 5K will be a big step up for you personally and that 10K is just a step too far (puns intended and apologised for too!)

I hope to get fitter and healthier as a result because in the end just being able to say I've done 100 days again isn't really the point.

Steps again

So, after a few weeks of "normal" activity it's fairly obvious that some days I easily reach my 10K target, and some days I don't. Nothing unexpected there. We've had a few weekends when we've gone to visit family and that's one reason my step count has been down, but as I said before, this is about seeing what normal looks like.

The next step, excuse the pun, is to work out some routes and their approximate step count. When we lived in Upminster I knew that if I walked to the station with Anne in the morning and then to meet her in the evening, it was going to take me past 10K steps a day even if I did nothing else. I also had a series of routes I followed and I pretty much knew what I needed to do in order to add that last 750 or 1000 steps at the end of the day.

Part of the fun of working on a routine for me is doing this kind of number crunching. Just putting in the miles is too tedious for me, so having a plan of where to walk and see how many steps that takes keeps me interested enough to get started. It takes time to build a new habit. When I was setting targets a few years ago I discovered that actually getting out and walking was fairly easy because I had a goal. Just churning out the miles or even the steps can become monotonous if you don't have a purpose that motivates you.

After a few weeks, I'm not sure how long it takes, I usually find a rhythm and I know I've got into a routine when I feel like running rather than just walking. I don't run long distances any more, mostly because of a knee problem that I haven't solved yet and that get irritated by running.

So, I think I'm all set to set a goal for September, and now I seem to have addressed a minor issue with my plantar fascia (see here for that story), I'm ready to set myself going. So fire up Runkeeper, dust of my music library on my iPhone and let's hit the mean streets of South Essex!

Counting steps-again!

I'm revisiting my walking 10,000 steps a day principle, easing myself back into at the moment. This time around I've decided to start by simply measuring how many steps I take a day without setting out to achieve the 10K goal. I think this is helpful because it gives toy a baseline from which to work. Anyone who has ever set themselves a health or fitness goal knows that starting is the first hurdle, but once you start, the initial phase is full of enthusiasm. This can lead to over extending your efforts, and then it's down the slippery slope of relapse and failure through injury or boredom!

Getting a baseline is also useful because it tells you the truth about how sedentary you've become. It might surprise you and tell you that you're more active than you thought, but I suspect the former is more likely. It's important at this stage to record the data. It might sound a bit OCD to do that, but you need to know where you started. Getting fitter and healthier (the two are not the same) takes time and discipline. You will need a way of measuring the changes and it won't just be through the scales.

Once you have your baseline data, then you can start to get a bit more active. I'd suggest (assuming you have no medical reason not to do this) that you find a route that's a mile long and see how long it takes to walk it comfortably. Then maybe try it again and do it as quickly as you can without having to stop. control your pace and note down the times. This will give you another measure.

Having done my challenge before I know that I can walk 4 miles (6.Km) in an hour when I've been practicing. That's not too fast but fast enough. I also know that I can sustain that over at least 5 miles without any problems. That will be one of my first tests, to go out and see if I can walk 4 miles in an hour. This will help me work out how fit I am compared with two years ago.

Being healthy is another thing, and that really comes down to getting out of breath for at least 30 minutes 3 to 5 times a week. Given that I play tennis 3 times in an average week and at least 1.5 hours of that is playing singles, doing the extra walking will do the healthy part. fitness only improves with a progressive increase in effort. The technical term is 'progressive overload', and you get this by changing at least one of the following principles:

Frequency
Intensity
Time
Type

So, for example, if you're walking your 10,000 steps a day and your fitness has improved over say 3 to 4 weeks, the next stage will need you to change of of these principles. But you might not have any more time available, so you can't walk for longer or more often. The easiest thing to do is to find a hill to add to your route. That will change the intensity. Easy if you live in Nottingham, where I grew up, less easy if your out in the fens! The other choice would be to change you speed. Walk faster, even add a little bit of running. When I go out walking I sometimes run for short bursts, say 3-4 minutes. That pushes up the intensity quite nicely.

The point of this is that it's not actually that complicated to do something about improving health and fitness. small changes, discipline and determination go a long way, provided that is that you get off the couch and into those rather too clean pair of trainers you keep hidden at the back of the wardrobe.

Currently Reading

I decided I'd like to read Michael Mosley's book about intermittent fasting. We were away during the Olympics, so we missed the BBC Horizon programme about it, although I did see his "The truth about exercise programme", which I found very interesting. 

Anyway I bought myself a copy of The Fast Diet: The secret of intermittent fasting - lose weight, stay healthy, live longer, which he co-wrote with Mimi Spencer, and set about reading it. I'm about a quarter of the way through the book, but reading it on Kindle means I have no idea if I'm near the end of the theory/practice bit before we hit the recipe section, or if there's more scientific revelation to come!

I guess that with our societal issues with obesity and preoccupation with diets as the solution, putting "diet" in the title was a no-brainer from a marketing point of view. But this is not really a diet book, although there are plans (recipes) and patterns to help you get started. 

If you already know about things like GI and GL, you'll probably skip over those bits, and to be honest, you can skim through much of the early pages as long as you don't miss some of the really interesting things that are being explored and discovered through current research. The thing is, this is not just about weight control, it goes to the heart of a healthy life. If the book is right, then our bodies need the routine of fasting (more accurately low-calorie days, around 600 for men, 500 for women) to get down to the business of repair. Giving our liver and pancreas a couple of days off might just reduce our risk of a number of diseases like diabetes and dementia.

Ever one to experiment, I think I'll explore the ideas. Being able to combine an age-old spiritual discipline with a 21st century exploration of healthy living sounds like a good plan! After all, I suspect one of the major reasons any of us puts on weight is a lack of discipline in the first place.