Tag: diet

It’s time to Po-ta-go

On By 00snookIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Have you heard the story about the Australian fella who only ate potatoes for a year?  Yes that is right.  Just potatoes.  Only potatoes.  For one year.

He is called Andrew Taylor and his story is an amazing one.  A chronic overeater (even though he was a vegan) he decided to cure his food addiction by eating only potatatos for a year.  He was perfectly healthy for this year, lost a shed load of weight (about 50kg) and now runs https://spudfit.com/, where he helps others do do the same thing.

Now I am not a chronic overeater, but I am prone to making very bad food choices and I am terrible at sticking to any sort of diet.  I also need to lose weight (all be it no more than about 15kg (I currently weight 95kg).  I found Andrew’s story hugely inspirational when I first heard it on the outstanding Rich Roll Podcast.

spudfit and roll
Left – Andrew “Spudfit” Taylor  Right – Rich Roll.  Two heroes of mine.

So hear is the plan Batman.  I am going to base my diet almost entirely on potatoes until I lose 15kg and get under the 80kg mark.  This is about the right weight for my height in terms of race fitness, and as I mentioned in my previous blog post It’s time to address the elephant in the room, carrying too much weight is not a good idea when running.

I am not doing pure potatoes like Andrew did.  I will still munch an occasional salad when out and about and I cannot get my hands on a potato, but if I am at home, or heaven forbid at a friends house (where I will asking for potatoes) then I am sticking with good old spuds.

If I stand any chance of completing a 100mile Ultra not only do I need to be at the best possible weight I can be, but I also need to be at that weight quick so the impact on my body is less during training.  As the miles ramp up, carrying round 15kg of extra baggage is just not an option.

So if you see me at the greengrocers with a big sack of potatoes, you know what I am up to.

TTFN

Snooky

PS – if you are interested in finding out your idea weight for running, you should check out the Racing Weight website.  A brilliant resource and well worth a look.  They have a book too 🙂

 

4 reasons why my diet is the missing link to my training.

On By 00snookIn love running, running, Uncategorized1 Comment

As any regular blog readers will know, mostly I blog about training, fundraising or write ups from the races I take part in.

Ever since I stated this endurance racing adventure there has always been an elephant in the room.  Lurking in the background has been an inescapable fact that I have chosen to ignore.  Yes you can train hard.  Yes you can train smart.  Yes you can make sure to rest well and sleep 8 hours a night, but if your diet isn’t on point then you are almost certainly letting yourself down.

1)  I am an unhealthy vegan.

vegan-policeLike most people in the Western world, I probably don’t eat the best diet.  Despite going 99% vegan last year (nobody is 100% vegan…………right???), I quickly found a way to eat a fairly unhealthy vegan diet.

Vegan cakes are easy to make.  Chips are always vegan, and so are baked beans, lots of vegetarian sausages, many pies, take away pizza (with no cheese), etc etc.  Also, almost all booze is vegan, and who doesn’t enjoy a bit of booze?

Plus, it is easy to over eat no matter what your diet is like.  Simply, if you consume more calories than you burn up each day you will gain weight.   And gain weight I did.  Over the Christmas period I managed to gain an impressive 16lbs of weight.  8kg in new money.  That’s a lot to gain in 3 weeks off work.

2) Sometimes I run like the wind………other times I just have wind!

I often suffer with stomach cramps when I run.  If I get my diet wrong before I run, or I go for a run too soon after eating I will almost always suffer from a bad stomach.  This is fairly common with runners or endurance athletes; however when I generally eat badly I feel a lot more sluggish when out exercising.  This clearly does nothing to aide my training.

3) You are what you eat

This is an old saying, but is entirely true.  How can you expect to fuel a machine to its maximum performance if you feed it crap.  If you put dodgy petrol in a car then it runs worse.  Perfectly logical.  If you feed yourself on crap food you will perform worse.  Also logical.

4) 5% of the time this works, every time.

Mo Farah celebrates winning the men's 5,000m final at the European Championships in Helsinki in JuneI cannot remember where I read the following statistic, but it has stuck in my ever since I
read it.  For every 5% of weight you lose you gain 5% in athletic performance with no additional training.  In other words, somebody who is as fit as me but weighs 5% less will be 5% faster.  This makes perfect sense.  You don’t see very many overweight people on the podium at triathlons.  Mo Farah doesn’t look like he is carrying a lot of extra baggage around.

Another way to think about it is this.  My “racing weight”, e.g. my ideal weight for maximum athletic performance is around 168lbs (calculate your own racing weight by clicking here).  This is 76kg for you Europeans. Or exactly 12 stone for us good old Brits.

I currently weigh a whopping 206lbs, 93.4kg or 14stone and 10 lbs.  In other words, I am 38lbs (17kg) overweight.

If I was lined up at the start of a marathon and somebody said to me “would you like to carry round this backpack that weighs 38lbs or not”, I think you can all guess what the answer would be.  But that is essentially what I am doing.  Imagine how much quicker I would be, how much easier it would be on my body if I can shed that unnecessary weight.

 

The moral of the story…..

So the moral of this story is, it is time to sort out my diet, and by proxy my weight.  I am determined to nail this missing link to my training.  I have never paid that close attention before, but this is going to change.  Somehow I feel this might be the most difficult part of any training I have ever done.

Wish me luck

TTFN

Snooky