Barefoot Bohemian's Blog

Firstly my apologies to those subscribers who have messaged me asking when I’m going to write another post. Well here it is, and it’s a little different from my normal scribblings. It’s about dieting – something I’ve never even done before, never mind written about.

It all started when someone who has been called my ‘foodie friend’ told me she was going to go on a diet which claimed to help you drop 14lbs (6.4kgs) in 7 days.

My initial reaction was that was not possible and could even be potentially harmful to lose that much weight in such a short time. My fears were not eased by the notes accompanying the diet which stated that the diet should only be followed for one week, and should not be repeated for a significant period. However, reading the diet revealed nothing alarming – no drugs, no strange concoctions, no bizarre eating patterns. In fact there were three meals a day, they looked appetising and there was nothing on the diet that I didn’t like. (Full diet is reproduced at the end of this post).

So in moral support, to experience dieting, as an experiment and because who couldn’t do without losing a couple of pounds, I decided to do it with her.

It was at that point my ‘foodie friend’ decided she could not do it until July as the diet involves abstinence from alcohol and, because she actually has a social diary, she knew she could not achieve this for another few weeks.

“But you do it and tell me how you get on, then if it’s good I’ll do it,” she said, presumably implying that if it caused irreparable damage to my health or proved too difficult to stick to, she’d just give it a miss and forget it was her idea in the first place. In fact it’s been amazing how many people have said: “Let me know if it works and I’ll do it” which suggests I may have a career as a human guinea pig ahead of me if times get hard.

What were my expectations?
Well I never thought I’d lose 14lbs (6.4kgs). To be honest I didn’t really want to either. Half a stone (3.2kgs) would be ideal as it would get me back to a more reasonable running weight. I felt that if I lost about 2-4lbs (1-2kgs) then the diet would be no better than any other diet as that amount of weight loss was probably achievable on most of them, especially in the first week. I thought that anything over 5lbs (2.25kgs) would be pretty good, especially as I’m really not too overweight, I exercise regularly and eat reasonably healthily. Perhaps that target could be increased if someone had a lot of weight to lose, but I felt it was a realistic target for me.

Some things to take into account when evaluating my experience (see I can remember some of the science I learned at school):

• I am not really overweight – honestly I’m not, but I’m not including photos so you’re just going to have to take my word for it.
• I have never dieted before.
• I walk or run for about an hour every day – in fact during the course of the diet I ran a total of about 20 miles.
• I did not cheat in any way and stuck to the diet, to the letter.
• I like everything listed on the diet so it was no hardship for me to eat any of it.
• When the diet did not specify amount – I ate quite a lot of it. But the diet claims to work using the chemical reactions between foods, not the quantity of it, so this should not have affected the potential weight loss.

What were my impressions?

• I can’t say I was ever hungry (see earlier comment about eating a lot) but I was peckish a couple of times.
• I was dizzy once but I genuinely think I just got out of the chair too quickly.
• I had no stomach problems or strange reactions.
• I was surprised how much I thought about food. I suppose it’s like when I worked permanent nights and all we’d talk about was how much sleep we’d all got the previous ‘day’. I found myself fancying a chocolate when I spotted the box, even though the box has been there untouched since Christmas – or is it the previous Christmas?
• I can’t say I noticed a loss of energy although my running pace dropped by a minute a kilometre (for non-runners: this is quite a lot) so it must have been depleted to some extent.

What were my results?
I lost just over 7lbs (3.3kg) which I regard as a fairly impressive weight loss in a week of eating reasonably well, involving food I like and never being hungry.

How could I have lost more?
To be honest I’m not sure I could given my starting weight. Perhaps someone significantly heavier could lose more weight, especially in their opening week of dieting.
I could have cut down on my portions but the diet does not require this and if I had cut down then I’m sure I’d have been hungry and therefore would have been far more tempted to cheat.
I could have skipped some of the ingredients in the meals but I can’t see how dropping the celery from the salad or the tomatoes from accompanying the eggs, would have materially affected the outcome.
I could have – and still should – drink more water which might have taken the edge off any hunger caused by reducing the portions.
Overall I still struggle to see how most people can lose 14lbs (6.4kgs) in a week, but if like me you regard more than 7lbs (3.3kgs) as an impressive result in only 7 days then I would certainly say this is not a bad diet to try if you’re looking for a quick fix to those unwanted pounds. But please be realistic with your expectations – just remember how long it took you to put that weight on, why would it come off in a fraction of the time?

The Diet
Allowed drinks: Black coffee, black tea, lemon tea, grapefruit juice, tonic water, soda water and tap water (unlimited amounts).
Salad consists of: Lettuce, tomato and celery only.

Day 1
Breakfast: 1 slice of dry toast and grilled tomatoes
Lunch: Any amount of fresh fruit
Dinner: 2 hard boiled eggs, salad and grapefruit

Day 2
Breakfast: Grapefruit and 1 boiled egg
Lunch: Roast chicken (any amount) and tomatoes
Dinner: Grilled steak and salad

Day 3
Breakfast: Grapefruit and 1 boiled egg
Lunch: 2 hard boiled eggs and salad
Dinner: 2 grilled lamb chops, celery and cucumber

Day 4
Breakfast: 1 slice of dry toast and 2 poached eggs
Lunch: Any amount of fresh fruit
Dinner: 2 grilled lamb chops, celery and cucumber

Day 5
Breakfast: 1 slice of dry toast and 2 poached eggs
Lunch: 2 poached eggs and tomatoes
Dinner: Fresh or tinned fish and salad

Day 6
Breakfast: 1 boiled egg and 1 glass of grapefruit juice
Lunch: Any amount of fresh fruit
Dinner: Roast chicken, carrots and cabbage

Day 7
Breakfast: 2 scrambled eggs and tomatoes
Lunch: 2 poached eggs and spinach
Dinner: Grilled steak and salad

 Notes:

• Refrain from all foods not included above.
• No substitutes allowed.
• Eat only what is shown or do without.
• No eating between meals.
• No alcoholic drinks, milk, butter, oil or fat.

The Barefoot Bohemian

For those of you who do not follow me on Facebook or Twitter (if not, why not?) you may not be aware that I recently completed the Florence Marathon.

‘No big deal’, I hear you say, lots of people run marathons; many of them considerably older than me and some of them with fewer limbs than me, or some other physical difficulty to overcome.  So I appreciate this post is not going to be akin to a revelation on the road to Damascus (although I’m not sure if anyone is taking that road anymore).

However, it was an important achievement for me.  Not because it was a great time – it wasn’t, it was the slowest of my four marathon times.  Nor was it because Florence is such a beautiful city which made it ‘almost’ fun to run around. In fact it was not because of anything visible or obvious to anyone but me.

Anyone who read my last post ‘What Drives You?’ will be familiar with my thoughts in the final days before the marathon.  Very briefly, I hardly trained all summer, developed an injury which stopped me running at all in September and October, and therefore was as ill-prepared as I could be and still have a realistic chance of getting round.

I did not run at all for more than two weeks before the event and my total mileage for November in three runs was about 26 miles – exactly the distance I had to run in Florence in one go.  Clearly that amounts to a pretty abysmal performance on the training front.

It was obvious to me – and to everyone else – that I would not be able to materially affect my fitness levels in a couple of weeks before a marathon, in fact it’s potentially more harmful to try.  So I concentrated on the things I could control – something we should all do for every aspect of our lives.  No point worrying about, or trying to change, things that we have no power over, stick to the things you can change.

So I ate the right foods and supplemented them with protein shakes and carbohydrate powders – something I’d never done to the same extent before.  I really loaded up and I believe I got the nutrition element right for the first time.  When I finished I still had some energy, did not feel sick or dehydrated, and generally felt more together than I’ve ever felt crossing that finishing line.  Tick for that box then.

My physio warned me my injury was likely to flare up during the race and could be very painful for a while afterwards.  So I bought anti-imflamatories in Spain where they are stronger than over-the-counter ones available in the UK.  I took pain killers before and during the race and I strapped my foot to reduce the pressure on the injured part.

I also used self-hypnosis to create a trigger (putting the thumb and little finger of my left hand together) to reduce the sensation of pain.  The result?  I didn’t have any problems for the first 15 miles.  I got pain which I could remove using my trigger from 15 miles until about 22 miles.  After that it was too painful for my trigger to overcome and I had to just put up with it. So I think that’s as good as I could have expected – therefore tick for that box too.

But by far the most amazing success was in the way I was able to tackle my belief in how badly I was likely to do in the run and my depleted determination which has been eroded to next to nothing over the past couple of years.

To tackle this I used techniques learned from Chris Walton, who taught me Psyck-K techniques many years ago.  A week before the marathon I did another course with Chris, a more evolved, effective form of Psych-K which he calls the Gamma Healing Technique.

Very simply this is a technique which uses muscle testing to check your subconscious beliefs are congruent with your conscious beliefs.  If they are, all well and good; if they’re not, you are running the risk of your subconscious mind sabotaging your goals.

So I focussed on digging deep when I needed to, like I used to be able to do instead of giving in because things were getting tough.  I managed to keep going for the whole 26 miles, apart from a couple of walks to ensure I managed to drink most of my water rather than throw it over my face, which is a danger if you run and drink.  In fact I repeated ‘Keep going’ in my head for the last three miles and did just that.  So definite tick in that box.

And I also concentrated on getting rid of the belief that I was so poorly prepared I might not make it round, and even if I did it was likely to be somewhere just below the five hour mark.  As a result of the work I did I was more confident about the run than I have ever been before and genuinely believed I might be able to get between four and four and a half hours. For those of you who know anything about running you will realise that is a time not really supported by my training.

I finally crossed the line in just under four and a quarter hours, only about 10 minutes slower than Amsterdam last year when I was much fitter and better prepared.  OK well short of my 3:31 personal best but that was 14 years ago so I suspect I won’t see a time like that again.  So at the risk of being accused of ‘marking my own homework’ I’m giving that a massive tick too.

To me it’s a powerful demonstration of the huge influence your mind has over your body, how your beliefs control your actions and how changing those beliefs can have a direct effect on your actions and therefore on your life.

If anyone is interested in more details about the techniques I used then please contact me, or you might like to read Chris’s book Gamma Healing by Chris Walton.

Good Luck
The Barefoot Bohemian.

In a little over two weeks I am due to run the Florence Marathon.  It will be my fourth marathon, and while I can’t claim I’ve ever done as much training as the schedules suggest, I have never been more poorly prepared to run 26 miles.

I take full responsibility for this.  You could say I simply have not done enough miles, but things are rarely quite that simple.

I found myself at the beginning of the year with a significant increase in my race times – the reason for this is part medical, part psychological and part lack of fitness – nevertheless it was an indisputable fact and it continued throughout the year despite my best efforts.

This meant I felt I was too slow to stick with the other runners as they gradually built up their marathon mileage.  I also spent the summer watching as many Olympic events as possible and adopting a Barefoot Bohemian lifestyle – more on that later – so training fell by the wayside a little.

My plan was to devote September and October to some serious pavement pounding (or sidewalk slogging for my American friends).

But that’s the trouble with plans – they often go wrong and there isn’t always time for Plan B.  I got injured and was told not to run for six weeks.  Well, more accurately I injured myself.  I developed metatarsalgia – an inflammation of the joints in my left foot where the toes meet the foot.  As you can imagine a pain on the ball of your foot is far from ideal for running, especially the sort of distances required to prepare for a marathon.

How did I manage to pick up this problem?  I spent the entire summer either barefoot or in flip-flops, and that bruised the joints, hence my renaming of the condition as flip-flopitis.  The irony of the injury and the title of this blog has not escaped me!

The lesson is always to be at least on track, if not ahead of any training plan, revision schedule etc, so that you can accommodate the inevitable spanner that will get thrown in the works.

Whenever you’re behind schedule something will further delay you.  That appears to be a fundamental Law of Nature which seems to have been ignored by Galileo, Newton, Einstein et al, who were all too obsessed with trivial issues like our place in the cosmos, gravity, relativity etc, to consider the big issues.

So here I am, two weeks to go and still injured. My physio has cleared me to run, told me I will cause some damage by plodding round Florence for a couple of hours, but has assured me I’m not likely to cause any long-lasting damage, although it will be ‘very painful for a couple of days afterwards’.

So why am I persisting, I hear the more sensible among you asking.  Good question and it’s prompted me to look at motivation and what drives us to do anything.

It seems to me there are a number of things which motivate people, not just to complete a marathon, but to achieve anything in life.

1. Record breaking – the desire to improve past performance.  Well that’s not going to happen in Italy.  My personal best is just over 3 hours 30 minutes and the way I’m running at the moment I’ll struggle to be within an hour of that time.

2. Financial gain – either to make money or not to lose money already spent.  Well there is certainly no money to be made.  True, I have bought the flights, paid to enter the run and paid the deposit for the hotel but I’ve never been to Florence before so I could easily turn the trip into a sightseeing weekend and justify all but the cost of entering the run.

3. Approval or recognition – admiration and acceptance of family and friends.  I am likely to be one of the slowest runners in the local group taking part, so I certainly won’t pick up any admiration from my running mates for my shoddy performance.  My family and friends have seen me do a marathon before and are unlikely to think any more, or less, of me as a result of running another one.

4. Fun.  I even struggle writing the word in connection with a marathon, but honestly running can be fun.  It just isn’t for me anymore.  Everyone goes through a stage on a long run where they question why they are putting themselves through the torment, even question their sanity.  But I now do it when I’m not running.  That’s not good.  I still enjoy short runs but the long ones – especially on my own – are just a tedious, painful and tortuous ordeal.

5. Faith.  This is not strictly relevant to marathon running so I’m going to skip it for now.  I might make it the subject of a later post, if I even feel the need to poke a rabid dog to stir up some controversy and draw attention to the site.  It is undoubtedly an intriguing subject, especially as it seems to me Faith is like the Ace of trumps.  It’s the only card you can play which effectively renders all counter argument redundant, however logical or reasoned that argument appears to be to the other person.  To persist with the discussion after someone has played the Faith card becomes an attack on something which can not be challenged.  Believe me it does not work for pub debates on who is the most stupid contender for US President, who’s the best footballer of all time or who was the sexiest Spice Girl.  Anyway, enough.  I’ve probably already provoked a fatwa, or the Methodist equivalent, and I don’t need any more problems – not while I’m already trying to cope with my flip-flopitis!

6. Fitness.  Running is an excellent way to keep fit but when you consider the toll on your knees and other joints, fitness can certainly be achieved over much shorter distances, and in many other ways. In fact I’ve been looking into an approach to fitness and diet which seems well worth considering.  It’s all a bit late to help me with Florence but I’ll be checking it out more thoroughly afterwards.  The diet is called the Paleo diet and it’s based on eating meat and vegetables and none of the things we would not have had hundreds of years ago like refined, processed foods.  And the fitness programme is largely based on body-weight exercises like sit-ups, push-ups etc and lifting heavy weights rather than endless repetitions of lighter weights.  You can get more details on it at an interesting site called Nerd Fitness – don’t let the title put you off.

7. Determination.  This is a tricky one because it is often conjoined with one of the above.  But it is a factor in why I’m persisting.  I am stubborn.  I don’t want to quit.  I do have a ‘fear of failure’ and it’s my definition of failure.  But I also recognise that over the past two years I don’t have anything like the dogged determination I used to have.  When things get tough I am much quicker to question if they are worth it and adopt the wisdom of the renown philosopher Homer J Simpson: “If something is hard to do, then it’s not worth doing.”

8. Challenge.  This is probably the closest I can come to explaining why I’m going to put myself through another marathon – and I know it’s weird.  I’ve almost become more determined to do it because of the set-backs.  It’s a perverse battling against the odds.  It’s that inexplicable drive to see how far you can push yourself.

It reminds me of a story I was told about my grandfather, a stocky little man who was literally as strong as an ox (but that’s another story).  He was only ill a couple of times in his entire life – once seriously when he was confined to bed for what was meant to be weeks.  My grandmother had only just let the doctor out of the house when she heard noises from the bedroom.  She rushed upstairs to find my grandfather, pouring in sweat, his face contorted in pain and effort, walking round the bed, holding on tightly as he took each ponderous step.  She managed to get him back into bed and when he’d recovered enough to speak, she asked what on earth he had thought he was doing.  “Testing myself”, was his reply.  And that makes sense to me.

So barring a thunderbolt from the offended religious amongst you, or some other calamitous mishap, I’ll be there on November 25 and I’ll slog my way round for no other reason than I’m not admitting that I can’t do it.

A running mate of mine told me: ‘If you can get to the start line you’ll get to the finish’ and I believe he’s right.  Although he also told me that I would spend most of the run fending off Italian senorinas because he assured me that my name ‘loosely translated’ into Italian meant ‘Love Gladiator’ – and I know he’s lying about that.

Wish me luck.
Barefoot Bohemian.