Running For Worthwhile Cause

I have entered my first ever City to Surf run which will be held on 9th August 2009.  As part of the City to Surf run, you can choose to raise money for a charity of your choosing. I really like the idea of running for a good cause and personally, I can’t find a better cause than the Lupus Association of NSW.

Three years ago over the course of a week I went from being healthy and pain free to being unable to walk or grasp objects and no one knew what was wrong.  Lupus was one of the diseases that my doctors kept testing me for.  Whilst I was lucky not to have lupus,  there are thousands who are diagnosed with it every year.  Lupus is an autoimmue disease in which your immune system attacks your tissues and organs causing problems with your joints, skins, kidneys, blood cells, heart and lungs.  Lupus can be fatal and there is no known cure.  The Lupus Association of NSW helps people who are newly diagnosed with lupus as well as those who have been living with lupus for some time.  If I wasn’t so lucky, it would be this organisation I would have turned to for help.

If you would like to sponsor me in my first ever 14km run and help raise money for this great cause, please click on the Lupus logo below. Thanks :)

This One Time, At Kung Fu Camp…

Image via Wikipedia

On Friday, I am heading out of town to attend my Kung Fu club’s biannual camp for two days and two nights of Kung Fu goodness.  The camp is to help us prepare for our upcoming grading on June 13th (I will be going for my 1st belt) and to teach us new weapons routines for the pole and sword.  I have done a bit of work with the pole and absolutely love it, but I must admit I am slightly terrified of the sword as, well, it is very dangerous looking and I am not very good.

We got the schedule posted to us for the camp and it is looks like I am in for a lot of hard work.

Friday Night

Ferry to camp

Dinner and Pictionary My drawing skills leave a lot to be desired, let’s hope I can mime.

Saturday

8-9am Tai Chi/ Qi Gong They expect me awake and working by 8am on a weekend?

9-10 Breakfast

10 -11 New pole routine

11–12 Double sword/straight sword Let’s hope I will just be doing straight sword cause there could be real problems if I am given two sharp weapons.

12-2  Lunch and free time Hurrah!

2-330 Grading preparation- Working on weak points for grading For me, there are quite a few weak points.

4-530 New pole/Double Sword/straight sword

6ish Dinner

7ish Salsa- spaghetti arms I have no idea what spaghetti arms is and I’m scared to find out

8ish Karaoke Help me!

Sunday

8-9 Tai Chi/Qigong Another early start!

9-10 Breakfast

10-1130 New Pole/ Double sword/straight sword

1145-1-15 Grading preparation I am really going to need this to be ready to grade in 2 weeks time. Yikes!

Lunch

Memory creative comp for sword or pole I have no idea what this is.

Pack up leave 3ish

It is going to be an exhausting weekend, but hopefully a fun one. Also I am looking forward to the opportunity to get in some intensive training before grading on the 13th cause I really need it if I am going to do well.

A Disastrous 5km Run

Image by smcgee via Flickr

Today’s CrossFit WOD was a 5km run which was perfect considering I am 95% sure I am going to enter the City to Surf 14km fun run in August.  I got into my running shorts and a white shirt with “Unleash The Wonder” written on the back (it is a promo shirt for my work’s rich media partner) and put on my new running shoes with my orthotics inserts.  I was all ready to try to beat my last 5km time of 37:51 mins.

The run started off well and I developed a good rhythm.  All was going well until the 2km mark when I started to get some mild stomach cramps.  I ignored them and kept running (big mistake).  I made it to the 2.5km halfway turn around point and was really proud of myself running the entire distance.  I slowed down to a walk and my legs instantly turned to jelly and my stomach cramps become pretty severe.  I was sure I was going to meet Mr Pukie, which would have been really embarassing since I was on the bike path running along the freeway next to the airport.  How lovely it would have been for people arriving in Australia to see me throwing up along the freeway.

I knew I wasn’t going to make it the full 5km so I did a fast walk back down the bike path and cut across the oval and headed home.  The total distance ended up being 4.25km which I did in 36:26 mins.  It would have been a great 5km run time for me.  I am disappointed I couldn’t do the whole run.  Then again, it wasn’t the wisest thing to do a 5km run on my first day back exercising after being sick with the flu all of last week.  I might give the 5km run another shot on Wednesday and not go out as hard and see how I go.

Debating About Entering the City 2 Surf

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

I am debating about undertaking a brand new challenge – running the City 2 Surf in August.  The City 2 Surf is a 14km fun run from Hyde Park to Bondi Beach and features the infamous Heartbreak Hill.  I don’t think I have walked, let alone run 14km, so this is definitely going to be a challenge, however, I think I need something like this to keep me motivated to keep improving my fitness.

Have anyone of you done the City 2 Surf before?  If so, how did you prepare?   I will definitely need to increase the amount of running I currently do, but I am just not sure what is the best way to go about it.  There is a training guide on the City 2 Surf site but it doesn’t have a lot of information, instead it is pretty much go out and run for X amount of time three times a week.  Then again, maybe that is the best way to prepare for something like this.

So if I do decide to enter and I am 95% sure I will, who else is going to run this beast with me? Any takers?

Pick Of The Crop

Image by ninahale via Flickr

Eat Your Lungs Out Whilst Getting Leaner – TMUSCLE.com interviews author Gary Taubes about the dangers of a high carbohydrate diet.

Exercise: Do We Really Need More Incentive – An article about the futility of providing people with incentive to exercise.

Soda and Weight Loss Don’t Mix – No, not even the diet stuff.

The Top 10 Healthy Ways To Lose Weight – Some great advice in here for those of you looking to lose weight and keep it off.

Study Shows Brain May Sabotage Weight Loss Efforts – Two studies that show the powerful effect your mind has on your weight loss efforts.

Debunking Detox Diets - Why detox diets don’t work and can in fact be dangerous to your health.

Weekly Weigh In

Starting Weight: 84.5kg (185.9 lbs)

Last Week’s Weight:73.8kg (162.4 lbs)

This Week’s Weight: 72.1kg (158.6 lbs)

This Week’s Loss: 1.7kg (3.7 lbs)

Total Loss: 12.4kg (27.3 lbs)

Hip to Waist Ratio: 0.85

Waist: 83 cm (32.7 inches)

Hips: 98 cm (38.6 inches)

BMI: 23.54

Body Fat Last Week: 30.09%

Body Fat This Week: 29.59%

A big loss this week due to coming down with the flu and my body’s metabolism kicking into overdrive to fight the infection.

Exercise

I did some exercise on the weekend, but for the rest of the week absolutely nothing.

Dangerous Weight Loss

Image by size8jeans via Flickr

We all love seeing the numbers on the scales go down.  Honestly, that is why we are all here trying to eat right and exercise every day.  However, what happens if those numbers on the scales drop too far too quickly?  It might sound like a dream come true, but in reality, it is kinda scary.

A healthy amount of weight to lose is 0.5kg to 1kg a week (that is 1-2 pounds for those of you in the US).  Anything over this amount is unhealthy and potentially dangerous.  It means your body is not getting enough calories. You may start to feel weak, dizzy and possibly even collapse as your body just doesn’t have the energy it needs to carry out its vital functions.

This week, I was struck down with the flu.  I started to feel not so great on Monday afternoon and by Tuesday morning I was sick in bed and stayed there for the next two days. I am just starting to feel remotely human this afternoon. I didn’t stop eating though.  I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.  On the weekend, I even went to a BBQ where I ate not one but two pieces of Mars Bar slice (think high sugar and high fat if you don’t know what it is).  Lack of food was not my issue.  However, when I hopped on the scales for my “unofficial” weigh in last night as I do every Wednesday (crazy, I know),  I found I had dropped a massive 2.3kg from what I weighed last Friday, a mere 5 days ago.  This  is a dangerous level of weight loss.  It seems that whilst fighting the flu my body’s metabolism kicked into overdrive and devoured all the calories I was feeding it and then decided to start breaking down my body for some more.

My girlfriend last night commented that I was feeling boney in places where last week I was muscular and today when I crawled into the office I was told that I looked like I had lost a fair bit of weight.  Now, I know some of you are thinking “quit complaining girl, I would love to drop that amount of weight and to look skinny”.  The thing is, I am not going for the skeletal look.  I want to look and feel strong and at the moment, that isn’t what is happening.

I have found myself in a position I have never been in before.  Where I have to eat more, consume more calories to get back my missing strength.  This place is an extremely strange place.  Before I started dieting, I would have relished the chance to eat more, especially more fatty foods.  Now, I really don’t want to eat those foods.  I had to force myself to have a pie and chips for lunch and to be honest, I didn’t enjoy it.  I would have much preferred sushi, which is my kinda healthy treat lunch.  But, I do feel better for it.  I feel stronger and more like my normal self than I did this morning.  If I had brought my Kung Fu uniform to work today, I would consider going to training tonight, even though that would be a really dumb thing to do. Although it is proof of how much I love Kung Fu.

This has been a really interesting lesson, though not one I ever wish to repeat again.  You can lose too much weight too quickly and when you do, you feel like hell.  You have no energy and you feel weak and rather yucky.  It is not a good place to find yourself. So remember spuds, diet wisely and aim to lose between 0.5kg and 1kg a week.  If you are dropping the kilos too quickly and you feel like hell, stop it.  Get a decent meal into you and re-evaluate your eating plan.  You can do way more damage to your body by starving it of much needed calories than you can do to it being slightly chubby.

What are your excuses not to diet?

Image via Wikipedia

We all know that we have to do something about our weight long before we actually do anything.  During that time between when we realise there is a problem and when we do something about it, we come up with lots of excuses about why we can’t start to eat healthy.

We tell ourselves things like, “I don’t have time to prepare healthy meals”, ” I have to keep junk food in the house because of the kids or my husband/boyfriend”,  “I’ve tried to lose weight before and I failed” or “All my friends eat poorly, so it is just too hard”.

Tell me your excuses for not starting to do something about your weight.  You can leave comments anonymously if you are too embarrassed to own up to them.  I am planning to write an article about how to overcome your excuses  so if you are looking for motivation, let me know your excuse and soon I will tell you how you can overcome it.

Weekly Weigh In

Starting Weight: 84.5kg (185.9 lbs)

Last Week’s Weight:74.2kg (163.2 lbs)

This Week’s Weight: 73.8kg (162.4 lbs)

This Week’s Loss: 0.4kg (0.9 lbs)

Total Loss: 10.7kg (23.4 lbs)

Hip to Waist Ratio: 0.85

Waist: 84 cm (33.1 inches)

Hips: 99 cm (38.9 inches)

BMI: 24.10

Body Fat Last Week: 30.69%

Body Fat This Week: 30.09%

Not a huge loss this week, but still a loss.  Again this week, my diet was not brilliant, so I really need to work on that.

Exercise

Got back my motivation for exercise this week and was happy with how I did with a mixture of Kung Fu, CrossFit and walking the dogs.

Cindy

Today’s CrossFit WOD was Cindy which is as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:

5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Squats

Since I still can not do a proper pull-up, I was doing reduced load pull-ups instead.  I was hoping to get through at least 10 rounds, but I managed to do 12.  This means I did:

60 pull-ups
120 push-ups
180 squats

in 20 minutes.

It left me absolutely exhausted and my legs shaking, but I did it.  This is what I love about CrossFit.  If someone asked me to do 60 pull-ups, 120 push-ups and 180 squats, I would have told them that there was no way I could do all that.. and yet I did. It is like accomplishing the impossible and the feeling of accomplishing the impossible is amazing.