I made some changes..- I measured what I ate
- I cut out the sugar
- I ate fewer carbs
- I ate more veg
- I chose wholefoods
- I cooked more myself
- I made sure I felt full up.
What happened next surprised me.. Within 3 months I lost 9kg.About 10% of my bodyweight.
And once I committed to it..
Well, it was easy... really straightforward.
I changed the way I ate.
And I dropped to a
BMI 22.8Middle of the range, plumb normal.
Okay. So, my main motivation was to run faster.
So, did I?I really did...
Bodyweight =>
10% lower.
My run times =>
10% faster.My 5 km parkrun =>
10% faster.My marathon time =>
10% faster. How do I know? Measurement (obviously).
Measurement is normal in sport. I had a
target run time.I measured my run times.
And I
measured what improved those times. So why not do the same in our everyday lives?Why not measure what affects our health & well being?My bodyweight came down to where it should be.
I could train a bit faster.
I got a bit stronger. My short run times improved by about 10%.
And I ran a personal best time in my target marathon.
A time I didn't think was possible before. More important than all of those targets
- bodyweight
- training time
- 5 km time and
- Marathon time...
I felt better.I felt sharper.I felt healthier.I felt happier and..I didn't feel hungry all day long. Others say the same.
Optimising bodyweight also soothed my right hip.I don't know how my hip would feel in my late 40s if I had not lost the weight.
If I was 9 kg heavier than I am now would my hip hurt more?*
*I have noticed pointers to that answer, e.g. see
Newsletter #024What I do know is that my hip now flares up less often.
And is less painful than it was when I was 39 years old.
(weighing in at
9kg more than I do now).
Remember we put
5 times bodyweight through our hips.
That's an
extra 45kg that was pounding through my hip.
Probably
3+ million times a year. I look back at my consistently high 13 stone 10lb bodyweight.
Unable to budge the scales by so much as a pound.
And I now link my consistently high bodyweight to the one constant that I had not paid any attention to:
My terrible diet. My high sugar intake was stoking my bodyweight to an artificially high level.
Higher than it should have been for most of my adult life.From that point on I felt like I had some new tools..
- Better knowledge
- Better information
- Better measurement
It is tempting to write ‘tools to control my bodyweight’… but in truth new tools to
help me feel better. So, in the same way I measured the inputs to a fast target run time...For me, bodyweight + nutrition are KEY inputs that affects my health + well being.So, I measure them.
