Juneathon: Day 1

Happy Juneathon! You've all joined Juneathon, right? If not, please rectify that here. Don't worry, I'll wait.

Good, now you've signed up to run (or do some other form of exercise) every day, and blog about it within 24 hours. It won't be too hard, I promise. It certainly won't be as hard as Janathon, with it's icy, miserable weather and dark mornings (you can read my Janathon posts here). We can totally do Juneathon. And if you've missed day 1, just start on day 2, it's all good, the Juneathon family understands.

Day 1 of Juneathon happened to fall on PT day, so there was no getting out of it even if I wanted to, which is just how I like my exercise.

PT must have sensed Juneathon was in the air, because today happened to be the day we switched back to weight training. While I was training for Paris, we eased off the weights and concentrated on my lung capacity and building strength in my core and back, and with Operation Abs, we've upped the amount of boxing in our sessions. So it's been a while since I did any proper lifting. And I'm definitely paying for it now.

I really want to try to run as much of Juneathon as I can, but seeing as I've just re-joined the gym after a brief separation (we had a row about money), I'm back in the honeymoon phase, so my morning runs might be treadmill-based and split with some resistance work. Either way, it's happening - I'm exercising every day. 

Even though it's warmer and lighter outside, I get the feeling I'm going to struggle with Juneathon for a couple of reasons:

1. I'm not currently training for anything. During Janathon, I was training for the Paris Half Marathon, which gave me a reason to get my trainers on and my ass on the road. My next event (which I'll tell you about in a separate post) isn't till late September, so my official training plan for that doesn't start till July. But training for that is going to have to be pretty hardcore (again, I'll explain all in another post very soon), so there's no better way to get those miles back into my legs than Juneathon!
2. I'm going on holiday in two weeks. With my girlfriends. Clearly, this is going to involve some alcohol, which probably won't make me want to run/walk/get off my sun lounger. And I'm sure as shit not going for runs on my own in a place I don't know. But our hotel does have a swanky new gym, and I'm planning to squeeze my trainers, sports bra and a pair of shorts into my limited luggage allowance (don't tell the girls), and I'm hoping I'll be able to manage a quick treadmill run once a day. 

But that's the point, right? It wouldn't be a challenge without real life getting in the way.

Dear diary: The results

Oh, that PT is a crafty one. Just when I'd forgotten about my food diary woe, he pounced. There's nothing like an email about the state of your diet to wake you up first thing on a Monday morning.

As predicted, he wasn't happy:

"Ok so from what i can see the current diet is not looking too good. Its fairly low calorie but not too high in quality nutrients missy!" (that's me told)

So, here's the plan:

"These are some basic food and liquid sources I would like you to follow for now... they are definitely not the most exciting but definitely are the most effective and HEALTHY!" (I took the caps to mean that my current diet is far from healthy)

The basis of my Operation Abs diet:

• Oats (gah!)
• Broccoli 
• Spinach
• Carrots
• Mushroom
• Celery
• Cabbage
• *Confession* I've eliminated cauliflower from this list as it's vile
• Salmon
• Tuna
• Chicken breast
• Water
• Peppermint tea
• Soya milk (only with breakfast - so long coffee, sweet nectar of life)

So far, so good (the coffee habit is getting a little out of hand, it needs to be stopped). But where's the bread? The pasta? The quinoa? The couscous? Where are the god damn carbs?! Obviously they'd be limited and brown, but they need to be there, right? He must have forgotten. How else am I supposed to construct a meal? I mean, when I think up an outfit, I start at the shoes and work my way up. When I think up a meal, the carbs are the shoes.

A gentle reminder about the missing carbs elicited this reply from PT:

"Nope, stay off those lovely carby items totally please."

*Right now, I'd like you to imagine a montage of pretty things while I edit out my bitter, sweary diatribe about how unnecessarily mean he's being*

I've never tried to cut carbs from my diet before, mainly because I didn't think I'd be able to do it. But for the purpose of Operation Abs, I need to look at this differently. It's a new way of eating, a new challenge, a chance to see my body change again. And if I do it all properly, it won't take forever.

I can totally do this, but I need your help to make it enjoyable. Can you think of any yummy things I can make out of the things in that list up there? If so, please let me know! Also, if any of you lovely readers want to do join in with Operation Abs, please do, I'll need the company to keep me going*.

Operation Abs is go!

*Duties may include removing me from the bread and baked goods aisles of supermarkets at 3am. 

Dear diary

During last night's PT session, conversation turned to eating habits - in particular, people who eat badly and still expect to see the pounds melt off (and then get mad with PT when it doesn't). This makes PT mad.

This got me thinking about my own eating habits, and the next thing I knew, I was admitting that I don't always eat uber-healthy meals, which I know is the reason I don't have abs like Gwen Stefani/Gisele/a Pussycat Doll. Before I'd even finished speaking, I knew PT would utter the one sentence more terrifying to me than 'We'll just strap you into these bungee straps...' - 'Keep a 3-day food diary'.

I hate the whole food diary thing because it forces me to look at what I'm doing wrong, even though I already know. It's like picking a scab or not taking your make-up off properly and all those other things you know you shouldn't do, but do anyway. I don't spend my days munching on Big Macs and deep fried Mars Bars, but my approach to food is 'I'll eat what I want', and I do tend to indulge a bit more when I'm with the boy. So in the spirit of getting back into training properly, I'm keeping a food diary for 3 days, and I'll be sharing it on here.

Before I do that, let me show you what I have to look at every day:

That is the Desk of Filth. Pretty self-explanatory non? I spend quite a large chunk of my working day trying to talk myself out of eating the filth on offer. Most of the time I win, but when I don't, it's a complete snack-fest. Must. Avoid. If anyone has any flat-ab-making snack ideas or recipes to rival the lure of the Desk of Filth, PLEASE let me know!

Here's how Day 1 went down:

07:15 - 1.5 slices toast with peanut butter
07:30 - 1x white coffee (2 sweeteners)
10:50 - 1x Boots raspberry granola yoghurt
12:30 - Boots Shapers sushi, 2 plums
13:30 - Wasabi peas (handful?)
15:30 - Plum
         - 1 litre water
19:30 - 2x salmon fishcakes, green salad, beetroot, potato salad, mayonnaise 
         - 2x glasses water

Janathon: Day 18

Flickr image from Eryn Vorn's photostream

Day 18? It's flown by, non? Today's Janathon activity was my weekly PT session. PT had moved it from Wednesday to Tuesday this week, so I spent most of today thinking it was Wednesday. Fail. 

PT has had a good look at my Paris Half Marathon training plan this weekend, and declared it 'pretty damn good' - win! But he did advise me to stick a couple more rest days in the week leading up to the race, and drummed into me how important it is that I carb load. He needn't worry, I've got carb loading down.

I noticed something hugely exciting today - it takes a lot more hideous exercise to make my legs hurt than it used to. God bless running! And no-one tell PT, because he'll find new hideous ways to kill me. For now, I'm just going to enjoy my legs of steel!