Weight a week and see

7 days of shakes and dinners and have I gone mad yet? Well, maybe... Depends on your definition I guess.

I have been attending the regular 20 minute sessions in the park, doing some weird and wonderful things, and continuing to commute every day (and it's getting colder and colder in the mornings too!) plus I went for another jog with Logan one evening. We picked a larger park with an almost 1km loop and managed to knock off a few laps before my shins gave way, but our technique is good and our pace is pretty even as well, which means we'll be able to build to the 19km required for the Hard Labour weekend in October. We have a couple of runs planned for this week, hopefully my shins don't give way on me and we can get more of those laps done in an evening. I still find it amazing that he can follow me around a field attached by a stretchy cord and know where we are after a lap, and be able to predict when we're going to be cornering again on subsequent laps. Blows my mind.

What I have noticed in the last week is weight loss. My tummy has finally started to shrink. Yup, flabby belly is now just jelly belly! I have lost about 5kg without starving myself, although I have been missing my coffee and red wine. The first week of this low-carb diet is dull as hell. Shakes are fun for a day, maybe two, but now I'm on day 8 they just plain suck. But, in less than a week I'll never have to have another one and I get to start on my fantasy fortnight - meat meat meat!! Oh yea, low carbs and meat flavoured. I'm gonna like those 2 weeks.

With my dropping weight, and increasing strength, my power to weight ratio is going up as well. On Friday we did 'crunchie club' in the 20 minute session, doing crunchies, prone holds and side raises, with (for me) a set of 5 chin-ups in between each loop. I managed 5 loops, which means 25 chin-ups as well. A good sign of improving upper-body strength.

I was back in the park on Sunday morning with Tracey and Jody doing a double-session instead of a walk up the hill. It was cold and wet, but I soon warmed up. A short jog, then Tabata intervals, followed by another short jog and then a random game of 'run up the hill and grab a cone and bring it down and do that exercise while the other person runs up the hill and back' - a game I seemed to suck at because I kept coming back with squat-based activities. I'm sure it was rigged. In hindsight, I should have checked the cones at the top of the hill rather than on the way back down! Squat-hold, twice, hurts.

My blood sugars have been sitting high off and on for the week, mostly because I'm having trouble guessing how much to account for when drinking these shakes. I have been getting better, but so long as it's pretty well controlled, I'll wait till the meat weeks before I start really knuckling down on it. It's not bad for me, but it would be bad for you, however I have had much worse weeks (or months) in the past and once my internals get sorted it'll be back to strict control again.

I'm off to fantasise about dunking biscuits in my coffee now. Enjoy your next cup of coffee, it'll be a week before I get to taste one again!