Monday, May 24, 2010

Diet and Exercise – Ur doin it rong!

Turns out I’m not very sensible when it comes to this dieting thing, and in the last week I’ve paid the price for my silliness. I made two key mistakes and I’m going to tell you about them so you don’t make them if you ever decide to go on a diet. Not that I’m saying you need to, you look great in those pants!

Mistake 1 – Not eating all my portions
I’m sure you’ve all heard the saying “too much of a good thing”, well that applies to dieting as well. When you’re on a diet that says “Hey fatty, you get to have 6 portions of grain/starchy veges, 3 portions of fruit, 3 portions of vege, 3 portions of dairy, 3 portions of fat, 1 portion of protein and 1 portion of legumes, chow down!” you should indeed chow down. It will NOT help your diet if you go for a whole week eating less than 17 portions in total when you have 20. It will not help your diet if you think “Hmmmm, I’m not soo hungry today, I’ll just miss a few portions, that’ll make me lose weight faster. Muwhahahahahaha!” Actually all either of these things will do is make you feel terrible, you will have no energy, you will get incredibly hungry and you will not be capable of doing the easiest of exercise. You will also become an irrational and grumpy cow who is a threat to the health of friends and loved ones. Ok, you might lose a bit of extra weight, but it’ll come back with mates if you keep under eating. Now I am being very careful to eat everything I’m allowed to and I’m starting to feel better and as a bonus my husband doesn’t look like he’s going to divorce me.

Mistake 2 – Doing high intensity exercise after making mistake number 1
Ok, I really am a doffus. I actually know I shouldn’t be hammering myself too hard when I’m on a diet, but my passion for cycling saw me doing a full on sprint into town on my roadie and then smashing the Cashmere Downs on the way home. I felt like falling off my bike at the top of the last pinch on the Downs, my head was going round and round and round. Then for the next two days I couldn’t move from lack of energy. Consistent exercise fail. And because a constant lack of food makes my brain not work too good, I made a very similar mistake yesterday when I took my singlespeed to Bottlelake. I started writing a sentence that started “In my defence...” and then I realised I had nothing to finish it with. I wanted to ride at Bottlelake and I didn’t want to ride the Anthem there, so that meant the power of one for me. Of course not having any gears meant I couldn’t regulate my intensity towards the lower end of the scale and in no time I was bonking like one of those little robots that scoots across the floor and then fails to turn round once it hits a wall. Bonk, bonk, bonk. I barely made it back to the car park and was unsure of whether I would be safe to drive home. Luckily I found my hubby’s secret stash of peppermints in the door sill and scoffed one down. Unfortunately I was a little delirious because of my non-existent blood sugar and keep laughing to myself as I imagined I was in the scene from Black Books where Manny, in a fit of absinthe induced delirium, eats Bernard’s bees. My hubby was a bit confused when I got home and apologised to him for eating all his bees. Rest assured, once I’d eaten some lunch I was almost coherent again and had learnt an important lesson. Long leisurely rides good. Hard fast rides bad. Poor singlespeed, it will be locked away for the next few months. Sad.

So this week I’ve resolved to be more sensible. Easy rides only and eating all my portions. Last week I managed to lose another 500gms bringing my two week total to 3kgs so I’m really happy with that. I’ll be happy if I can continue to lose 500gms a week for the next ten weeks.

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