Adapting

Initially Aspire has been all about adapting to less for me. Primarily less food, but also to having less energy for a while. I’m pleased to say that this phase of my diet is pretty much complete. I have adapted to having less food and my energy levels have returned to their pre-famine levels. I shouldn’t say famine, because it no longer feels like a famine, all the time, but it certainly did at the start.

To test out just how well my body is coping with the new food regime I decided to put it to the test last week, with a high volume of riding. Obviously I had to do quite a lot of riding and walking on Monday to complete my GE film and even though I was very silly and didn’t take anything at all with me except plain water, I survived that rather well. I had a nice hour of roadie spinning on Tuesday and on Wednesday I decided it was time for the big test. 3hrs on the bike with a muesli bar and a bottle of replace. In the good old days I would have taken a couple of muesli bars, a banana and some lollies with me and some sort of energy gel. I’ve realised that instead of relying on my body’s fitness to get me through long rides I was just eating and eating and eating so my body didn’t even have to try to burn up stored energy. Wednesday’s ride showed me that I don’t have to gorge myself to ride long and hard. It was a fairly full on ride, with a very slippery ascent up Kennedy’s which required a lot more walking than I would have liked because there was just no traction in the wet. Flying Nun was closed so I hoofed it round the road to the start of the Traverse and had fun flying along there. Then it was an icy blast down Rapaki and I headed into town to do an errand (my excuse for getting out for a ride). I felt great till I hit the flat road just after Rapaki. It felt like my legs had fallen off, but after a brief and slightly torturous visit to the Med Supermarket (the wood fired piaaz smells were just evil) I struggled home into the freezing southerly headwind. The last 5kms were pretty sucktastic, but as a test for adapting to less food I felt like my body passed with flying colours.

I had a couple of rest days and then on Saturday hit Kennedy’s with my hubby. Keen to show of my new climbing legs up the road I kept it in the middle ring and smashed my way up the first bit of climbing as fast as I could. Fool. I certainly crested the first rise faster than I ever had before, but I’d pretty much blown my legs doing it. I think it was probably the first time I’ve ever gotten there with my lovely hubby cruising just behind me rather than racing off ahead and circling back to see me so it was worth it. Unfortunately once we got to Kennedy’s track proper it was even wetter than earlier in the week with water flowing in streams across the 4wd tracks so our ride was cut short at the first water reservoir. We daintily negotiated our way back down the mud safely and decided to visit our section and do some skids. Unfortunately my propensity for doing incredibly stupid things on my bike got the better of me and I ended up marking our territory at the entrance of our new street by running my chin across the asphalt after gracefully flying over my bars.


Needless to say there hasn’t been any riding this week as I came away with 3 stitches and a mild concussion. Unfortunately I got rather excited after securing tickets to Metallica on Tuesday and jumped around the living room in celebration and have been blessed with a splitting headache ever since. So a week of perfect weather has been wasted. Sigh. Good news though. I have a new and even more insane goal on the horizon. The incredibly painful sounding Mini Brevet. 300kms, 5800m of vertical ascent in 36hrs around Banks Peninsula. This is going to take some serious training so I’m just putting together a plan at the moment. I’m also planning on doing both the McLeans and Timaru 6hr solos. With my weight loss going so well, I’m now 5kgs down, its time to kick my riding into a new gear. I know I can do it if I put the work in and I can manage to stop falling off my bike.

Winter isn’t stopping me!

It is very easy not to ride during the wet, windy, cold winter days and it does become very difficult to ride any of my MTBs as the tracks are closed and muddy. However I’m not letting that stop me in my quest of skinnierness. I had my weekly weigh in this week and now I’ve lost 4.5kgs since I started Aspire and have dropped a dress size. Oh yes, that feels pretty damn good. Best of all my energy levels are getting higher and higher and I can now go for longer and longer rides without needing to eat. My endurance and stamina are back to pre-diet levels and I’ll be able to start working on speed soon. Even more exciting is the fact that my strength has improved out of sight. My upper body strength is better than it’s been in years, my core strength is really improving and my leg strength is right up there as I showed myself yesterday with some nice seated climbing. Fun.
I did almost give myself hypothermia riding for over 90mins in the drizzle and southerly yesterday, but it was still a good, if very painful at the end, ride. I felt strong and I didn’t feel lightheaded or ravenous at all. But it hasn’t been just about the bike for me for the last 7 weeks, I’ve been working out. A couple of years ago I got a gym membership. It was pretty good and I enjoyed it over winter, but I found it took the focus away from my riding. However what it did give me was knowledge of a number of free weights exercises I can easily do in the comfort of my own home. I’ve combined this with my elbow rehab exercises and I’ve got myself a nice little ten minute mini work out that I try do 3 times a day. It’s been going so well that I’ve had to get more weights to keep it challenging. Now I’ve got my strength back I can hit the yoga mat again so I’ve got a selection of nice 30 minute workouts I can chose from each morning. I try to do yoga most days and some days it not only gives me a great workout, it also sets me up for my day of writing. What more could you want, exercise and inspiration all in one go. Sounds like riding to me! I’ve got 4 more weeks of Aspire to go and I’m really excited about all the things I’ve learnt and how good I’m feeling. I give Aspire 2 thumbs up.

What a difference a week makes!

My last post didn’t talk much about week 4 of Aspire and that was because I was feeling completely down about the whole thing when I wrote it. Luckily my lack of weight loss didn’t make me want to throw in the towel, it just made me want to try harder. For me last week was all about getting out on my bike in the sun. Yep, there were multiple sunny days last week and I put them to good use with a lovely roadie ride out to Tai Tap, a wee jaunt up Kennedy’s Bush Rd in middle chain ring and some absolutely fantastic Nun repeats.

It was a pretty busy week, being a short one and I was determined to eat properly and focus on how my body reacted to higher intensity exercise now that I wasn’t feeling so hungry all the time. My roadie ride was great. I focussed on keeping a nice high cadence the whole ride and after an hour I got home feeling good and strong. I wasn’t ravenous either, but I certainly enjoyed my poached eggs that day. The next day I headed up Kennedy’s Bush Rd to see if I still had the stamina to get up the road in my middle chain ring. I won’t lie, I had to rest at the crest of the first hill as I was panting like a dog, but I was soon on my way and made to the gate at the top of the seal without dropping into grannies. Yes! My stamina is slowly coming back as my body adapts to getting less fuel in. Unfortunately I had pretty much stuffed myself for much more riding and after attacking the first section of 4wd track and discovering that the next section was not only incredibly muddy, but exposed to the nasty wind, I decided to head home for some food.

Saturday was the CSC’s end of year function and I was flat out all day. I was helping Roscoe prepare a gift for Craig and Rebekah and had to get up early to get last minute supplies. As I was driving back from town in the sun I decided that the weather was too good to waste and I would have to head out for laps of the Nun since it might not be open again for weeks. This was the right decision. The track was in perfect condition. No standing water, pretty dry, but just tacky enough to provide fantastic traction and running so smooth it was heaven. I only had an hour to get up there ride and get home before heading to the hall to help set up and I managed to get 2 runs in. I so wanted to do more, but it was not to be. The rest of the day and the evening flew by in a blur, although I did managed to completely resist the lure of Spag’s pizza’s and have a healthy dinner that night.

My busy week has paid dividends and I’ve now lost another whole kg since my last weigh in last Tuesday bringing my total for 6 weeks to 3.5kgs. I’m very happy with that, but I’m happier with the progress my fitness is making. The mini-work outs I’ve been doing at home are starting to benefit my riding with my upper body strength finally coming back and my core strength increasing. I’m looking forward to this week and getting out riding more. I feel like I’ve got over the hump now and the next 6 weeks of Aspire are going to be great.

Exploring strange new worlds

Finally I got to do some real mountain biking this weekend past! My lovely husband and I made a last minute decision to head over to the West Coast for Queen’s Birthday weekend and managed to score some lovely accommodation at Havenz, where we stayed last time we were there, in Punakaiki. I was very excited to head up to Denniston Plateau for some exploring as I’d read great things about the trails in both my trusty Kennett bible and NZMTBR. We drove over on Saturday and had a leisurely trip with a few stop offs and then chillaxed in our tree top accommodation and listened to the birds in the forest all around us.

Sunday was warm and humid, but overcast so we packed for wet wintery conditions and headed north. After a brief stop in Westport for nourishment and a map of the tracks at Denniston from the information centre there (only $1) we were soon winding our way up the hill to the old coal mining area. After exploring the old Incline where the coal was sent down off the plateau and hucking off various things we headed further up the hill the Friends of the Hill museum, where all the tracks started. We’d decided on the 11km cross country circuit and headed out into the desolate landscape. There was a definite chill in the air and the snow on the side of the 4wd tracks was evidence that we up in an alpine environment. It was gorgeous and barren and even riding the metalled road was a pleasure as the views on all sides were spectacular. The Southern Alps surrounded us on one side and on the other the coast and Tasman Sea stretched for miles.

Soon the road deteriorated into a very rough 4wd track and started with a very steep pinch climb. I was pretty impressed that I almost made it to the top of the pinch, give how weak I’ve been feeling lately, but it really knocked the wind out of me. We continued heading up and the track soon became a boggy river in places and there was a bit of walking. The track was mostly slab rock as we got higher which meant a lot of it was rideable as long as you picked the right line.

I really enjoyed the challenge of riding this terrain. I’ve never been confident about riding up rocks, but I found that I was taking on things I probably would have walked in the past and riding really well. I think all the playing in the back garden with my bmx has helped me get my head around lifting my front wheel to get over things. The final uphill section consisted of a rocky chute with gnarly roots running cross it and a nice stream trickling down in. It was almost like a series of little steps and I was grinning when I got to the top.

From there the fun really started. The descent was really rocky so not much mud to suck at wheels. I was loving choosing different lines down ledges and blasting across slabs. Soon we came to a steep rocky chute and after stopping to scope it out I could see a nice smooth line that I felt confident about riding. Hubby walked down and grumpily told me he wasn’t going to watch me crash, but I knew my line was good and I just had to carry enough speed into it. Whoooooosh and I was safely down cackling like a mad woman. It was great and was the first scary chute I’ve ever ridden, also the first thing I’ve ever ridden that my hubby hasn’t!

This success filled me with confidence and when we came to the next rocky chute I could again see a nice line, but wasn’t comfortable with the run in on the Anthem, so sensibly walked it. Unfortunately on the third rocky chute I wasn’t so sensible and didn’t even stop to scope it. I did however slow down way too much and as I entered the chute I thought “If I hit that big rock there I’ll endo” so of course I hit that rock and went straight over the bars. I was worried that hubby might be nearby so I cheerfully yelled out “Bugger!” in a tone that said “That looked way worse than it was, don’t worry I’m fine”. Meanwhile what I was thinking was “Oh shit, that hurt my hip really badly, but at least my bung elbow, shoulder, chest, doesn’t seem too bad, shit I’ve got gorse in my gloves and down my back, oh I’m stuck upside down, oooh my finger is a bit cut, thank god I’m wearing gloves, thank god I have extra padding round my hips, damn its difficult getting up when you feet are higher than your head.”

After this barrage of thoughts I realised that hubby wasn’t nearby because there was no yelling to see if I was alright so I gingerly felt my various parts for damage and slowly extracted myself from amongst the rocks and gorse. I’ve never crashed anywhere so jagged before and was feeling pretty lucky to be limping down the hill intact. My rear brake had been filled with dirt unfortunately and was making a hell of a noise and I was too scared to look at my hip while we were still in the middle of nowhere. Hubby was waiting at the bottom of the final and gnarliest rock chute which I walked down with a sheepish look on my face. I informed hubby of my overconfident muppetry and he sighed and we headed back to the car. The heavens opened up and it bucketed down and I sent hubby off ahead to bring the car up the museum. When I got there looking like a drowned rat the coal fire was burning away nicely and I stood in front of it and steamed till the car arrived with dry clothes. That fire was fantastic. I haven’t been near a coal fire since I was a child and I’d forgotten just how lovely the heat is from good quality coal (how un-PC of me!).

Finally I dragged myself away from the fire and got changed into dry clothes before reinstalling myself in front of the fire again. It was great watching the old films of the mines and hearing the stories, some of them terrible, of life on the plateau.
On our way out we stopped at an old abandoned playground which spoke volumes about how life had moved on. I took some photos and then a very scary man came and yelled at us so we left, feeling like we could hear banjos ringing in our ears.



Once back at our unit I perused the damage to my hip and was slightly horrified to see the bruise which is still spreading. Ouch!



Our trip home over Arthur’s Pass the next day was well timed, the weather was closing in quickly and our car kindly informed us that it was 3 degrees outside with a cheery ding. We stopped to play with the keas at Deadman’s Corner above the Otira Viaduct and they were most interested in eating various parts of our bikes. Luckily we managed to keep them safe from marauding beaks and claws.


The trip was wonderful and although I haven’t managed to lose any weight again this week (WTF!) I am happy to be riding my bikes again. I also look forward to a return trip to Denniston to explore more of the 50kms of tracks, and to planning my next cycle tour. I seem to be falling in love with the West Coast.

Tweaking and Timing

Week three of Aspire is done and dusted and after consulting the dietician I have made some changes to get my wildly swinging blood sugar levels under control. The good news is I’ve been feeling much, much better. The bad news is I’ve put on a massive 100gms! Actually I’m not even slightly worried that I haven’t lost any weight over the last week. Now that I can actually do some proper exercise I’m sure that will soon sort itself out. I hear you ask: what are these amazing changes you have made?

Tweaking Portions
I’ve had quite a few comments from people that I seemed to be eating quite a lot of grain portions. So I talked to the dietician about that and we agree that I’d move down to 5 portions of grain and have an portion of protein OR legume a day. This has been great. I’ve been getting protein in the middle of day now and I’ve been feeling much better for it.

Timing Portions
This has actually been the most important change. I’m still eating only 20 portions in total a day, but I’m making sure I eat certain things at certain times to make sure my blood sugar doesn’t start doing the crazy dance that leaves me lying on the couch feeling like passing out. The first thing was when I was eating my grains. I’m now having 2 for breakfast and 2 for lunch, meaning I only have one at dinner, much better. Also I’ve split lunch into two meals, one at 12 and on at 2, meaning although I’m eating the same amount, it’s released into my body at a more consistent rate, meaning no big highs and lows.

I’ve also realised I have to eat between breakfast and lunch. I was letting myself get super hungry and weak by not eating anything for 4 hours and that was setting me up badly for the whole day. Now I have a portion of legumes at 10:30ish and that helps even things out and means I’m not as starving at 12 so only eating half a lunch is fine then.

What a change a week has made. I’ve been on a couple of hour long roadie rides during the week, in the rain and hail (I love my Helter Skelters) and yesterday I took the singlespeed to McLeans. It was wet and hard going, but I still felt human at the end of it and had a big grin on my face. Today it’s not raining and I think I might just have to take a jaunt to Sumner on the roadie and see how this new eating plan holds up to a longer ride. I will be taking Replace and a snack with me! Now I just need this crappy weather to go away for a decent amount of time and I can get back to having fun on my bikes.

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.

I'm Aspiring

Once upon a time, about 2 years ago, a young woman started a blog. This blog was about her quest to get fit and lose weight and it was this blog. Over the course of two and a bit years her fitness has improved and improved and her weight has gone down a bit and then up a bit. In fact when I weighed myself last Monday I weighed more than when I started this journey. Bugger. So over the next three months while I’m not full on training for anything I’m taking this dieting thing seriously. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the past couple of years it’s that even though I eat extremely healthily and exercise a lot that’s not enough for me to lose weight. I’m obviously doing something wrong so I’ve paid my money and joined up with the Plant & Food/ Uni of Otago created diet called Aspire.
Already I’m learning a lot and have discovered that I eat waaaaay too much. I’ve been on it for a week and luckily it’s been pretty easy for me. This first week came with a sample menu, which was just what I needed, something to tell me what to eat. I stuck to it really well, and made some substitutions where things weren’t working and made sure I stayed within my allotted portions for the week. The biggest change, apart from portion size, has been eating legumes every day. Yum! As the last post pointed out, I’ve been laid low by the dreaded lurgee and haven’t really been able to move off the couch much, let alone exercise so there’s not been much going into my activity diary. So imagine my surprise when I got on the scales this morning for my weekly weigh in and discovered I’ve lost 2.5kgs in the last week! Yusss! My power to weight ratio is going to be looking better by the end of winter.

I also managed to get out on the roadie today to return some DVDs. It was raining. It was windy. There was loads of traffic. I still loved it! It’s been two whole weeks since I’ve been on the bike and it felt great to be riding again. It made me rather light headed, which probably means I’m still fighting germs, but I still ended up singing “The legs on the Mel go round and round, round and round, round and round” because I was feeling so happy. Unfortunately I did manage to get quite cold and created some yucky chilblains on my legs when I jumped in my hot shower. So Week 2 on Aspire has started and we’ll see how I handle riding and dieting. Wish me luck!