A few kilos off

Hard to get them off; even harder to keep them away...

I have been wanting to write this post since March, but I waited until now to make sure the kilos would stay away. During January and February this winter I made a serious effort and lost 6 kilos. Several friends have asked for the recipe and I promised that it would come. You might remember that I have a history of overweight, and I have to constantly watch what I eat, although i train several hours per day, in average.

At the time I lost the big weight all those years ago, I was told that it would take the body a couple of years to get used to the new weight. During this time the body would all the time try to get back to the same high weight again, so one had to be extra careful. Unfortunately, new research indicates that this period is much longer than two years. In fact, if the overweight lasted over a longer time, the body might try to get back to that weigh for many years, perhaps the rest of its life... Many of my friends keep telling me that I could eat all I want since my training volume is quite high. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way.

Although I found this pretty unfair in the beginning, I am now used to it. I know that I need to eat well to recover and to be able to train efficiently. I do actually eat a lot, but mainly vegetables, lean meats and whole grains. My one weakness is wine. I enjoy so much taking a glass of wine every now and then, but its effect on my weight is not good. It seems to block my system and make more trouble than the number of calories it contains. Still I manage to balance all these things with training, and for longer periods it all works pretty well. But a few hundred grams here and there might sneak in unnoticed every now and then, and suddenly in December discovered that I was about four kilos more than I was at the same time two years ago. Desperate that things would get worse during Christmas, and motivated by the fact that it was a low intensity time with respect to training and upcoming races, I decided to lose those four kilos and two more. And it worked! My goal was to lose 6 kilos until the end of February, and I made it just in time.

Losing a few kilos, when you are actually normal weight, is in some sense harder than to lose a lot of weigh when you are really overweight. First of all, you don't really need to lose that weight, so the motivation is naturally lower. For me, it was to be able to race faster. For others it might be to fit into some clothes that have become a bit too tight. Secondly, the first couple of kilos go pretty fast, and then you feel happy about yourself and relax and then everything goes back to start. Here are a few steps that helped me reach my goal:

 1. Do it with a friend. Both when I lost all that weight many years ago, and also this time, I did it together with friends in a similar situation. This time, one of my best friends who is also a runner, wanted to lose exactly the same number of kilos, and we were a great support for each other throughout the period. She also reached her goal at the same time, but on the way both of us would have down periods with lacking motivation. It was wonderful to be able to write to the other "I want to stop, I want to eat chocolate, I am hungry, I am fed up" etc, and get an uplifting, motivating feedback. Every Monday morning we would text each other with the weight of that day, and give each other kudos. We would also text many times during the week, especially when we were up to challenging situations.

In fact, for some reason most of us like to keep to ourselves about wanting to lose weight. But when you are open about it, you discover that you have many friends in the same situation, even surprisingly many men. I found out that a group of my male running friends also had a similar support group during the same time to lose approximately the same number of kilos. I exchanged with them experiences and challenges every time we met, and this helped me a lot to stay focused and motivated.

2. Write down everything you put into your mouth. This is actually the most important point. In my experience there is no other way to make it work. Since I was used to Grete Roede from my previous experience, I used their tools also this time. It works perfectly in Norway. They have almost everything that is available in the supermarkets in their web tool, you can choose from an easy menu, the calories come up automatically. The page also suggests a daily calorie intake for you, distributed to various meals, and calculates for you how well you are doing in different food categories. I know that there are many other similar pages. Many of them are free of charge and work perfectly. Just choose whatever works well for you.

3. Report your weight to some 'authority'. This works magics for me! During a Grete Roede course, you go on a scale once a week while the course instructor watches you. This time, I made a deal with Ketil, my dear friend and world's best personal trainer, that I would go on the Barry's Bootcamp scale every Tuesday morning at 8 am, just before our PT session. I made clear my goal for him, and the fact that I did not want to disappoint him made me more rigorous in my efforts, I think.

4. Be prepared that it will take time. Even if it's a few kilos, don't try to get them off quickly. If they go off quickly, then they will for sure come back soon enough. You don't need a quick diet and then you can go on on as before. You need to either change your habits, or remind yourself of your old good habits and get back into them. There are a few boosters that you might want to try, though. Like fasting (juicing). This is so healthy in so many other ways than just to lose weight, that I think it can be recommended. I did it twice during these 9-10 weeks, and both times it helped a lot both for motivation and to get things going again. It also teaches you to deal with hunger, and you realize after a couple of days that you can actually endure going a bit hungry every now an then.

5. Do regular strength training when you are losing weight so that you don't lose muscles, just fat.

So what about the end of the story? Did the 6 kilos stay away? Well most of them did. Two of them came back, so now I am back to where I was at the end of 2014 when I was pretty happy about my weight. After the holidays, though, I might still make an effort to get rid off those two again. In the end:

No matter what my weight is, there are always two kilos that I want to lose :-D

Going vegan or going hungry?

An apple a day keeps the doctor away...

Last blog post received so many interesting comments that I wanted to continue a little bit more on the nutrition thread. During the Christmas break, I stumbled upon a few programs on BBC tv. The one program was about the benefits of vegan lifestyle, and the other was about how fasting for 24-72 hours every now and then can be beneficial for your health. The indications were so strong that I got really curious about both. But I also have some questions that I haven't found the answers to.

Fasting
Now let's start with this one, since I do in fact have some experience with this. Three times, during 2014 and 2015, I completed a three-day juice program. At that time, I did it mainly for weight management, but now I have learned that the benefits are so much more. In fact, the 2016 Nobel Prize winner in medicine and physiology, Yoshinori Ohsumi, got the prize exactly because of his research showing the benefits of hunger on the renewal of human cells.  The bottom line of the story is that when we go hungry (less than 500 kcal a day) for 1-3 days, the growth of new cells in our body slows down, and instead the body starts repairing existing cells. For a person with high cholesterol and blood pressure, such a diet can reduce the values to normal, even just after fasting once (then you have to do it every now and then to keep the good effect). Even for healthy people, this process is documented to slow down aging, and it might cancel or postpone the risk of serious diseases.
  
Vegan diet
The benefits of vegan diet seem to be very comparable to the benefits of fasting. Animal protein is one of the foremost promoter of the growth of new cells in our bodies. The production of new cells is good when we are young, but as we get older it also means quicker aging. Vegans, in average, not only live longer, but they also age better. Meaning that they stay healthy and young looking until very old age. Vegans are also in average slimmer, they almost never suffer from heart strokes, and there is a lower occurrence of cancer among them.

The benefits of going hungry or going vegan seem to be endless. And since benefits of both methods seem pretty similar, we can probably choose which one we would like to apply, if any. If the idea of going hungry a day or three every now and then (it is really not that difficult) seems doable, perhaps that is easier for you than to change your whole diet. Or perhaps anyways you have reduced animal products quite a lot, and the way to a vegan lifestyle is not so long. I must admit that I got inspired to try another juice program; I'm starting already on Monday!

Now, let us be more critical. Of course if you compare vegan lifestyle or periodic fasting to "normal" unhealthy eating habits (yes, unfortunately normal - meaning average - eating habits are unhealthy), the benefits are huge. But what if you are, like me, a person who is quite careful about what you eat, and avoid unhealthy fats, sugar, white flour, starch, prefabricated foods, and fried foods? What if your diet already contains a lot of vegetables and otherwise consists of fruit, lean meats, whole grains and nuts? Unfortunately I could not find any studies that compare such a life style with that of a vegan. One of the arguments used by vegan sites is that our ancestors did not eat meat or animal products. But we live longer today than our ancestors, and our brains have evolved a lot since their times. Could this be due to animal products? And how about athletes who want to improve running form or body strength? Are we not dependent on muscle growth?

I am sure both "sides" of the debate can give convincing answers to my questions one way or the other. While I was thinking about these things, I ended up watching another program on Norwegian NRK tv, this time, about areas in Europe where people live longer and stay healthier than the average European. Now, these places had very little in common in their diets. Toulouse in France (lots of duck, blue cheese and red wine), Iceland (almost no vegetables, lots of dried meat, fresh fish), and a small place in Italy (lots of olive oil, vegetables and fresh made pasta). The conclusion of the researchers was that there might be some components in these diets that are balancing out each other. However, they had one thing in common: almost no industrially processed foods.

What seems to be sure is that average European diet nowadays contains too much meat and animal products, and too much processed or prefabricated food. So, even if you don't want to go vegetarian or vegan, cutting down on meats and animal products is definitely a good idea. Avoiding processed and prefabricated foods (instant soups, sauces, cereal, packed snacks, etc) is probably even more important. Fasting a day or three, a few times a year, especially on resting days when you are not planning heavy exercise, can also be a good component to add to your routine.

For myself, I am inclined to continue with my dairy-free diet. I am enjoying it more and more, and it is surprisingly easy. I feel light and energized, and my form is actually improving. I have also discovered how much calcium there is in green vegetables, especially kale! I have calculated that I get more than enough of calcium without any dairy. So I was probably getting too much calcium earlier. That might also be a slow down of form, I have read. On top of my dairy-free diet, I am eating more fish and less meat, and I have almost stopped eating chicken. A couple of times a year, like after Christmas and after summer holidays, I might do a three-day juice program, to balance the effects of junk food and too much wine ;-)

Say yes to new adventures! (Better an "oops" than a "what if"...)

Love your avocado

If it's ripe then it's right.

A few weeks ago I started eating an avocado everyday. The benefits of avocado are countless, and I've been experiencing many of them myself. I feel so good, my skin feels softer, my stomach works better, and I'm full for longer with less food. However, when I mention this to friends, I get to hear very often that they don't like avocado. To me this is pretty incomprehensible. I daresay if you don't like avocado, then you haven't eaten it in the right way.

First of all, you don't just eat it like a pear; you have to do something with it. Even more importantly, it has to be ripe. Ripe enough that you can squish it with a fork. It has to feel soft on the outside. Then you cut it in two. Take out the seed by stabbing it with a point knife and then just pulling it out. Then you simply use a spoon to scrape the avocado off its skin. Once you have it on a plate then you simply squish it with a fork until you get a paste. Now, this paste needs a little bit of salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon. And then you taste it. You will see that it tastes quite different now, and to this base you can add pretty much anything. Spring onions, fresh dill and mint, tomatoes, just mix it all lightly with the avocado and you have a wonderful blend which you can use as a side dish, as a dip, or as salad dressing. You can also just mix the base with garlic and sour cream, which is pretty much guacamole. For those who can read Turkish, my friend Özlem has a wonderful blog about love and avocado. She has lots of great recipes there.

In addition to avocado, I am eating much more nuts, seeds, whole grains, and non-meat protein sources like beans, compared to a few weeks ago. In fact I used to be very cautious about nuts and beans earlier, since these are heavy on calories. However, they keep you full so much longer that you actually end up eating less. When I started these changes I immediately started to feel much better. Before that, my diet was based mainly on salads, vegetables, and lean meat, with almost no carbohydrates outside of breakfast.  I felt hungry very often, and I still did not lose weight. I think my diet simply did not provide enough nutrition and recovery for the four runs, one swim, and three pilates sessions of the week. After the changes I started to feel incomparably more happy, full, and content all the time. On top of that for that last two weeks I even started to lose weight!

I am also paying attention to make my diet more alkaline. I am not at all being strict about this, but with just little adjustments it seems possible to achieve a much better balance. Most vegetables and fruits are good for an alkaline diet, especially the green ones. I am eating much less meat nowadays, and I get more of my proteins from beans and seeds. I am also trying to eat more fish and eggs, instead of meat and chicken. There is some debate about whether or not alkaline diet can actually affect the pH balance of your body, but for sure it keeps your stomach much happier and calmer, and it contains only healthy and non-processed ingredients. If you want to learn more about alkaline diet, I can recommend my friend Aysegul's excellent blog about nutrition for athletes to those of you who can read Turkish.

The newest addition to my diet is a shot of wheat grass juice every morning. Oh I know what some of you are thinking: is this really necessary? Of course not. But I am curious, and I simply enjoy this a lot. Trying out new things also puts me in contact with interesting people all the time, and I love learning from them. You can simply google wheat grass juice to read about its benefits; they seem endless. I am lucky enough to have a provider that is literally next door, and I have already started to worry about how I will manage when I move back to Norway... If this all sounds like I have completely changed my diet, then be assured that it is not the case. I am simply taking the advice from several sources and combining them as they make sense to me. The best part: I get to drink a lot of coffee and a glass of wine daily. 

Do more of what makes you happy!

Eat right, run slow

An avocado a day keeps the doctor away...

I have finally got a copy of the book "Racing Weight", and it is very interesting reading. The diet part focuses mostly on eating foods that are dense in nutrition. The idea is to put as much nutrients as possible in our body per calorie. Even before starting to read the book, I started to change some of my eating habits. Trying to eat foods that are as little processed as possible. Paying less attention to calories and more attention to what good a particular food does to the body. Fortunately I am surrounded by many friends who know a lot about nutrition, and I am learning a lot from them.

Interestingly, nutrition advice among my Norwegian running friends and that among my Turkish running friends is of different type. In Bergen the discussion is mainly about foods that enhance performance, with red beets being the star of the show. I have strong belief in red beets, and in periods I use it in powder form (Stamox) before training and races. In Istanbul, though, the discussion is more about what foods are good for runners in the sense of repairing the body. There the star of the show is turmeric. It is supposed to have anti inflammatory effects and very good for joints and tendons. So I try to add it to my dishes as much as possible. I bought it in powder form, and it does not have a very distinct taste. Among other things that I have made a part of my diet are avocado and hemp seeds, full of proteins and healthy oils. I try to eat an avocado a day, and I sprinkle hemp seeds on almost everything nowadays.

When it comes to weight management, it seems that cutting down on meats, even lean and clean ones, is a good idea. There is a lot of evidence that replacing lean meats with lean fish is beneficial, not only for the weight but also for cardiovascular health in general. Also trying to get some of your proteins from beans instead of meat or fish could be wise. It turns out that our diet is too acidic, and meats add to the level of acidity in our blood. Trying to achieve a more alkaline diet seems to have many benefits, in particular for runners. Running can result in inflammations and toxins, and an alkaline diet aims to reduce these. On top of all that, with an alkaline diet our body is supposed to be able to burn fat easier.

Speaking about burning fat: I am running too fast. "Don't boast" you're thinking now. But it's not a good thing. Most of my training is too fast and too hard. I know just too well that all longer runs should be at easy pace, and hard effort should be limited to short intervals, but I have hard time implementing it. This is what a long and slow run does:

1. Burns fat
2. Does not make you exhausted
3. Does not make you hungry

A tough run does quite the opposite. You burn mostly carbohydrate, you get exhausted, and you are super hungry for the rest of the day. You might easily end up eating more than you burn. My goal now is to be more strict in sticking to my own plan for every run, and not get carried away when I am running with a group of friends.

Find out what is right for your body, and do it.

Testing of willpower in new ways: detoxing

When racing, competing,  and training hard, your willpower and self discipline are put to the test all the time. You reach a point where all muscles of your body scream at you to stop or slow down, but you still push yourself to continue. Two months ago, I tested out something quite different that also puts your willpower and self discipline to the test: body cleansing, or detoxing. During three days, I only drank freshly pressed juices, herbal tea, and water. I ate or drank nothing else! Although the experience was totally different from competing and training, the feeling of accomplishment at the end of it was quite comparable to the feeling after a successful race.

During our personal training sessions, Ketil and I regularly discuss nutrition and weight control issues. When I learned that he had tried out a three day cleansing and was quite happy about the experience, I immediately wanted to try it as well! There are probably many producers that offer these types of products, but I tried the same as Ketil, delivered by essentially.no which is situated in Oslo. Essentially offers three day cleansing products for those who live in Bergen. The juices are freshly cold pressed just before you receive them, and they have to be consumed within three days. When I ordered, the next delivery in Bergen was at the end of September, the day after I was coming home from a five day trip to Italy. I thought this was perfect; I knew that I would be eating and drinking a lot during the trip, and a cleansing right afterwards seemed to be well timed.

We arrived home from Italy late evening on a Monday, and already at 8 am Tuesday morning I was at the pick up point and got my juice package. The idea is that you pick it up early in the morning and start immediately the same day. My package consisted of 3 x the daily 6 juice bottles which you can see in the picture above.  I was to drink them with about 2 hours in between every bottle: three green juices (mainly containing cucumber), two fruit juices, and a cashew nut milk. The pickup point, to my surprise, turned out to be Barry's Bootcamp Bergen, and I learned that one of the instructors, Annelin, was also going to do the cleansing at the same time as me. This turned out to be really useful for me, and I think it helped Annelin as well. At the start and end of each day, we would send each other messages and share our experiences about the day to come or the day that passed. Here is how it went:

Tuesday: I picked up my juice package and went back home. At that time I was writing a big project proposal, and I was working at home several days a week to be able to concentrate without being disturbed. Working at home and being alone on the first day of the cleansing was quite perfect, as I think I would find talking to people quite hard at this point. As soon as I got home, I drank my green juice. Not too bad, but not very good either. I sat down to work. After a couple of hours, I was really happy that it was time for the second juice, this time a fruit juice. Oh, this tasted so much better than the green juice; happy happy! In the meanwhile, I was getting a serious headache and I was feeling really tired, both of which I think were due to lack of coffee. Still I found it surprisingly easy to concentrate on work. Actually, as the day progressed, I felt more and more "sedated" by fatigue, hunger and headache, which made me very uninterested in many things, like checking emails. So I found it easier and easier to concentrate on my main work. Surprising consequence! During this first day I drank a lot of herbal tea, because I felt cold all the time. In the afternoon I went for my weekly personal training session. The cashew milk was supposed to be saved until the end of the day, because it is the most nutritious, but since I was going to train, I took half of it before the workout and half of it after. Oh heaven! The cashew milk was delicious! I felt so full and happy, and the workout went surprisingly well. When I got back home, all I had left was a green juice, which did not feel that good at all at that time. I figured out it was a good idea to go to bed early,  to stay away from all temptations. I was very happy to have completed day one without a single thing outside of the cleansing schedule.

Wednesday: I went on the bathroom scale, and I could register that my weight was back to where it was before Italy. Very happy! I drank my green juice in the morning, took three juice bottles with me, and went to work. The summary of day two was that I felt less tired, more awake but also more hungry than the first day, and I had less headache. The day went surprisingly well. I could work and talk to my colleagues normally, and I could concentrate on all things as usual. I only had a slight feeling of having a thin veil in front of my eyes, and was slightly distanced from everything. I was also much calmer and more neutral than normal, which was an interesting experience for me, as I am normally quite energetic and enthusiastic. I managed also this day to avoid eating or drinking anything else than my juices, water and a lot of herbal tea. And most importantly, I managed to avoid taking headache pills. We are, after all, being cleansed, right?! No workout this day, and after exchanging experiences with Annelin and Ketil, I went to bed early. Simple life.

Thursday: One more kilo gone on the bathroom scale; yeay!! Same procedure as yesterday, I took my green juice in the morning, and brought my other juices to work. The headache was almost gone this day; I was slowly getting rid of my coffee addiction, and I felt almost no hunger. This day I went for the regular Thursday Stoltzekleiven and Rundemanen workout with Melkesyre, and I did the same trick as Tuesday, with the cashew milk before and after the workout. At this point, I was really fed up with the green juices, and felt that their taste got worse and worse for every bottle. The other juices, though, tasted better and better, so I had always something to look forward to. Knowing that this was the last day of the cleansing made it really easy to get through the day, and towards the end of the day I started feeling really really happy that I would be able to eat and drink normally the day after.

Friday: It's over!!! I woke up with this thought (and no headache!), feeling intensively happy. Bathroom scale showed yet another kilo off, which made my spirit even higher, and I was so much looking forward to my cup of coffee and my bowl of oat meal. It was great, but in the end I could not even finish my normal portion of oat meal. The intense feeling of happiness and being high lasted throughout the whole day. Surprisingly, I could eat only very moderate amounts of food this day. My stomach shrank quite a bit during these days. In the morning, before I had my breakfast I took this picture and sent it to Annelin and Ketil with the note: "my tightest jeans" :-)

All in all I was quite happy about this cleansing experience. Mainly because I managed to complete it without resorting to anything outside of the plan, which resulted in a feeling of success. The loss of two extra kilos, in addition to losing the excess from Italy, was also great, but one of the lost kilos came back over the next two days. When it comes to cleansing, I did not really feel any effect like being more energized than before. I think, since my regular diet was anyway pretty healthy, maybe there was not much to be cleansed from. I did shrink a quite bit during these days, though, and the shrinking effect has stayed on. The above jeans are still loose and require a belt :-) If you are eating healthy most of the time, I think you do not need such an experiment. However, it could be a nice boost at the start of a diet, or after a holiday with lots of food and drinks, or perhaps after the Christmas celebrations?

The first delivery to Bergen after Christmas is January 6 :-)