Fit in my 50s

According to Professor Steven Peters, motivation is over rated and that commitment is what counts if you want to achieve your goal. In his book, The Chimp Paradox , he explains that the psychological brain is made up of three parts; the human, the chimp and the computer. Our Chimp, our emotional machine, lives in the limbic system, our human, our self, lives in our frontal lobe and the computer is basically the storage system for our thoughts and behaviours. The problem with motivation, Peters says, is that it appeals to our Chimp and our Chimp is emotionally driven. Learning to live with your Chimp is the key to success and happiness. According to Professor Peters; ‘ Having a Chimp is like owning a dog. You are not responsible for the nature of the dog but you are responsible for managing it and keeping it well behaved. This is a very important point and you should stop and think   about this because it is crucial to yourhappiness and success in life.’ My...

So, one week since restarting the ketogenic diet and I've stuck to the plan. The first weigh-in was yesterday  morning. It's been a good week, I haven't been hungry, I've avoided snacking between meals and I've eaten very tasty, filling food. I even avoided tucking into the chocolates and biscuits and sweets in the staff room! And without throwing a tantrum! In fact, abstinence wasn't that difficult, this keto thing keeps hunger pangs at bay fairly effectively. There was a lot of fat though; butter, ghee, coconut oil, lard, full fat yogurt and olive oil. And cheese. Oh, and double cream. And mayonnaise ( home made!) And there's the fat in meat and eggs to consider on top of all that. Every morning I've had scrambled eggs in butter, apart from the weekend when I had eggs, bacon, tomatoes and mushrooms fried in lard. Lunch was the previous night's leftovers and dinner was something from the plan, Italian meatballs, Asian stir-fry, rib-eye steak, chicke...

La Velodysee 2019. Revisited, Complete and properly blogged this time. (promise!) So we’re heading back to France, and a little bit of Spain, to cycle the length of La Velodysee , the bit of the Eurovelo 1 route that’s in France. We completed a lot of it last summer, from Roscoff to Royan before turning South East and following the Canal des 2 Mers cycle route to Narbonne and eventually Torreilles Plage on the Mediterranean. This summer we’ll be crossing from Plymouth to Santander before catching a train to Hendaye where we’ll pick up the start of the route. Unlike last year, there’ll be no hotels so we’ll be carrying everything we need; tent, mattress, sleeping bags, stoves, etc, etc.   We’ll be taking the same bikes that performed so well last year, but the extra weight we’ll be carrying will have ramifications for one of the riders; me.   In order to meet the manufacturers suggested weight limit for my bike, I have to shed fifty pounds before the sta...

THE HELL OF THE NORTH. Click here for Day 1, Roscoff to Paule.

So we made it. We’re on the boat. Perpignan here we come! Although, there were occasions today when neither of us thought we’d make it this far, let alone ride the whole of the length of France. The plan was: drop the car off at the storage place in Plymouth, ride the five miles or so along the river to the town centre, have fish and chips and catch the ferry. We have caught the ferry. We have also had a ride on the lovely Tamar Valley Railway line. And we had Nando’s for tea. When we left Trowbridge this morning the mood in camp was positive, but tempered slightly by a certain level of apprehension as neither of us has attempted anything quite like this before. We had time to stop for a coffee en route and arrived in Plymouth in good time. We quickly found the storage place where we would be leaving the car while we’re away, but the storage people couldn’t find any evidence of our booking and they had no more room for new bookings. So, we had a car we were leaving in Plymouth for...

So, four weeks ago I visited my doctor about an ingrown toenail and walked away on a diet. A strict high fat, low carb or ketogenic diet. The daily carbohydrate allowance for this diet is around 20g or less. That’s the amount you’d find in one banana.  To reduce the intake of carbs down to this level, it essentially means no bread, no pasta, no rice or potatoes, absolutely no sugar, no beer (that’s described as liquid bread!) no cakes or pastries and no sugary drinks. All these foods are broken down into glucose which is used by the body for energy. Insulin is the key hormone that allows the cells of the body to use glucose as fuel and when we eat carbs and they are absorbed into the blood as glucose, we cause the release of insulin. Not only does insulin allow the use of glucose as a fuel, it also encourages the storage of fats. As long as the body has glucose to burn, the fat reserves we have are ignored and can cause a great deal of harm.  The body likes to s...

Going to the doctor at my age is like popping into the supermarket for just a pint of milk and coming out with a selection of things you previously hadn’t planned on having. So it was this week when I visited my GP for a quick checkup on my toe prior to an ingrown toenail procedure at the hospital. Everything was fine with the toe, but we didn’t idle long in the podiatry aisle of my imaginary supermarket of ailments, oh no. The doc decided we ought to do some browsing and so together we wandered down the cardiology aisle before visiting the endocrinology aisle then moving on to the neurology aisle. Fortunately nothing on the shelves caught her eye, until we reached the dietetics aisle where she pulled an item from one of the shelves. She had clearly noticed that i am one or two, or more, pounds over my fighting weight, and the item she handed me to take with me from the store was a diet. A low Carb, High Fat Diet (LCHF) with online information and support to go along with it.   ...