Hackweight’s BodyBlog

I have read many articles in magazines in the past few years that have advocated a high-fat, high-protein, low-carb diet as a means of shedding bodyfat while gaining muscle. The Atkins Diet (along with others promoting the same low-carb idea) has been one of the most successfully marketed dietary approaches in recent memory, and is backed with some legitimate scientific evidence to support it. I currently do not follow any carb-cycling program and I am not going to debate whether or not low-carbs/high-protein is a good or bad nutritional approach. I honestly haven’t put that much effort into finding out. I am not a nutritionist. I do, however, take a commonsense approach to my diet. I do not think that I could be easily convinced that someone who is committed to looking and feeling healthy can claim that meals consisting of chicken wings or bunless hamburgers have any place in such a person’s diet.

Those of you who are more knowledgeable on the subject will say that Atkins is not about eating hotdogs and skipping vegetables. Unfortunately, this is not how it was marketed by large resturant chains and pre-packaged food producers to individuals jumping on the latest health fad. Low-carb went from reasonable (thiner crust pizza) to ridiculous (low-carb beer?). Low-carb has since given way to a variety of new trends that to anyone wandering down a grocery asile can’t miss: organic, 0 trans fat, less sugar, probiotics, omega-3, etc… In and of itself, these are signs of a positive shift towards a more health conscious society, however, they are also signs of consumers being misled by products claiming to be ‘healthy’ while distracting from an ingredient list that could only be explained by a chemist. Sure Twizzlers are low in fat (as is clearly labelled on the package), but what else is in it… I mean besides sugar.

Cereal advertised and high in fiber (no mention of loads of sugar), cheese packed with omega-3 (and saturated fat) and pretzels that have no trans fat (but tons of sodium) may give someone the impression that they are making healthy choices when they are obviously not. My fear is that someone who is serious about making a lifestyle change and wants to take care of their body will become discouraged when they make no progress in becoming leaner and healther due to being conned into swaping one diet trap for another.

Most of the people on bodyspace.com appear to be discerning and informed about what they eat and probably like myself, attempt to stick to foods in their most basic form (unprocessed, no-additives, etc). I’m as guilty as anyone of purchasing packaged food because of convienience but I’ve also stopped to ask, is my orange juice better if I add, I dunno, fish oil? 

After years of being reluctant to do anything resembling "impact cardio" due to a belief that my knees could not handle it, I decided in mid-May to take up running as an addition to my overall health and well-being program. I discoverd two things very quickly: first, my body is much more resilient to the pounding on concrete than I had thought, and second, I am more stubborn (or stupid) than I am willing to admit.

The running itself posed no problems and I felt that I was capable to complete and possibly compete in a sanctioned race. On May 31 I committed myself to a 5k run that was far enough off in advance (Oct. 19) that I could prepare myself. One problem was that I did not know anything about training for a race as up until now all I had basically done in terms of fitness was based in a gym. I knew about weights (I have some muscle), I knew about cardio (I had managed to burn off some of my fat), and I had some vague ideas about nutrition, but I did not have a clue about what runners do other than get from point A to point B as fast as possible.

This is where I made my first mistake. Rather than actually seek out someone to help me -and there are plently on qualified and accessible individuals in my city- I thought it would be enough to print off a training program from Runner’s World.com. On top of that, I thought the beginner’s program was not challenging enough and chose a rather difficult 14 week intermediate program. Things went well until two weeks later I ended up in physio after blowing out my left knee.

I got over that obstacle fairly quickly and scaled down my weekly miles. This is where I made my second mistake. I had eight weeks to go and convinced myself that I had to make up for lost time so I increased the intensity of my training and made adjustments to the program where I decided they were necessary. Ten days later I was back in physio with a blown right knee.

With three weeks left to race my training consisted of one day of speed work (3×1200m repeats for example) and one day of running at an easy pace for 6-7 km. All other work was done on a stationary bike to keep my heart rate high enough so I could be in some kind of condition to race.

This is when I made my third mistake. I figured out that the speed I could maintain during repeats could, in theory, enable me to complete a 20 minute 5k. Now, these repeats have rest period in between which one jogs in order to recover for the next sprint. Totally irrelevant, I thought. I proceeded to shoot my mouth off to anyone that would listen that I would be finishing in under 20 minutes. It is one thing to have the encouragement of others and setting a standard as a motivator to meet those expectations. It is quite something else to assure that you will accomplish something without having the faintest idea of whether you can reasonably reach that goal or you are an idiot for even suggesting it.

I’ll admit that I was nervous several days before the race and that I had gotten myself in a jam and I would never heard the end of it if I came up short. I was calm the day of the race and inspite of problems that arose I had trained hard and regardless of the result I would walk away knowing much more about myself and the sport of running. I finished  40th out of 2073 runners at a time 20:32. 

I’ve decided to make a serious attempt at a personal record for a race in March and looking back I don’t think 32 sec is insurmountable, but this time I won’t say what time I think I’m capable of.