Futher Thoughts to Intermittend Fasting

Maybe I said it already. I love the concept of intermittend fasting! 

That brought me the idea I might try a thirty day trial. One day I faste until noon, the next I don't. This is really a nice thing. 

I felt wonderful about a week in a row. The pros were: I did't get all these aggressions when I can't run for a while. I usually begin to bug all people around me then by being either whiny or grumpy. I feel very clearly that I have to much energy in me then.

But I also bug myself then by being kind of unsettled sitting anywhere for a longer time.

Moreover, me - the never satisfied running rat - have a time in the day when I don't eat. This is very new. The only time I didn't eat before IF was while sleeping. And I really mean that. I practically ate the whole day through and dropped asleep when I stopped. 

Now that I don't have the time to run very much as it is winter and I need to study I was gaining weight each day. I rather lose weight with IF and a bit of training. Though I really hope it is not muscle weight I lose. 

But after a while there became more and more cons manifest: I felt light-headed and dizzy. Also, I was thirsty. Always. I could hardly schlepp all my drinks with me for some hours' work in the library. And I drank too much coffee, especially cappuccino. Then there was the heart-racing sometimes. I also prefered eating choci absoultely over anything healthy. And I just quit this bad habit. I don't want to start all over again.

And all those things happend though a drank a lot of juices, too. So there actually was 500kcal calorie income. But maybe this is simply not enough for a running rat.

Therefore, I cut back on fasting days again. I guess I'll do a lighter variation with fasting once or twice a week depending on the amount of kilometres I ran. I guess that might be healthier, too.

Intermittend Fasting

I did it. A fasted for about 24 hours. Actually not on Sunday because I was kind of hung over and needed vitamins desperately. 

Eventually, I succeeded to fast from Sunday afternoon to Monday. It wasn't really that bad. I thought it might get ugly but it didn't. 

I assumed that my mood would drop during the day and that I wouldn't be able to concentrate on my studies but that was not the case. 

Actually, my mood was perfectly fine and concentration even better than usual. Maybe that was because I didn't have to think about food, choci and sweets all the time? I also felt light as a feather and didn't have this annoying rumble in my stomach which I usually have when sitting too long and eating too much.

There were some annoying things, though: First, the drowsiness on Monday morning so that I needed a cup of coffee eventually. Therefore, it was not a perfect fast but much better than nothing. Some fruit juice was a nice breakfast and kept me from the worst starving feeling.  

Second, I had those really loud collywobbles after having the second tiny coffee. This was kind of embarrassing in the very quiet reading room of the library but I needed something warm in my stomach (apparently they don't sell tea there).But I suppose that was only because my stomach is not used to fast.

Third, my heart raced again and again for some time. This might have been due to the coffee, though. I also have to add that I drank about three litres of water, tea and juice only on monday morning until lunch. So whenever you plan to fast better take a couple of liquids whereever you go.

Monday afternoon I ate again. A little wrap with vegetables for a start. It made me feel kind of nauseous first. Should I have strated with something else? It could hardly have been too much because it was really a teeny tiny thing. I should do some research on that issue. By the way: of course I ate the whole evening afterwards. But I think, that's how it's supposed to work. I never ate a whole day's amount of food then but felt absolutely satisfied by some greens (and some choci).

In conclusion, I must say that I think I'll need some practise. If I can avoid the coffee and drink more tea instead I guess that my heart won't race. And I also think that I won't feel nauseous anymore. I'll stick with it for 30 days. Intermittend fasting is my thing!

Actually, my clothes feel bigger already... 

Old and New Issues

I found myself thinking that  it's really time for news here!

So in short (before I have to get back to studying) the topics I deal with recently:

1. Dark Chocolate Trial
I still stick to my just-very-dark-chocolate-trial (most of the time). 
First, I gave it up after the 30 day trial. Actually, I gave myself a couple days to eat all the choci-stuff there is. I consumed huge amounts. What it brought was a rash on the skin of my hip. First, it was only one side, then it was both. It wasn't really itchy but it also didn't look nice and when I left the milkchoci alone the rash left me alone, too. 
Running rat's mum made similar observations by the by. Of course, you can state now that this is probably a family issue but on the other hand it could as well have been a general body sign which may differ from person to person.

2. Gaining Weight  
I'm still getting fat sitting on my bud all day (I also get insanely intellectual but who cares?). As a consequence, I still look for possibilities to intervene. Unfortunately, sport is not really in the question as I simply cannot afford daily hours on running. 
Then I stumpled upon fasting again. I'm not really good with eating nothing for a longer period (as probably everybody else) but then I found a compromise! It's name is Intermittend Fasting. Not that it is an entirely new concept but now it has a name and a certain structure. You do it willingly and it shall help keeping you healthy (and slim). You can read about the benefits on wiki. Boyfriend#1 and me will start trying out tomorrow.

3. Sleep 
I wanted to write an article about sleep for ages already. I still haven't. But then boyfriend#1's sleeping issues made me aware again how gifted I must be. I usually sleep within seconds. 
So if you have sleep issues you probably want to do something about them. You'll soon be able to read an article about all the details here. 
In the meantime some very short advice: 
Skip coffee. Get up early, like at 6am - go to bed early, like at 10pm. Get a sleeping routine for your nights (like drinking tea and reading some book). Don't watch TV directly before you go to bed. Switch also your computer off early. Dim the lights directly before you go to bed and make sure that the room in which you sleep is really dark (and quiet of course) after you switched off your reading light. 
If you didn't know already: There are certain devices to track you sleep which also might help you if you have sleep issues. 
Believe me, with about 8-9 hours sleep a night you'll will feel much more rested, fresh and energetic.
I used to need naps during the day. But now that I have a daily routine (get up early, go to the library, sleep very early) I even sleep better than I used to (though I really rather have being-awake-issues than falling-asleep-issues). And my concentration span is longer, too.

4. Job Search
I still haven't got a new job. Though I'd really love to work for amazon if I can make it happen!


Now that was the short update. I'll post a longer one soon.

Healthy Christmas-Muesli-Biscuits

As poor running rat is not able to eat 'normal' sweets during christmas time I needed a plan what to do about my addiction to all kind of sweets. I was almost forced to invent those absolutely healthy biscuits. 
                                                     You need:  

100g raisins

100g almonds (minced)

300g oat flakes

100g butter

2 eggs

200g honey

150g spelt flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

                                                        1 teaspoon baking soda
 

Mix oat flakes, raisins and almonds in a bowl. Add also baking soda and cinnamon. Let the butter melt and add. Let the butter cool down while stiring. Also add the honey and the eggs. Add  enough spelt flour to create a homogeneous doug. Form little piles and bake at 150 to 180°C until the biscuits are light brown.

Sorry for your new (but wholesome) addiction!

Healthy Sweets Only

I thought a picture in your mind might be helpful: I took a picture of the variety of sweets that I consider healthy. 

There are all kinds of nuts in the background because nuts have the healthy unsaturated fats. In the middle we have dried apples and bananachips though bananachips are rather an exeption because they they are made with a lot of added fat and sugars (often from honey). Moreover, there is dark chocolate: 99% cacao and organic on the left (and that is really not sweets anymore) and 81% on the right which I really like.

If you want to buy all those nice things it might me adviseable to start looking in a healthy food shop. If you buy them there you can be sure that you buy good stuff without refined sugar. But there are also many supermarkets which have a quite wide range of those good sweets. 

On the other hand, I (running rat's dad) make the dried apples myself. It's easy and you know exactly what they contain. Moreover, they taste just like the ones you just bought for a lot more money than they are worth. It might be as easy to make bananachips but I didn't try (yet).  I used to buy them in a pet shop for my pets until I realized how tasty they were.

When it comes to the chocolate I often buy them in the shop I work in though it is not the same quality than in the healthy food shop. However, it is convenient and cheap.

Although this is an okay range already I still look for other things I might like. I didn't try dates, figs and a lot of other dried fruit yet. But often they do contain stuff I don't want in my food like sorbic acid, sulphur dioxide or other sulphides. These substances are used as antioxidants. Citric acid does the same job though. It is found in limes and lemons. But you an eat the apples just as well if they are not treated with lemon or lime juice. They do get a slightly brown then.

So if you also want to cut back on sweets during christmas, too, try dried fruit and nuts. They are perfect substitutes. I already feel lighter (and lost a whole pound)!

I am a Professional now!

Now that I have a schedule to train after I feel so much more professional. Actually, I ran a 10km-run last week though it was pouring outside. I'll run in a few minutes though it is freezing outside. I am so a Pro! Unfortunately I chose the schedule for ambitious marathon training. I really want to be ambitious, fast and everything but my left knee and my right foot refuse to be. So I had to stop training last thursday though I vexed myself with traveling to see my running group late at night and in rain. After one fast kilometre I felt a severe pain in my left knee. Trainer#1 said I had to go home. Though it just stoped raining. I was kind of wet and angry. Now that I had schlepped myself to train in the cold and dark I couldn't and instead had to limp home.
At least until now I'm able to stick to my 30 day trial more or less. It's not exactly easy (I had a very weak day on fiday) as I eat even more than before and after all I have to see the Christmas Market downtown almost daily and the sell so nice sweet stuff: sugary almonds and other nuts, gingerbread, gummibears and wafers with cream. *sob*
Luckily, I found a very nice substitute for me: they also have nice fishy stuff: fried fish, calamaries and so on. It's not exactly the healthiest food you can imagine but at least it is not sweet. They also have nice rolls filled with cheese and bacon.
At length, I found out that I tend to eat food that contains a lot more fat than before I limited the sweets to an absolute minimum. So this may be a hint on the new 30 day trial in January.Fortunately, I also found so many 'good' sweets in a health food shop close by. You can't say that they're cheap but they are definitely healthy. Some of them are also almost fat-free. But the nice and tasty ones do contain a lot of nuts and therefore, a lot of fat. But as we learned already unsaturated fats from nuts are not really bad.
After writing so much about food I am hungry. See you soon!

Rats love Avocado!

But not only rats do like avocado also running rats love them.
I must confess that this is a rather new love but that makes it even stronger.
And as I suppose not everybody can use avocados on their menu yet I made up some little pictures with some preparation ideas so you can imagine what nice things you can make out of an avocado and some other vegetables.

If you have one or two really ripe avocados and mash them with a fork you can use them for almost everything. You can add mashed bananas, almonds and honey to get a sweet bread dip for breakfast or you add vegetables like peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and garlic to have a savoury meal (spices like salt, black pepper or chili are also important!). You can also add sliced avocados to your salad or use them smoothly mixed for a vegan salad dressing. Herbs like parsely and chives also go wonderfully with avocado recipes. Be creative and try out this fruit and you'll discover some new tastes. If you need recipes you might like to try those or those.

If you want to try avocado make sure to buy them one or two days before you prepare the meal. Usually they are not quite ripe enough to mash them easily when you just bought them.

According to a highly valued page avocado is relatively high in energy and (saturated) fats but it also contains a moderate amount of magnesium which is very important for running rats. Moreover, avocado contains vitamins C, E, K, B6 and folate. If you add other fruit and veg you have a very wholesome and additionally, satisfying meal. Avocado tastes wonderful with bread or as a dip for other vegetables or bread sticks which makes it a perfect party snack. If you like butter you'll also love avocado. Give it a try!

30 Day Challenge

I concocted a new plan.
As you probably noticed I'm addicted to chocolate. I really have a hard time sticking to the 'good' chocolate when there is so much choice. Especially now that it's almost Chistmas and you can buy even more sweets than usual. Our Christmas Market just opened and you can guzzle your way completely through the whole town. As addiction never is a good thing I need to change. And I think I've got a good idea.

I'll start a new 30 day trial from tomorrow. 'Healthy' sweets only. Such as 85% cocoa containing chocolate, dried fuits and nuts. No milk chocolate, nougat or marcipan allowed. If I have a choice I'm eating whatever I want.
So that means that I'll stick to the good stuff for at least 30 days. I'll track what I ate and how I felt during this time and hope to get results afterwards.

As they found out dark chocolate is actually quite healthy I guess I should feelt great. Dark choci lowers blood pressure and keeps your heart healthy because it works against blood clotting. Also, it contains antioxidantes which help to protect your body from free radicals.

Dried fruit and nuts are wholesome snacks, too. Of course you should be aware of the calories they contain if you want to lose weight (just the same with chocolate). But in the end they are much more natural than a candy bar. Moreover, nuts contain unsaturated fats which are actually 'good' fats. They help to prevent heart diseases and keep your LDL cholesterol level low. They also contain omega-3 fatty acids which you usually only find in fish. These also help preventing heart diseases.

My goal is to be strong enough to say NO against all the unwholesome stuff during christmas time and also later on. I'd rather lose a couple of pounds because of more controlled eating instead of gaining weight during christmas time.
I also hope not to buy as many sweets as usual if I'm only to buy the 'good' ones because they are usually more expensive.

I'll keep you updated. :)

Tips to change your diet

Wanna lose a couple of pounds? Who doesn't?
Now we all know now what we should eat but everyone has difficulties in following the healthy-diet rules. I do have my difficulties with them, too. It's just so bugging to get through the supermatket with all those colorful, funny packages. I'm working in one and see all these 'nice' things daily and it makes me furious sometimes. Everybody is allowed to eat that stuff and I'm not. And why? Just because I want to run that stupid marathon as fast as I can. But on the other hand I do look so much better than years before.

That's why I figured out that I needed a complete new behaviour in the super-market. I ignore the parts with the colorful, funny packages and stick to the fruit and veg part as often as I can. It's colorful in the fruit and veg part, too. Green apples, yellow melons and red tomatoes. I do enjoy the non-artificial colours. And if I want to reward myself because of an overwhelming sportive achievement I buy organic food. It's actually not so much more expensive. But I just eat too much of it to buy it always.

It's still very difficult to leave the choci and go with carrots and cucumbers instead. But then maybe at least you can avoid supermarkets altogether. When I started to buy my stuff on small farmer's markets where you can also have a nice chat with the guy who knows exactly how the apples taste you'll start to consume less unwholesomes simply because you couldn't buy any. Moreover it's often much more fun there and has a holiday charme if the sun is out. And if it's not in walking distance: what does it matter? Take your bike on a nice ride and enjoy your ride and your shopping. Make the most of it.
If I don't have to work, I usually buy my stuff on Saturday mornings on such a maket. It's cheap and nice. And usually I've had a full workout afterwards because I buy so many nice things that I can hardly cycle home.

A good idea is also to look for substitutes in you diet. I try to substitute the sweets in the evening with a plate full of nice fruit. It doesn't always work entirely but at least I don't consume as much choci as if I hadn't had the fruit before.
I also don't go to work without my bag full of vegetables anymore. It looks much nicer than the stuff my collegues put in the microwave. Of course I'm not able to do this all day long but try to get better in substituting. But on the other hand I also almost always earned my chocolate by running, swimming and biking (You could have noticed here: Triathlon is close, too.).

In the end it's just the same with the running. Motivation comes first. I found a motivation: the marathon (and the triathlon actually). Also friend#2 helps a lot. And as boyfriend#1 always says: If you don't get what you want you don't want it badly enough.

How to be a healty running rat

I suppose it might a quite a good idea to drop some lines about nutrition as well.
Obviously you can't take me too serious most of the time. I mean the stuff about the tons of chocolate I eat daily is not very precise. I am really rather a nutrition control freak.

As you probably noticed everyone knows which diet is best for you (And I do, too.) Nutrions gurus and many different diets promise you to lose a million pounds a week and that kind of stuff. Doesn't sound real? Well try it (and pay 150 bucks) and you will be amazed! (Amazing how much money I spent on that shit!)
At least I am quite sure that all the diets I tried (and there are quite a lot, I started at 12) just made me more and more look like an (un)happy hippo. Of course they take all your self-confidence because you are too stupid to follow even such a simple plan as to only eat one carrot a day!
When I really was fed up with all that I decided I'll just go with healthy food (as far as I knew then). And guess what? It works! So you can stick with your weight easily and feel good.
Basically it's just this: fruit and veg as much as you want. Until your satisfied. Until you cannot crawl to your fridge again because your full belly is holding you back.

Maybe that's not what you wanted to hear if you're a fast food and sweets fan but believe me: you'll actually feel so much better, lighter, full of power and have a free mind! There are some raw vegans who state just the same (example). I'm amazed how they say everybody around you will notice your change. But I guess that's because you feel better if you eat healthy, are more self-concious and just have a complete new vision of the world.
In fact I also thought about going with raw vegan after boyfriend#1 brought it up. It sounded interesting and much like I would love it. But after thinking a while (you know I take longer sometimes) I decided that it might be too cumbersome for me. Sometimes it takes a while 'to cook' tasty raw food and I'd really miss my choci (which is not absolutely unwholesome if you buy the right one). Moreover, I learned right here that animal fats are sometimes healthier than they say.

Hence: strict raw vegan diet off the table.
The compromise: Raw-vegan (uncooked fruit and veg) with some vegan (including bread once in a while) and absolute carnivore food (chocolate).
Also, I try to eat fish on a regular basis (I didn't succeed yet). I also manage to eat some meat once in a while.

If you want to lose weight on the other hand you should control youself a bit more and step on the scales once a week (that's what I do currently so the next marathon will be easier). Of course you should do sports and it also would be a good idea to reduce the sugar containing parts of the diet, i.e. the bananas and grapes (and the choci of course!). What's helpful as well might be fasting a day per week if you can manage (or even over a longer period). A different idea would be to cut dinner out as often as you can (I can't) or only eat some veg for dinner (that's easier for me).

You really just have to listen to your body if you eat wholesome food. It learns what's good and what it needs and then tells you if you eate insufficiently.