Changing up.

What to do next with exercise and diet.

Blog time, March 2024……so, I was lying in bed a few nights ago and having a feel of my thighs…….at near the end of my first very moderate training plan (essentially 100 outdoor walk sessions) my thigh muscles seem to have firmed up and become a lot more defined – I, for example, can easily feel the groove between the quads and whichever lump is below it.

Given that my first ‘100’ is really only walking with a bit of added cardio drive I was quite pleased with the tactile result. My walking though has always had to include a lot of hill work because that’s just the nature of the geography around here.

Not great, not terrible.

Also as I write I note that my usual belt is in by 2 notches, sometimes 3 and that my actual weight is slowly going the right way. How much i’m not precisely sure because I didn’t take the time to record an accurate starting weight – to be honest I was a bit scared and very embarrassed at my appearance in the bathroom mirror. Another tactile change is that my belly fat is all loosening up – looks terrible, feels better !. It’s only been a small change achieved slowly unlike the quite dramatic weight change when I started using a weights gym some 13 years ago – the weight loss was great except that it came back and more besides as soon as I took my eye off the ball. I feel more comfortable now with slow change as long as it continues the right way plus, in my opinion, I have a better attitude about what I can achieve at 66 rather than 50 something.

As I write i’m about to become officially old in that I will be 66 any day now and hopefully get both a bus pass and my state pension. Of the two the state pension will greatly help with the huge increase in the cost of living and the bus pass would make it viable for me to make regular visits to a gym – this might be the next change in my exercise program.

Exercise – next.

I may have just taken a leaf out of Dr Peter Attia’s longevity strategy in that I have gone from nothing to something, in terms of exercise, with my daily one hour of walking with enough hills involved to create a more cardio workout when I push it a bit. Attia says that even a 15 minute daily routine makes for the greatest improvement in health and longevity over the person who does nothing – I should be nicely ahead of that having achieved a ‘daily dose’ of exercise that is always one hour and sometimes two. The second Attia point though is that maximum cardiac workload (VO2 max) is the single largest metric for long term healthy survival and pushing the ‘cardio’ is something that iv’e never been into except for a short period a long time ago.

To bring it right up to date, I read Dr Attia’s book (Outlive) and iv’e just watched Dr Rhonda Patrick being interviewed about an exercise regime that iv’e never even heard of – I have for instance heard of high intensity interval training and practices such as Tabata routines but i’d never heard of this one – basically the Norwegian 4 X 4 workout. The idea is to work at near maximal heartrate (80 – 85 % of ideal maximum) for 4 minutes and then ease off to ‘easy’ for 3 minutes….rinse and repeat 4 times. Like trying to achieve an actual Tabata I imagine it to be very hard – whether I could achieve a routine like that is questionable and I already know that I won’t be attempting it through running because I won’t and can’t put that much impact load on my operative knee.

When I set out my own parameters for attempting to get to such a routine I obviously know that it would have to be a progressive buildup, I can’t do it by running, don’t have access to a gym but do have access to some mean hills. I wonder, for example, if I could do it on a hill with a loaded rucksack just within fast walking pace but in forced pace like the military practice of ‘yomping’ or ‘tabbing’. To explain the first you would need to see the Royal Marines doing distance with loaded packs and for the latter I believe it came from the Parachute regiment. I have, a long time ago. learnt to move quickly with a loaded pack – the style being something between walking and jogging. Maybe that’s one approach I could take as I could do interval-like loops on one of my regular exercise hills

Another obvious choice, now that I almost have a bus pass, is to do a gym session where I try for a similar workout on an exercise bike and then continue my exercise by walking home (2 hours). One of the few good points about an otherwise torturous sounding workout is that I would only need to do it once a week.

If you’re wondering where the trike comes in remember that I am training now mainly to ride the trike around here and only with time and riding experience will I consider trike riding as part of my weekly routine.

Dietary approach now and next.

Iv’e just come to the realization that iv’e had a lifelong problem with sugar, possibly what Dr Cywes would classify as a sugar addiction. My second realization is that it was possibly created in childhood by late mother’s habit of always serving a sweet dessert with dinner – we called it ‘pudding in those days – and unknowingly driving the addiction myself once I cut the apron strings.

At 65 I am slowly working towards a zero added sugar approach, biscuits and cakes are my great downfall and I am glad to say that most days I am down to one or two biscuits over a whole day and only one cake from the bakery once a week – usually when we go out for coffee. Just recently I had a nasty chest infection and I note that my sense of taste has changed to the point where I find most sweet things too sweet and while it lasts I am trying to affect the change towards zero alongside other dietary changes. My other main dietary changes are : 1. Tending towards higher protein 2.Working with an eating window of about 6-8 hours within which I eat 3. Timing my eating with my exercise 4.Moderate dietary restriction – mainly portion size. and lastly leaning towards a low carb approach with less bread and as I said at the start no added sugar, especially anything with HFCS which luckily I now find far too sickly sweet.

One of my main working principles is to find an approach that is sustainable over a longer period so that I don’t experience ‘boom and bust’ cycles in my weight – I don’t favor fasting as much as I used to because at 66 I can’t afford to lose muscle.