Diet progress week three: output must exceed input!
Not so much weight
loss this week 😒. Still, have to remember that the target is a steady
one pound a week, which is only about 450 grams, so well within that target.
However, given that the principle of weight reduction – whatever method you’re
using – is that output has to exceed input, then this week I decided to have a
look at that output. And what a surprise I got!
I mentioned last
week that I’m an intermittent Fitbit user. I know some people won’t go anywhere
without their Fitbit. In fact, I even saw a recent plea for help on Facebook
from a lady who’d just moved to France and had lost her charger in the midst of
packing boxes. Fortunately, someone soon came to the rescue. There’s a heap of
statistics you can glean from your Fitbit, even the very basic original model
like mine. [I’m not into unnecessary upgrades as long as the products are
working, hence the reason I’m still using a first-generation Kindle.]
I didn’t really
need a Fitbit to tell me I wasn’t sufficiently active. When I’m working, and
that can be a seven-day week, I’m in front of the computer five, six, seven
hours a day. The only day I got anywhere near the minimum target of 10,000
steps was when I took a day off and went to visit my friends at Twilight. Over
the rest of the week I barely averaged 5,000 steps. It was time for some
radical action to ramp up my level of physical activity.
In the past, I’ve
dabbled with various keep-fit tactics. The only thing that has stuck is my
yoga, which I do several times a week, sometimes even every day. But yoga
doesn’t really burn the calories or provide a cardio workout – something
recommended to fight the ageing process. A couple of years ago I acquired a second-hand
exercise bike, but it didn’t fit into the room where I planned to use it, the
ceiling was too low. I sold it on. Next, I tried a treadmill, which was more
successful, though it did go through a long period as a clothes horse. I even
managed to get up to eight-minute blocks on a couch-to-5k programme. However,
re-siting the treadmill when we had a layout change just didn’t work and I
succumbed to pressure to sell it on.
Last summer I had a
go at jogging around the village. I started off getting up at 6.30am to run
before breakfast. Initially this was quite successful, and I saw some wonderful
sights: the turrets of the Chateau de Brie poking through the morning mist, a
deer snuffling around one of the village springs and a fox loping across a
hayfield. Then I tripped over the dog one morning, smashed up my knee and it
was months before I could even do yoga. I tried to go back to jogging, Japanese
Slow Jogging this time – even bought the ebook – but bad weather put paid to
this plan.
The problem with
introducing any new activity, whether it be a hobby or a job, is finding time
and then sticking to it long enough so that it becomes a habit. Some say you
only need 21 days to fix a new routine, others at least three months. With work
and the dogs to walk, our days follow a pretty regular schedule. You could
almost set your watch by our movements, especially the dogs’ treat time! They
have their own internal clocks. One reason that my meditation time is fixed in
stone is that it fits neatly into the time when Mr VV is doing his daily
ablutions and I’m waiting for us to take the dogs for their walk. Similarly,
yoga fits into the post-work period, after the dogs’ second outing and before I
need to start thinking about what to make for dinner.
I needed an
activity that didn’t involve any (more) expensive equipment, didn’t involve
leaving the house and that didn’t take up too much time. The answer - skipping.
Actually, it’s now called ‘jump rope’. Turns out, after a bit of research, that
adult skipping is ‘on trend’. There’s even YouTube videos showing you how to
skip. And an adult skipping rope costs less than €10 in Decathlon. No other
clothing or equipment required that I didn’t already have.
According to
Livestrong.com, you can burn 600 calories with an hour’s skipping. However,
it’s such an intensive form of exercise that you don’t need to jump rope for
that long, thankfully. The recommendation is to start with a maximum of ten
minutes a day, or even less, gradually building up to twenty minutes. Ten
minutes skipping is said to equal a thirty-minute run, so that’s a two-thirds
time saving. For a cardio workout, high intensity bursts of thirty seconds’
skipping are recommended with a slower or resting interval. So, armed with my
new skipping rope and with fond memories of playground skipping games, I set
about incorporating a new form of exercise into my daily schedule. Update to
follow next week!
Recipe of the week: Courgette and Bean Pasta
On the food front,
this week I’ve added a new recipe to the weight-loss rotation. Bedtime reading
is currently Dr Greger’s “How not to die” and I was inspired by his advice to
add beans or legumes to virtually all meals. So, I decided to adapt a recipe
from vegetarian days, replacing parmesan with nutritional yeast, creme fraiche
with soya cream and added some mashed cannellini beans. Even with a generous
serving of one cup of cooked wholewheat pasta one portion comes in at less than
350 calories, so plenty of scope for dessert. The recipe serves two; one cup of
dry pasta should yield a cup each of cooked pasta for each portion.
You’ll need:
1 cup cannellini
beans, cooked or tinned, rinsed and drained
100ml soya cream
2 cups grated
courgette (1 medium)
Zest and juice of
one lemon
3 tbsp chopped
parsley
3 tbsp nutritional
yeast
3 garlic cloves,
grated/minced
1 tsp colza or
olive oil
1 cup short wholewheat
pasta, for example, penne or spirals
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