So, first things first, today's weight: 12 st 0.4 lb. Down around 4 lb from yesterday. Good start. Should hit 11 st x tomorrow, and 10 st x the day after (I wish!)
I went for a "barefoot" run last night hoping to crack 2 miles, and managed 3.02 miles! Compared to the night before, where I attempted the same thing and gave up with major wheezing after around 1, this was great progress. Running "barefoot" (I'd stop with the quotes if I didn't think someone would deep-link here and get the wrong idea) is a completely different style focusing on landing on the ball of the foot with almost no impact on the heel. This puts extra strain on the calf muscles, and focuses you on staying "up" all the time (I tend to run on my ball anyway, so that wasn't really a change; but I "coast" on my heel which I can't do any more, so I have to run constantly). 3 miles is good, I was hoping to get there by the weekend, so managing it on Monday is great.
Diet is going well. Finished the last of the milk in the house yesterday, and changed the order so that we only have enough for my daughter now. Other than that I stuck easily enough to protein yesterday, and, apart from the oat bran with breakfast, am going protein only again today (and for the rest of the week). Keeping on top of the liquid intake too. 1.5 litres? Pffft 2, 2.5 easily!
I've been reviewing the salient points of the diet again, to refresh my memory. For those new here the diet I follow is the Dukan diet. The diet is low fat, low carb, and starts with a few days of pure protein (bar a table spoon of oat bran to keeps things moving); after the first few days you add in low starch veg every other day (or once in every three if you want greater weight loss). Throughout you drink water and exercise. The key difference between this and Atkins is the low fat aspect.
With all that in mind I was quite dismayed when I came across this article on the BBC website during lunch. Irrespective of my take on the diet, the article is rubbish. It is a long term diet, you are not meant to hit your goals in a week or 2, it is meant to change your eating habits and reduce your reliance on high carb meals, so to include 2 people who've only done the diet for 2 weeks is misleading. Now one of those people may continue on the diet, but another one stuck with it for 2 weeks, gave up, and then put the weight back on! Shock, horror! Someone tried something for 2 weeks, got bored, and saw no benefit! The other 2 participants have done the diet for reasonable time periods, and their experiences reflect mine; food's a bit boring, but other than that you lose weight, and feel fine. The side effects the other 2 list are only present in the first 3 or 4 days as your body transfers from burning to sugars to burning fats entering ketosis. If you only do the diet for 2 weeks these things might stay in your mind, but as they disappear by day 5 of a several month journey they are largely irrelevant.
The BBC then asks if there is too much salt or fat - high cholesterol. Has the researcher not researched the diet?! The diet specifically denies you salt and fat. The book goes as far as recommending you stay away from certain types of bottled water as they are a little high in sodium! As for fat, the whole diet is based on low carb, low fat food. You aren't allowed pork or lamb, carrots, potatoes, beetroot; no ham, no chicken wings, no chicken skin. No sauces, no mayonnaise. All this is in the first part of the book. Researchers, please research!
The poor woman from the British Nutrition Foundation has clearly been asked vague questions, or quoted out of context. However, her comments are fine (if irrelevant to the diet in question in some cases).
This sort of thing really annoys me as people read this sort of stuff, take it as fact, and then have pre-conceived ideas when they find out the diet I'm on. Surely it doesn't take that much more effort to get really representative people to question, and to ask questions that are relevant to the diet.
Ok, rant over. I know it's just a puff piece basically there because Dukan is in the news over a French libel case.
Right, another run this evening, another day on the diet, some more weight loss.
2 comments:
I'm sure that you can get away without the inverted commas around barefoot. It's not like you were saying that you went riding bareback!
You'd be surprised, I've had questions on both twitter and facebook even with using the quotes as to whether I'm using shoes or not. It is getting annoying though.
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