A little bit of help:

Okay,  Summer's over, the nights are fair drawing in and work's on a mad rush before Christmas.  Things are hectic. Getting out of bed in the dark is hard work. Going out for a run in the cold is hard work. Resisting that chocolate biscuit is a real challenge. This is the time of year when the lure of the armchair is strong.  This is the time of year when my will power has its work cut out.

I've blogged before about will power; it's like a muscle, you can train it and strengthen it, but if pushed too hard it can get worn out. By the time I get home from work, my will power runs at a peep. That's when I get my reward for getting through the day (and they do say will power is linked to low blood sugar levels).  On good days or when the wind allows, my reward might be a run, or in the summer we go for a walk. But on the bad days, especially the cold, dark, wet winter evenings, my attention turns to cake or a slice of toast (or maybe even a glass of wine!).

So I was intrigued to hear about some research (scroll down a bit)  about how we might be helped to cope when our willpower tank is running on empty.  Psychologists in Aberdeen stuck signs in coffee shops giving calorie counts for different food choices. These are organised from the lowest calorie options on the left to the highest calorie ones on the right.  Next to it is a little note saying that if you want to eat fewer calories then you might want to think about picking something from the left hand side. A little reminder, a helping hand. Not a fact, not a lecture, just a little helpful reminder - a nudge. They picked left to right as apparently we have a small bias to things we see on our left so pay attention to the left (hmm I wonder if that works if your writing goes the other way...).

Anyway, sales of high calorie foods dropped and sales of about half (not all) of the low calorie foods increased. There was a shift from high calorie to low calorie options - a black coffee instead of that latte. And even more interestingly, when they asked customers what they thought, the ones who scored lowest on will power were more likely to change what they bought and many went for the lower calorie option. Hurray! A win for us, a win for researchers and a blow to obesity!

But never, ever underestimate the ability of us humans to do the unexpected.  The researchers found that some people just swopped one high calorie option for another. Instead of having that latte they had 3 chocolate bars - the same number of calories, the same unhealthy options.  They were all women. They were probably calorie counting and this was their treat. I think that's fair enough.

There's no doubt that with our busy lives, worry and stress pull us in a whole load of directions. In winter it can all be a little bit harder.  There's a lot of reasons given for the rise in obesity and I do wonder if our busy lives, lack of time and our many responsibilities drain our will power even more than in the past. Plus we have more temptations and choices and it's all too easy to go for the comforting treat. I don't think we suddenly have more lazy people in the world; none of the overweight people I know could be ever be seen as lazy. Busy? Juggling like mad? Yes! Lazy? Definitely not.

I know my will power varies a lot and not always predictably. A run can fire me up making me feel strong and healthy and I really (really) don't want to eat chocolate. But the next run really deserves that cake! An extra pound on the scales can set me back on track with vigour or send me straight to  the biscuit tin with depression.  I know when I was caring for Mum on top of a busy job I couldn't resist the chocolate treats I bought her to encourage her to eat something.

So if the researchers can come up with something that helps us remember that we do have a choice and makes us think for just a moment, then I think that's brilliant. A little note so we think twice before reaching for that bun when we're on autopilot and making lists about lists in our heads. It's not a nag. It's not a lecture. It's a helpful reminder for busy people with busy lives.

Talking of which, I've had another reminder this week. I've been in serious running mode. Despite the weather, I've wanted to run every day and do hills and tempo runs and just run and run. But on Wednesday I got a twinge in the area of my calf where I had an injury. So I've made myself do an easy run and take 2 rest days, even though the sun's been shining and I could have run (grrr).  Half of me feels like a sulky teenager, the other half feels strong and sensible.  I still did 4 runs, 25 plus miles. I feel good!

The Chi running is really helping me in so many ways, including my tendency to over do things. I wonder if it can help me sort out my tendency to overeat!


Hope you've had a good week. Take care

Suex

Running on sleepy: eyes half shut

Okay, hands up who's exhausted? Who would really, really like to catch up on the old zzzzs but is just too busy? Sleeping time gets hijacked when we've lots to do. Up at 4am to get that run in before work. Staying up late to get the ironing done or more pleasurably, to get some time with friends. Every day that sleeping time gets a bit more chipped off it, gradually whittled away, even on a bank holiday! Long gone are the days of sleeping til lunchtime.

I don't know about you, but I've just got used to having less than my allotted 8 hours kip and most of the time it's fine. Less sleep, more time to do things. Lying in wastes time that could be spent doing things - it wastes the day. Yes I am that age and I am now saying things my parents said to me.

Because I'm practicing body-sensing, I'm beginning to understand what sleep deprivation does to me. On our trip to Barcelona in March, the clocks went forward several times so we didn't know which way was up when we got home. Then an early rise for a trip to London, a few a late finishes at work and a long 'to do list'. None of these keep me awake at night, I go out like a light.  No my problem is waking up at 4am. If I've had a long day at work or lots of travelling, that's often accompanied by a night of poor quality sleep, my body restless from sitting down all day, eating crap food and drinking too much tea.  

When I'm tired, things go awry. I struggle to concentrate, I'm easily distracted and I can't resist nibbling on rubbish, high sugar, high fat, junk food. My brain is not engaged with what I'm doing, it floats around on the breeze of random thoughts. Chocolate is eaten with absolutely no conscious input at all, cake slips past the lips barely tasted. My brain is on stand-by and those chattering monkeys rule the roost (apologies for the mixed metaphor there).

So I've been doing some digging round about sleep.  Research shows that we never really catch up after losing that hour when the clocks change. Maybe because I'm a winter baby my body clock is on British winter time, I never really feel right when the clocks are on British Sumer Time. We lose about 40 minutes of sleep every night after the clocks go forward as our body rhythms struggle to adapt. That adds up to a hell of a lot of sleep, especially if we're all paring our sleep down to the bone just to get by.

There's plenty of research that shows that disrupted sleep might not kill you, but it can certainly make your focus a bit blurred.  One study I found recently (www.occdigest.org.uk) showed that a lack of sleep can make us more prone to cyber loafing "frittering away work time on unrelated online activities". Isn't cyber-loafing a great concept,? I don't get time to do it at work (honest!) but I do lot a bit in my own time and it is good sport when you're tired or a bit hungover.

Anyway, they looked at Google's publicly available data for entertainment-related searches and found that these searches were significantly higher after the clocks went forward. The costs of cyber loafing have been estimated at £300m per year. That's a lot of loafing.

One of the theories for 'cyber-loafing' is ego depletion.  Some researchers see will power as a resource that gets used up through effort and sleep replenishes and re charges it. Lack of sleep saps our regulatory resources making us easy pickings for behaviours we need to keep control of - our defences are low. Certainly waking up groggy and out of synch with yourself is not a great way to start the day and is often associated with random thoughts about bacon rolls or muffins.

Lack of sleep certainly saps my will power and gets right at my weak spots. Women's Running magazine cites research that shows that a good sleep helps cut snacking, a real problem for me.  Folks who got less than 5.5 hours sleep a night ate larger amounts of high carb snacks than those who got 8 hours - and don't my scales know it. And this is not counting any impact lack of sleep has on your metabolism, making it easier to out fat on and harder to get it off. 

And of course it can be serious, lack of sleep can affect your running. Running Times had an interesting article on sleep and running.  Decreased sleep for even a few days impaired glycogen synthesis, meaning you're running on a half full tank and may "bonk" earlier than a well-rested individual (stop sniggering at the back). Disrupted sleep undermines our ability to repair training-induced soft-tissue breakdown. Not good if you're putting your body through serious training. 

So, freshly back from a very nice run, feeling replenished and refreshed despite my lack of sleep, what do I make of all of this?  All the advice is about getting to sleep and I don't have that problem, I am out like a light maybe because I already do all the stuff you're supposed to do. My problem is I'm wide awake at 4am wake up and then I start thinking about what I've got to do and the game's a bogie. I think I might just have to love with this for a while, so until I get a cunning plan, I'm going to take two preventative measures.  First I'm going to be limit the amount of running-related damage I inflict on my body. If I'm not repairing myself fully, then I have to watch my recovery times and make sure I take in protein immediately after a long or hard run. Second, I'm going to make the most of those early rises, that bit of extra time, and I'm going to enjoy a run, or get into work early. I'm not going to fret, just go with the flow.

Only two short runs and a spin class this week because of being away at the weekend. So I did 2 faster runs, one barefoot in the beach where I really focussed on form - both quality.  Next week I'm not going to do a long run, I fancy a break from distance, so I'm going to do more shorter ones just for a change and see how my body reacts to greater frequency. I did one today with a cheeky hill in the middle and it feels good.

Have a great week whether you're running, walking, working, playing, whatever.

Take care

Suex

In Recovery - Ready to run .....

A word that's been very much part of my life over the last few weeks is recovery, specifically recovering to run.  For some folk, they get injured, they get better and that's it. But for many of us it's a more complex and less certain process. And it's hard.

Here's what the dictionary says:

Recovery:  a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.  The action or process of regaining possession or control of something stolen or lost. Also  recovery shot - golf stroke bringing the ball from the rough or from a hazard back onto the fairway or the green. Football an act of taking possession of a fumbled ball. In rowing, cycling, or swimming, the action of returning the paddle, leg, or arm to its initial position ready to make a new stroke.


There's lots of good stuff in here that inspires me and captures the recovery process for me. Of course it's all about getting back to normal, but I like the idea of taking back control, regaining strength. I like also that it's physical and mental, that recovery is an end and a beginning.  


The definition sounds so positive and active and I need to be more positive about recovery; about my eventual return to running. I need to focus on getting ready to run.


A huge part of my recovery is about regaining confidence. When I first get an injury I am very cautious and self protective. I'm a catastrophic thinker - something happens and I immediately extrapolate the graph to the end of the world. It's a well know psychological problem you'll be glad to know.  So I worry terribly that the injury is going to get worse. I worry that some small movement, slip, accident, knock, will send me hurtling down that ladder; straight to jail, no passing go and it will be really serious this time. I was listening to Desert Island disks where an ex ballet dancer spoke about her ballet injury and how she needed someone she trusted to hold her hand and encourage her to dare to tackle the move that injured her. The confidence to take that risk was a critical part of her recovery. 


So this week, having found the positive things about not running, i.e. enjoying the here and now; I've been focussing on the future; on taking back control and getting a positive running-focussed mindset.  


My strategy is to start off with some easy risk free actions and move up from there SLOWLY - no frightening the horses. Here's what I've done since I last blogged:

• Deleted my old training schedule from my iPhone and calendars
• Done one hour of some kind of exercise every day - including physio, balance; upper body exercises and Pilates. 
• Practiced walking properly - very, very slowly
• Tried to drive - and stopped - ouch! even the thought of an emergency stop hurts
• Changed my thinking as I go down our stairs from re-living the ping to imaging I'm fixed and heading out for a nice long run
• Bought a mini bicycle machine to get those quads working until I can drive to the gym/pool and some new Pilates and workout DVDs 
• Got (and used!) a foam roller and compression tights
• Begun to think whether I want to risk running the Barcelona Marathon even if I am fit or wait until the autumn

Acting positive, even when I didn't really feel like it, really helped. I've gradually upped my risk taking, pushed the calf a bit, but not too much. I'm more in control and recovery is becoming an active thing, not just sitting on my bum (although I am doing a lot of that!).  


I'm surprised how tired I feel. Sometimes I focus on the loss of my Barcelona dream, of my fitness and those good running days stolen from me. Sometimes I'm sad; lost in the rough or abandoned in the sandpit as my running chums do a hole in one and are back in the Twitter clubhouse comparing notes. But that's neither use nor ornament as we say in Yorkshire and of course fine words butter no parsnips!


Recovery, just like running and any other challenge we set ourselves, is about mental strength, discipline and persistence. When I was dieting, I dealt with setbacks (eating the entire tub of ice cream; a nice bottle of Rioja) by just getting back onto the diet and not looking back. Usually I recovered my confidence, focus and drive to lose weight pretty quickly and easily. I need to do the same now for my running, but I don't have quite the control of the biological side of things!


The challenges of recovery are different for every one of us.  I'm a wimp. I need courage to take risks that might well make my injury a bit worse.  Other folk need the discipline not to run with an injury. I need to stop analysing how it all happened and focus on the future. Others need to spend longer learning from what went wrong before they look ahead. What is clear is that recovery is not easy for any of us, it tests us mentally and spiritually and so, like our damaged muscles, can make us stronger.


As I type, I have done my first set of very light calf raises and survived. That was really scary. I still can't walk very well or very far, but it will come.  Will I be able to make up over 2 months lost training and get fit to run a marathon in about 8 weeks when I can't even walk to the train station? Not sure yet, but whatever happens, all will sooner or later be fine.


This post is dedicated to everyone in recovery, whatever your challenge is. May you find the strength, courage, determination and wisdom to get through. And more than anything else, the hope and belief that you will get there.


Take care
Suex

More bad (eating) habits: naughty nibbling exposed!

As I clamber back onto the wagon after an indulgent Christmas I've noticed a few bad eating habits are still around and impeding my return to normal. They are aided and abetted by me being unable to run anything off and of course having what should be running time now available for other things.

Here, in all their shameful glory are my bad eating habits - well not all, just the ones causing problems at the moment:

I hoard food and I hate to throw it away. Christmas is a double whammy for this pair. I've already blogged about my Christmas hoarding instincts so it's no surprise that I have in the house lots of food; lots of rich food. To get rid of it I have to eat it or throw it out.  I was brought up not to waste food, never mind throw it out. This year, for the first time ever, I threw food in the bin (only if the birds or the cats wouldn't eat it!). This is a crime I know, I am ashamed as I type. And of course I haven't thrown it all out (discipline failure!) so there is some temptation at hand.  I am hoping that this experience has been so traumatic that next year I am sensible and don't overbuy, that will remove temptation and set a boundary for the return to normal. 

Family foods are good foods.  As a child I learnt about eating just like everyone else, in the family home and at school. There wasn't much on TV, Fanny Craddock didn't really impact on family cooking and cookbooks were rare. No Biggest Loser for us! Normal eating in the 1960s and 70s was a big roast plus pudding on a Sunday; fish and chips after swimming on Saturday or on the way home after a night out.   Mince and veg almost every night  (though of course veg were soaked overnight and boiled and boiled). Porridge for breakfast. School dinners, meals at other folks' houses and what we concocted in cookery lessons were all the same sort of thing (except the Pineapple Upside Down Cake circa 1969 only found in cookery rooms thank goodness!).  These foods are foods that Mum recognises, that the family ate together, they are comforting in a very deep way.

Food is a reward for hard work. We didn't have many biscuits or chocolates as kids but tea and toast was a treat and a reward to be had at almost anytime of the day or night for almost any reason you can think of.  Bacon and toast was a very special reward, usually for studying hard. I knew I was in favour and a very good girl when I got tea and a toasted bacon sarnie delivered to my desk.  Nowadays, I self-administer the treats. Health and Safety ban toasters at work so I am reduced to chocolate biscuits, but the principle remains in tact.

Diets are bad.  Like many women of their generation, my Mum was always on some weird diet or another - grapefruits, eggs, lemon juice (remember PLJ!). I never really understood why, she always looked slim and beautiful to me. These diets made life tense and uncomfortable.  Despite the diets, Mum also used to nibble in secret.  She'd have a tiny plate at dinner but fill up in the kitchen. We'd sit with big plate-fulls whilst Mum apparently ate like a bird and dieted. This left me feeling greedy and confused about food and portions. How could she possibly survive on such a small amount of food? Was this how women ate? Dad didn't seem to have any problems with eating and he could eat loads. I knew who I wanted to be like!

By the time I left home I had learnt a lot about what 'normal people' - people like my family - ate and about how food worked.  Over the years, I just applied and adapted what I'd learnt. Not surprisingly, I put on weight. I didn't diet and had no workable notion of weight control, so I exercised to control my weight when I got too fed up. The rest as you know is history.

Over the years I did change as I learnt new things and met new people, but I never really changed my basic beliefs about food.  My 'normal' expanded to include broccoli, garlic, butternut squash and aubergines. Out went lard, batter, three course lunches and the top of the milk.  When I started on my weight loss diet, very late in life, things changed.  I had to do a serious shed load of re-learning about healthy food, healthy portions and all the rest of it. It took me a year to begin to make those changes.

The emotional stuff though is harder.  I struggle still with my hatred of diets and I have to crack this.  I know (in theory) that I only need to eat fewer calories than I use for a few weeks, I don't even have it call it a diet! I'm going to have to re programme myself and @nuuutymel and my friend Helen have both suggested I take a look at NLP which I'm going to do (no I really am this time!). 

Similarly, the nibbling. As I type I realise that I don't nibble when watching TV, I nibble when I am working. It's partly that I get up, stretch the legs, stretch the mind, make a cuppa.... and yes, give myself a little foodie pat on  the back for working hard.  

A little while ago a friend told me about a conversation she had with her daughter who was being bullied at school for being 'fat'. At 9 years old, Fiona is not fat, but she is a bit heavier than her peers. My pal Sarah was worried, how to take Fiona's predicament seriously whilst avoiding any suggestion that weight loss was the answer.  Sarah handled it beautifully. They had  a long chat about how Fiona felt and decided that they would both read about healthy eating and exercise. As a result, they both learnt a lot; they had quality time together and now they are both training for Race for Life next year. Fiona is happy and more confident and their relationship is even stronger than it was. Fiona has a fantastic base for healthy living in adulthood.

Children are programmed to learn and they won't just learn what you want them to learn, there are always hidden messages to be decoded. What child ever fell for the 'do as I say not as I do' line!  Nowadays children have many more influences on them and more sources of information - for good and ill. For them it will be about keeping in good shape using self confidence, self belief and self esteem, much the same as for my generation I suppose!

As 2012 gets underway, I'm still not sure what my running goals will be this year, but I do now have some eating habits to sort out.   My two big challenges are getting over my diet phobia and my thing about rewarding myself for working with toast. I'll deal with Christmas hoarding in due course - remind me!

I hope wherever you are you enjoyed the festive season, survived the weather and are back on track for reaching your goals and aspirations for 2012. I hope to be out and running again soon. I will have my foot up for another 2 weeks, recovery is slow, but I will get there. Toes crossed!

Take care

Suex