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The last couple of weeks have been tricky.
During the Great Manchester Cycle on Monday 4th June I came off my bicycle and went skidding across the tarmac.
Luckily I didn’t suffer any serious injuries, which I’m very grateful for (one of the brake handles snapped clean in half – I dread to think how it would’ve been if one of my fingers had crashed down before it). But I had some horrible cuts and bruises including a lot of swelling on my right knee and a few centimetres of missing skin on each hand, which made any kind of exercise very difficult.
Fortunately, everything healed well and I was just starting to be ready to get back into my routine at the start of this week when I came down with a flu-like virus that left me with aching joints and no energy. Today I’m feeling a lot better though, so this morning I decided to step on the scale and assess the damage of a sedentary fortnight.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that my weight hadn’t altered, I’m still at 61.6 kg. According to the scale my body fat has also stayed constant at 27% and there’s no change in my measurements either.
I’m really pleased about this and not just because I’m relived not to have taken any backward steps. It serves as confirmation that I’ve been getting it right. I stopped exercising and carried on eating an amount that kept me completely satisfied and I didn’t gain weight. So this should mean that now I’m ready to get back on track the exercise will create an energy deficit once more (i.e. I’ll be using up a little more energy than I get from my diet) and I’ll start losing body fat again.
I’m really excited about getting going again. I did a low key session today with quite light weights to ease myself back in and check everything felt OK and I’m happy to report that I’m good to go. I’ll be taking delivery of my new stationary bike tomorrow (hopefully not even I can fall off this one!) so I’ll put that to the test with some hard intervals after doing my metabolic training.
So, that’s where I’m at… But, although I hope sharing my experiences is of some value to you, I’m really just using my story in to give a bit of narrative thread to this blog and to let you know what’s working for me. My main purpose in posting is always to give you a takeaway message to help you reach your fat loss and/or fitness goals.
I think today’s message is this: DO IT RIGHT. Try to lose weight by starving yourself, or over-exercising and, sooner or later, you’ll experience something like falling off your bike or getting flu and because your body hasn’t been well-conditioned and you haven’t got into the habit of eating well you’ll probably find that, after all the stress and strain it took to lose weight that way, you end up right back where you started in the course of just a few weeks. (Or even, thanks to your slowed metabolism and overstrained body/will power, in a worse state.)
On the other hand, if you gradually build up a fit, strong body and get into the habit of eating a good diet, you should find that your metabolism can happily stand a couple of weeks without exercise and that, once recovered, you’ll be ready to get back on track with nicely rested and refueled muscles.
How is your fitness and/or fat loss going? I’m always super keen to hear how you’re getting on as well as your thoughts on my posts, so please leave a comment. And, as always, if you like what you read here I’d really appreciate it if you’d share it using one of the social media buttons.
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Good to hear that you haven’t been derailed by your mishap. It is also very encouraging for me. I am injured and been told I cannot run for at least two months. My main worry is I’ll put weight on. I lost a lot training for the 100 mile Ultra Trail South West which I was due to run on the 23rd June. Reading your blog entry made me think about how I lost that weight and it was by sensible eating and having an amount that kept me satisfied. So I now know what to do to keep it offv during this period of enforced rest. Thank you Julia.
Not sure the use of the word “takeaway” in takeaway message was the best choice:-)
Hi Edward,
Sorry the injury has you out for so long, although two months isn’t all that much in the scheme of things. I’m sure you’ll be able to manage your weight by eating right, but maybe there’s some other form of exercise you could do while running is off the menu? Could be a good opportunity to do a bit of strength work and build up some muscle – much easier to do when you’re not doing a lot of cardio endurance training. Recover well… Point taken re. the “takeaway”!
Jx
Interesting post Julia. At the moment I am in a holding pattern as far as training is going, having had a successful race in the London marathon in April. That means that I have reduced my weekly mileage from the max that I reached before the marathon and I don’t think I am putting on weight, but neither am I losing weight. I have actually been trying to ignore my actual weight and instead focus on what results I am getting from my training, but it is not much use pretending that I am not worried about losing weight. So I have decided that I should add some other forms of exercise so that I improve the ‘in-coming calories vs. burning of calories’ ratio without simply running more. Hopefully that’ll shift a kilo or two. That and cutting out sugar… (now that is going to be tough!)
Congratulations on keeping your diet in tact whilst you were recovering. I have recently been researching an eating a vegan diet. It was hard to eat the right amount of calories but I did it. I did this without the intention to lose weight but weightloss came as a bonus.
My weight loss is steadily coming down. As you know, I have to be careful with the amount of exercise I do but I am steadily increasing that. Something I really struggle with is the week before my period I become so ravenous and all control flies out of the window. I’d be interested in any tips you have for that.
I think I have said this before but I couldnt agree more with you about moderation in diet and exercise. This was my biggest mistake, life changing in fact, and so many fitness instructors have encouraged me to go mental with exercise in the past so its refreshing that you’re exercising caution.