I didn’t write this and have never been running with Bruce Lee but it is an awesome story about pushing yourself through all boundaries.
It’s always nice to see a good success story. They can motivate you to get out of bed and go for a run but they can also motivate you to get to the point where you are providing your own success story to others.
Personally, I haven’t yet come across a story quite as motivating as The Unconquerable Dave. He didn’t have to fight against a rough childhood and he still has all his limbs, but just take a look at the transformation he underwent. He used the Primal Blueprint which in essence is a way of life based around the way our ancestors used to live and eat before such things as processed carbs and refined sugar came about. Whether you believe in the diet or not, this story is incredible.
Dave’s enthusiasm is entirely infectious and you can’t help but be happy for the guy after seeing where he came from to where he is now. Take a look at the whole transformation and story here: http://www.marksdailyapple.com/the-unconquerable-dave/
It’s obvious that I am not an expert on matters of health, but even in the short time that I have been with AD at W10 I have found a few things out that have opened my eyes to the destructive habits in my past. Before I moved to London I lived in a place called Frimley with 3 mates of mine. By the time I left that house in April 2009 I was at my heaviest ever. Looking back, it’s frightening to see the combinations of poor lifestyle choices that I was putting together each week. The three major ones were; what I was eating, what I was drinking and the amount of exercise I was getting.
Eating
I would wake up in the morning and start the day with the primary cardinal sin – skipping breakfast. It’s well-known that breakfast is the most important meal of the day but it wasn’t very apparent to me at the time. I justified the absence of a meal with the thinking that less food was a good thing, which meant I was able to go a little over the top on what I ate for lunch.
On the days that I did have lunch, I would opt for the meals-on-the-go by the door. A baguette or sandwich, plus a pot of noodles or some crisps and a chocolate for pudding. Though not quite the ideal formula for an energetic body, it was a slightly better alternative in principle to the option I often took: no lunch (because I was too lazy to walk to the shop). After forgoing two meals, I would get to the end of the day starving. Since I was so hungry by the end of the day I would buy a sandwich or a pot of noodles on the way home. I would eat that then drink the better part of a bottle of whisky before eating a massive dinner at about 10 or 11pm (I hated drinking after I ate, so I saved supper until the very end of the night so it didn’t halt my drinking). Eating that huge meal would be the last thing I would do before going to sleep. Not eating throughout the day then having a mountain of food right before going to sleep is one way to guarantee that you will pack on weight.
Drinking
Alcohol is something I have to avoid these days. A lot of people seem surprised that I have to stop drinking completely, saying that they couldn’t go without a glass of wine at dinner. If I was the sort of person who could just have a beer with dinner and stop there, I would probably allow myself the treat every now and again. Sadly I am a thirsty soul, and would rather have 7 beers on one night of the week than 1 beer every night of the week. Not such a good attitude, but it is the reality. Back in the day, I was drinking 7 or 8 pints of beer a night, or finishing off two-thirds of a bottle of whisky, and doing that every night of the week. One night I drank a litre of Bacardi Rum in celebration of the birth of my cousin’s son, and that was a Monday. On Saturdays I would sometimes start at 7 or 8 in the morning, cracking open a beer just after sunrise when the Sharks were playing a Super 14 match in New Zealand. I would then carry on drinking until about 12 or 1 the next morning; roughly 15 hours of drinking throughout the day. My tolerance for alcohol was extraordinarily high. I would get vaguely drunk, but not madly, and for the amount of drinking I was doing it’s quite alarming that I would suffer from little more than a fuzzy head when I woke up the next day.
Exercise
I was getting absolutely no exercise during the latter stages of my time in Frimley. A friend from work would pick me up from the end of my driveway in the morning, and drop me off after work either at the end of my driveway or at the shop which was about 200m from the house. On the days where I was dropped off at home and hadn’t walked to the shop during lunch, the only exercise I was getting was walking around the office and the house. For the way I was eating and drinking, getting little to no exercise is not really an option if you don’t want to end up as one of those people who gets hoisted into bed by a machine. I can remember walking to the shops on weekends and being proud of all the exercise I was getting rather than waiting for one of my housemates to get home so he could drive me to the shop. All in all a 400m round trip at best.
So that was how it all got so out of control, and the more out of control it got, the less chance there was of fixing it. Whenenver my friends went to the park to kick a football around I would always make an excuse not to go with them. By then I was too fat to run around, both for risk of developing a heart flutter and also the fact that there was no way I was going to be seen in public wobbling around after a ball. So realistically the less exercise I was doing, the less I was inclined to do.
When I look back and put those three major points together it’s hard to believe I didn’t do myself any more damage. In terms of weight gain the damage was vast and evident, but without being too dramatic that lifestyle was the fast lane on the way to a premature death which I was fairly luck to avoid.
One of the mindsets I have undertaken in this new regime is that once I finish something, no-one can take it away from me. If I hit a big session in the gym, I can go home in the knowledge that nothing can take that session away. If I eat well over the course of a day, I wake up the next knowing that the good work I did on that day cannot be erased. Obviously those things can be undone by eating badly the next day, or missing gym the next few days, but if I keep logging good days then in theory losing weight will happen naturally.
Well, unfortunately that mentality works both ways. I had my third weigh-in with AD this morning and it was a disappointment to be honest. It has been three weeks since our last weigh in and I was hoping to have lost about 6kgs but unfortunately only lost 3. It is still something, and I should be happy with that, but it still took the wind out of my sails a little. I felt like I had worked harder than that during the period, but, as they say, the stats don’t lie – obviously there are things I need to improve on.
But, as I said the mentality works both ways: there is nothing I can do about those three weeks now. They are done and in the past. I can’t put more weight on during that period, and I can’t lose any more – it’s set in stone. All I can do is look forward to the next three weeks and work harder to make sure that the next time we have a weigh-in I won’t be disappointed.
Personally I have cut booze out of my diet just about completely for the moment. It’s a killer in itself with regards to putting on weight, but I also seem to be in the habit of consuming pizzas designed for a family of 6 after I have had a few drinks. So for now, it’s out. But for those unable to cut ties altogether with alcohol this website has put together a list of the best ‘calorie to alcohol’ ratio drinks! Good to see science is finally pulling its weight.
From the end of November until the beginning of December there was a fair thrashing of snow around the whole of England. The north had a healthy shake of it, but it had reached into London too, and within the space of three days there was a thick layer of soft snow that was gradually turning into that compact, slippery, black sludge that you never seem to see on Christmas cards.
On the afternoon of the first Tuesday of December I received a text message from AD saying the he had no further clients coming into the gym and he was heading home for the day. We had previously arranged to meet at his gym that evening, so my instinctive hope was that there was to be no training with him that night – it was snowing and I didn’t want to get caught in the snow on my way to gym. Sweet irony, I would find, when I realised that the snowy terrain was going to be our gym as 2 hours later I was running in the snow with AD barking orders from behind; his cries muffled by the sheer mass of clothing he was wearing. I thought AD was joking when he sent the second text saying that we were going to be training in the park.
After AD arrived at my house we walked down to the park, which is just at the bottom of my road. As it turns out the park was closed (a sign, perhaps, that none of the sane would be participating in outdoor recreation in this climate) but, as they say, every time God closes a door he opens a window, and AD pointed to the now outrageously lubricated streets of London for our training. I slid to the pavement and he told me the game plan: interval training – alternate sprinting and walking between lampposts. We headed up the street and turned to a fairly disused road with a rather sharp incline. AD always seems able to sniff these steep roads out; some people can locate water that flows underground without being able to see it, similarly AD seems to just be guided by his senses to these landmarks of torture.
We climbed the road, which obviously seemed to go on forever and became more remote with each lamppost. During one of the walking parts while I tried to take in air AD remarked how much he enjoyed training in the snow, because if you could get through it, no training during any other part of the year would be as bad. There was some sense to that, but there was always the danger that one of us could fall in a ditch and not be found by the St Bernard leading the Search & Rescue team. On we marched, and on and on the road continued to wind and lengthen, almost before my eyes. We eventually made it through the loop (I would later find that the uphill was only the way out, we still had to make getting back part of the training) and got to the top of my road.
I can’t honestly tell you what effects I felt from training in the snow. It was shortly after I left the house that I lost all feeling in my legs, hands and face, and breathing in itself is a bit of a problem. Past experience tells you how cold air has almost a burning sensation when you breathe it in, and it definitely doesn’t feel like you are taking any oxygen in. Imagine trying to climb 20 flights of stairs with a feather pillow tied to your face; that’s how I felt during those sprints. That being said, it did actually feel good afterwards. I felt like I had achieved something while everyone else barricaded themselves indoors preparing to be snowed in for winter’s duration. Also, the next time I went out doing the lamppost sprints there was no ice on the roads – it felt like child’s play.
