Weeks 14 & 15 walking progress

Week 14 walking progress:

Total for week 14 = 43 miles
Average per day for this week (43 / 7) = 6.14
Running total = 408 + 43 = 451 miles
Miles left to walk in 2018 (1050 – 451) = 599

Another super effort! 10.5 tough miles were achieved by climbing to the summit of Carnedd Llewelyn, the second highest mountain in Wales. And on Easter Monday I did a 15 mile walk in the Chilterns which boosted this weeks’ total.

Week 15 walking progress:

Total for week 15 = 43 miles
Average per day for this week (43 / 7) = 6.14
Running total = 451 + 43 = 494 miles
Miles left to walk in 2018 (1050 – 494) = 556

Oddly the same total for weeks’ 14 and 15 but very different miles walked! Most of week 15’s miles were walked in and around my local town including a walk that Chris and I did to a local village pub and back… it took slightly longer to walk back…

April weigh-in

Starting weight: 10 st 7 lb

January weight: 9 st 10 lb

February weight: 9 st 0 lb (weight on 1st Feb would have been around 9 st 4 lb)

March weight: 8 st 12 lb

April weight: 8 st 7 lb (119 lbs or 54 kg)

Total weight loss: 28 lbs

I’ve gone quite a bit under my original 2018 target weight of 9 stones! The recommended weight for a 50 year old medium build 5′ 3″ woman is actually 8 st 10 lb so I’m slightly under the ‘normal’ weight for my height. I’m happy with this and would like to be able to keep my weight at around 8 st 7 lb rather than 9 st. The reason I originally set my target at 9 st was because I didn’t think I would be able to get below that weight!

Yesterday I sorted through my clothes and was delighted to find a size 10 holiday skirt which fitted beautifully! I haven’t been able to wear this for a few years and thankfully its one that never really goes out of fashion.

I’m consuming around 1200 – 1300 calories a day and still doing a huge amount of exercise most days. I’m anxious not to regain any of this weight and concerned that if I indulge in chocolate or cakes that I will lose my focus and the weight will pile on again…

A typical week of exercise for me at the moment is:

Mon: walk 5.25 miles to the station and back; spend an hour at the gym (700 calories burned)
Tue: work at home and go swimming at lunchtime (400 calories burned)
Wed: work at home and go swimming at lunchtime (400 calories burned)
Thu: walk to and from station and hour at gym (700 calories)
Fri: as above (700 calories)
Sat: walk around my local town (300 calories)
Sun: walk with a local walking club (750 calories)

This is more exercise than I’ve ever done so I’m probably fitter now than I was 10 or even 20 years ago!

A typical day of eating goes something like this:

Breakfast: a small bowl of bircher muesli with oat milk (300 calories)
Snack: banana (100 calories)
Lunch: Vegetarian soup from Pret (200 calories)
Snack: grapes/mixed nuts (200 calories)
Dinner: Sweet potato curry (400 calories)
Coffee: (100 calories)

The calories are estimated and rounded to the nearest 100!

Having received some helpful advice from my best friend (who is the same height as me and has had a similar yo-yo diet pattern over the years), in order to try and maintain my current weight I am going to do the following:

Stick to around 1200 calories a day during weekdays
Continue doing lots of exercise each day
Have treats and eat more at the weekends

And monitor my weight each week to keep a check and ensure it doesn’t start creeping upwards again!

Today I start my vegan month…

Conclusion on a vegetarian lifestyle

Today is the final day of my month as a vegetarian and tomorrow I switch to vegan.

I’ve spent the whole of March on a diet which has excluded all meat and fish products which according to the Vegetarian Society is a lacto-ovo vegetarian diet. This is the term used for vegetarians who eat dairy products and is the most common type of vegetarian.

Firstly I can say I found it very easy to lead a vegetarian lifestyle which is probably because my husband has been a pescatarian for a number of years, that is, someone who doesn’t eat meat but who does eat fish. He also occasionally has chicken but it has to be free-range organic chicken.

Rather than cooking separate meals, I’ve also tended to follow this diet too. So the main difference has been the lack of fish or chicken for a month.

As I mentioned in the previous ‘mid month‘ update, our dinners have contained meat substitutes such as Quorn which I still have mixed feelings about due to it being processed. Also, if you substitute lean meat such as chicken or turkey for say a cheese flan or cheese pasty, this has to be the more unhealthy choice too.

My conclusion?

In my view a vegetarian diet is easy to follow although, unless you limit the processed meat substitutes, cheese and pastry, I can’t really see the health benefits.

In addition, I would think there is greater suffering for cows if you consume larger amounts of cheese and milk. Rather than being slaughtered at a young age, cows have to go through multiple pregnancies throughout their lives to meet the demand for human consumption of their milk. So which is worse?

As mentioned, I’m starting ‘Vegapril’ (instead of Veganuary) tomorrow to experience a month as a vegan. Although the increase in people choosing a vegan lifestyle is rapidly increasing, I’m anticipating a few more challenges…

Week 12 walking progress

Week 12 walking progress:

Total for week 12 = 52 miles
Average per day for this week (52 / 7) = 7.43
Running total = 316 + 52 = 368 miles
Miles left to walk in 2018 (1050 – 368) = 682

Wow! Massive effort this week! Am I becoming obsessed? I’ve been in the office 4 times this week which, given that I walk over 5 miles a day (to and from stations as the walking element of my commute) every time I go into London to work, this has pushed things up a it.

In addition, I decided to walk through Central London instead of getting the tube during the working day (on top of the daily London trek from and to the station). For example its nearly 2 miles from one of our Central London offices to another one. And meeting my daughter in the West End after work racked up another couple of miles. So one day I actually walked 14 miles just by not taking the tube! (And burned off a huge 1200 extra calories too)

And on Sunday I did 12 miles with my local walking club…

Posting these updates every week or two is certainly helping to keep me motivated and look for ways of walking extra miles!

Update: being a veggie

We are nearly half way through March, my month of being a vegetarian… and, so far so good… I’ve found it relatively straightforward to stick to a fully vegetarian diet which excluded fish too.

Breakfast is easy as I usually have either bircher muesli (although I buy this in packets rather than making it myself) with *oat milk, or eggs or Alpro yogurt with fruit.

*I’ve cut down significantly on milk throughout the last year or so with animal welfare in mind. I started to consider the sad lives of mummy cows who have to spend their lives being pregnant and saying goodbye to their calves shortly after giving birth just so humans can consume their milk. When there are plant based alternatives to milk, it seems unnecessary and unnatural that we humans are consuming a product meant for baby cows…

Lunch has also been easy! When working at home I usually have some kind of vegetable soup, usually either broccoli and stilton or carrot and ginger. Or maybe hummus with pitta bread. When I’m working in the office I pop over to Pret where they have a delicious range of clearly marked vegetarian and vegan options.

Dinner, I have mixed feelings about… firstly, most restaurants in the UK have vegetarian options which is OK if you don’t mind a somewhat limited menu. We had dinner in a local pub last night which was great as I had a delicious vegetarian chilli which was made with a range of chopped fresh vegetables so was also a healthy choice.

Other times, the vegetarian part of the menu includes things like: feta cheese tart; cheese risotto or a cheese based pasta. I’m not keen on too many white carbs and from a health perspective, I still would prefer something like grilled fish and vegetables.

At home, I’ve been using Quorn as a meat substitute rather a lot. For example, last week I made quorn shepherds pie, quorn stir fry and sweet potato curry with quorn instead of chicken. Quorn is a brand which prides itself on being a healthy protein option which uses something called Mycoprotein. This is derived from some kind of fungus which I would think has to go through a great deal of processing for it to look like minced beef or chicken.

At the moment, I am thinking my current vegetarian diet isn’t quite as healthy as the diet I had previously followed, i.e. occasionally having free range chicken and having quite a lot of fish.

Perhaps I need to find some more creative vegetarian dinners to cook throughout the rest of March? Sainsbury’s sell ‘mushroom mince’ which is simply mushrooms which have been finely chopped to resemble a minced beef consistency. So rather than using quorn, I could try using a few more chopped vegetables for our dinner recipies?