Wheezy's Blog: #Veganuary

Ironman racing and triathlon in general, is hardly a cheap sport. Bikes, wetsuits, running shoes, Garmins; it's all just so expensive. I have more pieces of footwear devoted to triathlon training than Imelda Marcos ever had. Triathletes talk about 'free speed', but in my experience, free speed costs thousands. An £800 disc wheel that will give you 10 minutes over an IM bike leg; a pair of £240 Nike Vapourflys that will give you an extra 8 minutes; the list goes on. There is however, one, genuine way to attain free speed and that's to lose weight and I had some to lose.

My weight traditionally hovers around 75kgs and while I have a slim frame, I do sometimes get a bit of a tummy and this got more pronounced when I was bike focussed a few years ago. So while 75kgs is not exactly overweight, it's also not light either. Losing a few kgs would help increase my bike watts/kg and make running easier at a lower rpe, so it's a pretty good target. The problem is, I'm a Labrador. I love food and eating and doing 12 hours of training in the week keeps things just about in check, but it is far from optimal. The old saying that you 'can't exercise your way out of a bad diet' is getting more true as I get older. Having two teenagers who can literally eat what they want, doesn't help either. At home we have 'The drawer of crap'. Crisps, chocolate bars and biscuits make up most things in 'The drawer of crap' and my two are often delving in there. They can afford to. Wheezy Junior is playing 5 to 6 hours of squash a week while Little Wheezy does a fair few hours of dancing. Added to a metobolism rate that would make a nuclear reactor seem inefficient, knowing that it's there and coming home from work tired and hungry, means that 'The drawer of crap' often gets a regular visit from me too. So it's not just about what I'm eating and how often, but my entire eating habits. Eating late, eating between meals, eating very large portions. All this is kept in check by my training but it's not actually supporting my training and very slowly, the weight creeps up, year-on-year.

So' #Veganuary. One of those internet things where you sign up and go vegan for a month. I don't eat a lot of meat anyway, so it seemed possible, but bloody hell, I love cheese, cream, milk, pastry and butter. Those were going to be the things that I would struggle without. As it was, on January 2nd, after a very festive Christmas and a huge Chinese takeaway blowout on New Year's Eve with friends, I was touching the scales at 77.5kgs; a new high. I had spent part of December just experimenting with a few things, gradually reducing my meat intake and the like but the hard thing, as I saw it, would be replacing the things that I like with substitutes. As it turned out, there is now such a variety of mainstream plant-based food sold by the big supermarkets, that most things have been fairly replaceable.

My eating day, now looks something like this;

Breakfast- Porridge with almond milk, a handful of blueberries and a chopped banana. Black de-caff tea.

Mid-morning snack- 2-3 pieces of fruit / a bag of pea-based crisp snacks. Another black tea.

Lunch- Salad consisting of couscous, barley, fresh vegetables, a big spoonful of houmous, Sometimes including a small soup with flat-bread.

Afternoon snack - A handful of almond or cashew nuts, another 2 pieces of fruit, falafels. Another black tea.

Dinner- Usually a carb rich dinner, e.g. jacket potato, dahl curry, sweet potato curry or stew. More fruit or pancakes, small piece of chocolate or brownie.

As you can see, I'm hardly going hungry! As I'm still training pretty hard, I'm not holding back on carbs when I think I need them, but I've tried to cut out the starchy pasta and white rice and use the lower GI carbs instead. There have been a couple of days when I've felt under-fuelled, but with a bit more experience I'm now more in tune with when I need to eat a bit more. Ultimately, it's made me cut out the vast majority of the shit that I've been eating, although vegan chocolate is still laden with sugar!

I am finding that I feel more hungry between meals, but it's been about making choices. Going Vegan has meant that I can't have that slice of cake that's going spare at work, so I have some lentil chips or fruit instead. I drink a lot of tea in a day, so by cutting out milk entirely I'm probably not drinking half a pint of milk a day. I am also drinking a lot more de-caff tea as the taste is not as strong, so I'm sleeping better too. Double win.
I don't feel like I'm on a diet. I'm cooking currys and stews from scratch and having generous portions with lots of salad and vegetables. I genuinely don't feel like I'm missing out. So it's now got to February and I've decided to keep it going. Ultimately it was to help me to lose weight, and from that point it's been a great success. A steady downward trend and I'm now tipping the scales between 70.5-71kgs! A couple of days ago, I did a double training day and actually got down to 68.5kgs; I don't think I've been that lightweight in 30 years. It's making a noticeable difference in my running and cycling from two points. Firstly, hills are a hell of a lot easier, with me spinning easily for most gradients instead of the hard grind that they often are and the other noticeable positive has been my recovery when training. My weekend is often a 90 minute run on Saturday followed by a 3 hour ride on Sunday. Even if I take the run really easy, the ride is usually sub-optimal with my quads feeling tired and tight, but over the last couple of weeks I have felt so much better with it barely feeling like I have run the day before; it's quite a weird sensation.

So, feeling really good, training consistently and a few events coming up. It's all grand.

Here are some of the low and highlights;