Quick Paleo and Fitness Update – 90 days

Just wanted to quickly update on the fitness progress.  The Paleo diet has been going well, I’ve hacked it around a bit to see what effects can be had and for me at least, sticking to the core principles is whats needed.  The lack of wheat in the diet has made a huge difference to my eczema.  I deliberately ate some last week, and the normal itching effects were greatly reduced but still there, so I know to continue to avoid it, but that if taken sparingly when diet choices are limited I can get away with it.

Here is a chart of my weight since starting just over 90 days ago.  12 stone or 76kgs is my ideal target weight, and this has been fairly easy to achieve or maintain.  The blip recently seems to be down to taking more meals than desired with wheat and/or potatoes, but there does appear to be a cyclical trend to jump up by a few pounds every week or so, then lose it again, which I would think is water retention.  What causes it I’ve not tracked down yet.

Next month is the great cycle adventure, and that should help hugely with both fitness and weightloss.  I’m going to have a challenge eating enough calories and sticking to the Paleo.  I’m really keen to avoid carb loading – I’ll have to play that on a day-to-day basis to see how I feel.  The main thing is to remember to eat plenty whilst riding – not waiting for the scheduled meal stop.  I rode last weekend and did 50 miles on Exmoor and there were several times when the leg muscles were obviously crying out for more fuel.  I never felt fatigued, so I think there was fuel coming from elsewhere, but when I stopped and munched on some dried fruit, the muscle problems would go away quite quickly.  Just need to remember little and often.

Here is a graph of my gym activities.  This is total weight lifted per session, all exercises.  I do about 20 minutes of hill climb on the bike as well as a warm up.  My first session last year totalled about 4000 kgs, so quite a big difference.  The blip in April was due to a muscle strain (incurred gardening), I had to restrict upper body exercises for a week or two.  I’m amazed at the progress since however, as I’ve been concentrating on upper body and skipping quite a few exercises, but the total weight keeps leaping upwards.  Time in the gym is often the limiting factor!  One thing I can now do is pull-ups, which only a couple of months ago I couldn’t manage one, now I can do 3 sets of 10 reps!  Push-ups (a previous mini-challenge) are still being rather stubborn though.  I’m working on them every visit, and the volume is building but the stamina for continuous reps is still not a good as I’d hoped.  They will be my main upper body workout whilst cycling though, so maybe June will see some progress!