I’ve dabbled with intermittent fasting in the past, but decided to have a go at doing a full 24-hour fast to kickstart myself back into a lower-carb mode.
Anyway, I ate at around 2pm on friday, and that was it, except for some tea and a cup of coffee on saturday morning. I was feeling pretty hungry around lunchtime on saturday but spent 45 minutes doing some low intensity peddling on the exercise bike (freezing cold outside, with snow forecast) and the pangs faded.
At 3ish, I decided that it was time to eat, and cooked up a huge 5-egg omelette with bacon, sausage, peppers, onion, mushroom, tomato, kale and spinach. It was full of colours and delicious, and satiating but I had some chocolate and fruit with lots of thick cream to finish off.
Later, I felt a bit peckish and had a couple of smoked sausages and some cider. I’ve largely avoided carbs, to encourage the idea that fat is the thing to burn. I’ll eat normally tomorrow, and consider another fasted day next week.
There’s plenty of information about how to build up to fasting. My understanding is that you will gain the most benefits (and find it easier) if you have already adjusted to a higher fat/lower carb diet.
The cover by Walk Off The Earth is also brilliant, both because of the coolness of 5 people playing one guitar (gimmick, but cool) and the quality of the cover:
Gotye has done some great songs. It’s the first album I’m actually going to buy
in ages. There are songs that sound a lot like Radiohead, at least one where I forgot what I was listening to and thought I was listening to Muse (I shuffle my music collection a lot) and others with a style all his own. Nice, mellow stuff.
One of my more unusual hobbies (at least for somebody my age ;-) ) is making walking sticks. I’ve been interested in the craft for some time, but not had much time to actually do any for various reasons.
I’ve been a member of the Calleva Stick Dressers for a few years, but only really in a “web nerd” capacity.
This autumn, I finally found time to attend some of our work evenings in Thatcham, and completed my first two sticks.
The first is a two-piece market stick with an american black walnut handle and a hazel shank. The joint wasn’t too good, so I made it look a bit better by creating a fake collar with black-tinted epoxy resin.
The second is a two-piece cardigan stick with a spalted birch handle and a hazel shank. The joint went a bit better, after a few attempts.
I managed to get them finished in time for Christmas, so was able to give them to my parents as gifts. I’m reasonably pleased with them for my first sticks, but there are obviously things I could improve. Check out our galleries for some amazing work by our members.
Here are some pictures (click to view the whole image, and for some reason the gallery below is only showing 3):
In January 2011, I set myself a target which was ambitious but, I hoped, achievable.
20,000 pullups by the end of the year.
I tried a few, decided how many I could do back then in one day, and set myself a target of 100 in the final day. A simple spreadsheet gave me my total, with a linear daily increase.
I realised pretty soon that when I said pullups, I really meant chinups (distinguished by the direction the palms face on the bar). I mixed in pullups and chinups most days. I hope nobody hold it against me.
I also failed to allow for rest days, which meant that I had to keep ahead of my schedule to allow for rest days. Quite manageable at first, but tough towards the end. I also had a few setbacks, with a pulled muscle putting me back by 2 weeks, and a holiday during which I found it hard to do any pullups (I found a pullup bar in a children’s playground but the idea of hanging out at a playground wasn’t too appealing).
Much of October and November were spent clawing back the lost time, but, with the end in sight, I made a final drive to complete my target on Christmas Eve and in time to take my mother-in-law to Midnight Mass.
My cheapo bar from a large national supermarket held up surprisingly well. I had to wrap old flannels around the ends where it presses against the door frame, and it’s slightly bowed in the middle.
You can sponsor me, up to the end of January 2012, at my Just Giving Page
As I write this, I am about to go upstairs and do my final set of 10 pullups for the day. This will bring my total for today to 200, and my total number of chinups/pullups since last January to 19805.
If I can manage a third day of more than 195 pullups tomorrow, I will have reached my target.
I managed to stick to my plan and achieved a solid 1000 in two weeks.
Halfway with only a third of the year left feels a bit daunting and we’re away in a caravan for two weeks in September so consistency might be difficult (will have to find a playground or tree branch).
A lot of the reading I’ve been doing lately has been around diet and health, and how a lot of “Conventional Wisdom” about diet is fundamentally flawed. For instance, the idea that saturated fat causes heart disease appears to be…flat out wrong (I can provide citations).
I don’t have time to blog about it much, ohers do a much better job of it. I was fairly astonished to read (after having been shown the article, I’m not a regular reader) in Woman’s Weekly, a piece about various things that you think you know which are now being reversed.
It took a few more days after the bruising showed up on my arm for it to feel strong enough to try a pullup again, but it was not to be. The muscle that was hurting in my abdomen was still extremely painful and is immediately engaged when doing a pullup.
I had to exercise patience and wait for it to heal completely. Good for the soul, but extremely frustrating. I was worried for a while that I’d caused a hernia somehow.
It has taken over 2 weeks to heal sufficiently that I only experience a small stretching sensation in that muscle. A few days ago, Hannah noticed that there was a line of bruising in the area. Yesterday, I tentatively attempted my first pullup and it was a success, if harder than it had been before the break.
I’ve also lost all the head start I had. I had a few hundred pullups “in the bank” (ahead of my schedule) and I’m now around 300 behind. A lot of ground to make up, and it was already getting harder to keep up.
I was making good progress for the first three days last week. On target for 100 pullups each day, to bash out the next 1000 in two weeks.
Unfortunately, on thursday, I started to experience a pain in a muscle in my abdomen. I think I can trace it to straining it by twisting strangely while putting together a trampoline. It made anything that required engaging my core impossible including pullups.
Things got worse. At a gymnastics session that evening, I messed up a somersault on the trampoline and slammed my knee into my upper arm. This caused a surprising amount of pain and it’s still impossible to do anything approaching a pullup.
Today, 5 days after the event, the bruising finally came out. Oops.
I’ll just have to suck it up and rest until I can use my arm without pain or I’ll risk further setbacks.
I’m still ahead of schedule, but it’s getting harder to stick to so it’s a rough time to get set back.
in ages. There are songs that sound a lot like Radiohead, at least one where I forgot what I was listening to and thought I was listening to Muse (I shuffle my music collection a lot) and others with a style all his own. Nice, mellow stuff.
