The FastDay Forum

Alright, ate too much Friday and Saturday! Can't undo it, but in perspective with not losing anything last week I can see the pattern:
The increase in training leads to me eating more sugar Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Since I will not accept a standstill I have come up with a plan:
- I will cut the sugar from now on until goal weight is reached. The decision scares me, I don't know if I can keep it. Certainly I will have to find replacement rewards with no sugar.
- 16:8 as in I will skip breakfast except before long runs (This will also kill my Friday wheat buns at work)

Most awful Monday. Started out fasting and it went as usual. Around 6 pm I had stomach pains slowly growing. In the beginning I thought I was just too hungry as dinner was delayed and I was at friends. After eating a bit it became unbearable and I ended up in hospital, probably a gall stone or kidney stone passing they said. I can tell you that HURTS. For a couple of hours I went through a new level of pain until I got some drugs. Yay morphine! After that the pain cleared and didn't come back.
Today I'm back in the saddle, still trying to get a hold of last night's experience.
Phew!

Oh, poor you - that sounds awful.

Do hope you will feel much better soon.....& good luck with the no sugar rewards!

Ouch, that's grim. Having had gallstones myself (now had the gallbladder removed), I can empathise. Fingers crossed it was a one-off episode for you.

Thanks @Hazelnut20 and @Winsome!
Yes, it's a nasty experience - I sure hope it's a one-in-a-lifetime thing.

Today was a good weigh in, first time I'm under BMI 25 this millennium. It was so good to see the scale drop again. But who am I to complain? I only had one week standstill and I know it can be a lot worse. If all goes well I reach my interim goal of 70 K Friday morning after fasting tomorrow.
The no-sugar thing is going fine, except it is in everything (or so it feels) Tonight's omelet will be without ketchup... And I will kill for Stoke's Ketchup (another British brand I can't recommend enough)
Reading some stuff on the daily apple about potatoes vs. rice/pasta, I fell across wheat again as a major culprit for a lot of things. I think we are only beginning to understand how this really works inside our bodies and I'm not convinced moderate "anything" will really make a difference unless you have clear signs of allergy or feeling bad. However I am willing to try to avoid wheat for a while to see if this summer's allergy will pass easier than usual.
So, being all gung ho and all, for lunch I skipped some nice "fish meat balls", I don't know if you have that in other countries (except in Scandinavia). But they had wheat. And since I won't take any white bread for a while because of the implied sugar, it's not such a big step. What's left is to learn something more about rye, which we use for a lot of bread in Denmark and Germany.

Weigh in before fast day showed 69.3 - Too good to be true, so I'm thinking water is playing a trick here or gall stone attacks are really slimming. We will see in the coming days, but:

**** INTERIM GOAL REACHED ****

That is very satisfying! I'm willing to accept I will probably pass over 70 again for a short while, but on this fast day I'm as motivated as can be. Reminds me of a saying, something like "Any fool can handle a success", but it's in adversity we can:
- Really shine
- Our true self (the feared weak one) comes forward
I'd like to taekwondo kick the words "I always", "I never" and "I can't" and the energy for shattering those iron anchors that sink you on the bad days, comes from the success days. I will wrap up some of the feelings on this good day for later use, and this diary being an important part of it (to go back and re-read).

Traditionally Friday is my week lowest weigh in and today is no exception: 68.5. Now that's a lot of weight lost in one week: 2.4 kilos.

Explanations:
- I did lose weight the week before when it didn't seem so, but it was masked by water (and having peanuts etc did add a lot of salt)
- Last weekend I cut the sugar some, but not totally, but I did cut bread.
- This week I had more fat fish (salmon and canned mackerel) and white cabbage than usual, both foods I have heard have weight loss effect (I will try to dig it out).
I'm really happy with the results for this week, now for a bread-free and sugar free weekend, bananas and cream, here I come!

Woohoo! That's fantastic

Talk about smashing through a barrier! Definitely worthy of a sugar free banana cream extravaganza to celebrate.

I love hearing about times like these when someone hard work really pays off

Thanks @Winsome
Facing a sugar free weekend...
So far so good, even if it was hard not to eat buns with chocolate spread and jam Friday morning and today as well.
I'm looking to bananas and apples instead, maybe some raisins for tomorrows hard exercise. We'll see, but definitely no sugar!
I'm very excited to see the weigh in Monday morning to see how/if it affects my usual gain in the weekend. Since most of my running training is also in the weekend, I'm not trying so much to limit calories, more to change the composition and see how that affects everything.

Sugar and bread-free weekend has gone really well. I have had fruits, a little raisins, prunes and re-visited oatmeal porridge as post workout fuel. Well, we also had wine, potatoes, bearnaise and other non-paleo and "non grata" foods. I do make a point of "life is still to be lived" in the weekends - I "pay" for the meals I love with exercise.
The weight has gone slightly up this weekend, but a lot less than the previous weekends, it seems "no-bread no-sugar" is a great addition.

I also watched "Sugar - The bitter truth" with Dr. Lustig. It was really interesting, but also hard to sit through because it is a lot of biochemistry in confusing overviews with loads of arrows between abbreviations. If you cut out the political part and boil it down to facts, I got an understanding of how sugar is metabolized and why we are still hungry after a coke and a McD meal. I do have a question though:
Yes, sugar becomes fat, but if you spend more energy, some other fat will be released from the fat cells to fuel your body?
I have read that our fat is a lot more "smart and active" than we think. I also believe fat is good and fat is needed for a healthy life.
Unless you have metabolic syndrome I suppose you could to some point still claim "a calorie is still a calorie", even if you fuel yourself with (bad) sugar. I'm not in any way advocating this, but I want to rip the "religious" part out of the equation and understand better how our metabolism works.

Enough of brainy stuff! This picture is one of my running routes I have run a lot. It's the first route I started out with two years ago at 82 kilos, huffing and puffing...
Today I walked it with our dog as you can see.

Today's weigh in showed a weekend gain of 0.4 kilo, more or less the same as other weekends. This weekend was without sugar and bread - Apparently it had no effect on how much is "soaked up" during a weekend. However, I feel quite different! I feel more energized and less bloated - and also more hungry already from the start of this fast day. More later...

And that later became next day. I was/is bothered by a bit of pain from last week's gall bladder event. For some time I feared it was going to repeat itself but it never got worse than annoying.
Yesterday's trip home from work was different. We got kicked out of the train 20K from home instead of 7K because of a rail problem. I had brought my bike in the train and it could easily take an hour or so of waiting time before I could get room on the replacement train.
(Explanation: In some trains near Copenhagen you can bring your bike, which has become quite popular. You save time at both ends of your journey)
I took a quick decision, light tailwind, sunny, fast day and a little pain; Why not bike the 20 K, which I did in a comfortable speed. Arriving at home I made an example of "wolfing down" the dinner and a cheat banana.

Today I worked from home (a lot!), trying to get to see my GP with no luck. Papers from hospital last week hadn't arrived etc. etc. Sometimes you have to be a really ressourceful "patient" and stand your ground. I admire those who go through much worse things than me. Luckily the pain is lesser today, but still *bleh* since I put a lot of effort in the coming Saturday half marathon event.
That said I'm quite happy to have found this forum where I can cry/cheer/vent - It's a REALLY supportive crowd here, you can see that in the posts. I'll end this report with a cheer for @Moogie for having started this. If there were others I cheer for you too!

I hope you get to see your doctor soon (always a problem here too when you need to see one quickly!) and have the gall stone after effects pain resolved.
It is great isn't it to be able to vent away on here.....like having your own private counsellor! Good luck @RunningOlsen.

I'm sorry to say that your symptoms sound very like mine. After the first, very bad bout of biliary colic, I had pains of varying severity for some time. Then another attack that was so bad that my husband had to come and rescue me from a run when I was less than a mile from home

The doctor was blunt and told me that once you start having the colic,miss only a matter of time before you need surgery or end up with a stuck stone and jaundice. This happened to a friend of mine who was trying to manage her gallstones with diet. She had emergency surgery which was scary, and so I took the consultants words seriously.

Annoyingly, he also told me that being overweight contributes to the development of stones, but losing lots of weight (as I had, and also my friend) is a major cause of the colic attacks starting

Performed laparoscopically as most gallbladder removals are, its a simple operation and recovery is pretty quick. The fairly common side effect that some foods can cause 'rapid transit' if eaten on an empty stomach is a positive one when following a regime famed for its blocking capabilities

Thanks for sharing @Winsome even if I hope to skip the removal. My GP told me I could do nothing about my higher blood pressure and losing weight wouldn't help. Two years later now I'm off the pills and BP better than ever (measured, probably better when I was young )
I'm even better today, only the smallest notion of pain and maybe that's just me anticipating some. I skipped egg and some fat from my regular diet so let's see how it works out. I added peppermint and green tea because I heard they had good influence on gall conditions. I am always on for trying herb medicine. This story from BBC about Malaria is sad (because we're in risk of losing the battle again) but if you read how the wonderdrug Artemisinin's Chinese predecessor came to, it was based on old knowledge about plants that work.

Something more 5:2 related, I'm going to try and overload myself with carbs for Saturday's half marathon. Not that I doubt I can go the distance, I have run 20 k several times this year with no problems. It's "preparation training" for May's Marathon. I want to see how it affects me when I'm usually somewhat low carb. There seems to be enough evidence pointing to the relevance of running on full tank for marathon. It should give 10-15 minutes better race times. And since I'm in the game to beat myself I want to try: Tomorrow morning will be a short run with a 3 minute burst at the end, followed up by a binge of 250 plus grams of fast naughty carbs. A lot right away and the rest during the day. Maple syrup, dates, dried figs, oats and gluten free müsli is lined up. I have thought up a plan to avoid white sugar and fructose for what it's worth.
Stay tuned for carb shock!