My regimen consists of daily long slow runs and 8/16 intermittent fasting.
I’m not a high-octane athletic person, but I do like to stay active. I used to exercise three to four times a week, which consisted of weight training, Thai boxing, and cardio. For an average build middle-aged woman like me, the weekly routine was sufficient to maintain my metabolism and weight at a reasonable rate.
I started listening to the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear a few months back. And the key message I got from that book was if only we aimed to be just 1% better than our own self yesterday, we’re going to achieve remarkable improvements in our lives. So started in Q2, I began to track my various body measurements daily. I’d compare if I’m hitting the 1% benchmark and how far off I am from the goal. Being a metric person, seeing my progress and goals on a spreadsheet is motivating. I would fiddle with the formula every now and then, and sometimes toy with the idea of setting a more aggressive benchmark.
Since the adoption of the spreadsheet, I lost about 3kg. I would say equal parts of fat and muscles. During the pandemic, I could only do cardio and exercise with my own body weight. In my first weight training session post lockdown, I lifted the same weight as before. I’m usually a glass-half-full person, but all I could think of at that time was I made no improvements in months!
So I decided to up the ante and did 100 pushups a day to make up for the slack.
Efforts paid off! I was back on track in my weight training.
Then, the city went into another lockdown. Running became the only exercise option again. I would do different types of running on alternate days to keep things interesting and give my muscles a chance to recuperate. To be honest, that has been how I run for the longest time. I have managed to finish 10k races in reasonable times. The idea of completing a marathon rekindled in my mind.
So I did what most runners won’t do. I bought a book.
It was written by a Japanese ultramarathon runner. I really enjoyed the book. Every training regimen recommended for runners at different stages always ends with this advice from the author, “Remember to keep your training fun. So you’re motivated to do it again the next day.”
He also introduced me to this running technique — long slow distance. The idea is to build a pair of running legs. Once you’d laid the proper foundation, running a marathon is within reach.
But I only heeded his advice up to the point of “keep your training fun” as my initial training goal.
For the past month, I’d been running 90–120mins every day. I set no mileage goal, just a heart rate goal — the rate that you can still hold a conversation with someone as you run. A couple of observations from me:
- I paid more attention to my running posture when I run slow.
- Slow running employs a different set of muscles. But I only realized that after some time. As I relaxed my muscles using the muscle roller, I found out that the typical areas were no longer sore, but tensions started to build up in other areas.
- Bodyweight continued to drop but at a slower rate; however, it was mostly fat this time.
- I felt less hungry, running slow in the morning. I was on 8/16 IF, which meant I would stop eating at 5pm. The next morning, I would run on an empty stomach. The first few days were brutal as I kept thinking of running to get food. To kill the urge was easier than I thought. Just leave the house with no money on will crush the virtual nudge once and for all.
- For treadmill runners like me, I lacked the sense to protect myself from prolonged sun exposure. Running with those UV protection sleeves was irritating, but a much better option than getting skin cancer.
Of course, the watershed feel-good moment was the ability to fit into the stash of skinny clothes that I’d been holding onto for years, hoping someday they will see the light of day again. And they did, while they were on me!
