"The time is 1pm. Its a Sunday. The year is 2007 and its a beautiful summers day. I am getting changed into my footy gear for a match in Woodlands pitches with my mates. This is about the 5th or 6th week in a row that the numbers have been good and we should actually manage the full 11 aside this week. I am feeling strong and fit and can't wait to get down there.
This week in the gym during my lunch hour, I managed to fit in a 5km run made up of hill intervals on Mon, Tues, Wed and Thurs. Friday I just went to the pool for a rest day and rewarded myself with a Jacuzzi and Sauna for my hard work during the week. Its definitely getting easier and I am thinking of up-ing the pace next week. I have also managed to stick to a clean diet in regimental fashion.
The match begins.
From the kick off I am very aware of my new fitness level. My interval training in the gym over the last few weeks has definitely paid off. (...insert extract of a Dave Storry* like performance of going down to an early goal only to come back in the second half to score the winner in the dying seconds from a 30 yard swirling free kick into the top corner.....THE KEEPER HAD NO CHANCE!!!!...)
The final whistle blows (or rather Kevy Gray looks at his watch and grabs the ball, while shouting haha losers!).
On the way home, I have a feeling of pride with my performance and cannot wait for next week to come. Once home, I have a healthy dinner and upload the data from my heart rate monitor into my pc. For this week I have exceeded my weekly target of 2600 Kcals burned though exercise and when I weigh myself tomorrow morning I will be 78kg's and will have lost a total of 3lb this week. At this weight of just under 12 and a half stone, it will be the lightest (and fittest) I will be for the next three years..."
.....Dream sequence ends.
At this present moment things however, are not quite as they were back in 2007. Rather than portray a dizzying array of incoherent mishaps I will simply state some facts and figures to bring things back into perspective.
I am fast approaching my 31st birthday. My weight has ballooned to 15 and a half stone. I have not stepped foot in a gym or onto a football pitch or participated in any form of exercise whatsoever in almost 3 years. My fitness and energy levels are so close to rock bottom as they are possible to be, that this morning I could've sworn I found a stone in my shoe. It is 1pm and a beautiful spring day outside - the perfect day for a jog, yet here I am in front of my computer screen, still in the clothes I slept in last night with thoughts of a jog the furthest thing from my mind.
So, I ask myself the question...where the hell do I go from here?? As this can't continue, and has done so for much too long.
However, allow me to recollect some unfortunate events which have led me to now and 'inadvertently-on-purpose' offload some of my self blame.
"BANG! CRACK! - Were the sounds I remember hearing.......
It was a Tuesday afternoon around 3.30pm in the summer of 2007. I was playing 5 aside with my work colleagues in Shaftesbury Recreation Centre (which could've also been mistaken for a bomb shelter) or as we all more affectionately called it 'Beirut'. As I charged down to block a shot on goal my outstretched right leg explosively gave way. As Joe (Peewee's cousin - thanks again for that one Daimo lol) struck the ball; his foot, the ball and my ankle came together (as they say on the TV) with substantial force. As they say in Belfast however..."He F**king buried it!". In the inertia that followed, my ankle twisted around so much that I seen the sole of my foot and can remember thinking to myself, 'Man I need to get me some new trainers!' After that moment of absent minded observation, the reality however became clear. My ankle was well and truly FUBAR**!
Unable to resume play, the 5 aside it was cut short. As I removed my trainer and sock the swelling which had joined us was ghastly. Although the pain I felt was relatively mild, this was probably due to adrenaline circling my body at a mile a minute....almost, it has to be said, as fast as Joe's apologies were circling my ear drums...cheers Joe! :-)
Fitz and Marty Boyle brought me to the Royal Hospital A&E where I was diagnosed with a broken ankle and promptly placed in a plaster cast, handed my crutches and told to get on my bike. If I had have been a little more Compus Mentus I would've reminded the smarmy get that I'd just broken my ankle and if I could ride a bike with one leg in a plaster cast, I'd have applied to the feckin' Las Vegas travelling circus...but thats neither here nor there lol!"
For the record, Kev Gillespie said he would've accompanied us to the hospital also if it hadn't been for the state of shock he was in upon seeing the swelling of my ankle! The big wuss! :-)
Phew...there we go, some self blame offloaded! (Cue self blame offload segment pt.2)
As you can imagine, any injury such as this will put a set back in your fitness plans. I wanted to maintain my weight so I thought, 'I know! - I'll just make sure I eat correctly to take into account of my lack of cardio exercise'. On the internet I had been reading up on this new fangled 'too good to be true' diet called a 'Keto Diet'. This is similar to Atkins but more hardcore, and is practised by a lot of body builders. The purpose behind it is that you purposely put your body in a state of Ketosis. Basically what this means in Laymans terms (must've been a very daft fellow that Layman - doesn't seem to know much about anything!) is that your body burns your Fat stores as energy rather than your Carb stores. It all sounded so wonderful.
So I go into this thing 80% prepared for Ketosis and 110% motivated to stick to it! - Straight away I eliminate all Carbohydrate sources of food from my diet. No bread, cereals, milk, sweets, biscuits etc. To subsidise the sudden drop in Carbs in your diet you drastically increase your Protein and Fat intake - yes thats right: Fat intake! Based on my weight at that time (and my fading memory) I was eating around 150g of fat a day! As attractive as this sounds, eating 3-4 Big Al's beef burgers covered in cheese and dripping in full fat mayo for your main meal loses its appeal after a while! Steaks and oily fish along with beef burgers were my staple diet.
The way it is supposed to work is that the more fat you eat, then the more fat you will burn. Although you are also up-ing your protein intake, this is supposed to be being used to help recover and regrow your muscle tissue during Hypertrophy, as in a perfect world you should be maintaining your weight training workouts in spite of any afore mentioned ankle disabilities.
Within around 3-4 days my body was in ketosis...the coloured stick which you pee on to test this had finally glowed purple and all my worries were over. Soon - much to my amazement - I began losing (not maintaing - actually LOSING) weight at a rapid pace. After the first 2 weeks of my new diet I had lost a further 10-11lbs. I was astonished! Perhaps this was the way forward, who knows...for the first time, maybe something you read on the internet was the truth!
BUT! (I know u all saw that coming lol) Yes, a very big BUT....it failed, or rather I failed - who knows. What I do know is that it was something I wouldn't have been able to stick to for the rest of my life (which is pretty much the idea of the whole thing). I also couldn't help ignoring the massive warning signs which soon surround you when you are simply eating twice as much fat as a normal healthy human being. When I decided to quit the diet and resume eating carbs again - I cant even begin to describe the shock of what happened to my body. The human body is a very complex system, but at the same time can be simply managed and maintained. It prefers Carbs as its major fuel source, then protein, then fat. As soon as I began eating carbs again, my body stopped burning all the fat which I had consumed and went back to normal burning the new 'on-board' carbs. Then there was nowhere for my excess fat stores to go...so they simply shut up shop, dug their heels in and done what all excess fat stores do....turned to FAT! - Not only did I very quickly put back on the weight I lost during Ketosis, but almost an additional stone. Almost 2 stone in weight gained since quitting the damn diet!!! A lesson well learned.
Unfortunately, for now this is where part one of my new post comes to a close. All the talk of beef burgers, melted cheese and mayo has left me with a slight feeling of nausea and to be honest, some hunger pangs... :-)
The next installment shall be with you soon....stay tuned for pt. 2 where I will reveal the final pieces of this mis-shapen jigsaw and the truth behind what led me to this undesirable silhouette which I now find myself encased in!
*The infamous professional football player Dave Storry, taken from The Daily Mirror comic strip 'Scorer'.
**Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.
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