The Last Bit is the Hardest...

Hi everyone,

Sorry about the mini-delay this week but I have been pretty busy with uni work and I also wrote my first article for news.maccax.com. So feel free to head there and have a read. For me the build up to Bintan is well and truly underway and I am starting to see some good improvements. Mostly in the pool at the moment and I think this will be important in Indonesia. What I really want to achieve is to make some serious gains in my running. It is going to be HOT in Indonesia and to make sure I have the best chance of success I want to try and get as lean as possible before the race. Now I am embarking on another 'weight-loss journey' of sorts. But this time it isn't about a number on a scale. It is about making myself as light as I can be so that I am able to deal with the heat as well as possible. So what I know from my experience, and I am sure it is the same for many others, is that the last 3-5kgs is often the hardest to lose. So that is what I am going to write about today. I would also ask if any of you reading this who have any good tips for losing the last few kgs please leave them in the comments section below.

I very comfortably sit between 77 and 79 kgs. If I back off my exercise I might go up to 81 or 82 and when I really ramp up the training I have gotten as low as 75. The lightest I ever got was last year after a 10 day camp at Thanyapura, Thailand. The heat definitely played a significant role and the cold weather here will not make it as easy. One thing that I do not focus enough on is my diet. While I do not eat terribly, there is room for improvement. Why have I focused on it so little? There are a few reasons. First, I love food. Pasta, rice and bread are probably my favourite things to eat and when I do eat them I eat a lot. Most nights when I get home I am bloody hungry which means that dinner is often my biggest meal of the day. Another reason why I have never focused too heavily on it is that there is literally too much information out there about what is right/wrong. Sugar, no sugar, carbs, no carbs, vegan, vegetarian, paleo. I study law, I do not have time to sit down and read about all of these different 'secrets to success'. 

So how am I hoping to have success this time? I have given my wife an honorary position. She is the 'food police'. Dez has recently started paying attention to her portion sizes and without increasing her exercise has managed to drop some significant weight. So at night from when she walks in the door, she decides how much I get to eat. We do try to cook healthy food as much as possible and I eat vegetarian 5 days a week. So I am hoping that by making Dez serve me up smaller servings I might start to drop some weight myself. To double down the chances of success we are also going to start making less food with the idea that if there is less to eat I won't be tempted to go back for more. I am not sure what would be the ideal serving size for someone of my size would be but I will go and research after finishing this.

During the day I will be responsible for monitoring my food. It is hard at uni to try and find something that is both vegetarian and healthy. This is where I struggle the most so I will try and start taking some of my own things to eat. I could eat salad but quite frankly I hate salad as a meal. Again it is a work in progress and something I am hoping to learn about over the next few months and then try and share with all of you as well!

As far as my exercise is concerned I think it would be beneficial to try and include a weights session at least once a week. I usually like doing weight training but I find the fatigue has an impact on my tri training. The training volume is quite manageable at the moment but I am also aware that as we get into winter my immunity might suffer so I don't want to get sick or injured.

As I mentioned at the start this is something that I do not know enough about. I know that going from 85kgs to 80 is a lot easier for me than going from 80 to 75. So I will ask again, if you know of any good resources (that preferably aren't too long) please let me know.

Ill keep it quite short this week. I am racing next weekend so I will hopefully have something to share about it next week. I am also going to try and provide updates with how I am going with this for the next few months so I hope you all enjoy.

Train hard, stay safe and remember to TRI!

Eating like this may not lead to success...