Wednesday 29 June 2011

Food food food... and some pink

Since I finished my fruitarian diet, I try to get back normal. After my last Thursday jump out I started my new culinary journey. I try to put back some cooked food and meat just gradually in my diet, I have to get used to it. I had some minor digestion problem in the first few days, but now everything looks ok!

I was eating fruit and veg all day long on Friday, but I had some additional Honey Stinger protein bars. My body was craving so badly after protein, and it is still.... Adel and me decided to go out for a dinner Friday night. I found a very good looking little restaurant in Westfield. The place called Pho. It is an authentic Vietnamese restaurant and it sells freshly made noodle dishes. I had a massive bowl of wok fried rice noodle with chicken, prawn , lemongrass and peanut sauce (usually I don't eat peanut, but sometimes you need it...). Adel had some beef steak and meatball soup with a massive amount of rice pasta. And we shared couple of summer roll with peanut sauce. The meal was delicious and my body just sucked everything in. After a little chat we made our way to home, but on the way out I seen a Pret a Manger. I was craving after one particular Pret sandwich in a last few days. I walked in, when I just got told , tills are closed, sorry. I got a panic attack! :) I tried to buy a sandwich.... The manager was a nice guy and he just gave me the sandwich free! Wow! BTW, Pret has a freshness promise, the stuff what left over are going in the bin end of the day.

Light menu..
Bowl of love!
Pret rocks! OOOOOHHHHH YEEEEEE!





Saturday morning I headed out for a short run after 4 days full off from training. Legs were a bit stiff in the first couple of k, but end of the day I felt great! After work on the way home I popped in to see Martin and we finished of his new toy. He bought an old (okok not too old) Sigma carbon TT frame on Sigma's sale and we turned it for a single speed commuter monster. He did a rest of the job, I just had to swap over the crank from his other bike. It wasn't an easy process, removing alloy cup BB from a steal frame...thread is soaked in lock tight, but with some McGiver tricks we solved the problem. On the evening I dig myself in the kitchen and made some avocado stuffed sweet potato and turkey fajita. It was so good, but the too much
bell pepper blow up me like a air balloon.
Martin mobile

Avocado stuffed sweet potato with turkey fajita



But not just Martin has a new toy! I rebuilt my CAAD5 on last Thursday night. The bike got nearly everything new, just a frame, wheels and saddle stayed the same! Here is a photo and more details are coming soon.
My love...



One day later my new shoes turned up! Limited edition Rapha Condor Giro. Only made 600, mine one is a 471. I ordered it nearly 5 months ago... but worst the wait, it perfectly match my bikes colour!
Pimp high...

Sunday morning I taken out CAAD for a short ride. I just did easy 65k but I was very impressed with a bike. I changed couple of set ups and now it feels far better then before. I spent a rest of the Sunday with study, but I still had time for a little Whole Foods trip, meet with friends and a quick gym workout.




After the last month muscle mass loose, I decided to bulk back a little bit quickly. I pushed up my protein intake and I am going to do drop sessions in the next 4 weeks. I hope I can get back around 64,5-65kg quickly with a less as possible fat gain. From Monday my diet is still strictly clean again and I try to eat much raw as possible.




Monday was a madhouse, but a very very good day! I started a day with a little bike build for my friend. After I went to see MArtin , who played with my legs 2 hours and made my mood better. We had a good chat with him and his girlfriend Sue and I changed my world view! :) Cheers guys!


After the treatment we headed out to Look Mum No Hand for a lunch. We rode across the whole city, flow in the traffic! It was a great ride and I realized again, how cool is London, when you are see the things from the right angle... but, I have to buy a single speed ASAP! Because this trip also remembered me, why I hate to ride single speed riders, when I am on geared bike! Ehhh, it is suck!


Journey wasn't too long, but Martin managed to get a puncture with his super light (condom?!) inner tubes. No panic, mechanic on the board, we solved it in 5 minutes.


Great salad lunch in LMNH, and ride home. I had an other meeting in Barnes later on the day.
Look mum salad....

I went to see a new friend. We don't know each other long time ago, but hopefully it is beginning of the beautiful friendship...


Cut the long story short, a beer later I had a very very good sponsorship deal in my pocket for next season! I am neraly covered! I don't really want to share more details at the moment, but it looks a bloody fXXking big help! We finished the meeting with a nice dinner in Red Lion pub in Barnes. Hmm... I had some awesome lamb steak with salad!
Wollie Bollie bahhhh bahhhhh






Tuesday morning was a bit adventure. I went for an early run, I planed to run 13-14k, but I finished with nearly 19... I did a wrong turn on one place! :) The humidity and temperature were killer.

The last two days went quick and I am just finished with the pack in! I am off to Italy tomorrow morning for 3 days. I am going to see Willier's 2012 products launch! Stay tuned, keep looking, lots of interesting stuff is coming up!

Sunday 26 June 2011

30 days - end of my journey

Well, I am done with my fruitarian journey. I was planing couple of more weeks end of last week, but I decided to pull out and switch back to normal diet. I finished off my 30th day on Thursday and I had normal cooked food and meet again on Friday night.
Why did I make this decision?

Lets see! First of all my body weight drastically dropped in this 30 days period. I didn't loose only body fat, I lost a fair bit of muscle mass as well. My weight went down from 63kg to 60,5 (that was the lowest one in the 30 days) and my body fat was 4.8% on last Monday! I consumed mad amount of calories every day (over 4000 kcal) and a ton of greens, but my body weight didn't settle. The first two week's energy rush and good mood started to change tiredness and lack of energy. After the 20th day I had to start use my alarm clock again, I wasn't able to wake up automatically anymore. I woken up 1 hour later every morning then my usual time and I still was tired and I didn't have a mood to do any exercise. My recovery was far slow, I had muscle soreness from any small amount of training. I cut my finger and it still didn't heal after 1,5 weeks! (usually it takes me 2-3 days). After the 25th day I was ready to jump out in any critical moment. I totally stopped training on the last 5 days, eat a mad amount of calories and try to keep up until the 30th day!

In the same time a tried to find the answer for my questions! I read every related topic on 30bananas a day forum and I explained my problems as well. I had lots of very very "clever" and interesting answer. Basically the weight I lost, it isn't muscle , it was just crap and excess water! Wowww.... I wasn't a particular muscular build in the lest 2 years but now I look like a 13 year old teenager boy... Oh, well, I see, my muscles were full with crap! OK!
I had a sport related question as well, about "How can you run any endurance event on LFHR diet and how many top athlete follow this diet?". Well... I got a good explanation from team (and religion) leader Durianrider, basically no really LFHR top athlete (except Mike Arnstein) because everybody is a drug addict and dooper and nobody bother to change his current diet. And the same time Durian started to polish himself and his "sport carrier". Well! How many race have you finished on the podium , mate? NONE!
I started to have a feeling , that something is a bit not right with this bunch of guys on the forum. Durian is well know about attacking other diet gurus publicly.... like Mark Sisson, who is one of the leader paleo/primal diet guru. I am follower of Mark's blog and I never ever seen any slag off and judging about other diets. Everybody has opinion and most of people can share it in diplomatic form.
Durian blame all diet gurus are ripping off the public and try to sell his own products the public and tell for people , what people wanna hear...
Well, dear Durian, how much is your monthly fee of your " lifestyle advice"???? $2000/month? About what? Telling people, eat bananas and drink water? Well.... I think this is a rip off!
Anyway, I don't give a flying shit for this guy and his plastic tits girlfriend (who talks about natural lifestyle...). I hope you will be responsible for somebodies death one day! Your attitude is CRAP! (please note, this is not related with 80/10/10 diet, it is all about Durian)

Ok, move on! I started to do deep research on fruitarian diet failures and I found lots of interesting info again! Most of the fruitarian , who stopped this diet after 3-5 years, when started to have deficit on certain nutrition, talk about cheating during the diet. That is explain how people can survive on this diet that long!
Usually tooth failures is very common problem and this people blame cooked food and diets before. I found some extreme case, when people lost teeth and thought it is all ok, because the body just detox out the bed teeth...
The B12 and D vitamin deficit are just coming out years later.

Anyway! I did my little proof and I learned a lots of new things, but I had to realised this diet can't work on long term. (definitely not for me!). My goal wasn't to switch 80/10/10 diet fully and live on forever, I just wanted to try out!
Very good feeling to be lean, but what does it worth, if you haven't got strength in the same time?!
You feel yourself incredible light and fast...but this feel is just temporally and will switch to tiredness and slow motion.
I think this diet is great for end of season detox, carry on it for couple of weeks with zero or very small amount of training. Eating lots of fruit can be very beneficial for your performance, but you have to find the right balance. Raw food is one of the best for you without any shadow, but you also need some cook food as well! I started to eat cooked food, meat and other whole foods again and my cut finger hailed in two days.......
I am eating everything what my body craves in the last 3 days. I had some "bad" stuff as well, but I am full back to my healthy diet in couple of days time. I try to get back most of my muscle mass and strength as soon as possible. And I am going to keep one full fruit day every week!

The banana with you! And bear in mind eat some nice tasty but less healthy stuff sometime, because sometime you have to enjoy life.....

Monday 20 June 2011

Hurry up...

My last week started very slowly but it turned to be fast lane after couple of days. First of all the weather was CRAP, thanks for Dave.... I was moaning about low temperatures on Wednesday afternoon, when Dave had a big speech about how lucky we are with dry weather and we shouldn't give a flying fXXk for low temp! Since this big clever talk I managed to get fully soaked at least once each day, basically it rains now EVERY day! Cheers mate! :)

Beginning of the week my black Sram Red rear mech's due date has changed again and went forward 5 more weeks. I had enough, I canceled the back order and I ordered the normal silver version, which turned up next day. I have everything on site now, I just have to manage find some time slot for my CAAD5's plastic surgery. I hope I can do it before weekend and I can test the new baby during the weekend.

I decided to speed up a bit my PT study and I started to make major effort on studying. Thanks for couple of really good friends I fly forward and get the necessary knowledge with incredible speed. I try to hurry up to finish of the school ASAP and my Gym Instructor exam is on middle of August! Hurra!

Mainly I ran last week and I just went out two times for a ride. I wasn't really in the riding mood during this "lovely" English summer rain period....



I did some speed workout during the week and I planed to run a race today but thanks for my weekend private gym course, the couple of shower I decided to don't do it. It is a trail race and I am not really in the mud swim mood..sorry.

I headed out for a 60+k ride Wednesday morning and it was pretty good! Weather was a bit windy, but the banana engine worked well and I turned up to work with a big smile on my face. My Sunday ride was a bit less fun at the beginning. I planed to do my usual Croydon- Epson- Richmond lap, but I got a puncture in Croydon. I quickly managed to change the tube, but my only one CO2 cartridge taken the Micky out of me and unscrewed my valve core. I stand with flat tyre and no pumping device with me 7 o'clock middle of Croydon. Thanks God, some other rider came past me and stopped to help. He had a such a crap pump, but I managed to put around 50 PSI in my rear tyre with 180 pumping movements. It was enough pressure to ride home and top up the tyre. I decided to carry on the ride but I changed plan. I went out to ride a lap in Richmond park and I headed to the city directions. I invited myself for a coffee... Where? Look mum no hands! Oh yeh! This is one of the coolest bike related cafeteria in London. I never been here before, time was here! This place is amazing! Check it out!

After a quick coffee and my necessary purchase I headed home and eat 15 bananas quickly.

I spent most of the afternoon in Barnes with one of my friend. She is a PT and she try to help my preparation to the course. I learned lots of new things.... and I have a quite intensive muscle soreness today. Lol!

Monday was a day of the rest and calm....or not?! I headed out for a short recovery run first thing and after all I picked up the "bargain of the Monday" on the market! I bought 39! huge size Valencian oranges for £8. I already managed to eat 22 end of the day....

I went to see Martin (Mr Elastic band, Super stretcher, Muscle whisper SuppleWorX man) , who gave some good squeeze for my legs and fixed my right painful elbow. After the 2 hour long human origami we moved in the kitchen with Sue. We cooked some mega healthy lunch and also made some raw dessert. The menu was avocado stuffed sweet potato and paleo chicken fajita. My lunch was 7 more oranges... :) But end of the day I nibbled a little bit from the raw dessert!
Not for me... (at the moment!)
Raw goodness
Sue and my oranges...

Today was a manic day! I woken up so tired. I didn't have enough sleep and I made around 1000kcal deficit in my intake yesterday. I didn't pay enough attention. On 80/10/10 diet if you don't consume enough calories, you are going to be a zombie next day. I got myself "stabilized" at the end of the afternoon, but I decided to come home after work and don't do any exercise at all. No running, no cycling, no racing.... Bad bad Szabi...

BTW, yesterday was the end of my 4th week on low fat high carb raw vegan diet. I decided to carry on this diet couple of week longer. Little progress update is coming tomorrow, now I have to finish of my huge salad and go in the bed ASAP!

Saturday 11 June 2011

21st day!



3 week done already! I ate only fruits and some sort of veg in the last 21 days. I didn't touch any cooked food, animal products or processed food. I am on the Low Fat High Raw Vegan diet and I feel brilliant! No digestion problem, no hunger and no craving after cooked food! (I miss my extra dark chocolate only).

My body fat and body weight dropped drastically in the last 3 weeks. And I lost some muscle mass as well. I try to prevent muscle loosing now and I eat a ton of greens every day, includes 750-1000g of spinach.

Everyone was quite sceptical at the beginning but it turned to curiosity in the last 10 days and I get more and more interesting questions about my diet! One of the common question is: "How long do you wanna do this? " My answer is: " Longest I feel myself great!". If I start to crave after any other type of food, I will have it! Over the 4 weeks period I am not going to ban myself from any food. I am going to eat what my body wants. But, at the moment my body says: "I need more fruits!". I never been this lean and energetic in the same time. I think this is the ideal endurance athlete built!

My last week went very fast.
Couple of new bits turned up for my CAAD5 project in the last few days. I am only waiting for my new rear mech, which one was due yesterday, but date jumped forward couple days again. Hopefully the final missing part are coming Wednesday at the latest. Mike from Jim Walker was very kind and sorted out for me a great price on my new "cock pit". I ordered Thompson X2 stem and a Masterpiece seatpost. (pimping is never ending......) and in the same time I got a bargain on a brand new Easton EC90 SLX3 handlebar. It came from the same place then my Easton fork. I couldn't say NO for a £100 price. And thanks for Dave and his lovely wife Tina I didn't pay a single penny P&P! Tina went and picked up my handlebar from the shop and then Dave transported it for me from the far Harrow... :)


I am in love with Thomson parts. They are not the lightest and most technocrat parts on the market, but this each Thomson bit has a vibe... So industrial and looks very strong!

Since Richmond 10k I haven't done a huge amount of cycling. Somehow I prefer a bit more running at the moment than cycling. I think the reason the time efficiency. Lots of things going on around me and some change is coming up soon. This thing takes a lot out from my free time, but I reckon it worsts the effort! Hopefully 4 more weeks and everything is going to be settled again. I managed to ride only once last week (plus my weekly 100k commuting). I planed to ride a long one on Sunday, but the horrible rain and the 6000 miles/ hour wind kept me inside during the day. I just went down to the gym and ran 8k on treadmill last night.

I started to look a pair of new racing flats. I have 4 pairs of shoes already, but they are not enough. I know...this is bad! But I wanna get something very light and fast for my next 10k. Nike Lunar Racer 2? :) I am also looking the Brooks Green Silence, but I still have a big swoosh on my heart and I can't (and I don't want) give up my Nike freakness.....

Other new arrival of the week was my new water bottle. I ordered a CamelBak Grove bottle which one comes with a built in (and replaceable) water filter. It works on the same way than the Brita system. It has an little active carb filter. You just have to feel up the bottle with normal tap water and you can straight sipping out the fresh filtered water from the bottle. Save you time and money on long term. The filter is good enough for 3 months and the cost comes out cheaper then any mineral water.

Ok, I think now this is enough.... I have to get back to my little project! Carry on watching , if everything is gonna be alright , my new rear mech will turn up and I can make my CAAD5 full plastic surgery! :)


Monday 6 June 2011

Last two weeks in numbers..

Just a quick update, I summarised my fruit consumption....

Here we go!

bananas: 278
melons: 24
dates: 123
oranges: 22
mango: 11
papaya: 6
grapefruits: 12
apples: 10
pineapples: 4
mandarines: 44
sharon fruits: 12
kiwi: 4

Wow! You can see, the dominating foods are bananas, melons and dates.

I tried to pay more attention for my the protein intake from today. I lost a fair bit of muscles mass over two weeks . I have to eat much much more greens! I am going to post about leafy greens protein contain in the next few days. I started to dig myself in deep and I found lots of interesting stuff!

Sunday 5 June 2011

Great Sunday!

I had a brilliant Sunday! Why? Because I managed to win my first 10k running race! :) Ok, stop right now, don't think anything extraordinary... It was just a race, not a super race. But let see from the beginning.

I started to follow fruitarian diet 2 weeks ago. I made a decision to run a 10k race at the beginning of my new diet and 4 weeks time an other one. Just see how is my fitness changes during this period. My legs were itching for a 10k run since Kingston Breakfast Run 16 miler and the time was here!
I tried to find some local race and I spotted out Richmond Rugby 150th anniversary celebration run in Runners World's event calendar. It was an ideal race, Sunday morning, start wasn't to early, I could reach the place easily by tube. I did my entry in the last second, actually I had a think about to skip the race beginning of this week, when I had an intensive muscle soreness from the lack of protein. But SuppleWorX Martin magic hands and lots of eat and sleep solved the problem and I was in relatively good shape on Thursday morning. I decided to push the "ENTRY" button on Thursday afternoon..... in the last minutes! :D

I did really small amount of training during the week, tried to taper on the best way. It worked!

My alarm went on 6 o'clock. I had plenty of time to prepare everything. I had a 6 bananas- 8 dates smoothies for breakfast. I jumped on the tube quickly and I been in Richmond around 8:20. I went to pick up my start number and headed to Starbucks. I had a post race chill out! :)
I turned up the event village 30 minutes before the start. I had the first surprise of the day, I met with my old flat mates from Southfields! Linka and Robey ran the same race.
Opposite with the last year 450 entries, this year field was quite thin. The start was late with 10 minutes and finally we got the green signal 10 o'clock. I tried to stick with the leader group and it wasn't a hard effort. I thought we run slow, but checking my Garmin I realised the pace is under 3:40 min/km. My group was formed by 7 people and over the 5k sign we shrank down just 3 of us. The pace still was constants and one of the guy started to drop back over the 7km sign. After 8k I was pretty sure then my second place is mine if nothing goes wrong. In the same time my legs and lunge started to burn from lack of lactate acid, but I tried to keep up. The leader guy started to breathing heavily 500 m before the finish and I didn't need much more, I started to push like a lunatic. I won with 50m. I finished with 37:15. I ran a new PB, my best was 39:45 in the past.

I got a nice medal and a bottle of quality whisky. Ok, the whisky isn't too useful me, but I am sure it makes my dad happy! :)

After the race I stayed to chat with Robey, Linka and their friends. After I shared my all nutritional suggestion and tips with this guys I headed home and had a massive celebration fruit lunch and an hour nap.....

Overall:
Great event, good place. I love to run Thames footpath every time. Frutiarian diet seems working, but I am still worried with my muscle loose.... when is it going to settle????? We will see!
I have to say especially big thanks for Martin Jeffries (Mr. SuppleworX magic finger, muscle guru) who was very kind and helpful and sorted out my legs yesterday early morning on his off day and weekend....
Very big thanks for CompresSport UK as well! Tim is a top bloke! Thanks for your support!

Friday 3 June 2011

10th day


Yesterday was my 10th day on the fruitarian diet. Here is a little summary of the first 10 days:

Overall:
- my weight was 62,9kg when I started and the scale showed 61,9kg yesterday morning
- my body fat was 7,1% at the start and it is 6,4% now
- I lost 1kg in 10 days, 500grams fat and 500 grams muscle.... (to gain 500 grams quality muscle, it is hard work...)


I had a very hard couple of days beginning of this week. I didn't eat enough on Monday and I didn't have too much quality sleep for couple of days. I was a bit tired and felt a bit burned out, but with more food and proper sleep I got stabilised the "situation". Yesterday I was fine again. I pointed out this diet's first negative side. 10% protein isn't enough for fast and proper recovery next to very active lifestyle and 9+ training hours week.... The half kilo muscle loose is a bit
worrying, but I still feel strong and good!

23rd May.
23rd May.

2. Jun

Well, keep looking and I am updating you guys....

Wednesday 1 June 2011

Short bank holiday weekend!


Doh! Bank holidays are not good for me anymore. Because I am off every Sunday-Monday and actually the shop is closed on Mondays the Bh days doesn't effect me anymore! :(

I missed Friday running speed workout and I decided to do it on Saturday evening. Treadmill session went well and may be I went on the mad side a bit. Saturday night was the usual story, I went in bed very late and I had to wake up early on Sunday morning...

Martin (my hyper-super sport massage therapist) wanted to try something on me. He made some work on my legs before my ride. Basically I sat straight on the bike from the massage table and headed out for a "longer" ride. I met with him 6:30 in the morning.

When I left home and headed to Martin's place Sunday morning, my legs cried for more sleep. I had terrible muscle sorness from last night run. I thought this Sunday ride isn't a good idea...

But after 45 minutes later I headed out for a ride and actually I quite enjoyed it. My head and rest of my body still was tired, but I got a pair of brand new legs! Wowww! I have to say Martin's pre ride work made some huge change on my legs and the experience was unbelievable.

I am really looking forward Martin's further techs testing... If you have any flexibility or muscle problem, just give him a buzz and I am sure, he can help for you! You can find his contact details here: http://www.suppleworx.co.uk/

Part of my legs my Sunday ride was awful and short. The weather was windy, my garmin went mental and lost route plan and Sunday drivers were assholes! Usually wind doesn't bother me and I like to ride in windy weather, but when you tired and didn't have enough coffee... all views change! I managed to ride only 80km, which one is a bit shame. I could ride more, but wasn't a point totally kill myself one week before the 10k running race.


Monday was my rest day. I felt myself a bit tired, but all was ok! We went out to Holland park with Adel and we had a lunch over there. The weather was a bit windy, but quite nice. I managed to read out the new Runners World magazine and chill out a bit. I finished the afternoon in the gym with some upper body workout.
Picknick lunch in fruitarian style...


My dinner was a bit disappointing and painful... My pineapple went a bit too acidy and I got a very sore mouth, lips and tongue after dinner and my stomach felt funny, but was too late....


Tuesday morning I felt my stomach very uncomfy, but managed to do my short run with speed workouts. I didn't enjoyed this session very much, but I did it. I had a major muscle pain from Monday gym session. I think I reached the point when I can made a first negative feedback about 80/10/10 diet. If you do heavy training and destroy muscle mass, your body struggle to build it back from 10% or less daily protein intake. The recovery seems a bit longer as well. Energy level still was high and I wasn't heavy headed then on the high fat-protein paloe diet....


I finished the morning on the market, when I managed to buy 20kg bananas on some blinding price.