Tag: weight loss

Sofies C25k Journey: Week 1 – The beginning

I will talk about my body weight a bit in this series, its one of the things I focussed on at the time and that got me through. I just want to say, there’s nothing wrong with any body shape or size and the world would be a better place if people didn’t judge each other on such petty things. Losing weight was one of my goals for doing C25k, and probably for many others too, running became something else though, something I now can’t deal without. Weight loss (or now just being able/needing to eat a lot) became a secondary benefit. So I recommend running for everyone. Don’t let people who judge, have any say over how you live your life.

Week 1

It is the 12th of April 2016. I am working as a research assistant at the Manchester Royal Infirmary. About 2 weeks ago on the 1st, I was released from hospital. I had been sent to SAFIRE ward because of feeling suicidal and self harming. That was my first experience of being in a mental hospital (although I had previously been hospitalised for mental health reasons) it was scary, with four of us to a room. I remember a nurse saying “it’s a mixed ward but all males at the moment” although I couldn’t tell why at the time, the fact it was mixed comforted me a lot.

When I got out I stopped drinking and was determined to lose weight. I think they weighed me over 110kg at the hospital. I remember them asking if that was normal for me, and me being embarrased and thinking, this isn’t me! You aren’t seeing me!

I am about 5’10”-11″ (1.8m) in height which puts my BMI at 34

I started to diet and exercise, this included getting as many steps as possible, I wanted to get all the weight gone as soon as possible. I have an extremely strong will when I am determined to do something and I was losing weight rapidly. Although by this point hadn’t bought weighing scales, I was researching them online and finding that there was no good set of weighing scales to my dismay.

My researching online had also made me aware of an NHS running plan called Couch to 5k (C25k). I had become a serial Lurker on the health unlocked forum, where I read of the inspiring stories of people doing the program and becoming runners. I was immersed in weight loss and getting into running. When you drink too much and then give up, you end up having a hole in your days and nights. That hole is called living. I become ultra obsessed with one thing in order to fill it, since society these days is so obsessed with DOING, over the much neglected and denigrated SOOTHING (reading, painting by numbers, knitting – non goal oriented things). I set about DOING stuff, having goals, numbers of steps per day, steps during lunch break, weight loss per day, weigh loss targets per week and month, running goals anything I can measure!

So today, a reasonably warm day, around 10C, I do run 1 on C25K

Week 1:
For your 3 runs in week 1, you will begin with a brisk 5-minute walk, then alternate 1 minute of running and 1-and-a-half minutes of walking, for a total of 20 minutes.

Run 1:

Unfortunately I didn’t track this run. I wanted to get down to the river before the first run interval so that it wasn’t messed up by crossing a road. I can’t remember how I timed things, for this 1st session maybe I just used a stopwatch on my phone. Once I got to the river I started the 1 minute run…

OH MY GOD!! Running for 1 minute was hard. I was questioning myself, “can I do the next 7 of these? Is running a good idea for me? Maybe I just go home now.”

Now I am more experienced, I know I was running too fast, that was the simple answer to my problems, I didn’t know that back then. I ignored my gremlins, I did up to run 4, turned around so I would be closer to home by the time I had finished. During the last four of these my lungs were on fire, I was overtaken by a runner, I was seriously looking forwards to this being done. I pushed on and finished. I got home and felt super proud I had finished, I trusted the program and knew I had made my first steps to 5k. This was it, this was the start, if I continue I will get there.

Run 2:

Since my last run I downloaded an app which tells me when to run and walk, also lets me play my own music. I actually started recording partly for this very reason, 3 years later I am able to look back at what I did. Also I simply wanted to know how fast I was going. Beware however, I don’t believe the top speed in this case, although averages should be fairly accurate. I think I was pushing for 12kph because I remember running that fast before, and averaging 10 (6:00 per k) during the running sections. These are only 1 minute remember, so I was sprinting to get these speeds. This entire C25k journey will be me doing it wrong and telling you to slow down.

My first recorded C25K run W1R2 https://www.strava.com/activities/1197337482

Run 3:

https://www.strava.com/activities/1197337099

This time I turned around a bit later so that I would have a longer walk back home. I think I was enjoying being outside and with the river. I would often see people canoeing down the river too. By run 3 the 1 minute runs were tolerable. I again have to say don’t do what I did, I had done all 3 runs on consecutive days, but I was obsessed as I described above, this was filling the gap.

At this point I am well over 105 Kg (somewhere over 16.5st) I will finally buy some scales in a week (my birthday present) after much researching. I am doing over 20,000 steps per day, using the crosstrainer for an hour at the gym, walking on my lunch break. Also limiting my calories, this wasn’t a healthy diet it was just calorie limited. Burn off more than I put in = weight loss.

I still remember how I felt on these runs, sometimes through a race where I am absolutely pushing myself I get the same thoughts “maybe I should stop running” “maybe this isn’t for me”. It reminds me of how I started and the willpower I used to keep going. If you experience that on a C25k run, slow down, you are going too fast!

Beginner runners have one thing on their side, and that is diminishing returns. Sounds funny but it is true. When you start running you get 90% of the benefits and rewards (increased fitness) with only 60% of the effort level (OK I’m not sure on the exact numbers but you get the idea). You can push for the extra 10% but you are increasing 2 things in my opinion.

1: Your injury risk sky-rockets, your body isn’t used to running yet, your joints are unstable. It isn’t worth it

2: Even worse in my opinion, you wont enjoy it. Why is that worse than an injury? An injury might stop you from running temporarily but if you really despise these first runs you might shelve it completely for the rest of your life.

If you are like me your experience of running was in school, coming last every time, hating it. I missed most PE lessons I got a medical note I hated it. Running isn’t like that. It is like walking, you don’t go on a walk and push yourself to go as fast as you can possibly walk, you go and enjoy yourself. Treat running the same way.

I again recommend everyone to give this a go, give it another go, go easy on yourself, whatever you manage is better than nothing. The weather is getting better and you can graduate in time for summer!

Love you all

Sofie xxxx

Sofies Couch to 5K: Introduction

I want to tell the story of my C25K experience, including how much I weighed the routes I used and how I felt during and after. Fortunately I recorded most of this using GPS and forum posts so I can look back and see what was going on at the time.

To start with, I am 5’11” and weighed well over 105 kg when I started C25K, I was incredibly unfit. I point this out because so many people see me and say I must have always been a runner or fit. That’s a compliment and fine but I feel like a lot of people try to rule themselves out of running by mentally editing my history. And I feel like I worked hard back then so I’m not going to let people forget. Even my family who knew me as unhealthy most of my life say I have always been fit, well this is a photo of me in 2016.

I was working at the Manchester Royal infirmary at the time, I had the best job in the world, which is one that you want to do. I was a research assistant on a project hacking the Kinect, a gaming device, to make it track breathing rates of patients in the hospital. A proof of concept type of study and as a physicist into medicine I loved it. It was strange then that I was suffering from depression, and it was getting worse.

I used to walk the 4 kilometers into work everyday, and enjoyed it whilst listening to a podcast or audiobook. But the depression made this difficult, I would rather stay in bed for 20 more minutes and get a bus. This was one change that seemed to happen without me noticing, and when I did it forced me to think about things. Another was finding it harder to put my shoes on because my belly was just in the way making it hard to breathe. Walking up stairs to my flat left me breathless and sweaty. I kept having to buy larger clothes to stay comfortable. I remember deciding to walk home one day and finding it had become much more difficult, to the extent that I was shaking. Looking in the mirror I would see someone else looking back, this wasn’t me, it wasn’t fair.

I remember sometimes coming home and seeing females running past and becoming sad and depressed. “I will never be like that” I thought and I meant it in two ways. I meant it in the way that I will never be a runner again. I also meant it in the way that I wish I was born female. At the time I focussed on the running aspect, I honestly believed all men wished they were born female, it never crossed my mind that I could be transgender because all I knew about that was that you are born in the wrong body. Well, I was in for a surprise on that front and so was everyone who knew me, but that was for later. I had become resigned to being unfit and unhappy, I had tasted the world and didn’t want anymore of it, I wanted things to be simple, I wanted to be drunk. I was the loneliest person on the planet.

This carried on until the end of March 2016, I found myself in a mental health ward. It was an observation ward, with 4 of us to a room. I think I had gone to A&E because I was feeling suicidal, I had started to self harm again, cutting my arms but after 2 days they let me go, it was on April fools day, haha.. I had to make the decision between ending everything, or trying to get better mentally. With the stakes so high, I thought I have to at least try something, I might aswell right? The main thing I wanted to do at this time was to stop drinking, It had become a crutch to cope with life but I knew if I could ditch that I could make other changes too, drastic changes, but ditching alcohol would also mean facing my thoughts.

Stopping drinking was very hard, I had no brakes because I was suicidal. When you are only thinking a day, week or maybe month ahead you don’t really care about alcoholism. Contrary, actually I just wanted something to come along and kill me. I would drink most nights, I didn’t get drunk on nights before work and could do drink free days but it was getting harder. I had also began self harming again by cutting my arms. If you wanted to find me those days, my hobby was getting blackout drunk in the pub, reading comics. Somehow just by being surrounded by people in the pub I felt less lonely, even if I never talked to anyone.

I could see many benefits of not drinking, I was spending a fortune on alcohol for one thing. It would mean saving a lot of money, I was spending £50 some nights on alcohol. Dieting and losing weight, I was consuming 1,000s of calories through alcohol alone, and even more via obligatory kebabs. Along with this, I could be more active instead of drinking, I could go out for a walk instead of being hungover, burning calories, instead of consuming them.

Once I was free again I looked on-line for a way to start running, there I found the Couch to 5k programme and a lovely community of people who had completed it or were on their own journey through it. And so, about a week before my 28th birthday in April 2016, I ditched the drink and started Couch to 5k. This isn’t a complete success story, I did finish and I did lose a lot of weight, but the alcohol came back. The transformation that happened during these few weeks were incredible however, and it gave me the base fitness to start running again when I once again found myself deeper into a mental hospital almost 8 months later.

This is a brief section of my life, it wasn’t the first time I had tried to get into running, but It was a big lesson for me, and at that time the longest time I managed to stay off alcohol since I was 18.

In future posts I will tell you the details I put on the C25K forum and some of the notes I took on how my dieting was going along with how I remember it. As you can see below, eventually through running I found myself, I am still finding pieces here and there.

I am doing this in the hopes that it encourages others to try C25K as you can tell I really enjoyed doing it, and even though I fell off the wagon, it really helped me start running with just the knowledge that I could still do it. As a very large person, it gave me a lot of self confidence, along with being an overweight runner I also had plenty of scars along my arms that I was extremely self conscious about.

I have seen people in their 60 and 70’s starting and loving C25K, falling in love with running in the process, ant they all believed they were never able to run. If you are thinking of starting it, then why not join in?

Lots of love to everyone,

Sofie xxxxxxx