Since end of last year, I decided that I want to be healthy. After years of neglect, I decided to do something about it. After a few months of running, I decided to put it down in words my journey on running so far.

When I first started running, I know motivation was the main component. As such, I kept a record of all my runs faithfully using the Nike+. I used the Nike+ SportBand initially as all my runs were on the treadmill in the gym. Nike+ uses graphs a lot, which works for me as I need visual motivation. The downside of Nike+ is that I could never login from my home PC due to some problems that many people in the world encountered. I used the Nike+ app for iPhone/iPad instead.

The other tool for motivation was getting a weighing machine, to keep track of my weight.

Initially it was tough. I could only manage 2km on the treadmill before I gave up. After faithfully going to the gym for 3 months, I could manage 5km on the treadmill.

The problem was, my weight was not going down.

So I thought it was due to running on the treadmill. I mean treadmill is indoors, with air-conditioning, no humidity, no heat. Besides I have always wanted to take part in a race, and no race are held indoors. So after 3 months, I decided to run outdoors.

I chose a quiet stretch of East Coast to run after work, firstly, it was not crowded, and secondly, the parking was free. I will go home after work, change, drive down and run.

It was very different from running indoors. The heat, the humidity, the hard ground. It was like running starting from level zero again. However, I actually enjoyed it more than running indoors. The sea, the sky, it was just wonderful to be able to enjoy the view when I was running.  Gradually, I increased the distance from 2km+ to hitting 5-6km each run. And I was doing 3 to 4 runs per week. I also realised that if I run early in the morning on weekends, I actually struggle. I am definitely not a morning person.

However, the problem with my weight not going down still persists. This was something that bother me quite a fair bit. I decided to read on it.

The likely problem I decided after reading up on it, was my diet. I had figured that since I was running so often, I needed the energy to keep me going, and as such, I ate more than usual. I was also not watching what I eat, fast food, soda, sweets, anything goes. I decided to do something about my diet.

Initially, I went quite extreme on what I ate. I removed a lot of carbo from my diet, no rice, no noodles, no bread. It was mostly fish and vegetables. It was terrible. I was hungry all the time, and on top of that, I have no energy throughout the day. When I went for my run, I almost died every single run. I was definitely doing something wrongly.

So it was back to the drawing board. I read up on it and suspected my body went into ‘starving-mode‘ . The body literally shut down in order to conserve energy, which explains why I was tired throughout the day.  Effectively, I was going from one extreme where I ate everything, to the other extreme, which caused my body to shut down. So I have to tweak the food I ate. The beauty of all this was that whatever I ate, it had an almost direct effect on my body state, and I could see the results. After tweaking a fair bit, my current diet includes having museli/granola with cottage cheese/yoghurt and fresh fruits for breakfast, rice with meat and vegetables or soup for lunch, and mainly fish for dinner. I have dried fruits and nuts for snacks throughout the day, and lots of plain water to hydrate myself.

With this diet, and my running, I am finally seeing some results. My running times have improved, and my weight has finally started to go down. I am no longer tired throughout the day. I sleep better at night, my mind thinks better and I am more focused. Of course, nothing is set in stone, and I will continue to tweak what I eat accordingly. Eating the same food daily is not good either.

That is the whole beauty of it. There are a lot of schools of thought, opinion on healthy food out there. What I understand now is that there is no one diet that is for everyone. One must read up extensively, filter out the harmful ones (for e.g. diet pills), and decide which one to try. After deciding what to eat, one must also see if it is working for him. If it is not working, why not, and what can be done to improve. It is pretty fascinating actually.

While it was going pretty well, I was hit with yet another obstacle, an injury. This caused me to change my opinion that running was fuss-free. I always thought running was as simple as putting on a pair of running shoes, putting 1 leg in front of my other leg, and just run. The injury led me to realise that running is not that simple. I will document on the injury in another post some other day.