Chewing the fat...

One of my main targets this year is to try and reduce my overall body fat percentage.

What with the man flu over the last 10 days, its been virtually impossible to do any sort of cardio exercise to burn any fat so I've taken a look at my diet and I'm making a conscious effort to cut out the crap.

I may have lost 5st over the last 3 years but when I'm at work, I think nothing of a quick 1 min walk around the corner from the office and come back with a packet of Real McCoys Chilli flavoured crisps AND a Twix bar.  Thats 600 calories right there and god knows what the fat/saturated fat content is in them.  Well technically I know but lets not go into that detail right now.  As I train so hard, the effect of them treats isnt that bad on the body in terms of putting on pounds but the fat content will ensure I'll never properly see my abs and the other muscles.  So, its about time I get that part of the training regime correct as well.

Most of you will know that I used the My Plate function of Livestrong.com to log my calories when I first lost weight.  Although I havent done that for the last 12 months or so, I thought it would be a good idea to do it again, just to track the nutritional values of the food rather than the calories as I tend to eat sensbibly these days.

However, I've just discovered My Fitness Pal.  Essentially, it works in exactly the same way as My Plate but the main difference is the majority of the food database is based on English food companies rather than American, thus making it so much easier to track the food.  The iOS app is bloody brilliant and makes it a dream to work with.  The reporting function is awesome.

As you can see, I've done pretty well this week.  Way under my net calorie allowance and I've got the carbs/protein/fat ratios pretty much where I want them to be, although they will need to be tinkered with a little when the full marathon training programme kicks in...

As you will know from my blog posts, the only proper training sessions I've done this week were Saturday and Sunday and this shows in the net calories consumed.

2013 v 2012 Training Stats

I've just been updated the 2013 training stats as of today and I thought it would be interesting to compare like for like with the same period last year.

So, for the record, this is my 2012 training stats...

2012 Training Stats 1st Jan - 12th Aug...Click to expand...

Now when you see the 2013 stats, it does really show a signficant change in my training regime...

2013 Training Stats 1st Jan - 12th Aug...Click to expand...

Now bearing in mind I lost time in April due to a reoccurring chest-infection and I've had to scale back my cardio training in June onwards from the persistent knee niggle I've been suffering from, its interesting to see that I've lost 4 hours on last year but I've burned significantly more calories for the same period.

The main plan this year was to spend less time cycling and spend more time running and in the Gym.  So far so good and the results are clearly paying off.

Average speeds for cycling and running have increased whilst the average HR for the same activities has reduced, meaning I'm a damn sight fitter than I was than this time last year.