Running, healthy eating and leadership coaching – what’s the relationship?

01/05/2020: It’s the 22^nd consecutive 8k runs I have done in the last 25 days.

It’s taken me just over 8 months to get to this level of consistency with my running. And 1 year and 8 months to get to 87kgs in weight (from over 100kgs in weight) and reverse type 2 diabetes.

But every morning when the alarm goes off at 6am to get up to run, there is more often than not, hesitancy. A disbelief that I can quite do this.

But I ignore it and get on with the action.

My problem is that I am a good cook, I have a good palette so I am prone to eat and I used to eat all the staff that tasted great. And everything was fried in oil or butter, or made of rice or wheat and full of sugar or salt. Not good if you want to lose weight.

About 1 year and 8 months ago, I started a revolution of not frying everything, gave up alcohol, sugar, wheat, rice, dairy (apart from cheese, occasionally). I reinvented menus which were low in glycaemic index and no added fats, sugars or carbs.

Choosing to eat healthy vs not is still a daily choice.

As I begin a run, initially there is always hesitancy, maybe there is a little niggle somewhere or its raining or its too cold or too hot.

But I have learnt not to heed those concerns and keep putting one foot in front of the other.

To alleviate boredom, I run different courses each day, each 8k long run is slightly different and listen to music in my Spotify.

And also, at the beginning I set out at an easy comfortable space, influenced by Deepak Chopra’s notion of “effortless” running.

I have also found that there is a posture for running. And as long as you stick to the posture, I remain injury free. So, I stick to the posture consciously and after a while it becomes a habit.

I remember that I have learnt so many things that I can do by this process that I couldn’t have told you before.

I imagine a recipe for next day each day. I have to think of my eating principles of no high glycaemic index food (wheat/rice, mostly vegetables, meat and fish), no added fat/oil, no added sugar and dairy free.

Then I go shopping for the ingredients and occasionally have to adjust the ingredient on the hop as they may not be available on the shelf and have to think about the taste and flavours.

Then, I start the process. This often involves chopping ingredients, or getting ingredients ready, like toasting and grinding spices, whisking, blending, mixing etc.

Then in my head I work out the order of the cooking or the process, what goes in first and what’s next. Tasting for seasoning or the taste I’m looking for as the dishes develop. Correcting and balancing the tastes.

It’s a real learning curve while all this is happening, will it pay off as you imagined?

Each day I run a different route, that means 7 different routes a week, they do of course cris-cross bits of others but there are parts that are just on that route.

So, there are different challenges in each of them. The traffic, the walkers and other runners, rain or cold or both, wind etc but there is this feeling I can go on running all day.

The most annoying thing is smokers on the track or the road. My lungs react badly, so I end up coughing. Also, the air pollution makes me cough as well. But since the lock down there is a marked improvement in the air quality.

Then, on different days I feel different even in the run, some days I feel like a slug trying to run and on other days I seem to have a spring in my step and feeling fine.

Some routes are more challenging than others because they have big hills to run up. But I take it all in my stride and run as fast as my body and my technique allows me to. As I know mine is a longer race than just this one run or just this one moment.

Each time I cook, I try to have a little adventure in cooking. In this lock down time I have been more adventurous in trying out new recipes, for example making souffle’s, but not with butter, flour or sugar!

That is challenging because a banana souffle without sugar is a bit dull, but then if I added some dates which are naturally sweet, then it sweetens up and not with lashings of artificial sugar.

I have also made brownies without butter, sugar or flour (wheat) and that too became a triumph at first time but then I attempted a cake which was a cake but wasn’t quite or tried to make ravioli from rye flour pasta which was not at all successful. So, there were some experiments that didn’t turn out to be right.

But when I made pasta with rye flour, that was also a great triumph as I never made things like that before, as my strengths were curries or sauces or Asian type savoury dishes.

But I take it as a part of the challenge to go beyond my limits of cooking ability to try and dare to come up with new ideas.

After completing a run and walking back home, the feeling is of a complete satisfaction. Yes, you are tired and your clothes are wet but physically you feel really great, mentally you feel so accomplished and calm. The rest of the day is now all ahead of you and you are looking forward to it, awake and ready to go.

So, I get home, and rest for about 30 minutes, have a glass of water and a warm cup of tea, then have a shower, first warm and after 5 minutes turn on cold, and have a cold shower for 10 minutes, dry and apply tiger balm to main muscles ie thighs, hamstrings, knees, calves, ankles and feet. This calms down all my tired hot muscles and prevent physical aches.

Then a nice breakfast.

I usually wait about 15/30 minutes before eating each dish after making it.

90% of the time, the results are fantastic and the dishes ends up in Facebook and LinkedIn. The 10% are bad to terrible but they are learning points.

People share lots of stuff in those sites, mostly their opinions about politics or the subject of their work. I share results of my cooking and running, it’s my self-expression, I don’t run the world of politics or operate the environment or fix other problems, I take myself out of the NHS que or do something which I can affect in the wold and people say they get inspired by my shares.