This Week At The Gym: Week 14

There's a nasty cold going round London and I had it last week. I made it through Monday, woke up on Tuesday realising there was no way I was up to commuting, so I missed the planned Abs class that lunchtime. Wednesday I went in because I had reservations with my sister for an early supper at Murano, and I had no intention of missing that. (Sweetbreads followed by pigeon followed by a pistachio souffle. Some of the best food I've eaten in the last five years.) I went for a run Wednesday lunchtime, and tried the SCS class on Thursday evening. This was the beginners class, and it's about doing some basic weights exercises fairly quickly without a lot of rest in between the sets. Light weights for the first time. On Friday morning, I was aching from the after-effects of the squats. We had different tutor for Friday evening Pilates, who took us through some different exercises that made other different parts of me ache. And I still have that cold.

So let's talk about "playing hurt and working sick". Listen to athletes and sportsmen / women, and they almost always have something wrong with them. It's so unusual for them not to have an ache, a cold, a sprained this or a tired that, they actually make a point of saying they're on top form. If you want to achieve and maintain a respectable level of fitness, you will be aching, occasionally in need of massages and osteopathy (athletes take regular consumption of both for granted) and cannot take time off from training just because you have a cold. If you have an actual thermometer-busting fever, sure, you stop because training on a fever can mess up your heart, but if all you have is a cold and a cough then you train, in fact, you compete unless your coach and doctor physically restrain you.

One of the many, many things the know-nothing Government health and fitness advice slides over is this harsh fact. If you want to make a serious difference to your fitness and weight, you are not going to do it by taking a week off every time you get a cold or feel under the weather. You'll lose at least four, if not eight weeks a year like that, and each time you do, you'll lose most of the progress you made in the previous period.

Friday lunch with The Gang took us to a Korean behind Centrepoint, where I had really tasty noodles and beef. That evening I weighed 88.8 kgs with a body fat of 19.8%. The weight will come off, as it's mostly water retained by the noodles, and possibly a reaction to the Fluox, but I am going to have to swear off the Friday lunches until I've hit the target weight.

My primary purpose is to get to the end of the day without having a drink. My second purpose is to get to the damn targets I've set myself. Everything else comes after that.

This Week At The Gym: Week 13

I talked about my back and shoulders last week. I spent the Tomatito and Rocio Moilinas concerts in minor pain waiting for an appointment to have my back massaged and clicked by the wonderful Taj Deeora, who has been undoing the effects of my bad posture and genetic lordosis for longer than either of us would care to remember. Now have a back that wants to move and shoulders that are easing off. I can go back to exercising. I ran last Monday and did Pilates on Friday: the two running sessions at lunchtime wedre cancelled due to pain.

My scalp is a mess, fortunately hidden by my hair. I'm seeing the doctor about that after I collect the car from its MoT this Monday. I'm taking paracetomol to ease the twinges from whatever nastiness is going on up there: it's not so much painful, unless something scores a direct hit, as distracting. I'm not good at ignoring my body when it demands attention.

My weight is 13st 12lbs, or 88 kgs in new money. My body fat is about 21%. I haven't been in this territory since I was... well, since about 1994 / 5 or so, when I quit smoking. I doubt my body fat was 21% then. I think my body is deciding whether this is all real or just a temporary aberration. Next week, I've booked myself in for Scs, Abs and Pilates classes, plus a run. This is for real. I've had a rest, probably forced on my intentions by my body. I have 2 kgs to lose and then I'm at target - see earlier remarks about diets. I'm kinda there on the aerobics bit, the Abs classes are to get me there on sit-ups. Press-ups are clearly more traumatic than I thought and will need approaching indirectly. With massage. It's still only February.

Flamenco Season 2011

It's February, so it's been the Sadlers Wells Flamenco Season. I saw Israel Galvan, Aida Gomez, Rocio Molina, Tomatito and Eva Yerbabuena. Which means I saw three of the best dance troupes - Galvan, Molina and Yerbabuena - in the world today. Yes, including the Royal Ballet and anyone else you want to mention.

Tomatito's band are a straight-ahead flamenco trouple: guitars, cantores and an athletic gypsy dancer, Jose Maya. Tomatito mixes flamenco with jazz, doesn't let his technique get in the way of expression when needed and has a preposterous groove - sorry, compas. In the second half of the concert, the band hit "an impeccable groove" and no-one wanted to go home. This is an example...



Israel Galvan will make you think several times about what flamenco, tap and modern dance could be. Cheeky, technically challenging, full of odd poses and supremely confident. His guitarist Alfredo Lagos was startling: there are a handful of people who can play a trill with their fingers and a tune with their thumb and still keep a beat, and he's one of them.



What do I say about Rocio Molina? Sexy, inventive, a confident young lady with a style all her own... He stage presence when she wasn't dancing reminded me of a guy called Miles, the way she would stand away and then suddenly take the centre for her dance and pull everything together. The set looked like something a top-end ballet company might do if it had the budget. Her cantoras, including La Tremendita, complemented and challenged her. This time round I was starting to regret I don't speak Spanish.



And so we come to Eva Yerbabuena, one of a handful of artists who have reached the point where, if you don't get what she's doing, that's your problem, not hers. The show was When I Was... set in the Spanish Civil War. I'm going to let a professional critic describe it. The show was about how flamenco isn't just a bunch of moves and neat tricks on the guitar: it's an approach, a mood, a style, a way of interpreting. The only non-Spanish form like it is jazz. Yerbabuana could pull in a Chaplin-esque routine and moves, and make them flamenco; she could take a straight modern dance piece you would stand and applaud the Ballet Rambert for doing - the cockfight - and make that flamenco; she could set a number of traditional pieces - including a beautiful shawl dance - in a dramatic setting you'd expect to see at the ENO. And she could create a moment like this...



that hypnotised everyone.

How many times do I have to say this? What these guys are doing, right now, is the best new work in dance on the planet today. Get over tutus and swans, or body suits and bare stages, and arms held "like a ballerina" and watch what these guys are doing, feel what they are performing. This is how it must have felt to be able to go downtown and hear John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Miles Davis play in the early sixties.

The Diets: It's Coming Off That's The Catch

The pat theory is that you exercise more - we've dealt with that as a non-source of calorie loss - and eat less. The "eating less" bit has to mean "drastically less", as in 500+ calories a day, not "a little less" as in 100 calories a day, because you simply can't control your intake to within 100 calories a day. It's a slice of Dove Farm bread or half a Yoga Bunny Bowl from Pret. Or a good long look at a bar of chocolate.

According to the US Army, those of us with a sedentary lifestyle need between 12-14 calories per pound of body weight as an equilibrium diet. That would be "sedentary" is by the standards of the US Army, not a London office worker. You and I are "sedentary". When I started The Diet, I weighed 95 kgs, giving an equilibrium intake of 2,500 calories a day. I cut this to around 1,500 calories a day and aside from yearnings for food mid-morning, it's not hurting at all.

Now here's the catch: when I hit my target weight, I don't "go back to eating like I used to", which is what the pat articles in the press say. I go back to the equilibrium diet for that weight. At 87 kgs, that's 2,300 calories. 800 calories is not a) the croissant with the morning coffee + b) a Snickers in the afternoon +c) some chocolate in the evening + d) fries at lunchtime on top of e) slightly larger meals with more veggies in them for additional roughage. If that's what I do, I'll be back up at 95 kgs again.

You understand I'm thinking out loud here. The extra calories cannot be extra carbs - unless they are really slow-digesting. Extra carbs means early-evening carb crash. That does not help the quality of my life. Contrary to anything you may have heard, veggies have calories, but Good Calories - not many per 100 grams and accompanied by a lot of fibre. I could have more veggies, but where does that happen in central London? So-called 'vegetarian' restaurants are actually very high on carbs: rice, noodles, potato. And the prices do not reflect the cost of the raw materials, but the aspirations of the customers.

The extra calories allow treat meals, such as I had at Santore on Exmouth Market before Rocio Molinas' amazing performance at Sadlers Wells. Treat meals are good. It allows sushi and a little something with afternoon tea - just not muffins. How muffins got to be on the Good List I have no idea: bland taste and packed with fats and carbs. But I could home-bake some biscuits: equally fatty and full of carbs, but much more flavour. What I eat in the evening now is about right: you need to be Spanish to have large evening meals and not turn into a Lard Tub. I eat enough at breakfast now. Maybe I could graduate from the sandwiches to the stews at Fernandez and Wells.

This is the catch. We really don't need to eat that much and it's really easy to eat more than enough. What I need to work out is a baseline diet on top of which I can put treat meals and the odd bit of comfort eating without messing up the weekly average. Oh. Right. That would be what I'm eating now. And that's the catch. There is no "return to normal", only a bunch of new habits and a certain amount of vigilance.

Joni Mitchell's Blue

There are a handful of moments in my life when I experienced something like a complete conversion to a cause. One of them was an edition of the John Peel Sunday show in the winter of 1970/71, when Joni Mitchell played an hour-long solo set. (Warning: I can't find this via Google, but since I heard the repeat when I was a summer intern with the CEGB at the Pembroke Power Station, and that was summer 1971, I think I'm right.) My first reaction was "oh, she wrote Clouds" and so I was expecting some twee folkie stuff. I'm sure she previewed some songs from Blue and her then hit Ladies of the Canyon. I was totally converted and genuflecting in front of the radio half-way through. I had no idea anyone could write songs and sing like that.

Joni Mitchell is one of a handful of artists in any genre who never stopped developing. Miles Davis. John Coltrane. Francisco Goya. Henry James. David Bowie. She never hit a groove and stuck with it, but kept on changing. Grow up following the career of artists like that and the regular guys, who hit a groove and stay with it, seem like, well, tradesmen. Entertainers. It gives you crazy expectations.

She released Blue in the summer of 1971. I heard it again after a long while recently and it sounded better. It is, in fact, perfect. Perfect in the way that Kind of Blue or A Love Supreme or In A Silent Way are perfect. You know the songs by heart, but there's always another little detail in the accompaniment, another piece of phrasing in her singing, that you didn't notice before - just as happens with Kind of Blue. Maybe Ashley Kahn should write a book about it.



Blue swings between ectsatic love-song (Carey, My Old Man) with the immortal lines "But when he's gone / Me and them Lonesome Blues collide / The bed's too big, the frying pan's too wide", to the darkness of Laura Nyro in the song Blue: "Acid, booze, and ass / Needles, guns, and grass / Lots of laughs lots of laughs / Everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go / Well I don't think so / But I'm gonna take a look around it though". The rockingest song she ever wrote, covered by Nazareth (!), is there in This Flight Tonight and A Case of You has been covered by more than a dozen people.

It's not for everyone. Joni Mitchell has been described as making music for sensitive girls of both sexes, but they aren't paying attention to the lyrics. Joni Mitchell doesn't expect love to last, and she doesn't regret that it doesn't. She expects it to be wonderful when it's there but for it to pass away pretty soon. That's not a girl-y sensibility. A woman's, maybe, an artist's defintely.

The Diet: Week 7

Last week I passed into the Target Zone: on Friday morning I weighed 87.5 kilos with a body fat of 22.4%. The target is a stable weight of 87 kilos, which means I have to get down to 86.5 or so before resuming the non-diet. Except there's a catch with that I'll explain in a later post.

Last week was an Emotions Week. I've had a tight right shoulder and my middle back is rock solid. If I sit still for ten minutes, I start to ache and without thinking to rub my right shoulder-blades. Also, there's a really complicated thing about the getting near to your objectives: it's not actually a cause for celebration. Suddenly the spectre of failing becomes serious - up until you reach the Target Zone, you can say "at least I tried", but once you're in the Zone, it becomes "I failed". By the time I reach the Target Zone, the fun has drained right out of the exercise: I'm in grit-my-teeth and finish this mode.

Which is why on Friday lunchtime the Gang and I went to Soho Joes on Dean Street at lunchtime and I had the burger and chips. Which is very good and I loved every bite. Promptly at half-past-five I had a carb-sugar-crash the like of which I remember from previous fries-with-lunches and haven't had since The Diet started. Crashes like that used to send me straight home feeling awful, cancelling any plans I may have  had, but this time I went to the Pilates class and worked through it. By the time I'd showered and came out, I was just fine. And had put on over two pounds in the day, because my weight was 88.6 kilos - usually I weight about the same at the end of the day as at the start.

Huh?!!??! A bowl of fries slams on two pounds? Well, yes. Because you retain more water to process the carbs and because you don't burn off any triglycerides (aka Bad Fat) in your fat cells because the chips de-compose more or less instantly into blood sugar, which turns up the insulin, which turns off the Bad Fat metabolism. I was calm about the weight increase, because I knew it would be back down as long as I didn't eat any more crap.

So the Saturday, I had more fries for lunch, and the vanilla ice cream with hot chocolate sauce - at the Med Kitchen on Upper Street, before going to see Aida Gomez' Carmen at Sadlers Wells. When I came out, the sky was blue and the air was clear and I stretched my legs by walking back to Waterloo. Sunday morning: 88.0 kilos. Also a much steadier emotional state allowed by a bit of indulgence over the weekend. Which is what I need for the next week or so. Emotions are the rocks on which many a good intention about our bodies crash.

Things I Saw Where I Lived and Walked: Part 29

Autumn bushes in Virginia Water (I think); office workers crossing London Bridge; M4 Friday evening westbound; toadstool in Bushy Park. All Olympus 0M10 on film and early 1990's.