This morning I had my first session with Jo of Funktional Fitness. Thanks to an offer from Groupon she is my new, though perhaps temporary, personal trainer. We met in a coffee shop at 7am to discuss what I wanted to get out of the session and to go through my food diary. This session was all about nutrition and chatting. I was already armed with a Chai Latte (a real treat as I rarely buy anything from coffee shops) when Jo arrived and I realised that she’d been involved in the Reading Half coaching session at moti> in Reading. I was expecting someone super svelte and exasperatingly perky but Jo is really down to earth and we got on a treat.

I told her that my aims were to:

• lose half a stone


• run 5km in 25 mins


• reduce wobble on my thighs

And she added:

• run a sub 2 hour half marathon


• improve strength (glutes especially)


• complete a triathlon

Apparently this is all very do-able.

My food diary stumped Jo a bit in as much as there weren’t many tweaks to make. It was a real boost to find I’m already doing lots of things right. For example not bothering with “low fat” products, eating good cereals like porridge, shredded wheat and weatbix. Did you know that organic apples can potentially reduce cellulite? My nutrition improvements are:

• Up my protein intake. Try to get some protein into every meal. This will include eating more things like quinoa and buckwheat.


• Water down my morning fruit juice to reduce the acidity


• Switch to full fat milk as it contains more protein and good fats. Raw milk would be even better.


• Avoid cooking with nut and seed oil if I can


• Drink more water (I currently manage around 1.5 litres a day)

I intend to also:

• Eat more wholegrains. 50% of the pasta and rice I eat is wholewheat or wholegrain and I can switch to wholegrain cous cous too.


• Pay more attention to portion sizes. 80g or the size of a fist is about right.


• Limit my alcohol consumption to around 3 drinks a week. Spirits are best but white wine is better than red which is better than beer.

I’m having my first training session on the 11th. I have to find a location but we’ll be doing things like sprints, fartlek, and strength building. In the meantime I’m making a copy of my booster bar recipe for Jo and she’s digging out some more information relevant to the vegetarian diet for me. It’s been a real boost so far and I hope that I come out of this with a bit more confidence and the motivation to keep up the good work.